NOVEL NEXT Chapter 73: Training
They had gathered in the lab at 9am sharp. I strolled in while sipping on a cup of coffee. I was tired; I’d enjoyed the boys a little too much last night.
I scanned my new assistants. Priscila Vargas: a round-eyed bulbous nosed beauty with short hazelnut hair. Swapna Vigo: a caramel-skinned lady with voluptuous breasts. Prune Brodeur: a black haired vixen with cute lips. Nelli Fodor: an eyebrowless woman with alchemical tattoos running down her neck. Kyo Okamura: a flat lipped blonde with a burn mark on her chin.
Priscila had the lowest level in the group, at 11. Swapna and Nelli were the highest with 13, the other two were 12. They waited for my instructions. But first, I needed to address the elephant in the room, there weren’t enough chairs, and only Prune was sitting. “Let me go talk to Garth.” So I put down the cup of coffee and left the room. I let them talk amongst themselves.
I looked at Terrie, swinging her sword in the middle of the yard as I walked back to the mansion along the stone-paved path. Once inside, I went straight to the kitchen. The new head maid stood beside Garth with her arms crossed, nodding to everything he said. They were watching Otto, and the boys cook.
“Master!” Garth piped up as soon as he saw me. “Maura was wondering if she could move her family into the castle.”
“Oh…” At my mother’s, there was separate housing for the servants. I could do the same thing here and make houses for them; there’s plenty of space, but… Goddess, the cost! “Okay, sure.” For now, since we’re still a small group, there was no harm in letting them use an empty room. “That’s not why I came over. The assistants don’t have chairs. You need to go buy them.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I can buy the chairs.” Maura, the new heavy chested middle-aged maid, volunteered. “You want chairs for an alchemical lab.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your budget.”
“Ah… I don’t know, not too expensive.” I shrugged. “Just take Garth with you. He’ll know if it’s too much for our budget.”
“I see. Okay.” She nodded.
“What room should I give her, master?” Garth asked.
“Ah…” I didn’t want to think about it. I only want to explain how to make potions. “I don’t know, just give her one that’s finished.”
“I think they finished all the bedrooms.” He said.
“Then you figure it out.” I exhaled. “Just get me my chairs,” I said as I marched away.
***
I was back in the lab.
“So,” I said to my new assistants, “Garth is getting us our chairs. Tomorrow everyone should have chairs, for today, you guys are going to have to… you know, deal with it.”
“That’s fine. We’re good.” Prune, who was sitting down, agreed for everyone.
I picked up my cup of coffee. “Right.” Well, they didn’t disagree with her, so I carried on. “Today, I’ll train all of you in the 3 potions we’ll be making for the next 4 years.” I took out 3 pieces of paper from my pocket. “Okay, let’s start with the Vitality.” I handed them the sheet of paper. “Pass it around.” I put the other two sheets back in my pocket. “There’s plenty of ingredients in the freezer.” I opened the storage room/freezer door. “If something’s low, let Garth know; he’ll get you more.”
“Who’s Garth,” Swapna asked.
“The butler,” I said while bringing out the ingredients for the All-day Vitality potion.
“I saw him. But I don’t think these guys know.” Priscila said.
“No, these guys know. They saw him take the maid applicants away.”
“Oh, him.” They recalled.
“Yeah, the head maid will eventually be able to help you too, but for now, she’s new.” The ingredients were lined up on the table. “I’ll show you guys how to make a batch, and then you’ll be doing the rest. And you can keep that sheet as a reference.” It was a copy.
“This is amazing. I would never have thought that poison mushrooms could be used this way.” Nelli, the oldest of the group, said after reading the recipe.
“Yeah.” I smiled. I could tell Priscila was confused; she’d read the recipe but didn’t realize its amazingness. “It’s fine if you guys don’t understand. As long as you follow my instructions, you’ll be able to make it. And that’s all that matters.” Priscila nodded. “Okay, so for one batch… If you look at the top of the recipe, you’ll see, I wrote it for 2 bottles, 100 millilitres.” Kyo, who was holding the recipe, nodded. “So for that, you need about 100 grams of raw black lion mushrooms. You only need 40 milligrams, but when you get rid of the poison and the refuse, that’s what you end up with.” I used [telekinesis] and moved enough mushrooms onto the scale till I had 100 grams. Then I tossed the 100 grams into a beaker. I moved faster through the rest of the ingredients, quickly mouthing them off, “150 grams of yellow plankton, 30 grams of Usuton, 100 grams of…” I measured them and tossed them into a beaker or the big pot. Then I explained, “You can add water and let everything in the big pot boil while you work on everything else. Everything in the beakers need to be processed.” So that’s what I did. I floated a ball of water into the pot and put the pot over the fire. “Then these, you have to be careful.” I took up the black lion mushrooms. “You need to wash each one in pure alcohol. Then let it stay submersed in Sea Oil for about 10 minutes. The Sea Oil makes the poison gather on the surface, so you can peel it off.”
“Amazing.” Nelli and Swapna nodded.
“How long do we have to wait?” Prune asked.
“Well, you only need to wait 20 more minutes for that. Then you can add it to the pot.” I pointed out the boiling leaves, “But you have to wait 30 for that…” My eyes shifted through the beakers till they landed on the fish guts. “That takes 2 hours, so 2 hours.”
“Okay.” She nodded. They looked at the various ingredients undergoing change with curiosity and impatience.
“Do you guys want me to start explaining how Over-clock pills are made, or will that be too much.” I didn’t want to overload them with information.
“Sure!” Nelli, the eyebrowless assistant, agreed enthusiastically.
“What about you guys?” I asked the rest.
“Yeah.” They nodded with less enthusiasm. Priscila was still taking down notes.
“Remember, you can’t show this to anyone else,” I told Priscila when I saw her scribbling away.
“I know, I won’t! This is for myself.” She continued to write. Is this the problem with hiring young people? But I’m a young person, right…
“Okay, then I’ll start explaining the method for making Over-clock pills,” I said as I handed them its recipe. “So…”
I switched between the 3 products throughout the day. While one was cooking, I prepared the other and so forth.
Garth and Maura showed up in the middle of the day and gave everyone chairs.
My assistants had to stay 4 hours extra to watch everything, but they didn’t complain. It was dark outside. We’d all skipped dinner.
“Okay,” I said at the end of the day. “So you have to roll this in Oceantree sap and bake it for another 2 hours in the oven.” I showed them the powder that was formed from drying the Over-clock mixture. “You’ll get around 5 pills out of this.” They nodded. “Okay, I won’t make you guys wait for another 2 hours.”
“I don’t mind,” Nelli said.
“What about your kids,” Swapna asked. “They must be missing you?”
“My hubbies can take care of them.” She said.
“Well, there isn’t much to see. I roll them up in Oceantree sap, like this…” I measured out 20 milligrams, put a drop of sap on it, and rolled it up. “See.” I showed them the round pill. “Now you need to bake it for 2 hours.”
“Hmm… Then what about the other stuff.” She pointed at the two pots full of All-day Vitality and Mana Storm.
“We need to let them cool, and then you can pour it into a bottle.” I stroked my chin. “Yeah… I don’t have many bottles left. I’ll need to get in touch with a glass manufacturer; I can’t keep buying them at the store. Hmm.”
I got lost in my thoughts, and Prune had to snap me out of it. “So what do we do with the waste?” She pointed at all the refuse.
“Oh… I’ll let you know tomorrow.” I’ll probably have to get Garth to take care of it. “Yeah, so that’s it for today. I’ll finish up the pills; you guys head home. Tomorrow I’ll have you guys work on your own.” I planned on sitting around and supervising. “Then, the day after that, you’ll be fully on your own.” I won’t supervise. “Ah… Let’s see… Priscila, Prune, Nelli, you guys take that table. That’ll be you guys’ table from now on. And you two will be working on this table with me.” They were huge tables, so there was plenty of room for everyone. “Tomorrow, if you have any questions, you can ask, but after that, I’ll be working on my own projects.”
“Your own projects?”
“Didn’t I tell you guys? Maybe not. I’m an adventurer. I’ll be heading off to a dungeon next month, and I’ll be focusing on preparing for that trip.”
“I see. So it’s not merchandise.” Kyo said.
“Yeah. I’ll be working on personal stuff.” I nodded. I measured out another 20 milligrams of the powder. “Alright, you guys head home. I’ll see all of you tomorrow morning.”
“Alright.” Priscila picked up her bag. Unlike yesterday, she’d come prepared. She was wearing clothes meant for the lab.
“Maybe I should get you guys aprons.” I wasn’t wearing one, but that’s because I’m an idiot and liked giving Garth work. I want him to feel like he’s accomplishing something when he does the laundry.
“I have aprons at home. I can wear it tomorrow.” Nelli said.
“Yeah, me too.” All of them seemed to have one at home.
“Alright, then never mind. I think I have one too…” I know I put one in my suitcase when I left my mother’s… Or did I…?
So, they left, and I finished up the pills.
***
When I returned from the lab, I noticed strangers moving luggage into the mansion.
“Hello.” One of the girls bowed as they walked past me.
A child came running, screaming, “Susie! Susie! He won’t give it back!”
“Who are these people?” I mumbled. There were a lot of them.
Susie, the girl, hit the little boy on the head and said, “Don’t shout.”
When Garth saw me, he came running over. “I gave them rooms in the left-wing.”
“Are these…”
“Maura’s family. I had to give them 3 rooms.”
“3 rooms!?” I need to build a separate living space for them. This house is for adventurers only, dammit! I was hoping to build a training facility next… But, everything’s just- I sighed. “Okay.”
“She says her kids will work for the castle.”
“Do we have to pay them?” If so, kick her out; time to hire someone else.
“No. No.” He shook his head. “They’re only helping her out. She wants to train her sons to be butlers and one of her daughters to be a maid.”
“How much are you paying her?”
“I’m not paying her, master. You are.” He innocently told me.
“Okay, how much am I paying her?”
“4 silvers a month.”
“Okay.” That’s not bad. “Is there dinner left over? I’m starving.” I’ll worry about all this later; my stomach demands answers now!
“You have to ask Otto. But probably.”
“I shooed him away earlier.” Otto had shown up with dinner earlier, but it would’ve been weird to take a break while my assistants were forced to stay overtime. “Okay, is he still in the kitchen?”
“He should be.”
“Okay, I’m going to go get something to eat. You deal with this.”
“Okay.” He nodded.
“But she moved everything in quickly, didn’t she?” I thought it’d at least take a week. “Moving her whole family.”
“Ah, yeah. I think they were living in a hotel for the past few weeks.”
“Hotel? Why?”
“She moved here-”
“Actually, don’t answer that.” I interrupted before he could continue. “I don’t care. I going to go get something to eat.”
***
The next day I sat around and did nothing while they worked. I watched to make sure they didn’t make any mistakes. It was a boring job. They were phenomenal alchemists. Though the level 12s needed to repeatedly ask Priscila for help, they didn’t screw anything up. Priscila had written everything down and was the go-to for the level 12s. While Nelli and Swapna seemed to know what to do. Over the course of the entire day, I think they consulted me twice.
At the end of the day, I said, “Okay, you guys seemed to have gotten the hang of it. I think I can leave you guys alone for tomorrow. You guys can handle it on your own, right?”
“You’re not going to be here?” Priscila asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “I have to check up on a few things. I might try to look into the bottles too.” I looked over at the giant jars we’ve been pouring the potions in. “When we present it to the auction house, we can’t use those jars.”
“I see.” Nelli nodded.
“Anyway, you guys work. I have to run errands tomorrow.”