Master Of None

"Just remember, you have no control over the ingredients brought to you. If you want a perfect moth wing herb, then you better be out there with an herbalist and an adventurer team to get it. The best herbs I have seen are hand picked and grown by the alchemists have always yielded better results!" Walker seemed to have come at the perfect time. Remey sounded like she had just ended a grand speech about the values in gathering her own herbs. 

Walker couldn't deny this. He was also way happier when he would eat foods he and the party had hunted on their adventures. The same must be said for potions. Since the alchemist would have gone out and seen the struggle to get the herbs then they would take more care through the potion making process. This would inevitably end up with more things learned and a better potion made. 

"I didn't think that you would be coming to watch my class. You aren't even a real member here." Remey couldn't resist the urge to tease Walker. It was an instinctual reaction at this point. 

"Ohh, you know how it is. I was studying some mage tower and found a strange dried up potion that has no efficacy. I did get an appraisal on it and save what I cleaned up. But if you don't find a mana eyes potion interesting then that's fine. It's not like it was a grand potion at one point in time." Walker turned around with his hands in the air shrugging. 

It only took a second for Remey to grab his arm and turn him around. "You are going to repeat every word of the appraisal you got from that back to me as slowly as possible with every possible detail!" The seriousness in her voice was a drastic change from her light hearted teasing before. She had easily realized just how big of a deal this could be for every alchemist in the world. 

After about fifteen minutes of questions that Walker could barely answer, Remey dragged him toward the upstairs. "Trish and the old man should be done by now. They are going to start investigating this as soon as possible." The rooms that they passed had some alchemists already at work. However, the herb preparation rooms were more impressive.

To say that the alchemy guild processed and prepared herbs would be too simple. They were a factory that could prepare hundreds of herbs a day of any variety. They had packages and standards to ensure that the herbs would remain in their best possible conditions for as long as possible. What went even further was that they were marked by quality. The alchemists that were experimenting and learning didn't need to buy the most expensive of that kind of herb. They could buy the lower quality herbs to save money while also learning. 

"Trish! Old man! Get over here!" Remey burst in to her own alchemy lab while Trish and the old master alchemist rushed toward her. They knew the sound of her voice when she had something amazing to show them. At this point, it was a learned tone that told them they would be experiencing a new challenge and possibly a new potion. "Well? Tell them what that is in your hand." 

Trisha and the old massage alchemist were eyeing the decayed potion dubiously. There was no indication that they saw any value in it whatsoever. This changed as Walker explained what the potion was and what it had been. They slowly showed more light in their eyes and became more animated. There was even a moment that Walker expected them to snag the potions and begin testing it in various ways. 

"Are you sure this was just on the ground dried up? It wasn't cracked on the floor or covered in any molds?" The question caught Walker off guard because he wasn't sure if it was really important. However, looking back at his memory of the event, he knew that it had not been covered in mold or even dust. It was just the dried potion. The entire tower was surprisingly clean despite being abandoned in the desert for many years. He realized that this was the runes at work again. 

"No, it was just the potion dried in to the rune carvings on the floor. I think that the ingredients in it were able to fully disrupt the flow of mana. It was a potion that was able to give someone the ability to see mana in the air after all. I doubt that it wouldn't have some effect on mana in general without being inside a being to cause the skill." 

"Then were there any ingredients around? Did you find any manuals or documents that explained the potion nearby?" Trish had to see the data that came with this kind of potion. She wanted to begin research with as much as she could possibly have in her hands. 

"That is the tough part. This seems like a potion that would be very common for the race that once lived there. I would say that the archive floors will have something about them but that's the problem. There are multiple archive floors and all of them are in languages that aren't easy to translate because the runes are also in them. I will be having a meeting with representatives tomorrow to discuss who will have access to the tower and when. It needs a lot to be properly operational." This was going to be a longer process than anyone wanted, but Walker needed it to be done right. 

"We will be there to see what is said. In the meantime, leave that with us, and will do some experiments." Trish seemed to be taking the lead. She wanted to be able to figure out what herbs may have been used as a foothold for how the potion was made. Walker didn't argue at all. This was a goal for him coming here. 

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