After packing away my new purchases, I had dinner with my friends and went to sleep. Casting magic was very tiring.

Sunday was spent primarily doing any homework I'd skipped out on during the week, including the lab report. What time I had left, I spent messing around with the monster cores.

Instead of the biter core, I tried a treant core. They were about the same size, but the mana was different. I pulled out the binder and spent the few minutes running it through my mana channels to dissipate the full feeling. The soupy Green and White mana sloshed about more vigorously than the Black and Red had. Maybe it was due to the different types of mana? I had no idea.

Remembering my process from yesterday, I separated the two types into separate vessels. There was about twice as much Green ad White. As I had thought, the mana stored separately did not a health potion make. Into a third container, I added all of the Green mana and slowly added the White mana drop by drop. It took a while, but, rather quickly, the green color changed to a deep blood red. I marked down how many drops this took and kept adding drops until the color changed again and marked that number as well.

I put the remaining White mana back into its container and pulled a little bit of the White from the mixture out again to turn it back to its red, health potion color. It turned out that the middle of the amount of drops was equivalent to about half of the White mana from the core. This meant that there were four parts of Green to one part of White to create a healing potion. I wondered if it would transfer to learning spells. Something to test during the week!

I poured the health potion into a vial. About three-quarters of the vial was filled with this health potion and a very small amount of White mana filled another vial. I decided to run this four times throughout the day, leaving me with three completed vials of health potion and a bit more than half of the White mana. I thinned the White mana potion out with water to fill the vial.

If I had to guess, the health potion was probably grade 5 or 6 and the White potion was grade 4 or 5. I didn't know what the White potion did, though.

Since the store I went to was open every day, I went there in the late afternoon on Sunday. I felt mentally exhausted from all of the magic I'd done. I didn't need to check my Status to know that my MP was nearly gone.

The shop was much less crowded today than it had been the day before. I asked the clerk, a different one than yesterday, if I could talk to Bridget concerning selling some potions. The clerk gave me an eye that said 'you're too young to be here' but went to fetch the owner nonetheless.

"Ahh, James, you're back again."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"What does your master have to me today?"

I took out the four vials and placed them on the counter. She picked up a health potion and examined it. She placed a drop on a piece of special paper and her eyes went wide.

"Above grade 5?! That shouldn't be possible!"

She scratched her head and took a deep breath before continuing.

"Tell me, who is your master? This potion is perfect!"

"I'm sorry," I said. "He doesn't want his name known so he sends me to sell for him."

"Damn," she cursed. "Now, let's see the other one. Hmm..."

She completed the same procedure she had in the past.

"Grade 5 curative potion. This is good stuff! Each of the health potions I will buy from you for one small gold each and the curative potion..." she paused, thinking. "The curative potion I will buy for five large silver."

"Wow!" I exclaimed.

"You don't see potions like these every day... or ever, really. They're hard to price, but they'll sell very well to the right buyer."

"I see. May I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"What is that paper?"

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"The ones I use to test potions?"

"Yeah."

"Trade secret I'm afraid."

"So you can't tell me?"

"I can't, sorry. But I would give you some if you'd introduce me to your master."

"I can't do that, sorry," I said glumly. I really would have liked to know how that paper worked.

"It's too bad, really. anyway, you have yourself a good day, ok?"

"Sure. You too."

I pocketed the three small gold and the five large silver and went back to my apartment. When I returned, Dave was sitting in the common room with the girls and they were chatting away. I sat at one of the couches and joined in.

"Hey, James," Dave called to me when I had sat down. "You were out late."

"Yeah, I was making money."

"You got a job?" Keira asked.

"Sort of?"

"Ooo tell us more!" Dave said excitedly.

"Well, I've been making potions and selling them."

"What?" Alicia said, shocked. "How do you make potions?"

"You remember how I have all affinities, right?"

The group nodded.

"Well, I got another skill from it recently called Manasight. I can see mana."

"Whoa!"

"That's awesome!"

"What does mana look like?"

"Since I placed out of Math, I'm taking Practical Chemistry instead." I continued, ignoring their questions and statements for now. "I learned how to make health potions last week in class, right? So I watched the mana as I made the potion the way the teacher said and I was able to see what it should look like. Now, Alicia, you'll like this next part."

Her ears perked up at my statement.

"Have any of you seen a monster core before?"

They shook their heads.

"Hold on, then."

I got up and went into my room. I took one biter core and one treant core. I put them on the table in the middle of the couches.

"These are two different monster cores. Can any of you tell me how they are different?"

"This one," Dave said, "looks kinda red."

He'd pointed to the biter core.

"But the other one doesn't look like anything to me."

"The the one Dave pointed to first looks dark to me and the other one looks green?" Alicia said, a little confused.

"I can't see anything with either of them," Keira pointed out.

"You're all correct. Dave, you must have an affinity towards Red mana, and Alicia you have an affinity towards Green and Black. Keira, you don't have an affinity to those three or White."

They looked at me and nodded.

"How do you know?" Keira asked.

"My skill. I can see more than just a shadow or hint like I did before I got the skill. I guess you can't see what you don't have an affinity for, which is why Alicia doesn't see the Red and Dave doesn't see the Black of the biter's core."

"Ok... and what does this have to do with money again?" Dave asked.

"Well, I saw how health potions were made and wondered if I could do better. The teacher made us heat it up and many other things that just seemed to waste the mana--"

"Mana?" Alicia interrupted.

"The cores are solid mana. So anyway, I wanted to not waste the mana from the cores. Due to the skill, there's... something that binds the mana together so it stays like it is. It's a type of mana, but it's not one of the eight types. I can pull it out of the core so that the mana becomes liquid instead. Then I can separate the mana by type and make the potion with the right amount of Green and White. I hope that makes sense."

Dave and Keira looked confused, but Alicia seemed to mostly understand.

"What happens to that other kind of mana?" she asked.

"I pull it into myself and circulate it like any other kind of mana. It makes me feel like I've eaten too much but that feeling goes away after a while."

"Can you show us?"

"Sure, I guess."

I got a dish and returned from my room. I placed the biter core into the dish.

"Can you see if you can give me that other kind of mana?" Alicia asked. "I want to understand it better."

"I can try."

I pulled the mana from the core and pushed it into Alicia carefully. I could feel my control of them mana being lost when she took control of it. The core melted into a liquid as I'd come to expect.

"This feels weird," Alicia said. "I get what you mean now."

"Can you see what the mana looks like?"

"I see red here and there," Dave said.

"Whoa," Alicia said. "I see the black but I can see the red now too!"

"I thought you didn't have an affinity for Red?"

She didn't answer immediately.

"What is this?!"

The three of us gave her a look.

"M-m-my status! I have an affinity for Red now? It's at 1!"

I checked my own status quickly and saw that my affinities had gone up as well! Red and Black had gone up by 1% and Green and White had gone up by 4%.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed.

"Can someone explain what is going on?" Keira demanded.

"That something that holds the cores together raises affinities! This. Is. HUGE!"

Alicia was still shocked.

"Wait, so you're saying that you can give me affinities to all types?" Dave asked.

"It seems that way. You might get Manasight too."

"Do it!"

"Calm down. I can help you guys with that, but I don't even know if there are cores of every type that I can buy! I have biter cores, which are Red and Black, and treant cores, which are Green and White. We can go to the market on Saturday and take a look. If you can't see any affinities on a core, it'll help you at least."

"Let's do it!"

Dave and Keira looked excited about the prospect, while Alicia simply nodded. She was too shocked!

I went through the motions of separating the mana into types and then stoppered them up into two vials.

"This is the pure mana from the core. The taller one is Black while the one with less is Red. The Black potion is a poison while the Red potion is a fire potion. They aren't worth a ton, but biter cores are also not expensive. I should explain that it takes a lot of mana to be able to do what I just did. My affinities aren't very high, despite having all of them."

"You're awesome," Keira said. "I wanna do that, too!"

"We'll go Saturday, promise."