Andy carried the thick "Introduction to Potions" and came to Benjamin's tent with an anxious mood.
Unlike other mages, he did not come to Crewe Town and meet everyone after becoming a mage. Crewe Town is his hometown. He was misunderstood by other mages half a year ago and was pulled down from the assembly. Everyone found out that he was not a mage, but they didn't kill him because of his pity, so they simply taught him a magic trick. After he learned it, he accidentally became a member of the mage group.
However, after becoming a mage in this semi-forced state, Andy had no dissatisfaction with the people in the mage group. In other words, he never felt that dissatisfaction was meaningful. The only meaningful thing was the established fact.
Joanna always said that his thinking was too pessimistic and had no motivation to strive upward. He had to agree.
Just like after Benjamin appeared, other mages seemed to have found the direction of their lives, meditation, fighting, new spells... He also learned the long-lost flying skill and participated in the operation to capture the gate. He felt that he should be rejoicing like everyone else, and his shining eyes were filled with infinite expectations for the future, but he often felt inexplicably lost.
In the entire operation to capture the gate, he only followed Joanna to release a fireball at the beginning, and then waited outside. The gate was occupied by those people from the inside. Although he was a little scared at the beginning, but he did almost nothing, Andy still felt empty in his heart.
It seems... Even without his presence, there would be no difference between everyone.
This feeling of loss becomes more intense as time goes by. Especially after the battles with the monsters, everyone else was excited that the battle was over, but he was the only one who felt uneasy. He felt that he was missing something and couldn't keep up with everyone. He even had thoughts of quitting, thinking that maybe he shouldn't stay in the team.
After all, when everyone is accelerating in the same direction, those who stand still will only grow further apart.
Until he opened the "Introduction to Potions", he always had that feeling of being out of place in his heart. After everyone else flipped through the book, they threw it aside, saying it was "boring", "too complicated", and "it didn't feel useful". And he picked up the book only because Benjamin wanted them to read it, and most people were ready to read it—he hoped to be the majority of people.
"Potions are better than magic."
Interestingly, when he saw this sentence, he was not surprised or puzzled. He didn't know why, but he just felt that the person who wrote this sentence must be very unwilling - he could even imagine an angry and frustrated mage, under the dim oil lamp, picking up a pen and writing on the yellowed manuscript paper. Wrote the first sentence of this book.
At that moment, Andy had an inexplicable feeling that this was a very "interesting" book.
And the rest of the book gradually attracted him. The concept of plundering the power from the flesh and blood of monsters and giving it to originally weak humans surprised Andy, who had just become a mage for half a year. If potions represented such a theory, then he even felt that its significance was more profound than magic.
He didn't understand why other people found such a concept boring, but he thought it was a pretty remarkable thing.
More importantly... Teacher Benjamin seems to attach great importance to this book.
Andy didn't want to leave the group. Moving away from home is unsettling enough, but it can be even more distressing if you are also drifting away from your former friends. He is not a person who asks for anything, but he is willing to make efforts in order to become like everyone else.
Benjamin has brought new hope to others, and maybe it can also show him a way to continue walking
Thinking like this, Andy has never read a book so seriously. The theories of potions, the refining process, materials, formulas, elements... He didn't even sleep all night, turning the book over and over until he could almost memorize it.
In fact, "Introduction to Potions" also gave him a feeling of empathy. It was strange, but he just felt it, as if the person who wrote the book had some indescribable common ground with him.
That... feeling of being out of place but helpless in every word.
Therefore, at dawn, he crawled out of the tent with dark circles under his eyes, feeling more energetic than ever. He wanted to test the book quickly, but he was afraid of disturbing Benjamin, so he had to wait quietly outside the tent with complicated emotions.
"Andy? Do you want to try refining a potion?"
Surprisingly, before he said anything, Benjamin noticed his arrival through the tent. He opened the tent door and looked at Andy expectantly.
Suddenly, Andy was a little nervous and couldn't even speak. Therefore, he had no choice but to hold the book in his hand tightly and nodded to express his affirmation.
Just like that, Benjamin welcomed him into the tent and took out a pile of Warcraft materials from the package, as well as the necessary equipment for refining magic potion—a small iron pot that can replace the medicine stove, and a large kerosene lamp that can replace the fire source. .
"It's a bit shabby." Benjamin smiled sheepishly and said, "Just make do with it, and don't be afraid of failure. It's hard for most people to succeed the first time."
Andy took a deep breath, squatted down, and began to sort out the things in front of him.
He originally wanted to say something to ease his nervous mood, but when he saw the Warcraft materials he had read, he couldn't help but start to deal with them according to the method in the book. But once he started to move, other things were suddenly forgotten by him.
Benjamin seemed to have said something else, but he didn't hear half of it clearly.
The first time he refined a potion, he chose the simplest healing potion. There were only three ingredients for the healing potion: the down of the immortal sheep, the leaves of the water cattail, and the blood of the wind wolf. Andy quickly picked them out.
He poured the wind wolf's blood into a small pot, lit an oil lamp and began to boil it. The whole scene is indeed no different from a housewife cooking some strange soup at home. There is no sense of mystery that a mage should have, but Andy's mind has long been unable to notice this thing.
He just said a strange and short spell to the pot.
With the guidance of mental power, a small amount of water elements gathered and poured into the wolf blood in the pot. Suddenly, the color of the wolf's blood gradually changed from dark red to light red, and it had a tendency to boil under the heat of the flames. Seeing this, Andy quickly picked up the immortal sheep's down and threw it into it.
However, the wolf blood in the pot turned black in the blink of an eye.
this…
When Andy saw this, he was stunned. Then, a somewhat disappointed look appeared on his face.
"I-I failed."
The book says that when this step is reached, the color of the wolf's blood should gradually turn white. It turned black because the timing was not grasped well, which led to the failure of refining.
However, Benjamin acted as if nothing had happened. He picked up the pot and poured away the black pot of unknown liquid. Then he put the pot in front of Andy and looked at Andy with a smile.
"It's normal to fail. You succeed the first time. How many geniuses are there in the world? Think about why you failed, and then try again." He said.
Hearing this, Andy also took a deep breath and regained his calm state of mind.
"I... I was so nervous that I forgot to use my mental power to feel the changes in the materials every moment." He spoke, as if he was talking to Benjamin, but also as if he was saying to himself, "The element distribution of each piece of material They are all different, so for each refining process, I have to choose different timings and add different amounts of materials based on the refining process - the same magic potion does not have the same process."
Suddenly, Benjamin looked at Andy with a look of surprise.
But Andy didn't notice at all. He just continued to mutter to himself, lowered his head, poured some wolf blood into the pot again, lit the fire, and repeated the process.
Guide the water element, add the down of the immortal sheep, gather the wind element, add the leaves of the water cattail...
Only, this time, he did it with his eyes closed.
When Benjamin saw this, he also smiled with some relief. He stood up, tiptoed, and quietly left the tent without disturbing the other party.
Half an hour later.
Suddenly a cheer came from the tent, and Benjamin, who was having breakfast with other mages outside, was startled. At that moment, everyone turned around and couldn't help but be stunned when they saw Andy running out with black eye sockets, dirty clothes, and carrying a dark iron pot.
"I-I succeeded!"
I saw that in the black iron pot, there was a small pool of very rare blue liquid that reflected a faint luster in the sun. Facing everyone's surprised gazes, Andy held up the iron pot as if holding a unique sapphire.