After finalizing the precise potion formula, Edwyn handed over all the Focus Potions he had made during the past half-month to Agnes to pay off his debt, and placed an order for a custom-built machine.
All the materials he had used over the past two weeks had been bought on credit from Agnes.
"What you want isn't hard to make. A mana probe plus a few stabilized mana injectors should do the trick. But…" Agnes hesitated. The machine Edwyn had requested gave her a crazy idea.
Was he planning to brew potions using a machine?
"Agnes, what is it you're trying to say?"
"It's nothing," Agnes shook her head, brushing off the insane thought.
Potions? Made by machines? No way.
"I've got time this week. Come back in seven days."
Hearing Agnes agree, Edwyn felt reassured. Agnes's specialty was magitech and alchemy machinery. As Joron's most outstanding student in a millennium, her expertise in alchemical mechanics was second to none among apprentices.
With her crafting the machine, its quality and precision were guaranteed.
Leaving the testing zone, Edwyn went with Agnes to the commercial zone to settle the potion debt in Mana Stones.
"You're raking in gold these days. At this rate, even I'll be falling behind," Agnes joked as she handed Edwyn a heavy pouch full of Mana Stones.
Edwyn smiled shyly. "I don't dare compare to you, Agnes. One piece of your magitech equipment equals a month of potion brewing for me."
"You're still young. I'm already a High Apprentice," Agnes sighed. She was starting to feel like the old wave getting washed away by the new.
Edwyn hadn't even been studying alchemy for long, yet he'd already achieved this much.
She couldn't imagine what kind of monster he'd become once he reached her level.
Having not returned to his dorm in half a month, Edwyn swung by the commercial zone to buy several dozen pounds of fresh meat and two pounds of iron pellets.
He didn't want his companion, Moony, starving to death.
Luckily, when he returned to the dorm, Moony didn't seem too different, just a bit dull in the feathers, lacking its usual shine. At the corner of its beak, Edwyn even saw a trace of flesh and blood.
"You little rascal, you snuck out for a snack, huh?" Edwyn stroked Moony's feathers, and the creature affectionately nuzzled him in return.
After feeding Moony, Edwyn returned to his desk and reviewed the model Elia had given him.
This spell matrix, once dismantled, could still be used as a functional spell, but now Edwyn had to consider how to make it more useful.
"Ice Spike accelerates over time after being cast…" Edwyn scribbled lazily on his draft paper with a quill. "Continuous acceleration… it's kind of like a rocket."
A rocket needs constant fuel burn to reach maximum speed, while Ice Spike consumes mana-fueled kinetic energy to gradually accelerate.
So, if Edwyn applied additional acceleration spells to the spike during flight, wouldn't the projectile travel farther, and hit harder?
He felt like he had hit on something important.
But having an idea was one thing. Turning it into reality was another matter entirely.
If he wanted to create this magical device, he'd need to find a suitable material substrate for the spell, then carefully plan the rune layout and mana conduction circuitry.
He also had to minimize the rune count. More runes meant higher mana requirements and greater heat loss. With the current rune density, the only feasible option would be to inscribe them on mithril directly.
But mithril? Every alchemist drooled over it. There was no way an apprentice like him could get his hands on any.
In Edwyn's vision, the device should have a long, narrow acceleration channel with kinetic runes inscribed at various points to fully transfer spell force to the projectile. He sketched out his idea, refining it repeatedly until a rough, wizard-themed prototype of a gun emerged on the draft paper.
"Well, isn't that fate," Edwyn chuckled as he looked at his design.
With a basic blueprint in hand, he began preparing for production.
First, he asked Elia to help reduce the rune count of the kinetic spell as much as possible. She happily agreed. Next, he started gathering candidate materials from the commercial zone for testing.
According to Edwyn's concept, the device should consist of an acceleration barrel and a projectile, in simpler terms, a gun barrel and bullets.
The bullet material was particularly crucial.
A good bullet needed to be hard, light, and easy to shape, and if possible, have anti-magic properties.
But gathering materials was tedious. After some trial and error, Edwyn suddenly remembered he knew a fellow apprentice who dealt in alchemical materials.
…
"These are… quite a lot," Kevan muttered, eyeing Edwyn's material list. He'd been in the alchemy trade for a while, but even he couldn't guess what Edwyn was trying to make from this.
"Just running some experiments. Got to test a few materials," Edwyn replied nonchalantly.
"I'll keep an eye on the marketplace for you. If anything shows up for sale from the mage consortiums or apprentices, I'll grab it." Kevan folded the list and tucked it into his pocket. "By the way, I've heard you're kind of a big deal now."
"Big deal? Hardly. I'm just riding on my mentor's coattails," Edwyn waved it off.
"Ah, come now, false modesty is the worst kind of pride," Kevan said, pouring Edwyn a cup of tea.
"Agnes's cottage is known all over the commercial zone for Focus Potions now. Everyone who's used them says they're more consistent than the ones from Ulrich's Alchemy Shop."
"Ulrich's shop?" Edwyn asked, puzzled.
"You didn't know?" Kevan looked surprised. "Before you came along, Ulrich's shop had a monopoly on Focus Potions."
"I really didn't know," Edwyn admitted, scratching his chin. He'd never paid attention to who was selling what in the marketplace.
The academy's Focus Potion market was huge. He wasn't anywhere near competing with anyone yet.
"Well, the rumor is… you started making Focus Potions to compete with Joseph because he stole your girl…"
"Huh? What kind of nonsense is that?" Edwyn laughed, cutting him off. "I've got better things to do."
"You might not care, but some people think that's what happened," Kevan said. "And it's true, Ulrich's potion sales have taken a hit since you entered the scene."
"Before, demand far outstripped supply. Even the low-quality stuff sold. But now that there's a competitor, the apprentices who aren't in a hurry just wait."
"Wait for what?"
"Wait for your potions," Kevan's eyes glinted. "Yours are better quality, more consistent, and released regularly in good quantities. If you're not rushing out on a mission, why wouldn't you wait for the better product?"
"I really hadn't thought about that." Edwyn shook his head. "So, what are you trying to say, just spit it out."
"Haha, still as direct as ever. Just like on the airship." Kevan smiled and finally said what he came for:
"I want to be your potion distributor."