As usual, potions class took up the First Year Witches’ morning, but this time Wolfe had come prepared to have fun.
He had a good book and lots of time to kill. But more importantly, he wanted to see what had happened to the students into whom he injected a bit of extra mana during yesterday’s class. He could feel their aura starting to form before they had been dismissed for lunch, and he had high hopes for them.
“Greetings, Mister Wolfe. It is good to see you again.” The class B through D Potions teacher greeted him politely when Professor Ashcroft sent him over to assist her for the morning.
That was new. She had been pretty rude and dismissive last time.
“Good Morning, Professor. It’s a pleasure to see you again. What might your students be preparing today?” Wolfe asked.
“Today’s effort will be a bit more complicated than yesterday. We will be creating the beautifying potions, and then we will be practicing them along with the basic healing potions for the rest of the month until the capable students can reliably create them every time.” The Professor informed him.
Risa wasn’t joking about beauty potions being the basics. They were the second thing students learned.
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Wolfe hid his smile and nodded in agreement. “Tragic, really. Who would have thought that the Academy’s new wards were so sensitive that evil intentions could trigger a Smite? “
Wolfe’s joke caused a wave of panic among the students. They surely wouldn’t survive if something like that happened to them, which led to a recap of every bad thought they’d had so far in their young lives.
The Professor saw this as a golden learning opportunity, and Wolfe saw her place her hand on a drawn circle under her desk, shocking a small group of students.
They immediately began to panic and pat themselves while the Professor smirked at Wolfe, then silenced the room with a magically enhanced voice.
“Behave yourselves this term, and it shouldn’t be a problem. You already knew that crimes are never successfully executed here, thanks to the wards, so a little shock shouldn’t be too much of a warning.”
Wolfe knew that was a lie as well, or at least it was in Elder Maria’s case. Unless the perpetrator had been caught and punished, but it didn’t sound like it from what Wolfe had heard.
“Now, begin your potions. Remember, if you can successfully create more than the first one, you can keep them for only the cost of materials out of your student funding.”
That got everyone focused. Not a single student in class didn’t want to keep as many of the beautification potions as possible.
Wolfe could see hints of aura on a few students he had worked with yesterday and made a note to check their work first, so he could compare them to the ones who couldn’t use mana and try to determine what the difference was.
“Mister Wolfe, I’m ready for mana.” The first of the students asked politely, calling him over to check her work.
It looked alright, so Wolfe placed a finger on the back of her neck and granted her enough mana to work with. This time the potion needed much more energy than yesterday’s healing potion, and the Witch moaned softly as the mana flowed into her.
Wolfe ignored that and focused on the way that his power moved through her body. There, in the chest, just above the solar plexus, was a cluster of nerves where the aura originated. That was the focal point all mana had to go through on a Witch.
For Wolfe, it only had to go through his Mana pouch, and Witches had a similar but less developed gland. At least these ones who were mostly born of mixed Blood did, but after examination, it wasn’t used to direct mana at all and appeared to be redundant.
The potion turned to a lively lilac colour with mild scents of tuberose and cherry blossoms. That should be a success, but the Professor would have to verify it before the student could take it away.
“Excellent work.” Wolfe congratulated her, then added a bit more mana as a gift to help her aura.
Both Cassie and Ella had an aura hundreds of times stronger than this nascent Witch, so Wolfe was fairly sure that it wouldn’t hurt anything.
One after another, the more talented Witches completed their work, and Wolfe helped them all the same way, trying to kickstart their training. And maybe a little bit just because of the cute noises they made when he channelled mana into them.
Eventually, he got to the first one that he knew couldn’t use mana at all. Yesterday’s analysis had been an abject failure as far as determining the reason for that, but Wolfe could make it a learning point today now that he had more information to work with.
The cluster of nerves was still there, in the same spot, but this one seemed dormant. The gland in the chest was less developed as well, but since the mana didn’t move through it, Wolfe ignored it and tried to get the nerves to accept the flow of mana.
He slowly moved mana through her system until he found the endpoint, where the pathway which transmitted energy from the outside to the nerves which controlled her aura was unresponsive. Pushing harder, the mana arced the gap and continued to flow, finding a path to the nerve cluster and then outward as the Witch focused.
It took her nearly five minutes to complete the process, but in the end, the potion activated.
“Good job. Have some mana.” Wolfe congratulated her, patting her on the head as the Witch blinked slowly, and her body trembled.
“What was that?” The Professor asked curiously.
“She had a damaged nerve, and the mana wouldn’t move through her. So I worked around it, but it took a while.”
“No, I saw that. I meant that.” The Professor pointed to the Witch’s face, which was slack with her eyes rolled back and wore the happiest look he had ever seen on a human.
“The process is mentally stressful. Don’t worry. I had permission.” Wolfe answered.
From Cassie and Ella, who thought it would be funny, but permission is permission.
“Can I go next?” A Witch with bright orange hair that matched her eyes asked hopefully.
Her potion was ready for mana, so Wolfe moved over to begin the process as the Professor watched him like a hawk, intent on determining exactly what he had been up to.
It was the same with this one. A damaged or undeveloped nerve wasn’t able to transmit mana, so she couldn’t complete the process without assistance. That served to make the rest of the system atrophy as well, and these last two clearly couldn’t handle as much mana as the others who had developed more fully on their own.
He forced through more mana than last time to bridge the gap and saw the two nerve points pull together as if he had welded them, bypassing the damaged portion in between. But the effect on his subject was greater as well, and she nearly passed out, whimpering his name.
“You’ve had enough fun. If they can’t do it, they can’t do it. We have limited class time.” The Professor admonished Wolfe, then gestured for him to get a move on and have the others try to activate the potion on their own, with just passive mana flow from Wolfe.
Or semi-active, with him providing mana directly to the end point since most couldn’t properly pull mana from him on their own yet, and he wasn’t going to let them suffer just because the teacher had caught him having a bit of fun at their classmates’ expense. It was still just as effective to make the potions, but not nearly as fun as the other way, and it didn’t have the long-term benefits.