The Sin System: My Wife is Envy

Chapter 74: Alchemy Club 3

The club met on Thursdays at the fifth bell.

Three members now, properly. Tessira had joined the previous week. Anastasia had joined by being present when the membership form was on the table and picking up the pen. Seren had not commented on this. She had added both names to the list and found two additional stools.

The session was healing potion fundamentals, which Seren ran for new members regardless of prior experience.

"The mistake," she said, setting materials in the center of the bench, "is thinking you are making a medicine. You are not. You are making a delivery system for the body’s own response. The compound does not heal. It tells the body to heal faster than it would on its own."

She lined up the silverleaf, the bloodmoss, the stabilizing crystal fragment, and the measuring vessels.

"The distinction matters because medicine targets specific problems. Your delivery system has to be general. It cannot know in advance what it is delivering to."

Anastasia was already looking at the bloodmoss.

"What was it called before the current classification," she said.

Seren looked at her.

"Keeper’s vine in some regional traditions," Seren said. "The Commission renamed the reagent categories in the third era to standardize distribution records. Some of the older texts still use the original names."

"The compression technique is different under the original name," Anastasia said. "Not significantly. But the pressure distribution is applied from the outer edge inward rather than uniformly."

Seren looked at the bloodmoss.

"I have not seen that method documented anywhere current," she said.

"No," Anastasia said. "You would not have."

"Show me after the demonstration," Seren said.

Anastasia nodded and looked at the bench.

The demonstration ran twenty minutes.

Seren moved through the stages from memory, talking while she worked, neither interfering with the other. Tessira followed with the focused observation she gave things she was building a model of. She asked two questions, both about the resonance phase, both precise enough that Seren answered without the standard follow-up.

"You have done partial synthesis before," Seren said.

"Spirit bond maintenance requires some compound preparation," Tessira said. "The resonance principle is similar."

"The frequency is lower for healing compound."

"I know. The bond maintenance frequency is higher. I will adjust."

Seren moved to the next stage.

When she finished, Anastasia went to the bench and began the silverleaf preparation without being told.

Her paste work was different from the demonstration. Faster, with a pressure pattern that produced the correct consistency in half the time, the compression running from the outer edge inward.

Seren came to stand beside her and looked at it.

"That is correct," she said. "The angle is not in the current curriculum."

"No," Anastasia said, and moved to the bloodmoss.

Tessira was already at her station. She ran the bloodmoss compression with the even-pressure method from the demonstration, stopping at exactly the right point.

"Good," Seren said, passing her station.

"It is slightly under," Tessira said.

"By an amount that will not affect the output," Seren said. "You stopped before the absorption point."

"I stopped because I was not certain," Tessira said. "I would rather be slightly under than over."

"Correct instinct," Seren said, and moved on.

The infusion phase was where Tessira made the adjustment.

She held her hand above the vessel and dropped the frequency without apparent effort, the way she modulated her mana for Sylph’s bond maintenance, and the compound responded immediately.

The color shifted faster than the demonstration had produced.

Seren stopped beside her.

"The bond maintenance work," she said.

"The principle is adjacent," Tessira said. "Not identical."

"Adjacent enough."

"Yes."

Anastasia’s compound had been at the correct color for forty seconds already. She had done the resonance adjustment the same way she had done the paste work, without apparent calculation.

Seren looked at both compounds and wrote something.

Midway through the work session, while Tessira and Anastasia ran their preparations, Seren came to the end of the bench where I was reviewing the Arc 3 synthesis notes.

She set her pen down.

"You funded my research," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Fifty coins."

"Yes."

"Without asking for anything specific."

"I told you what I wanted," I said. "Access to questions and a membership."

"That is not fifty coins’ worth," she said.

She said it the way she said most things, directly and without apparent expectation of an argument.

"I have been trying to find a way to be useful in return," she said. "I do not have fifty coins. I have the lab and the work. Tell me what you need."

I looked at her.

"The dungeon assessment is tomorrow," I said.

"I know."

I wrote a short list and set it on the bench between us.

"High-grade healing compound. Enough for four people, two uses each. Fire compound, same quantity. Light potions, six."

She read the list.

"The healing compound I can do tonight," she said. "High-grade fire takes twelve hours minimum. If I start now it will be ready before the fifth bell."

"That is enough time."

"Light potions are four hours. Simpler formula." She picked up her pen. "Why light potions."

"There is a section of the dungeon that is not lit," I said.

She wrote the list without asking anything else.

Tessira had stopped working.

She was looking at the list from across the bench with the peripheral attention she used when she was tracking something without appearing to track it.

Anastasia had turned from her station.

"What are the light potions for," Tessira said.

"The dungeon," I said.

"D-tier academy dungeons are lit by the resident mana," she said. "There is no section that requires additional light."

"There is one," I said. "That most people do not know about."

Anastasia looked at the quantities on the list.

"Four people," she said. "Two uses each for the healing compound."

"Yes," I said.

"You are accounting for something specific," she said. "In a section nobody has told us about."

"Yes," I said.

Tessira set down her preparation cloth.

"Are you going to tell us what it is," she said.

"It is a surprise," I said.

She looked at me.

"That is not an answer," she said.

"It is," I said. "It is just not a useful one yet."

Anastasia looked at the list again. Then at me. The expression she wore when she had filed something under later and was not pleased about the filing.

"How many people have completed this section," she said.

I looked at her.

"The quantities," she said. "You wrote them without hesitation. You know exactly what is in there."

"Yes," I said.

A pause.

"Surprise," Anastasia said, in the same tone she had used the first time, flat and precise and not entirely accepting.

The session ended with two functional compounds and a third that Anastasia set aside for further refinement on her own schedule. Seren assessed the results, wrote her notes, and began clearing the bench.

Tessira gathered her things. Anastasia picked up the reagent reference she had been annotating throughout the session and added it to her stack.

They walked out together.

I heard them in the corridor for a moment — Tessira’s voice, then Anastasia’s, something about memory, the specific quiet of two people who had arrived somewhere adjacent without quite naming it — and then the sound faded.

I stayed.

Seren looked at me.

"You do not have to," she said.

"The fire compound takes twelve hours," I said. "I am more useful here than reviewing the dungeon bracket for the fourth time."

She considered this.

"You can work on the Arc 3 problem," she said. "The absorption side approach you suggested. I have the materials."

"Show me what you have so far," I said.

She cleared a section of bench and spread her notes.

The high-grade healing formula took until the second bell past midnight.

The fire compound was still cycling when I left. She would finish it in the morning before the assessment.

She did not ask again what the light potions were for.

When I reached the door she said, without looking up from the bench:

"If a section of that dungeon requires specific preparation, it means someone built it that way. On purpose."

"Yes," I said.

"The academy has been running first-year groups through for three hundred years," she said. "Nobody has ever mentioned a section requiring light potions."

"No," I said.

She looked up.

"You are not going to tell me tonight," she said.

"Tomorrow," I said.

She held that for a moment. Then she nodded and went back to the compound.

I went back to the dormitory and looked at the bracket I had already memorized, and thought about what the dungeon had looked like from inside a development file.

The announcement came the next morning, before the first session.

Hiratsuka set her documents on the desk and looked at the class.

"Tomorrow," she said. "Dungeon assessment. Practical examination format. The academy maintains a controlled training dungeon below the east complex for first-year curriculum requirements. You will enter as a group. You will complete the dungeon as a group. Performance will be assessed individually within the group context."

She picked up her coffee.

"D-tier. Expected completion time for a full A-Class cohort, approximately two hours. Bring whatever you would bring to a practical examination and nothing you would not want to lose."

She opened her documents.

"Questions tomorrow before entry. Not today."

She began the session.

Reinhardt, from the back row, leaned toward Leon and said something.

Leon looked at the front of the room.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Tomorrow," Reinhardt agreed, and paid attention to the lecture.