"Now, with your combat skills tested and me being rather impressed with them, I want to go on to the next part of being a Witch: Alchemy. From what I recalled of your test scores, you were rather average in everything, so don't be too worried and don't attempt to do something stupid to impress me.
I have the ingredients available for many potions, but if you need a refresher or require additional information on the sort of herbs, powders and liquids obtained in this region there is a book inside that goes over just that. Pick any potion at all and go ahead and brew it."
The bluenette just stared at me for a few moments before looking down at herself, the dusty leather training gear she was wearing giving her a moment of pause as she likely wondered if I would give her time to get sightly, only to look back at me a second later to figure out her answer.
I remained quiet and just stared back at her, wondering what she would pick to do; I hadn't given her a time limit nor had I explicitly stated that we were heading right into the test this very moment, so I was just curious to how she would respond.
I hadn't even forbade her from drinking that mana potion on her belt to recuperate, nor said she couldn't drench herself in water right now to wash off, but the bluenette turned around and dashed into the house, surprising me a little.
Following behind her, I was relieved to notice that she wasn't using that same speed indoors, and I was even more relieved to see her searching for that book before carefully laying it on the table, flipping through it and eventually recalling that she should be writing these things down.
It was amusing to see how scatterbrained she could be, even more so since she rushed upstairs before almost crashing back down them as she returned to the table, jotting down the ingredients she might need alongside their page numbers while keeping them in what seemed to be an orderly manner.
Already I could tell she was attempting to create a recipe for something with each ingredient she picked, basing them around some of the more common and always required by everyone no matter where you went; regeneration, stamina, mana replenishers and more were the backbone of the Alchemical market, and as such everyone valued those materials and the potions themselves quite a bit.
Having the knowhow to make those potions wherever you went was a necessity amongst us Witches, especially if you wanted to be a skilled Alchemist as well; no one cared about the fancy potions if you couldn't make the things everyone needed at all times.
So seeing that she was going for stamina potions that would have one or two extra ingredients to enhance those effects was giving me a bit of anticipation, even more so since she was quick and decisive with which recipe she was going to use for this test.
Watching from the side and remaining out of the way while she began to zip around searching for the various ingredients she needed was quite amusing, but I was also becoming hopeful the more I saw of her as she harvested just what she needed from the plants around the room while pulling the various powders and vials of liquid off of their shelves, moving them to the table.
She was quick to get the various containers and measuring devices she needed, setting them up and getting her workspace tidy so that she could begin the actual process of brewing a potion; there were various methods to brewing a potion, but much like a recipe for baking there was a set in stone method that everyone primarily used.
Sure those other methods existed, but why bother when people before you had already done all of the trial and error to find the most efficient way to brew the potion?
Wynn began to grind down two of the herbs - a thin, needle like stem with small spherical leaves and then a single large, typical leaf that was orange in color - together, mixing the pastes she made inside of the mortar before adding a few drops of a cloudy white liquid.
Right away the orangish paste bubbled up and brightened in color, almost becoming yellow and then getting rather sparkly as the mana trapped inside each of the ingredients started to be released, starting the timer that would determine the grade of her potion.
The more mana that there was to be trapped within the vial that would store the potion itself after it was corked meant that it would have a heightened effect and be far more potent, so now that she had begun this portion of the brewing process I was watching even more closely.
Scraping this current concoction into a vial, Wynn corked it and started working on the next part, saving as much mana as she could while also showing a fascinating twist on her methods to brew potions; she ignored the idea of rushing now that the timer was on and instead forced that timer to pause a little, but her method wasn't a new one.
It was a common one many years ago, one that people gave up on due to the amount of mana that bubbled up within the vial while the rest of the brewing was done outside; once that vial was uncorked all of the mana that was trapped would be released, resulting in a far faster loss of efficacy than any other method.
When she placed that vial inside of a larger glass jar and began to weave together a spell that used air mana to push the raw mana back into the vial, making me chuckle silently as I wondered if her control was good enough for such an advanced technique...
If not, this was a good learning opportunity for her as she got to work on the other parts, knocking them out one by one.