“Friggin’ frick!” Eik groaned as the ingredient mixture exploded all over him for the fifth time. “Why is this shit so sensitive?”

  Resisting the urge to slam his fist through the table and, in extension, the floor, Eik refilled the cauldron. This wasn’t as straightforward as he had hoped. From the first contact with the mixture, he had known that he was more than capable of operating at the level of finesse to do this but if the way forward was unclear, then no amount of finesse would be enough to push through.

  And he was running low on the necessary materials to continue trying. At most there was enough left for, what, ten more attempts or something like that. All previous grades had come with comprehensive recipes that described in detail how to handle each component—an instruction he already had trouble understanding without getting hands on with it.

  A simple ingredient list was all he had this time and if nothing else, he now understood how luxurious it was to be told how to do it.

  Nothing to do but get back to it.

  Two more failures followed but the last one he managed to keep viable for several seconds longer than any of the previous attempts. He took a deep breath. This was progress.

  “Eik?” A knock on the door ripped him from his place of concentration.

  “What?” he groaned.

  “Are you done yet?”

  With a sigh, he got up and opened the door. “Of course, I’m not done!” he growled as he threw open the door in frustration. “I’m a shitty alchemist who can’t even solve the issue in front of me even though I have a literal list of what I need at hand!”

  Meri clicked her tongue in annoyance at her new boss’ tirade. “Maybe you should just get off your high horse for a moment.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know you’re very strong and it’s obvious that you have a talent for aura manipulation and other skills that make you a perfect practical alchemist, but there’s more to the noble art of alchemy than just reading a recipe and throwing power at it. It requires subtlety! Determination! You can’t just expect to get every achievement handed to you on a silver platter! You need to study-udy-udy!” Her voice reverberated through the laboratory as it gradually grew louder with every word until she hit the final syllable with force close to a shout.

  Robert looked ready to shrink into his shirt like a turtle while Eik stared at Meri, at a loss for words. “Uuuh, right. I should, shouldn’t I?”

  She almost choked on her own tongue as the realization of what she had just done struck her like a bolt of lightning. “I-I’m… I’m sorry,” she stammered with a deep bow of regret.

  “Nah, it’s all right. You’re not wrong. I should study more. But right now, I unfortunately have more pressing matters to attend to and the grade 6 potion could be a turning point in our ability to put up a proper fight against the enemies we’ve yet to encounter.”

  Her lower lip nearly disappeared into her mouth as she stared holes into Eik’ feet. “I understand. I apologize.”

  “Don’t. Just remember that there are good times and bad times to voice your opinions—a lesson I am still far from getting through my own thick skull as well,” he chuckled. “Well, I had better get back to it then. Duty calls.”

  ***

  “Excuse me, Mr. Magnasen.” A knock on the door was followed by Meri hir Gawak’s voice.

  “Just a second,” came the answer. Ten seconds later Eik cracked open the door to the laboratory and peeked out, nearly every centimeter of his face and hair covered in various types of multicolored residue. “What is it?”

  The perpetually annoyed tone in Meri’s voice that had otherwise characterized her had disappeared nearly completely. “Again, I’d like to apologize for my thoughtless words before. I crossed a line I had no right to cross.”

  “And I already told you not to worry about it. We all make mistakes and I’m not in the habit of holding a grudge for something this min—” Eik said but trailed off as he caught Robert’s eye. His assistant was standing behind Meri and was now shaking his head furiously. Eik frowned as he tried to figure out what the hell the guy was trying to relay to him. “I mean… Thank you, Meri?”

  At this, Robert nodded with satisfaction, breathing a silent sigh of relief.

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  “As a peace offering, I went to the markets with Robert to track down the materials needed for the grade 6 Potion of Mighty Strength. I know you must be running out so I figured you could use a restock.”

  “You managed to find everything? On the markets? There are a number of rather rare materials among them as well.”

  “I… Well…” Meri appeared very determined to avoid his gaze.

  With narrowed eyes he asked. “What?” Robert tried to evacuate the situation but Meri’s hand snaked out to seize him by the hem of his shirt.

  “I may have dipped into the inventory of the Alchemist Guild… But only a little bit.”

  “All right, that’s not so bad. But wasn’t it expensive to buy so much rare stuff from the markets? How did you pay for it all?”

  A single bead of sweat ran down her temple. Robert tried to pry open the fingers keeping a firm grip on his shirt but the rank discrepancy between them made it a futile struggle.

  “Oi, what did you guys do?”

  “…-ut it… -ur tab…” came the mumbled, barely intelligible answer.

  “Say again?”

  “I, uhm… I kind of just put it all on your tab…” she muttered.

  “Wait, so I’m paying for my own gift?” Eik asked with disbelief.

  Hearing her actions phrased like that, she lost even more confidence. “N— Yes…”

  It started as nothing but a sniff but as the ridiculousness of it all hit him, Eik burst into laughter. Yes, this was the kind of colleague that was worth having. Competent and hilarious. The best combination. “Perfect! That’s fucking perfect!”

  “You… You’re not mad?”

  “Meri, I was going to ask you and Bobby to go and get me more materials anyway. I’m going to need a healthy supply, because I just made the potion,” he said and held up a tiny vial of swirling, yellow liquid.

  She gaped at the creation, her eyes following it as he shook it like a cat’s following a ball of yarn thrown through the air. “You already— But h— That doesn’t make sense! We’ve been gone for at most a couple of hours!”

  Eik just shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I did say that my talents are almost entirely practical. If you go hard enough at something it eventually works out.”

  “But if you recklessly approach such a recipe of such a high rank, the risk of death from auralic corruption is…”

  “See, that…” he said with a smile. “That, is what I’m good at. Not dying.”

  Robert just rolled his eyes while Meri just stared through narrowed eyes, clearly not quite sure if she was actually hearing this insane nonsense. “Is he…?” she asked Robert directly, pointing feebly at the S-ranker.

  “Serious? Mmh… I’m never really sure when it comes to him, but I would give it a good fifty-fifty chance that he’s serious, yeah. My most sincere advice is to just kind of try to ignore most of what comes out of his mouth. It makes it easier to stay sane in his company.”

  “Okay, wow,” Eik deadpanned. “You have no idea how much those words hurt me.”

  “See?” Robert said, deliberately avoiding including Eik in his exchange with Meri. “Even with that one you’re like, what the hell is this guy babbling about?” Judging by the hand she held over her own mouth, Meri seemed to enjoy Robert’s antics very much. Eik could live with some friendly, wingman banter.

  “Where has that sweet adoration and respectful deference you showed me when we first met gone?” Eik asked. “Remember? I used to tell you to call me Eik, not Mr. Magnasen, but you just couldn’t do it. Meri, I’m telling you, it was so cute!”

  “I believe you,” she snickered while Robert blushed.

  “If I’m not mistaken, that deference has long since been diluted into water by your ridiculous antics. Having to pull your boss from meeting to meeting because he forgets his responsibilities tends to do that to a man,” the administrator grumbled.

  Eik grinned and Robert grinned back.

  “Anyway!” Eik said and clapped his hands. “Thanks for the potion ingredients, you guys. Now, please leave.”

  “Again?” Meri complained. “What’s going on?”

  “I made the regular potion,” he said and tossed the precious vial to Meri who only barely caught it in time to save it from shattering on the floor. “Here, you can have that one. I have to actually make the grade six Legendary Mystery Medicine now.”

  “Can’t I stay and wat—”

  “Nope. Trade secret.”

  ***

  “Fuck yeah!” Robert jerked awake as the shout echoed through the hallway outside Eik’s laboratory within Eik’s Excellent Elixir Emporium.

  “What just happe—” he began but froze when he realize that he had been sleeping with his head against Meri’s shoulder. There was drool on her shirt! But when he met her eyes, there was not even the shadow of anger or disgust. She looked delighted. “I’m-I’m… I’m…”

  “I don’t mind.” Her smile was so lovely and warm that Robert didn’t know what to do with himself.

  Bangs and crashes accompanied stomping footsteps before Eik broke through the door to his laboratory. Sliding out on his knees, he held aloft a chromatic pill between his thumb and index finger. “I fuckin’… did it!” he howled gleefully.

  “It looks exactly like the others,” Robert noted.

  “Yeah, but the feeling is different, y’see!”

  “Wasn’t it kind of slow?” Robert asked, getting a black scowl in return. “I mean, I even had time to fall asleep while we waited.”

  “I was recreating the regular potion a couple of times first just to get it right, for your information,” Eik grumbled.

  “So? Did you test it out yet?” Meri asked excitedly.

  “No, actually. I guess I’ll start with the regular grade 6 Potion of Mighty Strength,” he said and threw back ten of the vials he had just made one by one in quick succession.

  “Mr. Magnasen! What are you doing?” Meri gasped with horror. “Such an extreme amount will cause toxicity so severe that you’ll be dead in… seconds!”

  “Watch me,” Eik said and stood still with his hands on his hips, watching the two of them as a fidgeting Meri waited nervously for Eik’s inevitable demise. Robert just rolled his eyes and let the spectacle play out.

  Ten seconds passed. Then thirty. Then a minute. Meri’s jaw dropped further and further toward the floor and when two minutes had passed, she couldn’t hold it in anymore. “This doesn’t make any sense. Do you possess absolute immunity to toxicity or something? Even an S-ranker with a toxic resistance skill shouldn’t be able to simply ignore it when it’s from such a large dose of grade 6 potion…”

  Eik shrugged. “I told you. My speciality is not dying.”

  Having apparently decided to give up on understanding Eik, she just sighed.

  The powerful potion lay ready in his internal spiritual reservoir, just waiting for him to take it in. “Now,” he said with a grin. “Shall we test out what these can do?”

  Power surged through his body as all ten doses were released into his system.

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