Chapter 177

“A blood relation potion? The potion itself isn’t hard, but the ‘twin seeds of curly sky grass’… Master, is there a good way to identify those?” Several days after Caroline had been rescued, Mariela received a request for an unusual potion. A blood relation potion wasn’t something that common folk were familiar with. It didn’t heal injuries or illnesses, nor did it have any special effect on the body. It was a very expensive potion that was regularly used among nobles when their children were presented to the public. To prove the blood relationship of a child who had been newly announced to the world, the offspring’s blood was dripped into the blood relation potion, followed by that of a different person. The potion turned deep crimson for parent and child, orange for siblings, yellow for grandparent and grandchild. The color was lighter the more distant the blood relationship was. It was a very important potion for nobles, who prided themselves on their lineage, to prove without a doubt that a child was theirs. Although the concoction was a type of high-grade potion, it was extremely expensive at a gold coin per bottle. This was ten times the price of a normal high-grade potion. Despite being so expensive, the difficulty level of making a blood relation potion was no different than other high-grade potions. The reason for the high price was half because of an added surcharge and half because one of the ingredients—twin seeds of curly sky grass—was extremely expensive. Curly sky grass itself wasn’t rare. It was a legume planted in autumn and bore fruit ripe enough for eating right around this time of year. The vines coiled into spirals and, for some reason, stretched toward the ground and hardened when they reached the soil. They were not meant to coil around anything. Rather, the vines became a support for the main plant. Hence its name, curly sky grass. They were like self-supporting beans, bearing only one bean per pod. In exchange for the low quantity of beans, the pods were soft, and pod and bean could be boiled and eaten as is. On extremely rare occasions, two beans could be found in a single pod. These were aptly called “twin seeds”. If you took them out after they were ripe enough to be planted, they became an ingredient for blood relation potions. They were highly valuable because they were a very uncommon find when the beans were examined one by one for those that could be planted. Freyja, who had been looking high and low for a bottle of alcohol first thing in the morning, responded to Mariela’s question with seemingly no interest at all. “Twin seeds just take hard work. We’re right in the harvest season. You can dooo iiit… Ah!!!” The sage paused for a moment after her exclamation. “That’s right—I buried twin seeds under the hut in the Fell Forest for safekeeping. What a coincidence, huh?” Freyja said as she abruptly turned around. She must have remembered something stupid because a forced smile appeared on her face. She had been so uninterested before, yet now she was like a different person. “C’mon, let’s go, right now,” Freyja urged, leading Mariela and Sieg toward the ruins of the little house in the Fell Forest. This is my master we’re talking about. I know what’s buried under there with those seeds… Mariela had never been told of this storage location. She hardly needed to guess what her master would have secretly buried there. Even so, Mariela was glad to revisit the little house for the first time in two centuries, and she followed briskly behind her master. “Looks like this place was totally destroyed, huh?” With her usual cheeriness, Freyja gazed at the site where the house she and Mariela used to live in once stood. The house, which had been filled with memories of Freyja and Mariela, was so devastated and swallowed by the forest that you couldn’t even tell where the walls had been, save for the barely perceptible remnants of the stone floor connecting to the cellar. Even the floor had been reclaimed by a large clump of grasses and herbs. No one but Mariela and her master would’ve ever been able to notice that a small house had once stood here. “Ahh, isn’t this the medicinal herb garden you made way back when, Mariela? Curique is incredibly fertile, but you planted it without space between each plant, so they competed with each other, leaving even sturdier ones behind. Bet these ones here now are really potent. And this huuuge tree is from the fruit seeds you planted. It’s got male and female varieties, but the one you planted was male. You diligently watered it day after day and then said, ‘Master, when can we eat the fruit? Maybe next month?’ I couldn’t bear to tell you there wouldn’t be any because it was male.” The sage spoke with nostalgia about things that had happened a long time ago, perhaps picturing how the little house looked before the Stampede. “Oh yeah, I guess that did happen…” Mariela had forgotten that precious memory until now. She reminisced about those bygone days of so many years ago. Behind her, Sieg cracked a smile as he imagined a younger Mariela. She’d probably been adorable. To another, the hunter’s expression may have looked a little suspicious, but since Freyja didn’t shout “Fire!” it probably wasn’t anything to worry about. “Now for those indispensable s—twin seeds.” “‘S’? Is there something you need that begins with ‘S,’ Master?” Freyja clearly ignored Mariela’s pressing and said, “Now, the twin seeds are…,” and nimbly jumped down into the cellar where Mariela had slept in suspended animation for two hundred years. “Huh? But there was nothing in that cellar.” Mariela was puzzled as she laboriously and carefully climbed down into the basement after her instructor. The place was so small that when Freyja, Mariela, and then Sieg were all inside, their shoulders touched. “Let’s see, yeah, right here. Sieg, move this stone out of the way with your sword.” The spot Freyja pointed to was the exact center where Mariela had spread her magic circle and slept in suspended animation. “This was the safest spot in the whole house. I put valuable stuff in there. Hey, there it is.” Despite its appearance, the flagstone she pointed to was actually a thin plate. It came loose quite easily after Sieg forced the tip of his sword beneath it. When it was moved aside, it revealed hole big enough to fit an armful of items. Secreted within this hidden spot was a leather bag. The contents of this secluded satchel included curly sky grass seeds soaked in honey, and several bottles of alcohol. “Ahh, I knew it, ‘spirits’!” Mariela exclaimed. The identity of the S her master had uttered was alcohol after all. The contents of the bottles had turned strange colors in the intervening years, even then there was hardly any liquid content left in them. Were they even drinkable anymore? The curly sky grass seeds soaked in honey were probably a snack to be eaten with the drink. They, too, had rotted so badly that Mariela couldn’t even tell what they’d originally looked like. They’d long since dried out, and their shape suggested that eating them now was ill advised. However, there was one other small bottle next to the honey, and the twin seeds within were steeped in a particular substance called “time-cheating nectar.” This was a preservative that prevented its contents from experiencing the flow of time. Whenever Mariela’s master had made or bought the honey, she’d probably put the twin seeds she found by chance in the time-cheating nectar and took the opportunity to store them when she’d hidden the alcohol and snacks. There was still one more thing in the bag, however. “Ah, so the alcohol’s no good—guess that figures. But these still are.” “Huh?” The spirits were in poor condition and looked sour and undrinkable. But, if that’s what Freyja had expected, then what was the object beginning with S that the alcohol-loving sage had so been looking forward to? “Heh-heh-heh. Mariela, whaaat do you think these are?” “A-are those…?!” Freyja retrieved several tattered scraps of paper from the bottom of the bag. The ink on them had run, and it was difficult to read what was written. However, Mariela had made them when she was little, and remembered exactly what they were. “Service voucher. I will help Master with one thing.” Those worn-out scraps of paper were premium tickets the young Mariela had given to her master on some anniversary or other such special day. “Heh-heh-heeeh. The time to use these has finally come! Now, I wonder what I should have you help me with.” Freyja was overjoyed. “Please give those back!” cried the troublesome sage’s student. Sieg safeguarded the preserved twin seeds, while keeping an astute eye out in case Freyja dropped any vouchers so he could pick them up himself. For some reason, Mariela was extremely embarrassed at having given the vouchers as a present when she was little. She would have preferred such things not to have been hidden in the number one safest place Freyja could’ve come up with. In the end, Mariela agreed to honor the promise she’d made on the little tickets. She was already doing everything for her troublesome master anyway. “I want to eat orc meat fried with general oil!” The first order Freyja made was for food, unsurprisingly. The particular dish was made by kneading orc lard with orc king lard. The oil produced from this effort could not be created via magic or skills, truly it was the embodiment of effort. Cooking with this rare oil made cheap orc meat as delicious as that of an orc general. “Yes, ma’aaam.” After completing the blood relation potion, Mariela went to the kitchen to make the substance, as decreed by her master. Was she going to have to make the oil once again by knead-knead-knead-kneading like she did not long after she’d first met Sieg? Nope. After she put the orc lard in a bowl, she set the bowl under a kneading machine and pressed a switch with a click. Kneeead-kneeead-kneeead-kneeead, kneeead-kneeead-kneeead-kneeead. The machine was super convenient. Powerful, too. As if to say, “This is two hundred years of humankind’s progress!”, the general oil was ready in the blink of an eye. It was incredibly easy. No Sieg required. Perhaps Freyja didn’t know such a handy magical tool existed, because she stared with dumbfounded shock on her face at the roasted orc meat as it sizzled on the magical heating tool, emitting a delicious smell. Even for Freyja, such an expression was a rare sight. As if knowing the general oil was made via artificial means, Freyja said a bit dejectedly, “I can’t feel my pupil’s affection in this…” But she decided she’d let Mariela off the hook this one time. Considering Freyja had—quite literally—dug up the embarrassing service vouchers when Mariela already affectionately looked after the sage every day, it was the least she could have done. Incidentally, Sieg was the one who collected the service vouchers in exchange for Mariela cooking what her teacher wanted. The young alchemist had insisted that he throw them away, but this time he probably hid them somewhere safe in their home.