Chapter Eight: Life-Force Water
We ended up training until nightfall.
When the sun went down, we teleported back to the castle and were finally free to do what we wanted.
“Man, I’m really tired.”
“I know. That was more taxing than I’d expected it would be.”
I was far more tired after the training in the mountains than I had been after the previous day’s work with Eclair.
The thought of going through all that again with Rishia and the old lady was depressing.
“Raphtalia, are you going to spar with Eclair?”
“Yes. She says that she has a lot of things to show me.”
There was no time to relax. But there was no getting around it—there was only so much time until the next wave, and we had to do what we could.
“I think I’ll make up some nutritional drinks. I’ll go swing by the apothecary in town. Raphtalia, you go ahead and start your training with Eclair.”
“Understood. The castle wizards offered to teach us what they can about magic once dinner is over. If anything comes up, let us know.”
It really was starting to feel like we were rushing to get everything in before the wave came.
There was training, sparring, and studying to do. We need to level, and to raise money too, but there just wasn’t enough time.
I wonder if that was why Melty’s level had been so low?
Thinking back on it now, Melty was very powerful, considering how low her level had been.
I decided to save those thoughts for my walk. I had to use the limited time I had to stop by the weapon shop and the apothecary.
Unfortunately, the old guy at the weapon shop hadn’t finished any of the projects he was working on for us.
Granted, it had only been a day, so it wasn’t surprising. I moved on to the apothecary.
“What is it?”
Just like last time, the grumpy-looking-but-actually-kind man at the counter greeted me gruffly.
“I was hoping you could show me how to make an effective nutritional drink to combat exhaustion.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, sounding uninterested before calmly telling me about the most effective medicinal herbs. Then I had an idea.
If anyone knew about items and the way they affected people, it was this guy. So maybe he knew something about herbs that affected the “energy” that the old lady kept talking about.
“Do you know anything about a weird medicine that acts kind of like soul-healing water or magic water?”
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“I’m trying to experiment with this. . . thing that doesn’t show up in your status menu. I’ve got reason to believe that it is somewhat excited by soul-healing or magic water. Any idea what I mean?”
That’s it. It wasn’t exactly a shortcut, but maybe there was a tool out there that would help me figure it out. Like that fragment the accessory dealer had shown me that got me in touch with my magic power.
Come to think of it, I’d gotten completely accustomed to magic use in a relatively short amount of time. That wasn’t something I’d been able to do when I first arrived in this world.
“Hm... Well, it was a long time ago, but I think that my teacher’s teacher had a recipe that sounds like it might fit the bill. Wait a minute.”
The man vanished into the back storeroom for a few minutes and returned carrying an old book.
The pages were tattered and worn. It seemed like there were holes here and there in the fragile pages.
“Here it is.”
“Life-force water?”
It wasn’t a life-restoring medicine; it was a medicine that gave the user more vital energy.
It wasn’t very good at helping its user heal their wounds directly. It was used to help the body heal itself better. Apparently, it was difficult to combine with other medicines and so never gained much distribution in the marketplace.
Maybe it was like soul-healing water. If anyone who wasn’t a hero drank it, it was just a medicine that would help them concentrate.
“To make it, you need soul-healing water and magic water. They need to be filtered and then run through a centrifuge. Then you must collect the resultant liquid.”
That was not the sort of process that I had been expecting to hear. To centrifuge the liquid, you needed to have a magic stone, the sort of thing that we had needed to have Filo’s clothes made.
“The medicine can be made from the by-products resulting from the production of very strong soul-healing water and magic water. Both of those medicines are quite rare in and of themselves, so you can imagine how few people use this life-force water.”
I nodded at his explanation.
So it was like collecting the sakekasu from sake production. You could only get that by squeezing the sake liquid from the mash.
It wasn’t something that put you at a loss to produce. It was just very rare because the original materials were rare.
Come to think of it though, I didn’t know what sort of materials you needed to try and make a vial of strong soul-healing or magic water.
When I say “strong” medicine, I don’t necessarily mean super concentrated; I mean super effective. If you made medicine too concentrated there was a chance that it could act as a poison on the user. That was probably why this recipe never found any wide use.
And if it only helped wounds to heal, there would be little incentive to make it in a world where healing magic was commonplace. The simplest potions available were very effective at healing wounds anyway.
Maybe you’d need a stronger potion if your arm had been blown off, but the book also clearly stated that the medicine was unlikely to cure such a grievous injury.
Basically it was a medicine that was very difficult to make with dubious efficacy.
But it might have been just what I was looking for.
“If you already have soul-healing and magic water, can you make it? I think the magic shop down the street has a magic stone that could to the centrifuging for us. She’ll let you borrow it.”
“Huh? Yeah, I could probably make it in an afternoon. But you don’t really want it, do you?”
“I do, and I have the materials.”
My shield had given me advanced compounding abilities that had enabled me to make the soul-healing and magic water. I passed them to the man behind the counter.
“Your payment will be the leftover soul-healing and magic water. Will you do it for me?”
The process itself shouldn’t have been very difficult. All he had to do was filter the liquids and give them a spin.
I would use the extra materials I had to give it a shot myself back at the castle. But I couldn’t make very much of it, which would make experimenting difficult.
“Sure, but that payment won’t cover it all.”
The guy knew how to run a business.
I found out later that he was actually an old friend of the accessory dealer I'd met on my travels, the one that taught me how to make accessories.
The dealer recognized the taste of one of my medicines and immediately realized where I had learned to craft it.
“So that’s how I made this life-force water stuff.”
It was evening of the following day. We spent the day training, though I, once again, didn’t feel as though I had got much out of it. So when we returned to the castle I stopped by the apothecary to pick up the medicine, then I took it out to where Raphtalia and the others were training in the courtyard.
Just like the previous day, Raphtalia and the others trained with the heroes during the day, only to continue training Rishia and studying magic in the evening.
There were a couple of breaks throughout the day, but all in all it was a very tough schedule.
Still, the evening training was pretty simple. Rishia mostly just sparred with me or the old lady.
Filo and Keel were out leveling on their own.
Keel had already reached level 25, so I was feeling pretty good about that.
But he was having severe growing pains and could barely move by the end of the day. He collapsed on Filo’s back while she transported him back to the castle and then fell asleep in his room.
“I’ve never heard of this kind of medicine!”
The old lad looked fascinated by the bottle I’d given her.
“Yeah, well, I still haven’t really figured out exactly what this ‘energy’ you talk about is. But I think there’s a chance that this medicine might replenish whatever it is. Maybe.
“Hrm... Well, there are no shortcuts through training, but I can’t really deny giving it a try. Rishia has great potential, but she can’t go with us to the mountains to practice energy manipulation. Why don’t we try it?”
“Fehhh...”
Rishia let out a weak little whine. She must have been afraid to act as our guinea pig.
“It’s fine. I already tested it to see if it was poisonous. It’s not.”
Granted, I did have a poison-resistance ability, but I hadn’t felt anything odd when I sampled the medicine.
I let the shield absorb a portion of it, along with the soul-healing and magic waters, and while they did unlock an ability related to compounding, it didn’t look like it was going to be particularly useful.
I’ll go ahead and tell you what shield they unlocked
The magic water unlocked the Ether Shield. The soul-healing water unlocked the Spirit Shield. And the life-force water unlocked the Aura Shield.
Aside from the Aura Shield, they both came with equip effects that restore magic or SP (strong). Those effects apparently naturally refilled those energy sources when they ran low.
But something about that got me thinking.
I guess that could be said about all the shields that I had unlocked up until that point, but when I decided to believe in what the other heroes had said about the way to power-up the shields, new options made themselves available, and those options made the extent of possible power-ups clear.
I had to wonder if believing in the energy that the old lady talked about would create a new power-up option, or some other kind of change, in the Aura Shield.
“I didn’t know there were items like that.”
Eclair looked at the bottle of medicine I’d brought and nodded to herself.
“I just found out about it myself. How’s the training going?”
“Well, Raphtalia gets the hang of things very quickly. Her progress is astounding. I think she will wield a power in the coming battles unlike anything you have seen so far. I cannot wait to see it.”
“That’s great, but back to the medicine. Rishia is supposed to have an innate talent for this kind of thing, so I was hoping I could get her to try it out.”
I could have drunk it myself, but I wasn’t confident that I would be able to notice the subtle changes it might cause.
The old lady was pretty confident in Rishia’s ability to master energy manipulation. So if I was looking for some sort of effect I’d probably have better luck if I let Rishia try it out first.
“I see. Very well then, disciple Rishia! Please take a portion of the holy saint’s medicine, then spar with him.”
“Okay...”
She was nearly twitching she was so nervous.
She took the medicine from me with a shaky hand, then raised the shaking bottle to her lips before closing her eyes, chasing away her fear and drinking the medicine.
“Oh, um . . . It’s not bitter at all! It’s actually kind of sweet.”
“Well, it is made from soul-healing and magic water, after all.”
Magic water tasted like soda, soul-healing water had a chemical taste to it, and life-force water tasted like a sports drink. They all had a pretty artificial taste though. I’d heard you could mix them with fruit juice and it wouldn’t affect the efficacy of the medicine.
“Well? Disciple Rishia, do you feel any different?”
The old lady was very excited.
“Yeah, do you feel anything?”
“I’d expect no less of a holy saint. That medicine really does seem to have filled her with energy.”
“What? Huh?”
Rishia kept looking at me, then the old lady. She wasn’t relaxed at all.
“So? Do you feel different?”
“Um . . . well...”
I guess she couldn’t really tell. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. We were fine without it anyway.
I started to give up, when...
“I feel, um . . . warm? And my mind feels clear!”
Rishia explained as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Really? I hadn’t felt anything like that when I tasted it.
“But now I feel like I’m slowly cooling down.”
“Disciple! Focus on keeping that warmth within your body!”
“Fehhh!”
Rishia was startled by the old lady’s sudden outburst. She hesitantly placed her hands over her stomach.
Was THAT how she was going to keep the energy in?
“Holy saint, it seems she is having trouble keeping the energy still. If she is going to learn how the energy feels, she must spar with it now.”
“Got it.”
I readied my shield for our sparring match.
Rishia’s stats were really low though. So before we started fighting, I cast Zweite Aura on her.
That should have raised her stats enough to help her move and focus. It was a special spell that only heroes could use, and it raised all of the target’s stats.
“Zweite Aura!”
The spell reached Rishia, and once it took effect, she looked even more confused.
“I feel even warmer now! Here I go!”
“What the?! Holy saint!”
The old lady called out just as Rishia started running at me.
“What? The match has already started!”
“It seems that the spell you have just cast has stimulated her energy!”
What?! Then I realized something. Another word for “energy” is “aura!”
Right—that’s why the life-force water had unlocked the Aura Shield!
I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, bur Rishia’s reaction confirmed the connection.
“What?”
Rishia was dashing straight at me, and I could tell she was moving much faster than she had before.
The stat boost that she’d gotten from Zweite Aura couldn’t possibly have been high enough to explain the difference.
Rishia herself looked surprised. She looked like she couldn’t control it, like she couldn’t stop herself from barreling ahead.
“Fehhh! My body won’t stop!”
I wished she would stop crying about it.
She came at me with a stick, but I got a hold of her wrist before she could hit me with it and slipped behind her.
Careful not to hurt her in the hold, I forced her down.
But I was in for a shock. She was stronger than she had been before!
Her elbow crashed into my ribs.
And it really hurt! What did it mean? My defense was so much higher than her attack ability that she shouldn’t have been able to hurt me at all!
But my side was throbbing where she’d hit me.
“Stop fighting back!”
“Fehhh... I . . . I can’t!”
Was she being overpowered somehow? It looked like whatever she was feeling was too intense to manage.
For another five minutes, Rishia seemed to be at the mercy of her rampaging body.
Finally, whatever it was wore off, and she sat down on the ground and stared at her hands.
“I . . . I can’t believe I have so much power.”
“So? Do you think you learned to feel it?”
“Fehh...”
I guess not yet. Oh well. If it were that easy, then everyone would know how to use it.
“I have to say, when Ms. Rishia ran to attack the Shield Hero, her speed was really something to behold.”
“You’re right. It really was.”
Eclair and Raphtalia both agreed.
I agreed too. If a bottle of life-force water and a stat-boosting spell could have such a dramatic effect, then we must have been dealing with something powerful.
“There’s more. She got in some effective attacks against me without even trying. When she hit me with her elbow, it really hurt.”
“Fehh! I’m so sorry!”
“I’m not mad, so don’t worry about it. I hope you learn how to control that energy, whatever it is.”
There was a limit to how much life-force water we could make, and it wouldn’t do us any good to use it awakening a power that we couldn’t even control. I checked her stats and there didn’t seem to be any change.
Was it just some sort of technical power-up?
“Ok, Raphtalia. You try it next.”
“Alright.”
If the training progressed faster by combining it with the medicine, then that was enough reason to use it.
I went ahead and cast support magic on Raphtalia, just as I had done with Rishia. Then we began to spar.
But unlike Rishia, Raphtalia didn’t seem to be as dramatically affected by the water as I had hoped.
Maybe she had come a little faster? Just a tiny bit? It was very hard to tell regardless, which meant that it probably wasn’t worth it.
“If we can use that medicine in her training, then perhaps disciple Rishia will be able to grasp the fundamentals of energy manipulations faster than I had expected.”
“Yes! I will do my best to meet your expectations!”
She certainly was calculating. Oh well. If she ended up stronger than she was, that was all I cared about.
I had to admit though, by taking the medicine and then training, it kind of looked like steroid abuse to me. If the life-force water turned out to be addictive, I’d have to cut her off.
“Naofumi! I’m . . . I’m going to try my best!”
Rishia was optimistic about devoting herself to her training. Seeing her like that made me feel like I needed to do my best as well.
The next day I brought the medicine to the other heroes and had them drink it.
It hadn’t had much of an effect on Raphtalia or I, so I wasn’t sure if it would do anything to the other heroes.
I had them all try drinking it, but as expected, it didn’t seem to do very much.
Apparently none of them were having much luck sticking their fingers into rocks either.
The next day, the other heroes began to sabotage the training.
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