When Cain arrived at the farmyard on the Southern Continent, the entire clearing was in chaos.
The first batch of new Peaches was ready from the trees. The Echoes had produced six other tree fruit varieties to sample and mix with the Peach juice base today, attempting to find the perfect flavor while maintaining the juice as a Mythic Quality recovery potion.
That was no small feat, but they had quite a few willing volunteers, as far as Cain could tell.
There was an assortment of farmers, city folk, merchants, and politicians from both the beastkin and demon species gathered on the lawn by the house, every one of them eager to help in any way they could.
"Boss, welcome back." The Echo Called Victor yelled when he sensed Cain approaching in his Ancient form.
It was a minor oversight on his part, not transforming back into a demon before getting too close to home, but there simply wasn't a good reason to keep hiding it from the locals anymore. Of course, he could hide it for quite some time if he wished, but a few had already seen through his disguises, and too much secrecy would just breed mistrust at a time when he was trying to help people with the influx of dangerous monsters.
"What's the verdict?" Cain asked as he landed on the roof of the house and released the Companions.
"The peaches are just as sour as ever, but I think we have isolated the gene that causes the regenerative effect and compounded it within the fruit. So we should be able to use even fewer to a barrel of juice than last time and still get the same effects." Victor informed him before the other Echo cut in.
"Plus, we have grown this variety of pears which is exceptionally sweet and offers a poison cleansing effect. We hope that the two don't interfere with each other, so we can use the pear juice to offset the peach juice's sourness and not have to introduce ingredients like sugar that had been making the mixture unstable."
Cain nods his agreement. Their idea seems to be a sound one.
"And what about the apple trees over there?" Vala asks, pointing near the far treeline.
"Don't mind them. Those were another experiment, and they've proven exceptionally volatile. They contain an immense amount of Ice Mana inside them, and when the skin is damaged, they release it all in one shot, like a gust of Ice Dragon breath. If we can find a way to slow the release, they might be useful, but for now, they tend to just freeze whoever picks them." The Echo informs her sadly.
"Not every experiment is a success. But, you will have it right soon." Vala attempts to cheer up the Echo, currently in a nondescript demonic form wearing a black robe to obscure the fact that they are perpetually covered in shadows.
While the others were talking, Laura snuck over to the Ice Apple tree and flew around it, inspecting the fruits from every possible angle. She didn't seem too concerned, but a Mythic Dragon of the Ice Aspect takes very little damage from Ice attacks, so she had a good reason not to be.
"I want to do an experiment too." The dragon informed them all in an eager voice, casting a series of mighty Mythic spells straight up into the sky, burning off a large portion of her mana pool.
Once she got below half capacity, Laura transformed into her shimmering Opal Prismatic Dragon form and bit down on the edge of the tree, swallowing one apple whole.
As predicted, a flood of Ice Elemental Mana poured from the fruit in her mouth, freezing the area around the tree.
But the vast majority was absorbed directly into her body, which Cain watched in real-time, using the system interface to see her Mana reserves go from half to completely filled in a single second.
"You let them grow too long. If you pick the apples while they are still little, you should be able to cut the stems and store them safely in your inventory, then chomp them for a cool and refreshing treat. Between what was wasted and what I got myself, I would guess that apple stored nearly seventy thousand mana inside it. That's way more than most Mythic Awakened could use, so it's a waste."
The dragon's conclusion left most of the onlookers stunned. Seventy thousand mana in a second? What sort of incredible potion would that make if the Echoes could juice the fruits without losing their efficiency. Even a thousand instant mana is well beyond anything that could be reliably sourced from the merchants here on the Southern Continent.
It wasn't that they couldn't use anything better. It was simply that the ingredients and recipes for such a potion didn't exist in this world.
Even after centuries of Alchemist's quests, the System had never revealed a potion that was so miraculous. The more typical ones would be akin to the Peach Juice, giving as much as a hundred mana every second for a set time. Never a thousand or more in an instant.
The Mage subclasses would kill for such a potion. Many of the subclasses had a single finishing spell, an ultimate move or nuke of sorts, that used a considerable portion of their mana pool to cast. If they could recover their full mana in an instant instead of over ten seconds, they could chain the spells together and drastically increase their combat power until they ran out of potions.
"We will have to work on the stability." Victor agrees, looking at the tree with a researcher's calculating gaze.
Money means almost nothing to the Echoes, as long as they have volunteers to test on, but the prospect of a new potion that would allow insane exploits? That's premium entertainment to break up their repetitive days of minor alterations to the orchards.
"Did the change in mana density cause any issues with your peach trees?" Cain asks, unwilling to sort through all their memories to find the answer himself.
"Not much. It increased the potions' potency, but the last batch was stable and didn't pick up any undesirable qualities." Victor shrugged, not knowing how this batch would turn out until they tried.
A volunteer picked a single peach for him, bringing it over with a sense of reverence usually reserved for precious treasures. Victor took out a small device from his pocket and held it up for Cain to see that it was a simple juicer designed for peaches. It would puree the flesh and release the juice while trapping the pit safely out of the jug.
Victor split the sample into three equal parts and placed each into a larger serving jug before signaling for a pear to be brought over.
Victor repeated the process, but with a different juicer, and the three samples were separated, only this time, one of them was put into a jug that already had peach juice in it.
Everyone observed the process carefully, using any sensory skills to see if a reaction was occurring. Still, the two only behaved as you would expect of fruit juice and mingled without any chemical or magical reactions.
"Both are Earth Element fruits, so they shouldn't have a bad reaction to each other that we would need a proper lab for, but you never know." Victor smiles, and Cain can sense his mild disappointment that nothing remarkable happened.
Water was added to the first two jugs of each fruit, first in equal parts, then at a ten parts water to one part juice ratio, and small cups were filled.
With the samples ready, the volunteers got in line, and each of them was well practiced in what was to come next. First, they cast a spell into the air, using up some of their mana, and then they carefully cut their bare skin with whatever weapon they had on hand. With the preparations done, they all took a single cup of their assigned concoction and downed it in a single gulp.
The Echoes and a group of researchers made notes on their recovery speed, plus their facial features on drinking the potion, as well as any side effects that might have occurred.
The universal face was a puckered one, as the juice was very sour and not mixed with any form of sugar, but nobody had a problem swallowing it, which was taken as a success by the Echoes.
They had taken minimal damage and mana loss, so they all recovered in a single second, which showed the researchers that the recovery effects were still working. The capacity test would wait until later, as the Echoes decided that experimenting on those who came back from hunting missions injured was more efficient than asking a volunteer to seriously injure themselves.
The process was repeated with the pear juice, only this time, the volunteers had a mild poison cast on them. It was a slow-acting Petrification poison. Legendary in quality, but taking a whole minute to take full effect, giving them plenty of time to reverse the effects.
The spell started turning the victim to stone from their feet, making it excellent in combat, but even better for this purpose, where it wouldn't render the volunteers unable to drink the potion themselves, a vital act of consent, according to the Echoes' unique moral code.
The faces as they drank the super sweet juice were just as entertaining as the sour juice, but more importantly, the single small vial of juice at both low and high concentrations was enough to fully reverse the effects of the Legendary Poison.
"Success!" Victor called and the whole crowd cheered, knowing that the orchard had produced a new antidote that would soon prove to be essential to their survival while they were hunting the increasingly dangerous beasts.
"Now, the final test, both blended into a single concoction at maximum dilution, ten to one." The second Echo declared, and a single volunteer stepped forward, casting a spell into the air and cutting his bare leg before having the Petrification spell cast on him.
When he drank the juice, an unexpected effect began, a gentle golden glow began in his body, and he instantly recovered back to full health, with the debuff effect removed from his status.
"Interesting. The visual effect is a new one, and the test subject has no known interactions with recovery efficiency. The test is a resounding success though." Victor declares happily while making notes in his journal.
"The taste isn't bad either. The pear juice gives a smooth note to the usually overwhelming peach, and the sweetness brings it to a neutral tart flavor. Overall, I would rate it six out of ten as a breakfast drink, and ten out of ten for a potion." The tester informed the researchers that were recording the event.
Many potions taste absolutely horrible, so ten out of ten while tasting like fruit juice is perfectly reasonable for a potion. The standard isn't hard to meet. It might even be enough to make their products extra popular, especially the poison-curing ones since the usual herbs used for antidote potions taste like a mixture of licorice and vomit.
"Since the dilution of ten to one maintains sufficient effects, we will call this round of experiments complete. Bring all the day's fruits over and we will blend the potions." Victor called out, sending the workers into a frenzy, cleaning the trees of the precious Mythic Fruits in seconds.
The echoes would just use magic to regrow the fruit tomorrow for the next round of potions anyhow. At least they would this time since the tests today were a success on all fronts. If they had failed, a large portion of the orchard would be ripped up and replanted after the seeds were modified with magic.
The group knows the process well. In just under ten minutes, they filled two thousand small potion vials with the light orange liquid. They then sealed the bottles with the chemical resistant toppers and handed them out to the hunting teams, reserving half for any injuries that came back to base, or refugees in need of treatment.
This was part of the deal that the Echoes made to reduce the stress on their summons. The hunters helped out, and the echoes provided Mythic Quality potions to help keep them alive. It was a win-win situation.
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