Ainz crossed the bridge between trees, bathed in the dappled sunlight filtering down from above.
Every now and then, a dark elf waved at him. Not just that—a dark elf walking his way smiled and said, “Fior, off to the apothecary master again?”
“That I am,” Ainz replied.
The fake name had startled him at first, but after a few days, he’d gotten used to it.
“I’m afraid I’ve got no knack for it, so I’m giving my provisional master no end of headaches.”
“Your casting skills are plenty magnificent. If you were an equally skilled apothecary, that would be far more astonishing. Same as how no one’s both a skilled druid and a skilled ranger at the same time.”
Ainz had slain a beast that approached the village—a giant hypnotism python. This had earned him tremendous respect from the dark elves who lived here.
Ever since then, people waved and came over to chat. Their admiration was evident.
“That certainly makes me feel better. Much as I’d love to stop and talk, I am keeping my provisional master waiting. If you’ll excuse me.”
“I do apologize. Don’t let me delay you further!”
Completing a polite extraction, Ainz pressed on, arriving at the place he’d spent the last few days training.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, stepping into the elf tree.
He was not actually late. Time was entirely subjective in this village; only the hunters were at all strict about it. Most people never promised to be anywhere on time, preferring to play it very loose indeed. No one had specifically told Ainz to be here at this hour.
But he was a little later than usual, so he figured it was worth acknowledging.
In fact—
“You aren’t late at all, though?”
Was the only response.
The apothecary master never looked his way. Looking distinctly uncomfortable with the process, he was slowly, gingerly adding crushed herbs to a plate.
Ainz took a seat next to him and, once he was done, picked up the plate and set it on the scale. Then he began adding weights to the opposing plate.
He didn’t get it right the first time and had to swap weights in and out several times before the plates balanced properly. Ainz then wrote down the final measurements on the page he kept close at hand.
“Okay, what’s next?”
The apothecary had been growing increasingly agitated the whole time, and he snatched the dish of herbs away, moving them to a different dish. He was being careful, but it was impossible to get all the herbs off the dish—some residue and fluids remained behind.
The master scowled at that, then tried to use a scraper on it.
If this tool had been made of rubber, perhaps it would have come off clean, but unfortunately, it was made of wood. He got some off, but there was still some left.
“Argh, what a mess!” he yelled, mussing his own hair.
He never would have let Ainz see him this distraught the first day. This was less because the days they’d spent together had brought his guard down than a demonstrative act provoked by his irritation with the workflow Ainz had proposed. It was mostly a hint he’d really like to stop.
“Hang in there, Provisional Master.”
The apothecary shot him a sulky look.
That might get one reaction from women or children, but from a grown-ass man, it did not exactly make Ainz’s mind waver. No matter how handsome dark elves were.
“…Provisional Disciple, you’ve turned this into a complete nightmare.”
“We’ve gone over the reasons. And you agreed. I didn’t force you into anything.”
“……At the time, I thought you had a point. Certainly, our village had no giants. But once I slept on it…I realized that learning to feel it by hand is important. Once you learn that, you can always take measurements later when you’re back home.”
The apothecary sounded less and less confident as he went on.
Ainz was swearing internally—he’d hoped the master wouldn’t pick up on that.
He wasn’t sure if this observation came too late or too soon, but he’d certainly hoped to keep him confuddled.
The dish-based approach was the result of the apothecary’s attempts to get Ainz to learn by the weight on his palm and then with his tongue.
The hand he could obfuscate—he just had to work harder on the illusion. But flavor was a nonstarter. Put it on your tongue and feel how numb it gets… Easily said, but Ainz didn’t have a tongue. A fact he could hardly admit here.
So he’d made excuses. “In the city I’m from, we have creatures large and small, from giants to dwarves. Treating them requires different dosages. For that reason, I’d like to take accurate measures of the volume of herbs needed in a single dose, so I can later adjust that to match the body mass of the patient.”
The apothecary master had treated only dark elves, so these words rang true.
Ainz thought the story had a grain of truth to it. But he was also well aware it was a deception.
The logic behind it was based more on the world he’d come from and might not apply here.
This world ran on magic, and that warped the laws of physics. Potions clearly had one foot in the realm of magic, so it seemed altogether plausible they would hardly function the way things had where he came from.
He knew for a fact that a small potion could heal a giant’s injuries just as well.
Naturally, your average human and your average frost giant’s maximum HP were substantially different, so you’d imagine the amount recovered would differ. And yet, in practice, it seemed to be identical. They hadn’t experimented to be strictly sure—this was an estimate based on what Ainz knew about Yggdrasil, the principles of which were rather similar to this world’s. So there was a possibility his rationale here was actually true.
In retrospect, I should probably just have said I have no sense of taste.
That would have saved them a lot of trouble. But if he’d gone that route, it probably would have led to other problems somewhere.
No use crying over spilled milk. What I need now is something that’ll silence his complaints and convince him…but nothing springs to mind. I thought I had him where I wanted him so didn’t prep any other excuses. Big mistake.
Ainz adjusted his facial illusion, closing the eyes. Since it was just an illusion, he could still see just fine.
The twins had said his face didn’t move nearly enough—It’s like you’re wearing a mask. So he was making a point of closing his eyes sometimes. The parts left uncovered by the cloth—his brows and eyelids—were particularly vital in conveying emotion, so if they never moved, it was just like he was staring fixedly at a single point and rather unsettling. He’d had no idea.
With them supervising, he’d practiced until he was capable of producing things that looked enough like emotion to pass rudimentary inspection. Even then, that was true only when he was consciously controlling it. The movements were still rather clunky, and he definitely couldn’t do anything at all if he wasn’t focused on it.
It wasn’t clear how the apothecary had interpreted this bout of silence, but he said, “And doing it this way—you know it’s unproductive. Far less medicine produced a day is bad for the village!”
A fair assessment.
The village had a number of druids, albeit low-level ones, and they could heal most urgent injuries. The demand for medicine came from hunters and anyone else leaving the village proper—people who necessarily would be far from the druids.
If the druids accompanied the hunters, they might help when injuries occurred, but since they weren’t good at concealing themselves, they’d get in the way of the actual hunts.
Ainz didn’t know much about hunting, so he was of the opinion they should just make a base camp and leave the druids on standby there, but this village had its own way of doing things. Likely the result of trying things out and seeing what worked. An outsider with little knowledge of the forest itself really shouldn’t be sticking his nose in.
“And can anyone truly say that the properties don’t change while the mixture is sitting on this dish? They cannot.”
The scale and its dishes were a retired model taken from the Baleares—to Ainz’s knowledge, the most accomplished alchemists this world had to offer. If they’d used them without issues, there likely wouldn’t be any issues. He’d said as much already—specifically, that he’d been given it by his master, so it should be fine.