Fourth Moon, Fifth Sun Day

  The rest of the moon cycle was uneventful, fortunately.

  Class 1 was still getting sent beyond school grounds with the Adventurer Affiliates during the rest days, but now the rest of the students - including first and second years - were being tapped to support production efforts to supply Adventurers with resources. Metal students were tasked with molding basic weapons and small pieces of armor for non-Adventurer use, Wood students were instructed to grow basic ingredients commonly used in medicines, and select groups of students were sent out with pairs of Affiliates to harvest materials from some of the more dangerous creatures.

  Healer Luk had a strict, optimized potion-brewing operation that she ran nonstop, cycling through all the first years: Earth students made vials and assisted with Wood students’ ingredient production; Metal students would repair, recycle, and reconstruct the cauldrons Luk used to brew large batches of potions in between grinding dried ingredients to powder; Water and Fire students had to work in tandem to ensure the actual brewing of the potions went according to Luk’s specifications.

  Aida and Lily were handpicked by Healer Bokar to help him prepare poisons and other consumables that Adventurers and civilians alike could use to protect themselves against monsters: poison pellets that could burst on impact, as well as vials of poison for guards to coat their arrows in; toxic cakes with pungent smells that regular humans could throw at a hungry predator and buy them time to escape.

  Aida found the work relaxing, as morbid as it was to admit. At first, she had been apprehensive about poisoning herself during the brewing process, but Bokar assured her Detox would be more than sufficient to protect her and anyone else involved, as long as she made sure to cleanse everyone after every shift. After three star cycles’ worth of rest days, the repetitive steps required to brew Bokar’s concoctions was comforting. She was now familiar enough with the process that Bokar trusted her to prepare batches in his absence.

  “Thank you so much for taking over these tasks, you two,” Bokar said, relieved. “At my clinic all our resources are directed towards developing deterrents to keep monsters away from settlements. Unfortunately, targeted deterrents are a lot more difficult to cook up than general toxins.”

  “We appreciate you involving us in your work,” Lily replied enthusiastically as Aida nodded beside her. “I’m already getting ideas on how I can use some of these plants in combat…”

  “I just like feeling useful,” Aida confessed as she sorted through the vials some of the first year Earth students made. Even though making vials was a simple task, there wasn’t a quality control process in place, and some glasses contained obvious contaminants that could affect the efficacy of the potions she brewed. She would bring inadequate vials back to the Earth students so they could break them down and remake them.

  “Well, you certainly are that,” Bokar said appreciatively. He rubbed his eyes. “I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to being able to bring you two to my clinic - if you’re willing, of course,” he added hastily, straightening his glasses.

  “Definitely,” Aida and Lily said. Bokar smiled in relief.

  “I’m going to bring these back to the Earth team,” Aida said, hefting the crate of impure vials.

  “Very well. Get some rest afterwards; thank you for all your help today,” Bokar said. “As a reminder, I’ll be heading back to Burston City tomorrow, so if you can have ten crates of each of the poisons on the list when I come back end of next moon cycle, I would be very grateful.”

  “You’ll be back for the Fire Festival?” Lily chirped.

  “Oh, time passes so quickly.” Bokar squinted as he thought, pushing his glasses on top of his head. “Perhaps not, as I’ll be participating in Burston’s own Festival. But I will be back before graduation, at the very latest.”

  “Oh,” Lily said, bummed. She gathered the bags of leaves she had snipped off of the herbs. “I need to get these dried. Have a safe trip back.”

  Lily walked with Aida out of the brand new greenhouse - which everybody called “the warm room” - the school had built behind the Affiliates’ lodgings, bidding her goodbye as Aida headed around the building to where the Earth students had set up their glass-making station.

  “Are these bottles not good enough?” The second-year Earth student in charge of his team took the crate from Aida, eyeing the contents critically. He sighed. “Just when we think we’ve figured it out, turns out we haven’t…”

  “What’s the issue?” Aida asked. She noticed there were five furnaces poking out of the ground, with one student sitting in front of each furnace, intense concentration on all of their faces.

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  “We can’t get the temperature consistent enough for our furnaces,” the leader said plaintively. “If we don’t get the temperature right, we can’t filter out the raw material we need. Our best batches are when we can snag a Fire student, but they don’t last long, and they’re so busy with their other tasks…”

  “I can imagine,” Aida said sympathetically. The Fire students were primarily called to harvest materials from small animals, as they could safely control fire to drive the animals out of the woods into easy captivity. Everything was easier with a Fire around; when Sue helped Aida brew small batches of poisons before bedtime, Aida didn’t have to worry about overboiling the ingredients. But Sue got bored easily, so she wasn’t an ideal partner for brewing.

  After wishing the Earth students luck, Aida turned back towards the greenhouse, coming to an abrupt halt as she saw Dev heading for her, two crates stacked in his arms. He looked utterly disheveled, with his hair mussed, scratches marring his smooth skin, and what looked like dried blood on his clothes.

  “Hey,” he said, slightly out of breath.

  “Hey,” Aida responded, snatching a stool from a stack that was leaning precariously against the wall of the Affiliates’ home. She quickly dusted the top off, planting it in the dirt so Dev could sit down as she pulled out her wand. “Come sit. Everyone else is alive, right?”

  “Yeah, Myk’s getting treatment from Healer Luk. Nobody else sustained major injuries.” Dev set the crates down and sank into the stool with a grunt that sounded more fitting for a middle-aged man.

  Aida patched up Dev’s superficial wounds with brisk flicks of her wand, pulling burrs from his hair and washing away blood with gentle streams of water, before she finally inspected his mana flow. Tucking her wand away, she placed his hands at the base of his neck, pressing her thumbs into the top of his spine and working her way out and down. She felt him relax underneath her fingers.

  “You’ve improved,” Dev murmured, his head lolling forward.

  “I know,” Aida said, smiling. Her Regen and Heal skills were now at a respectable Lv20, and she could clearly tell the improvements.

  She didn’t need to rely on the overlay anymore; she could feel where the mana didn’t flow as smoothly as the rest, or where an exorbitant amount of mana was gushing - which didn’t always align with where copious bleeding occurred, interestingly enough. She still used her overlay to confirm what her mana sensed in her patient’s body, however. Old habits died hard.

  Another benefit of her improved abilities was that she could finally experience the coveted mana efficiency everyone had been talking about. She knew her base mana pool had increased in size and depth, but now she felt comfortable enough to take risks during their training exercises, feeling as if she did have limits that merited exploration.

  “What did you bring for me?” Aida asked as she twisted Dev’s neck each way with a satisfying crack, eliciting an impressed “oof” from the boy.

  “Ant intestines,” Dev replied promptly, stretching luxuriously before he reached for the crates. “Healer Luk took everything else, but she left the abdomen for you.”

  “Lovely.” Aida poked through the crates, making the round spheres of chitin clatter. They called the creatures “ants,” but the only ant-like thing about them was that they traveled in packs. They were vicious insects, of course, but they spat anything from goo and acid to fire and hardened substances that hit as hard as a bullet. Healer Bokar liked using the ants’ intestines as a vessel for his poison pellets, and Aida was developing an appreciation for the material as well. It was a very durable material, and could stretch a ridiculous amount, allowing her to make hundreds of poison pellets out of one intestine, each the side of a small ball bearing. “Thank you, this will keep me busy for a while.”

  “Do you need help preparing the intestines?” Dev inquired, hoisting the two crates into his arms against Aida’s protests.

  “Not at all! This is my job, anyway - I’m sure you have other things to do,” Aida said, flustered. Dev was already leading her back towards the greenhouse.

  “Consider this as thanks for healing me up. I’ll help you with your chores for the rest of today,” Dev said, a smile in his voice as he sped up, his long strides keeping him just beyond Aida’s reach.

  “If you insist…” Aida guided Dev to the rear of the greenhouse, where they had essentially designated it as a sludge disposal area. She tossed a pair of ant intestine gloves to Dev, instructing him to put them on.

  “You’re not using gloves,” Dev observed. Despite his complaint, he dutifully donned the gloves.

  “I know what I’m doing, and I’m training my Detox while I’m at it,” Aida informed him.

  The two of them worked quietly for the next hour, carefully rinsing out the contents of the ants’ stomachs, with Aida occasionally flushing the sludge out of the greenhouse. Once the stomachs flushed out clean water, Aida turned to Dev.

  “This next part’s gross. Are you sure you want to stick around for it?” Dev tilted his head politely, and Aida demonstrated.

  She turned the sphere upside down, so that the ant’s sphincter was upright. Then she took the metal wand-rod Healer Bokar donated to the cause, and jammed it into the opening. Carefully, holding her breath, she placed the sphere on the ground, and sent a powerful Mana Blast through the wand.

  “Is that how you get it out?” Dev asked, recovering remarkably quickly from his wince.

  “Yeah, it’s how you can get it out in one piece,” Aida said, grinning as she split the abdomen down the middle like a nut shell. She peeled the stomach off of one side, laying it carefully on a horizontal log that served as a drying rack. “Feel free to leave now, if you want.”

  Dev gravely held out his hand for the rod. “I am a man of my word, and I will see things through to the end.”

  Stifling her smirk, Aida passed him the rod and fetched another one. “Glad to have you aboard, my friend.”