“Broooooo, Broooooo, Broooo. Wake up, man! Broooooo, Brooo! Don’t tell me he has fallen into a coma.” An annoying sound pierced through the comfortable nothingness. “I swear I will never again be angry at you for choosing a brain core, bro. Wake up!”

Feint memories of incredible powers coursing through his body surfaced in his mind. “Bro, the old woman is here again! She is so kind to you that it is creepy.”

Res let out a groan to make the noise stop. Instead of having the intended effect, the voice intensified: “Yo, you are finally awake! You absolute mad lad, you actually opened all your meridian gates in one go!”

At the mention of ‘meridian gates’, memories came flooding back. Alarmed, Res sat up and opened his eyes. He was lying on a plain mattress in the middle of the old woman’s laboratory and looking her dead in the eyes. When Granny saw that Res was fine, she spoke: “Good morning. My name is Granny. What is your name?”

Maybe he trusted her because she was a grandmother and he answered: “My name is Res. Why have you taken me in?”

“If I hadn’t taken you in, you would be dead from blood loss as all your aether channels ruptured yesterday.”

Jason interjected: “That’s true. If I hadn’t been there, you would have been dead, anyway.”

Res couldn’t answer Jason as Granny continued: “If I hadn’t taken you in, the authorities would have killed you. To be exact: After your small spectacle, the guards knocked at my door. They asked about a powerful cultivator in the area. Do you know what you did yesterday?”

“Yes, I wanted to see your work and so opened my 12 meridian gates all at once.”

Granny took in a sharp breath. “Oh my. I thought you opened five at the most. That makes things even worse.”

“Why?”

“Do you know of the king’s tournament?”

Everything snapped into place. “The king is around his sixties by now, isn’t he? Even though I am not a threat, I am an unknown factor. If you were noble and had pledged your allegiance, I am sure it would be different.”

Res winced at that, and Granny nodded. “You aren’t only talented but also sharp, my boy.”

Res gathered all his strength and kneeled in front of Granny. “Please let me apprentice under you. This is the only way I can live out my full potential and not die.”

Granny adopted a thoughtful look. She knew that this boy would turn into an alchemy monster like the world had never seen before. The more she thought about it, the more she realizes she had no choice: “Fine. I already applied potions worth over 200 gold on you. I would be a terrible businesswoman if I killed one of my investments.”

It had been the first time in his life, Res had wanted a position, and the release from that pressure was palpable. “Thanks, Granny, I would love to watch you at your work and I will pay you a 10% interest rate.”

“That’s the spirit. You know what, boy? I trust you somewhat now. I hope you can appreciate that trust. Your first lesson will be humility. You might see yourself as a prodigy, but you still are nothing. Let me show you one of my recipes and explain it to you. It’s simple.”

Res bowed to the waist down. “I will do my best teacher.”

After Res had washed in a small bathroom and had put on fresh clothes, he looked Granny over her shoulder. Jason kept pestering him on being a warrior, but Res brushed all suggestions off as he already had his dream job.

“Watch. If you want to, you can try to circulate the little aether you have in your brain.”

“How do I do that?”

“You don’t know? Then how did you … Never mind that. You try to find the essence of what you want to do. If you want to watch, think of the essence of light and sight. The further you progress along the path of the brain core, the more you can do at once. You could use it to only watch the process, but you wouldn’t hear the explanation. You couldn’t even remember it.”

Indeed, when Res followed the instructions, all his other senses got cut off. Only his sight remained, and the memory of the experience was fuzzy at best. “No, I would rather watch you will all my senses.”

The old woman smiled to herself. “Good choice. The ‘phoenix collar’ recipe is one of my masterworks. Do you already know that everything in the world takes in aether over time?”

“Yes, teacher.”

“This potion binds the deadly but energy-rich phoenix feather bush with the healing Silver Bark. ‘Why can’t we mix the corresponding extracts?’, I hear you ask. If you were to do that, you couldn’t regulate the poison with the right amount of healing power. Parts of your body would be damaged so much that you would die. The difficulty in this potion lies in finding the balance between the two natural herbs.”

With practiced movements, Granny added tens of powders at certain intervals. As if that wasn’t difficult enough, she heated up and cool down tens of other concoctions. Res tried to soak up everything, but sometimes he couldn’t even follow her hand movements. Not to speak of her use of the aether. After two hours of work, Granny held a vial with a green liquid in her hands.

She smiled at Res: “I could make a pill out of the potion. I won’t because doing that would take two extra hours. Now it’s your turn. When you have given up, you can start cleaning the shop.”

“Bro, she set you up good. She wants a servant. You should try fighting instead.”, Jason commented.

Res knew that he couldn’t make the potion the way Granny wanted him to. An idea sprouted in his mind. “Why do the bark and the phoenix leaf not fuse?”

Granny scrunched up her face in frustration. “I don’t know exactly. I had different theories, but they were all disproven. I have tried everything: different temperatures, different catalytic converter, and binding reagents.”

Res smiled and whispered to Granny: “Life is change. Aether is change. Energy is change. No change is nothingness. They have to change. Can I touch or taste some of it? I need to understand it.” Res instinctively felt that if he understood the plant better, he could feel why it wouldn’t change. He needed information.

Granny looked at Res intrigued: “I don’t see why not. You should take some of that antidote before you swallow the poison.”

Without hesitation, Res swallowed all the powders and circulated aether in his head. He focused his whole being on observing the taste of the different substances. The phoenix feather bush tasted like sand while the silver bark tasted like tangy grass.

Res opened his eyes and asked: “Does the silver bark have anything to do with a mushroom?”

“You tasted it? Yes, the silver bark tree works in symbiosis with a mushroom. The tree provides the mushroom with food and the mushroom provides minerals.”

“Could you tell me more about the phoenix bush? How does it grow?”

“It’s found at oases in the southern desert and it’s competitive. Its roots kill plants around it by stealing their aether. It dries up when there is nothing around it. After plants have grown again in the area, a new phoenix bush grows out of the spot where the old had died. That’s why it’s called ‘phoenix’ bush.”

“I have a weird idea. It won’t work, but I can’t reproduce your potion.”, Res said.

Before Granny could object, he channeled aether. Granny shouted, but Res was already exploring the potential of the world. With increasing force, Res channeled aether into the powder of the silver bark tree. The bark didn’t contain much aether, and it wanted no more. The symbiosis provided it with all it needed. The material resisted absorbing more aether, but Res only shoved even more energy into it. His view darkened around the edges and a vessel in his eyes popped. His vision turned red, but he still continued. After the silver bark stopped resisting the push of aether, Res passed out.

He awoke to a slap to the face. “Are you stupid, boy? Do you think because you can, you should summon amounts of aether that could flatten my lab? Now I even had to spend a tier two practitioner potion on you. I’ll add another three hundred gold onto your bill”

“You know bro that was not cool. Do you even realize that I can feel pain, too? You can blackout and feel no pain, but I have to endure it.”, added Jason in a hurt tone.

Res realized that he had acted without thinking and apologized to Jason: “Sorry for that. I’ll stop using aether without your permission.”

Res smiled at Granny and replied: “Let’s hope that my potion will bring in some of that money.”

Res didn’t like to show too many emotions, but he couldn’t hold back a childish smile of glee. He strode to the workbench and picked up the previously white, but now dark powder of the silver bark. In one go, he emptied the now dark bark into the glass cylinder with the phoenix bush in it. Before the silver bark even came close, tentacles of phoenix powder shot out. Like the predator it was, the phoenix powder engulfed the dark bark.

Granny stared at the spectacle in a combination of awe, horror, and fascination. Then Granny stared at him as if he was the bogeyman. Finally, she snatched the glass cylinder with the now dark orange powder out of his hand. “I have been researching this for an entire year and I haven’t found this braindead solution. If you had failed, you would have flattened my life’s work. This is reckless on a level that I never have seen before. If something doesn’t work, hammer on it with aether and make it work. I forbid you to do anything like this again without my supervision.”

Res tried to interject, but Granny was too engrossed in poking at the powder. She whirled around and shoved a silver coin in his hands. “Go eat something or do what you young folks do. I need to examine the powder further. If I hear you spent the money in a brothel, I will force you to eat a castration pill. Understood?”

“Yes.”

Jason’s voice whispered in his head: “Bro, we should go to a brothel. It has been so long until I have seen real women.”

“No, I meant it. Did you have a habit of lying as the former king?”

“Sometimes you have to make up a little white lie.”

“There is no such thing. Think about it.”