Crates full of freshly brewed potions were stacked on the floor of the cabin. After sending Argis on his way Elas had spent the rest of the day brewing all the vigor potions he could with the materials he had at hand along with the potions he would need for teaching his new students.

Focus potions diluted to a twentieth should be safe for normal human consumption. Giving students focus potions was standard procedure for alchemists as it not only trivializes the intense memorization part of alchemy it also starts building up the students poison tolerance. Just the fumes coming out of an alchemist's cauldron can be deadly to the uninitiated not to mention all the toxic ingredients they will have to handle thus there was a need to ease students into gaining resistances.

Elas planned to push the workshop alchemists to get the poison resistance milestones as they weren't going to need all the space for a well developed mage heart anyway. The alchemical workshop was designed to be similar to assembly lines back on Earth. This way he did not need to train actual alchemists as just teaching them a single step in the process was enough to do their task. It also meant none of them could leave and start their own workshop somewhere unless they left as a group.

After comparing all the potions that had steps simple enough to be divided among novices Elas decided that his vigor potion was his best bet at getting a product that was both simple and easy to sell. His current formula was unlikely to work as it was both expensive and used materials that were far too dangerous to work with but with his skills it was easy enough to tweak the formula.

Training an alchemist apprentice was a decade long endeavor. Training someone to perform a single step of the potion making process should take a few months at most if starting from nothing. Not training them into actual alchemists also meant he did not have to register them with the empire, effectively dodging all the restrictions and taxes that came with it.

Then he just needed someone to watch over the cauldron. Unlike preparing and mixing simple ingredients, managing alchemical reactions inside a cauldron was a job for an actual mage for the same reason he had entrusted Rikia with his medication. The final steps of the potion making process required a mage to bring the conflicting mana of the ingredients together into a stable construct with as little waste as possible.

There was simply no time to train a competent mage so Elas planned to hire one along with a merchant given both should be easy enough to find in larger cities. He looked around his alchemy shelves taking stock of the much diminished materials. He would need to go shopping soon which was convenient as he planned to visit a city anyway.

The closest city to Farhaven was the city of North Point, a month's travel on foot. It might sound extreme but that was the cost of living in the most remote corner of the empire. By providing extremely dilute vigor potions he could cut the trip by half which was still a month's round trip but it would have to be done. He had brewed the crates of vigor potions precisely to make the long trip worth it.

This early in spring the baron would be far too busy to travel anywhere which meant his coachmen were just lazing about planting root crops in their gardens or what not. It would be easy to convince the baron to lend them to him as getting the workshop running was supposedly for the greater good of Farhaven.

The trip was also a great way to get his students and apprentice away from Agris and his overprotective group. The path to getting toxin resistance was ugly and would further damage his reputation with the workers if he was not careful. By taking them on the trip with him he could ramp up their training to something more efficient.

Elas out of the window seeing that the sun was still high he began taking out ingredients to start his research into creating a cheaper version of his vigor potion. He had prepared the materials and was about to start the brewing when he was suddenly interrupted by screaming and the sound of men running up the hill.

“Clear the path, we've got a patient!” a man shouted.

Elas recognized the voice as Berian the elder woodcutter. Elas moved to the main table and cleared it of all items just as his door was pushed open as Berian and his men carried a dying man into his home.

Elas gestured for them to place the man on the table. The man was covered head to toe in his own blood. Both legs were broken and his left arm was a mangled stump to top it of a deep cut spanning his entire stomach threatening to spill out his guts. The fact that the man not only still breathed but was screaming bloody murder was a testament to how hardy the woodcutters can get with their blessings.

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“Hold him down!” He commanded the woodcutters who followed his words without question.

Elas was an alchemist who specialized in life extending elixirs and treatments. The official categorization of his profession was Immortal Alchemist pertaining to their never ending pursuit of immortality. The obsession with everything life extending had turned them into the best doctors in Eterna. Elas was no exception although his pursuit was more in the realm brewing elixirs than saving patients.

He could just use a healing potion and be done with it but to hell if he was going to waste one of the most expensive potions he had. A healing potion was no different from a panacea and just as expensive to create. Elas had only three vials of the stuff and that was after using the Emperor's favor to get his hands on the rarest ingredients.

Elas grabbed his treatment kit from a shelf and dropped it on the table next to the screaming man's head.

“Oh shut it will you!” Elas said as he grabbed the man's throat and constricted his carotid arteries.

Soon enough the man slumped unconscious and Elas shooed away the woodcutters to the corner of the room. There was a reason everyone avoided going to Elas if they could help it. His only experience with surgery was with rich nobles that can afford a specialized anesthetist alchemist or with convicts that don't require such considerations. Safe to say anyone that required his help would come out feeling like shit for the next few months. At least they are alive.

First he took a piece of rope and constricted the man's mangled arm to stop the bleeding. Next he jammed disinfecting herbs into the open wounds before washing it all with water. The man’s arm was done for but his legs would heal with some bone mending powder, splints and several months of recuperation. He mixed bone mending powder with water in a bowl until it formed a clay like substance then bent the man's legs back in place before cutting open the area of the fracture and fishing around for bone fragments with tweezers. Then it was a puzzle game of getting as many bone pieces back in place while using the bone mending clay to stick them all together. The man's gaping stomach wound might look grievous but it was a clean cut and was mostly skin and fat with the organs only taking minor damage. He took out a sewing kit and started sewing the muscles together while sprinkling dilute troll blood into the seams. Troll blood is toxic but when diluted sufficiently would only cause extreme pain along with actually providing some of its miraculous healing properties on the wound. Of course one could take a convict and slowly infuse them with troll blood over several years and produce human tempered troll blood that has no ill effects on humans but such luxuries were not to be found here.

The stomach wound was the easiest as he just scrubbed the organs clean and sewed the small wounds before packing it all back in and sewing it all shut. He then finished by chopping off most of the mangled arm and shaping it into a stump before forcing dilute vigor potion down the man's throat to fix anything else wrong with him with its minor healing property along with making sure the man healed from the brain injuries he caused by squeezing his arteries.

Elas wiped his hand on a towel.

“It's done, make some splints and make sure the wounds are clean and clean up my house.” He said as he tossed the blood soaked towel at one of the woodcutters.

He walked up to Berian who was sitting on the floor next to the door and asked how the incident came about. The injuries of the man were not the usual head trauma and cut fingers the woodcutters came to him for. And he was quite sure the mangled arm was chewed, not crushed.

“It was beasts” the old woodcutter started. “Several dozen came at us while we were out chopping. We fended most of them off with our axes but Pol over there” he gestured towards the man on the table “got separated from the group and mauled. We managed to get to him and formed a circle to wait for the soldiers. Soon enough Luka came with his men and the beasts ran away.”

“Did you over log?” Elas asked.

The old man grunted. “We always do. But this was no retaliation from the forest. No way they let us off so easy if it was.”

Elas agreed with the woodcutters assessment. There was no way the denizens of the forest would leave it at a few dozen beasts. There would be several thousands of monstrous beasts if it was a planned attack by the denizens. Many townships at the edge of the great forest had been razed to the ground the last time the people of the empire overstepped. There were many great kingdoms within the sea of trees and if not for their fear of the empire they would have slaughtered everyone that approached.

Elas was wary of the situation as there were a couple of crown bearers within the forest itself but they were quite far from Farhaven so it was unlikely. And it wouldn't make any sense for any beast faction to attack with only a few dozen mundane beasts. They did not even manage to kill a single woodcutter.

“Where did this happen?” Elas asked.

“About half an hour south of town maybe.” Berian answered.

It seems he would have quite an exciting start to his trip then as the only road out of Farhaven was south of the village. He might as well help Luka and the soldiers with clearing up the problem. For all he knew this was one of the many possible random events that occur in the game though part of Elas doubted such events existed in reality.