POTIONS AND POISONS
And so was the rest of the students gathered in the orientation. After a moment of silence, I spoke to the audience.
"Who was the one who wanted to challenge me?", I asked those in the audience.
The student who wanted to challenge me already left the fields. Initially he was one of those who wanted the opportunity to move up the rankings by beating me, a perceived freeloader but he never expected that the perceived cheat could beat the top in the school so easily.
"Wow you are ranked number one now, there would be many challengers coming for you", Bommurs told me.
"Don't worry from today onwards there won't be any more challenges coming for me", I told my friends.
"I don't understand, everyone will want to beat you to become number one", Raven said to me.
"From this day onwards, whoever wants to challenge me must defeat Ivor Burgess first otherwise you'll have no right to challenge me", I told all the students gathered there.
-----
The first class of Templar Magic School explained the magical system developed in this continent of the Ten-kingdoms.
As a student is Awakened in Templar magic through a special Awakening Ritual. The templar sky isn't a physical part of the body but a magical space that was created by the templar through awakening and the space is linked to the heart of a templar.
The templar sky contained all the magic of the templar and would influence how he or she develops templar magic.
There were initially four realms in the templar sky- which templars identified as Power, Momentum, Constitution, and Conjuring. When a star appears in the templar sky realms, the attribute of the particular sky realm would be activated and enhanced by it. The more stars that appeared in the particular templar sky would enhance the templar's attribute of the region in the sky.
At every new Templar tier the Star gained every level would be doubled, so it was important to advance into higher magical tier to improve templar magic.
After learning about the basics of Templar magic, we could choose the curriculum that we were interested in.
There were classes that specialized in battle magic, defensive magic, knight magic, healing magic, and potions and poisons. The class that I was most interested in was Potions and Poisons and our teacher was Madam Bettywise.
-----
Madam Bettywise introduced to us the different potions that we produce in the Ten-Kingdoms and their uses. One of the first lessons that she taught was the making of a basic magic gathering material, the magic gathering incense.
"With the right ingredients we can create incenses that can be used in gathering mats or Heart lanterns to increase magic without the need of expensive creature hearts", Madam Bettywise told us.
"How do we create gathering incense?" I asked Madam Bettywise.
"You would need the ingredients, usually hearts, livers, bladders, eyeballs, and other creature parts of magical creatures. These magical parts would be condensed by magical fire in a cauldron before being dried and compressed into incense cakes", Madam Bettywise told us.
The incense cake was far more efficient as the ingredient of my Isolation Lamp than creature hearts or even fruits from a magical garden.
"Why didn't anybody tell me about incense cakes before?" I asked myself regrettably.
"Can we make our own incense cakes?" I asked Madam Bettywise.
"In theory we can although to be making them effectively, only experienced Apothecaries could do so", she replied to me.
The process wasn't difficult to understand but the materials and equipment required to produce magic potions and incense were rare and expensive.
In Antene Town, the trade of producing potions and incense was monopolized by the major families, so it was impossible for most templars to produce their own.
"What is the point of learning about something that we can't make anyway?" Bommurs asked me about the lessons.
"Perhaps we could", I replied to him.
-----
"Amelia, do you have an Apothecary in the Noten House?", I asked Amelia Noten of the Noten House of Magecraft and Antiquities.
Although my first impression of Amelia wasn't the most trusting kind, after she obtained the passes for me and my friends to compete in the Young Mages Competition, my thinking of her slowly changed and improved. Amelia was shrewd in doing business, but she is honorable.
"An Apothecary is a prestigious institution in Nymera. No, we don't have one but it's always our family's intention to have one although there are many obstacles", Amelia explained to me.
"What obstacles?" I asked Amelia.
"Firstly, we need a hunting license to be able to hunt magical creatures from the forests around Antenne Town. Those licenses are usually the monopoly of the Strout Family without which we don't have a stable supply of animal part ingredients for the Apothecary", Amelia explained to me.
"How do we get a hunting license then?" I asked Amelia.
"Well, you would need a Master Hunter to get this license and all the Master Hunters in Antenne are controlled by the Strout family and that has always been the case. No Master Hunter would want to work with us", Amelia told me.
"What if we have a Master Hunter working for us?" I asked her.
"Even with the employ of a Master Hunter, the hunting licenses are limited in this town and the only way to obtain the licenses is to take it from another Master Hunter who has it with a challenge", she explained to me.
"Well let's challenge a Master Hunter", I told Amelia.
"Orion do you really want to set up an Apothecary with us?" Amelia asked me.
"Yes, we would be partners, I want to make my own gathering incense", I told her.
"This is a major endeavor, and the reason shouldn't just be for some gathering incense that you can purchase readily", Amelia told me.
"Gathering Incense is just a start if we have an Apothecary. We can develop and produce all kinds of potions which is a lucrative business", I told her.
"There are other obstacles too", she told me.
"Then we will overcome them all in due time", I replied to her.
-----