Chapter 193 - On Brewing Potions

While Eric was a bit rough around the edges, Ted found him easy enough to get along with and easier still to extract information from. The wizard shared his knowledge freely as they traveled down a road of his making inside the mountain and dived deeper within the cave system. Perhaps this was merely because Eric had lived so long and cultivated such a massive amount of knowledge that it made no sense for him to be jealous about the little tidbits he shared. In any case, Ted soon learned that to truly put immense, reality-altering power behind an action of magical origin, one had to put mind-altering effort into making that action count. This effort ranged from continuous and dangerous overindulgence to harsh asceticism that would have been unacceptable for most; Ted, who was not most people, appreciated the thought that lack could make something plentiful. It was a rather tempting idea, in fact.