If Your Body's Fine, Your Head Doesn't Need to Suffer

Isabel turned all the lights back on and began her explanation.

“Why do you think this effect occurs? Anyone know the answer?”

Then Carter raised his hand first.

“Natural mana is a general term for mana with countless properties, because the mana inherent in the material itself has its own distinct qualities.”

“Exactly! Basic natural mana is usually pretty similar in nature, but each ingredient’s mana has its own unique properties.”

Isabel continued her explanation, holding a blade of grass in one hand and a bottle in the other.

“For example, this dried mandragora and this Skyrake horn powder have mana that repels each other.”

“So if you mix them, they neutralize each other and can’t be used in the same potion. They’re ingredients for mana potions and stamina potions, respectively.”

This much had been taught in herbal medicine.

Repelling properties and amplifying properties.

And the degree of amplification and repulsion was different for each one.

On top of that, each herb also had things like detoxifying properties or clumping properties.

So there were nearly endless combinations.

Herbal medicine professors even said this wasn’t something to put on homework or exams, but something to be handled case by case.

“All right, then. For your assignment, memorize every ingredient combination listed in the herbal medicine textbook. We’ll cover this on the final exam.”

...Huh?

“Yes?”

“What!?”

Ah.

Now that I thought about it, Isabel had said she gave brutal assignments too.

I hadn’t expected it to be in this form, though.

I hate that I’ve already gotten used to this thanks to Karnaroff.

“But that’s such a pain...”

Memorization doesn’t even work on a magical-circle mathematician...

“We’ve looked at the herbs that go into making potions. But you can’t make a potion with herbs alone.”

She took out a test tube.

Blue-glowing mana was sitting inside it.

“The most basic, yet indispensable, element in a potion.”

Isabel opened the cap.

Mana glowing in a clear, bright color popped like bubbles in a carbonated drink.

“Liquid natural mana. Now, put all of this into the pot.”

The students took their test tubes out of their bags and poured the natural mana into the iron pots.

“This time it’s a potion that doesn’t need heating, so handling the natural mana is the most important part.”

I opened my test tube and poured it in too.

Even though they clearly said it was liquid, when I poured the mana from the small test tube into the pot, the amount had increased.

Honestly, it felt like it had half the properties of a gas.

“Now just make it according to the manual! Assuming all the ingredients have been measured out, you can just throw everything in at once and make it! Liquid natural mana dissolves the ingredients!”

Isabel said with a smile.

As if there was nothing else to explain.

But the manual Isabel handed out was only one page.

[Suppress the repulsion and leave the amplification alone. Use the spatula to crush any spot where repulsion appears.]

Huh?

“Um... isn’t there any other explanation?”

Someone raised a hand and asked.

It was a girl with short red hair.

Isabel said cheerfully.

“Nope! What’s written in the manual is the alpha and the omega, and everything else has to be adjusted on the fly!”

Isabel dumped all her ingredients into the pot and started stirring.

“As for the demonstration...”

“You wouldn’t know what you were seeing even if you watched! Precise observation of natural mana is hard unless you’ve got talent!”

I looked at Isabel’s pot.

The moment the ingredients went in, I could see their mana repelling each other in real time.

Cracking, sparking mana.

But once Isabel intervened, the repulsion almost disappeared.

Isabel would suppress the repelling natural mana with her own mana, and even press it down with the spatula.

So there wasn’t just one fixed method...

“Isn’t she just ridiculously good at this?”

“If I had to give one tip, it’s that everyone learns by failing at first! Commercializing it is hard, you know?”

I roughly understood.

This was that kind of thing.

The kind of thing that looks easy when someone else does it, but is ridiculously hard to actually do.

* * *

Just as expected.

Looking at the other students, it was total chaos.

It was nothing unusual for some black stuff to start billowing out of the pots.

And I could roughly see why she’d told us to memorize the ingredient combinations.

To control the repulsion, you had to at least know which ingredients repelled which others.

But sensing natural mana was a talent in itself.

“Mmm... whoa!”

Aris, sitting next to me, looked like she was having a pretty hard time.

Still, something was at least coming together over there.

If I looked elsewhere...

—BOOM!

—Fwoosh!

“Aaagh!”

“Why is this happening?”

For now, I roughly understood.

There was no point in watching those guys.

“Still, I should check Robert’s.”

I went over to Robert’s desk.

Robert was one of the students who had confidently thrown all the ingredients in from the start.

“W-what is it?”

He was trying hard to keep his composure, but the ingredients’ repulsion was no joke.

—Crackle, crackle.

“Need help?”

“Sorry, but this guy doesn’t need help from a bystander...”

“Ah, that’s repelling! Catch it!”

I pointed to the right side of the pot.

At a glance, there was clearly a spot crackling with repulsion.

But it seemed like I was the only one who could see it.

Robert’s spatula stabbed only the innocent left side.

“W-where?!”

“There! You idiot!”

“Here!?”

Damn it.

—BOOOOM!

The small explosion happened on the right.

Robert couldn’t blame me, because he knew that too.

“Ugh.”

“No, how did you even know that?!”

“You should just memorize the repulsion combinations.”

I mean, why can’t you see that?

Even when I gave advice, he wouldn’t take it.

That was when Isabel came over to our side.

“Ah, that one’s not easy to detect, is it? I figured as much.”

“Pardon?”

“You need the eye for it if you want to see that as repulsion.”

So I really was the only one who could see it?

“Anyway, Spirit Plant and Thunder Flower have pretty strong repulsion. If you know that much, you should be able to succeed.”

Even so, Robert, who was third in the year, held out for quite a while.

Of course, there was nothing he could do about the contents having burnt black.

I laughed at Robert.

“Loser.”

“Let’s see how well you do.”

Robert ground his teeth, looking wounded in his pride.

But even I don’t know this one.

“Still, I think I’ll last longer than you.”

“Tch.”

Ah, this is fun.

Then I heard a low voice.

Isabel and I both looked that way too.

“Hmm... this isn’t easy...”

“Oh, this one’s fine?”

Isabel’s voice came from over there.

Pink pastel-colored hair and a voluptuous figure.

It was Linia.

Even she, who always seemed sleepy, was sweating as she focused.

As the top student, it seemed like she could see what I could see.

Control the repulsion and leave the amplification alone.

She had eyes good enough to follow that manual faithfully.

“Why don’t you try it too?”

“I was just about to.”

I walked over to the pot.

And dumped in all the ingredients.

—Crackle.

Sure enough, repulsion occurred.

Calmly mixing the ingredients, I adjusted the flow of natural mana.

—Crackle, crackle, crackle!!

“Ah, this isn’t working very well.”

But Isabel was the weird one, cutting the repulsion almost in half the moment she stepped in.

I roughly mashed down the places where repulsion was appearing with the spatula.

That made the repulsion die down a bit.

And when there was a spot where the repulsion was too strong, I just let a little liquid natural mana flow through there.

Liquid natural mana dissolved the materials and fused them together, so all I had to do was let them melt a little.

There was no need to memorize the combinations.

I could tell at a glance where repulsion was happening.

“Wow, but if you can’t see that, you have to memorize every combination?”

The talent gap was way bigger than I’d thought.

I don’t know if it was [Dragon Eyes] or [Great Mage’s Talent].

After stirring for quite a while like that...

It ended up a somewhat darker color, but it was a blue potion all the same.

“There we go! Easy money!”

How many bottles is this worth?

“Oh, not bad. This could be sold. I’d say the quality is around middling!”

Isabel came over, took one look at the potion, and said that.

Robert clicked his tongue.

He seemed secretly disappointed that he hadn’t managed to make the potion successfully.

“Tch, so you succeeded.”

“As expected, the top and second-place students are different.”

Seems like those guys succeeded too.

“Wow! Did this work?”

Then I heard Aris’s voice too.

The potion was fairly dark in color.

But it was a success.

“This side’s fine too. It’s only low-grade, but it’s usable enough!”

A few other students also seemed to have succeeded to some extent.

About an hour after class started, the successful and unsuccessful students had roughly been sorted out.

“Now go to the sinks and clean up! The ones who succeeded stay here!”

The successful students, including me, Aris, and Linia, stepped forward.

Isabel handed leather packets containing test tubes to the other students, but not to me.

Huh?

Why am I not getting one!

This is discrimination!

“These are specially treated vial sets, and we usually hand them out to people who succeed in the first class. They’re pretty pricey if you buy them at the school market, too.”

Perhaps sensing my gaze, Isabel chuckled and opened one of the packets.

She began explaining while looking at the test tube.

“This is magically treated glass. It’s resistant to shock and heat, and it preserves a potion’s effects well. Put the potion you make in here for storage.”

With that, she poured the potion she’d made into the test tube inside the packet.

At a glance, it glowed as vividly as the mana from earlier.

It looked like high-grade... no, top-grade.

“Ugh... I wouldn’t even be able to hold a candle to that if it’s like this.”

I’d heard that even the most basic mana potion was on a completely different level if it was top-grade.

Well, it was the first one, so I should be satisfied with this much.

But seriously, isn’t there one for me??

I thought she’d set one aside for demonstration?

She didn’t seem to be planning to give me that one.

Then Isabel took out something else and handed it to me.

It was much more luxurious black leather.

It was larger than the ones the other students had received.

“Wow...”

I could feel the students’ envious gazes.

“I’ll give you a sales set for making the best potion. It has quite a lot of test tubes in different sizes and types, and it even comes with a special test tube for holding mana.”

I opened it up.

At a glance, the sizes and number of test tubes were different.

And I could even feel some strange mana from it.

Which meant it was an artifact.

This must be pretty expensive...?

“However, there’s a condition!”