“She drank some poison by accident. I’m trying to nourish her back to life, she needs some energy desperately.” I inform her matter-of-factly.
Lucille nods and hastily brings the pot to us, then places it on the ground while kneeling in front of us and uses her ladle to scoop up some porridge, which she brings up to Aurora’s mouth. “Come, Aurora, open wide. You can do it!” She encourages the barely conscious platinum haired woman. freewēbnoveℓ.com
She does as instructed and parts her lips to accept the food. Lucille holds the ladle up to her mouth with one hand while using the other to place it under Aurora’s chin to catch anything she might drop.
The overly kind alchemist takes a bit and gulps it down after some effort. “Hehehe… I’m home again… with daddy… and mommy…”
I grimace involuntarily and exchange worried glances with Lucille. I think she is hallucinating. “Keep giving her small mouthfuls. Hana will be back with a good potion soon.”
She does as told and Ayame thankfully indeed arrives rapidly and shoves a potion’s contents down the ill girl’s throat rather forcefully.
The difference between a lesser and high health potion is immediately evident to all eyes. Her skin brightens as soon as the first droplet reaches her stomach, eyes become livelier, and her veins no longer seem to wish to burst.
This really is a potent potion. Sadly the cost is too high for our current group to just chug it at any minor inconvenience, but even if we were gold millionaires, we couldn’t just drink it all the time while in combat to become pseudo-invincible, as each droplet is less potent than the previous one, until one rests or multiple hours pass.
For reference, a lesser health potion cures minor ailments and small scrapes. It usually costs between 150 bronze coins.
Normal health potions can heal open wounds and illnesses up to a certain degree, and cost about 500 bronze coins.
Higher health potions cost over a 3000 bronze coins, and can at least close most wounds, if not outright cure them in a few seconds. Fever, cough and other such weaker illnesses are also easily cured by it, and it also helps recover from stronger ones, though oftentimes not instantly.
However, even the high tier version can’t regenerate lost limbs, eyesight and other grave injuries. For that, people have to visit the temples and hope that a high level Arch Priest is present, though they will charge many gold coins for those services.
If you can’t pay, then… let’s just say that they tend to have a person with the Slave Contract spell unlocked on hand for a very good reason.
After Ayame’s purchase of the vial, we likely have less than a single gold coin left to our name. It will soon be time to begin grinding again.
Aurora snaps her head away from resting it on my chest to look around the room, and when she sees Lucille’s kneeling form she reddens; “I just said something stupid again, didn’t I?”
Holy. I have to reevaluate the value of a high tier potion. She seems to have been injected with a high dose of energy straight into her veins and all her physical ailments are fading rapidly. She’s not back at full health at all, but she’s most likely no longer in any serious danger.
Lucille smiles warmly up at Aurora as she ladles another spoonful of porridge and brings it to her mouth. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. You were really sick, we’re just glad to see such a rapid change in you. Here, open wide.”
“Aaa” Aurora listens with much more childlike obedience than a ~25 year old woman like her has any right to. “Thank you… It’s very tasty.”
“You’re welcome.” Lucille beams.
Aurora, seemingly realizing something, snaps her head back to me. “Wait, you didn’t spend a high tier potion on me, right?!”
“What’s with this reaction? We did, but don’t worry about it.” I state with a bit of puzzlement in my tone.
“At least tell me you didn’t pay more than 30 silvers.”
I don’t know the answer so I glance at Ayame. “It was 35. I didn’t exactly have the luxury of looking for the best deals in town, since someone was busy dying.” She says defensively, shifting the blame from herself to Aurora.
“Curses!”
“What’s the issue? Be happy you survived.” Ayame chides the disgruntled platinum haired girl.
“*Sigh*. You are right. It’s just, I can make one for 5 silver at most, and so can other highly talented alchemists. If they are average and mess up a few times, it will still not be more than 15 coins. Horrible alchemists who have a really embarrassing elixir concoction success rate might need 25 silvers, but even then…
The kingdom enforced a ridiculous price floor on healing potions because a lot of people preferred to use them instead of the insanely overpriced healing services of the church.”
Just another example of their machinations, I see. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it. Focus on recovering instead.” I instruct in a strict tone.
“Yes!” She replies very obediently once again. “!!!” She suddenly tenses. “Wait… It worked. The elixir worked!”
Perhaps sensing the shift in atmosphere in the room, Lucille quickly understood that she was no longer welcome, so she straightened herself and stood to leave. “I’m glad to see that healthy pink shade returning to your cheeks. Call me if you need anything, I will return to my work…” She said her goodbyes dejectedly. I imagine she really wanted to stay and hear what we were talking about.
She would probably much rather chat about mysterious elixirs that can almost kill someone instead of cooking lunch again after doing so for 20 years straight.
After she left Ayame was the first to ask, “what happened?”
“I got a system message which states ‘You’ve unlocked the Rare rarity Enchanter class.’ But that’s strange, it should be Wizard… Maybe the potion isn’t working as intended after all…”
We all ponder on her statement, but it’s my beautiful tantrum thrower who speaks up once again.