Batch after batch, hour after hour, day after day, Percy continued to brew inside his room, rapidly consuming his enormous stash of green mushrooms. By now, a rich herbal aroma permeated the inn – maybe the entire neighbourhood – all day long.
Luckily, nobody had bothered him about it. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent – mostly the minty odour of the life mana, since that was the ingredient he used in the bulk of his brews. On top of that, he’d made sure the innkeeper was the kind of guy who respected his customers’ privacy before starting.
Besides, what he was doing wasn’t that unusual in Twilight City. While alchemists were much rarer outside the Guild, there were still plenty living here. Most of the residents had likely encountered one before.
Of course, if anybody peered into his room, they’d be left speechless by the sight. Whether it was the strange shape of his cauldron, or the sheer scale of his brews, he doubted his neighbours had seen anything even remotely similar.
In any case, he was free to pour all his time and effort into the operation, and the results spoke for themselves. Yet, no matter how fast he brewed, he couldn’t possibly keep up with the steady flow of ingredients Nesha provided him with.
She’d already had Martina discuss with Alexander the possibility of exporting the mushrooms directly. That was not to say that there was anything wrong with the quality of Percy’s products – all three of them were selling like hot cakes. But they could make a lot more money if they weren’t bottlenecked by his brewing speed. Plus, a lot of people would be interested in an alternative source of life mana. Especially one that was so much easier to grow.
Still, this wouldn’t be without its downsides. Contacting the right people to set this up would take even longer – easily another two or three months. For now, they’d have to rely solely on Percy’s output. That said, this arrangement suited him just fine, as he had yet to register the scaling principle, and his yield hadn’t reached a high enough level for him to consider moving to Aurora Dew.
But time wasn’t the only issue with selling the mushrooms. Such a grand upheaval of the market was inherently risky. Their competitors weren’t idiots – it wouldn’t take them long to figure out how to grow the mushrooms by themselves. From there, it would only take them a few weeks to optimize the process and eliminate Percy and Nesha from the equation.
In other words, Nesha would make some quick money the moment she sold their entire stock of mushrooms, but that would mark the end of their operation. The mushrooms, the healing potions and the tattoos would become far less profitable soon afterwards.
In any case, managing everything was Nesha’s job. Percy’s focus was on alchemy.
Right now, he needed a couple hours per day to brew enough Aurora Dew for himself and his companions. He used his old cauldron for that, prioritizing efficiency over speed. The rest of the time, he switched to the new cauldron to mass produce the potions and the ink.
It had been another week since his birthday, and he’d brewed a lot more stuff than the week before. Over 5000 doses of healing potions. Everything considered, they cost Alexander less than a single contribution point per dose to produce, and were sold at fourteen points apiece. Of course, the Radiant Lord had negotiated for 30% of the profits, which meant that just over nine points ended up in Nesha’s pocket.
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Percy had even found enough time to brew around 500 doses of magic potions. The recipe hadn’t been difficult to invent – he only needed to extract the juice from some fist-sized fruit called mana apples. It had barely taken him a couple hours to find the right temperature and pressure settings for the extraction. Even better, these potions sold even more easily, and at a slightly higher price – sixteen points per vial – since the demand for them was greater.
However, Nesha had asked Percy not to prioritize these, as their profit margin was smaller. The ingredients cost around eleven contribution points per dose, so only a fraction of the money ended up in their pockets, despite the fact that they took Percy no less time than the healing potions to brew.
The tattoos on the other hand were their favourites. The mud mana ingredients were common and cheap, only costing three contribution points per portion. On the other hand, Nesha was charging a whopping 63 points per finished tattoo!
Of course, Percy had to spend twice as long to brew the ink, and he wasted more of the ingredients in the process. Still, even after taking the losses into account, the ink was nearly twice as profitable for them.
Sadly, they couldn’t focus solely on that, because the market for it was much smaller. Plus, drawing the tattoos was a time-consuming process in and of itself, so they’d only managed to sell about 300 of those over the past week.
Nesha had asked Martina to take over that part of the business, since she’d rather not involve any more strangers into the operation than necessary. Luckily, she’d accepted – for reasonable compensation – as she had a sick husband and a couple of young kids to provide for.
Overall, they’d make over 100,000 contribution points once they managed to sell all their current stock. It was a lot of money for the average person, though not nearly enough to cover their needs. Unfortunately, they could only buy about a third of the ingredients for the Aurora Dew with that. Plus, it had taken Percy three weeks of non-stop brewing to get there.
If they were to extrapolate their current results, they’d need another six weeks just to gather enough money for the secondary ingredients. After that, it would take him half a year to convert all the elixirs into Aurora Dew.
All things considered, it would mean that Acton’s group would get an extra fifteen or so years in the Valley. It wasn’t the worst possible outcome, since they’d still beat the boy to his next promotion, which was their priority. However, it wasn’t ideal either, as his guards would get that much closer to Blue, making their eventual clash significantly more dangerous.
Fortunately, this was under the assumption that Percy’s yield remained stagnant, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
Granted, his current efficiency was quite poor. It varied depending on what he was brewing, as he was less familiar with some of the recipes, and they didn’t all involve the same number of alchemic steps. On average, his yield with each step was about 53%.
Admittedly, that was embarrassingly low. If he’d tried to brew the regular elixirs with such a yield, he’d only preserve around 15% of the nectar – not enough to even qualify as a professional alchemist. This was especially stark, considering that it had been over twice as high back when he left the Guild, even before he got the Sorcerer’s Eye.
After obtaining his mutation, his yield had climbed to a whopping 75% per alchemic step, or 42% when it came to elixirs – just two points below Orin’s.
So, why had it declined this much?
Naturally, it was due to how thin he had stretched himself, tackling so many different frontiers at the same time. He was trying to familiarize himself with a bunch of new recipes, to get used to brewing five times as many ingredients at once inside his upgraded cauldron, and to register the scaling principle.
The truth was, his lower yield was nothing but a fleeting illusion. Percy’s alchemy skills had never been sharper than they were at this moment, and they continued to improve rapidly with each brewing session. Every batch brought with it many lessons, and every day, his yield grew by a couple percentage points.
It was a monstrous achievement, that would have left any other alchemist flabbergasted. Even novices – who had a much easier time improving – didn’t do so nearly as fast.
At the rate it was climbing, Percy was confident his yield would catch up to what it used to be in about three weeks. Not just that, but he guessed it would probably continue to grow past that, for a little bit longer.
Yet, even he seemed to have underestimated himself. Just two days later, something happened that accelerated everything.
[Congratulations! You have mastered a new alchemic principle: Scaling!]