A New Kind Of Grind

"Alright, everyone, welcome to the Monthly Crafting Overview Course," the cheerful woman at the front of the room announced loudly. She was short and apple-shaped, with wide shoulders and hips, and a thick midsection. Her face, too, was padded and rounded, making it hard to estimate her age- clearly older than a teenager, but by how much, I couldn't say. Could be 25 like me, could be 40... I didn't know.

She was also, by my estimation, ethnically Dornish; I'd begun to piece together that Dorn's 'core population'- which was, admittedly, quite outnumbered by immigrants and the children thereof- tended towards fairness of both skin and hair (although brown was also a common hair color) and eyes that were either blue or green. Apparently, these were the descendants of the original Vegan colonists, who'd landed in Dorn those several hundred years ago.

Interestingly, Dorn had actually been largely uninhabited before that point, according to the sources. It had mostly been mountains, badlands, and deserts, desirable only for the many naturally-occurring dungeon gates it held; today, the Dornish countryside was far more livable and productive, but that was after literal centuries of terraforming from Farmers, Miners, and Ranchers- who could ranch normal livestock too, not just unawakened monstergirls- using their class abilities to slowly improve and enrich their surroundings.

"And finally, yes, we will be doing Mystic Artificer as well," the teacher said, reminding me that I was in a crafting classroom and not a history classroom. "Yes, yes, I know, every spellcaster above Level 4 already has it, but if you pay attention, you may notice that we do have attendants who are not spellcasters above Level 4."

Wait. Was this a class meant for high-level delvers?

"Besides," the teacher continued. "Even if you do already have Mystic Artificer and simply haven't touched it, perhaps a guided exercise of its abilities will help you realize your interest."

Cautiously, I raised my hand.

"Yes?" the teacher said, pointing at me.

"Pardon the interruption, but, is this class not intended for low-level people trying to decide which crafting class to take?" I asked.

"That would be far more useful," the teacher said ruefully. "Alas, the artifact which allows us to hold these workshops in the first place is still a prototype that's quite expensive to run, let alone reproduce. At this moment, the price for a seat in this workshop is high enough that I mostly teach high-level delvers who've gotten bored and are searching for a new passion."

I glanced sidelong at Veronica, who'd likely paid for our seats. Her last name was Vega; how likely was it that she was, in fact, a noble in exile, retaining enough family connection to the Kingdom of Vega that she could afford to toss around this kind of wealth?

Well. It wasn't impossible. I'd just have to... stay on her good side.

Hopefully.

"That being said," the teacher continued, "I will be taking levels into account when evaluating your products and determining who receives the prizes."

"...Another question, and apologies for spacing out, but: prizes?"

"Yeah, you never mentioned prizes," another delver somewhere behind me said.

"I didn't?" the teacher asked. "Hm. I suppose I do always forget something. Yes! For each class we explore tonight, we will be doing three short projects. The third and largest project will be evaluated by myself, and at the end of the workshop, once we've all selected our favored crafting class, I will be awarding starter sets of equipment to the Alchemist, Blacksmith, and Mystic Artificer who most impressed me. This isn't just a question of who can pour the most magic into their creation, mind; this is a question of impressing me,

with craftsmanship or creativity. Surprise me!"

I turned my head to exchange looks with Akane and Veronica. Now, granted, given Veronica's apparent wealth, I actually wasn't that worried about winning a starter set here- I could probably sponge a set of tools and materials off her, and then pay for more materials and upgrades the normal way, plying my trade. Still, given that the teacher was apparently pretty high level, and was very likely a crafter herself... chances are, she'd made the starter sets, and had made them truly impressive.

So.

"Let us first begin with Alchemist," the teacher said, pulling a sheet aside to reveal a strange-looking thing. It was a trapezoidal prism of grey stone, engraved with a strange pattern, and bearing a circular dial offset from the center. It almost resembled an old-school radio, oddly enough, but then, a radio would've had two dials- one for channel tuning, and one for volume- and neither would've been surrounded by a flask, an anvil, and a wand.

With a loud click, the teacher turned the dial to Alchemist, and suddenly, I could feel something strange going on with my system. Pulling it up to check... Ah. 'Temporary Slotless Class: Alchemist.' Capped at Level 1, and lasting for... a little over two hours. Fun.

"You have two hours to complete three projects," the teacher said. "First, using the herbs in the box labeled A1, brew a Level 1 Healing Potion. Second, using the materials in the box labeled A2, use quicksilver to refine lead into tin. And third, using the materials in the box labeled A3, plus any leftovers from the previous two boxes... Surprise me. Decide on your own project. If you can't think of anything, Box A3 comes with a short list of ideas, as well as a pair of dice if you can't select one yourself. Good luck!"

Each of us was seated at our own worktable, and as the teacher finished talking, a set of three labeled boxes appeared on the left edge of each table, followed by a set of alchemical equipment- some of it recognizable chemistry lab glassware, and some of it less-recognizable ceramic doohickeys- in the center of the table, and finally, an introductory text on alchemy on the right edge of the table.

The first thing I did was yank the book into the center and flip it open. Ah, perfect, this book was written for this class, and wasted no time at all getting into the meat of 'so here's how you brew a healing potion even though you have no idea what you're doing.'

Potion-making, it seemed, was pretty straightforward: you had ingredients, which had a number of alchemical properties, and then you processed them, with these processes strengthening some alchemical properties and weakening others, and once you were done with all the processing- including mixing the ingredients together- you had a potion.

The three ingredients of this basic healing potion, meanwhile, were... hrm. An herb called 'heartleaf' but which looked exactly like basil, and two types of mushrooms, one of which was poisonous and the other of which was commonly farmed for its culinary value.

Okay, well, whatever. Step one, chop up the poisonous mushroom real fine. Step two, put it in a round-bottomed flask with water and torn heartleaf and apply heat. The heartleaf reacts with the poison to invert its effects, making it heal instead of harm. Step three, chop up the other mushroom and put it in the flask with the others, so that the mushroom's own properties- the strongest of which was a sort of mimicry of other alchemical properties; in a sauce, it'd make the sauce taste stronger- would blend with the nascent healing potion and bring it up to the point where a Level 1 delver could drink it and actually get a useful effect.

Bam. Simple healing potion in ten minutes. It even turned red. Turn off the heat, put on thick leather gloves, and pour it out of the round-bottomed flask and into a potion bottle, apparently standardized at 100ml. I had no idea how these people had the metric system, but I wouldn't question it.

Next project: use quicksilver to turn lead into tin. Flip to the next chapter... ah, here we go. Apparently, there was a hierarchy of 'base metals' in alchemy, and quicksilver- i.e. elemental mercury- was used to 'refine' metals, moving them up a step in the hierarchy. Lead was the lowest-ranked of these metals, and tin ranked one step above it, so it should be a pretty simple process... and, indeed, it was! This one weird ceramic apparatus was a metal refinement chamber, and enchanted to remove the need for external heating; simply put in a weight of lead- which, thankfully, came in pre-weighed pellets of ten grams each- and an equal weight of quicksilver, melt them together, and let it cool down, leaving you with one weight of tin, and one weight of alchemical slag- which does, thankfully, float to the top, allowing me to skim it off with an iron scraper, leaving me with twenty grams of liquid tin, which I pour into an adorably petite ingot mold.

Okay, now... for my Magnum Opus.

"Question," I said, raising my hand.

"Yes?" the teacher asked.

"What happens to what we've made after this class?"

"The materials and textbook were paid for when you signed up. Everything on that desk is yours to keep, save for the equipment- although don't worry about breaking it, it isn't expensive."

"Got it."

Okay, so, not only do I have a chance at winning a leg up on my crafting journey, I also have a guarantee to keep whatever it is I make here. Which... admittedly, for a potion, may not be terribly impressive; they're consumables, after all. Still... hrm... ideas, ideas, ideas...

There were four chapters after the one on metal refining, each one walking you through alchemical theory in a way that I figured was accurate but incomplete, because you had maybe an hour to read 'em all and figure out a final project. I skimmed through, and noticed a recurring detail: it was apparently common knowledge that Wizards made the best crafters, because they had the biggest bonuses to the Magic Capacity stat, and thus could spend the most magic in enhancing the results of their craft. I hunted down a longer explanation, and it turned out magic could be used for a lot of things- the second most important was getting the effects of a preparation step without having to actually perform it, which saved time and, sometimes, materials, but the most important was that you could dump increasing quantities of magic into a potion to get increasingly high bonuses to its final effect. If I'd dumped my entire magic pool into that healing potion, it would've been suited for a Level 4, not a Level 1, and it still would've only cost Level 1 ingredients.

I had an idea, and pulled out my phone and frantically searched the internet for potion recipes- I didn't care if it was cheating, this idea could be way more important than any prize, and I wasn't leaving anything up to chance.

I found the recipe I needed pretty quickly, and tore through the ingredient boxes looking for what I needed, before swearing quietly. The recipe called for ingredients I didn't have... but, with some creativity and some quick checking of the alchemical theory in my guidebook, I was pretty sure I could use other ingredients to synthesize the effect I needed.

From there, I got started, first by brewing a quick batch of a half-dozen simple magic recharge potions, and then, following eight complicated synthesis paths that slowly converged together like tributaries into a mighty river, I finally, finally, just before the artifact's effects wore off and I stopped being an Alchemist, dumped my entire magic pool into this final potion, boosting its effects into the goddamn stratosphere.

"Alright, let's see what everyone managed!" the teacher said. "If you didn't finish, don't worry about it too much- if you do choose alchemist, you can finish it later, and if you don't... well, I doubt you'd be worried very much anyways." She went around, inspecting everyone's creations- Veronica apparently used all her quicksilver to produce about a single coin's worth of gold, whereas Akane somehow managed to synthesize a fucking ruby. But when she got to me, she blinked a few times, and tilted her head.

"It's just a simple stat boost," I admitted. "Probably not as impressive as the rubies, but-"

"This is the twenty eighth time I've taught this class," the teacher said. "The first time I taught it, everyone made a Magic Capacity potion as their final project. And so, after some careful analysis of the ingredients, I removed a few of them to make it much harder to brew a Magic Capacity potion, without making anything else too terribly much harder. I've had to repeat the process a few times, as students found more and more convoluted routes to synthesizing a Magic Capacity potion, but the last time someone produced one in this classroom was well over a year ago."

"...Sorry?"

"Oh, you've done nothing wrong," the teacher said. "I never told you to not make this potion, I simply took away the ingredients that would make it practical. In fact, you've actually impressed me, because however you ended up brewing this potion, it must have been an obscenely complicated nightmare."

"It was only eight precursors I had to process," I said.

"Most potion recipes have no more than five." She sighed, and set the potion bottle back on my desk. "Well done. Now... let's see what the next student created."