The Potion Peddler (1)
"Did you enjoy your vacation?"
"It was nice seeing my parents again after so long."
Having filed for leave and stepped out of the Academy with two students—plus one of his own attendants—Felix had finished his homecoming and returned once more to campus.
"Must have been lovely. Absolutely lovely."
"Uh… Professor Remillion?"
He had been walking the corridor toward his first class in ages when he ran into Professor Remillion and offered her a cheerful greeting. The moment she spotted him, she closed the distance at once, her face heavy with exhaustion as she fixed him with a glare. Felix found himself taking an involuntary step back.
"While I was gone…? Did anything happen while I was away?"
"While you were away…? While you were away!?"
"Y-you look like you've been pretty busy…?"
"Would you stop stating the obvious!? Sure, the Headmaster signed off on it—but while you were gone, I did every last scrap of your work for you!"
In truth, Felix's leave had been approved without a hitch. He was already being hailed as a hero of the Academy, and with no classes scheduled for him at the moment, there hadn't seemed to be any problem.
But a professor's duties were hardly limited to teaching. Drawing up lesson plans, preparing and inspecting class materials, and a mountain of assorted odds and ends—there was no shortage of work. Even with official permission, coordinating schedules with the other faculty was the unspoken rule.
Felix, however, had ignored all of that. The moment the approval stamp hit the paper, he left the Academy, and for nearly two weeks every task that should have been his simply sat there unfinished. The result was that everything got dumped on Remillion, the professor who had lately grown closest to him—and she had been grinding her teeth, waiting for him to come back.
"B-but still…! I brought back plenty of high-purity mana stones, didn't I…?"
It wasn't as though Felix had been completely shameless. Before leaving Karak-Zar, he had obtained high-purity mana stones from the dwarves and delivered them to the Academy.
"Of course, stones of that quality don't come cheap. Even my salary would barely cover them. I'm grateful for that—I really am. Honestly, most of this is just me grumbling."
Those same high-purity mana stones had been passed along to Remillion as well, amounting to compensation so generous it far outstripped the labor involved. By rights she should have been thinking, Well, this is fine… Instead, being stuck with Felix's busywork had simply gotten under her skin, and she was taking it out on him.
"You really went through a lot~ Yes, yes—there's no one like you, Professor Remillion."
"Hmph…! Still, being flattered like that doesn't feel half bad. I almost feel like I've got the upper hand for once."
What a nasty personality… Though still better than the original owner of this body, I guess…
As Felix rubbed his hands together and poured on the gratitude, Remillion shrugged her shoulders and preened, clearly not entirely displeased. Felix had to fight down the urge to reach out and mercilessly ruffle those rabbit ears of hers, which were twitching with smug delight.
"By the way, you look exhausted."
"Of course I do. Thanks to all that work, I haven't slept in sixty-seven hours."
"Still, that's more rest than last time. During joint exam prep you pulled all-nighters for a whole week straight."
"This much is nothing. Just a little bodily fatigue, really."
They fell into step side by side down the corridor, chatting as they went. By simple arithmetic she was on her third day without sleep, yet both of them merely shrugged as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. For mages, skipping meals and sleep while buried in research was simply a way of life—an all-nighter of this caliber barely registered as a concern.
"…Actually, I happen to have a rather excellent fatigue recovery tonic. Would you care to try it?"
Glancing sidelong at Remillion as they walked, Felix carefully slipped a hand into his coat.
"A fatigue… recovery tonic?"
"Yes. And it doesn't just help with fatigue—it aids mana recovery as well."
With a soft clink, he drew out a small bottle filled with a liquid that shimmered with a faint green light.
"…Did you make this?"
"More accurately, I sort of… 'helped' with it? But it's still a prototype, so if you wouldn't mind giving me your feedback after using it…"
"Are you treating me like a lab rat!?"
"No, no! Clinical trials are already finished, and I've used it myself—it's perfectly safe! Just take it easy. That would be more than enough."
Prototype. Felix had a hand in making it. Please leave a review. Every phrase made Remillion more uneasy. And the fact that it was this Felix handing her a mysterious drug only made her more reluctant.
"……I'll take it for now."
"Great~"
Deciding she might as well accept it, she took the vial of green liquid from his hand.
"Well then, I'll be off~"
The moment a fork in the corridor appeared, Felix strode ahead without looking back.
Phase one: complete.
With his back to her, he clenched a fist where she couldn't see.
"—So if I plug this formula in here…… Phew…. I can't focus."
Late that night, Remillion had finished the day's schedule and returned to her research lab. Even though midnight had long since come and gone, she still sat by candlelight, buried in her work. But the fatigue piled up over so many days had left her mind stiff and sluggish; concentration simply wouldn't come.
"Maybe I should make some tea—just to wake myself up…"
She rose from her desk and wandered the lab floor, muttering to herself—then stopped.
"…Ah."
Something occurred to her, and her eyes found a small bottle standing in the corner of her desk.
"He said it was a fatigue recovery tonic…"
The highly suspicious concoction Felix had handed her that very afternoon.
"Mmm… is this actually safe to drink…?"
She had accepted it, yes—but knowing it came from Felix made her hesitate to even touch it.
"…Well, even so, it shouldn't be poisonous."
Surely it wouldn't contain anything truly dangerous. After a moment's deliberation, Remillion reached for the bottle. Had it been Rosaria, she would have died before putting it near her mouth—but Remillion still had no idea what Felix was truly like on the inside.
Pop—
"…Sniff, sniff… It smells like… grass? Not bad, actually."
She pulled free the cork stopper and sniffed. The scent that rose was the clean fragrance of grass under a cloudless sun—like lying in an open meadow. In short, not unpleasant at all.
"Well then…"
The smell had passed inspection. Time to drink.
Gulp—gulp—
"…Pwah! Looking at it and smelling it, I was sure it'd taste like tea—so why is it sweet?"
From the scent alone she had expected something bitter, but instead a gentle sweetness lingered on her tongue, more like a fruit drink than anything else. Remillion's face went blank with confusion.
And then—
Fwaaah—
"…Huh? Wha—?! Wh-what!?"
Her entire body suddenly flooded with a soft blue light. Remillion patted herself down in a panic.
"M-my mana…!? It's filling up this much?"
A mage's mana recovery typically came in two forms.
The first was natural recovery. So long as a mage's vessel remained unbroken, spent mana would gradually refill on its own. Aside from meditating in places dense with ambient mana or deliberately drawing in the free-floating energy around you, the rate was more or less the same for everyone.
The second was drinking a mana recovery potion. Unlike research mages, combat mages relied on these constantly—soldier-mages on battlefields where spears, swords, and arrows fell like rain, or adventurers delving into dungeons. When every second could bring a sudden crisis, there was no time for leisurely recovery. Potions were all but essential.
They could restore a large amount of mana in a short time, but the process was forced and crude. It strained the vessel that held one's mana, and overuse all too often led to potion addiction. The futures of mages who abused recovery potions were rarely bright.
But the potion Remillion had just drunk was something else entirely.
Refined, high-purity mana filled her with unnatural smoothness—and it wasn't only her mana that recovered. Her overall physical condition improved markedly as well. To restore the body so thoroughly in so short a time, and with a careful internal inspection revealing not the slightest strain on her vessel…
In short, it should have been impossible.
"This insane man. What the hell did he make!?"
Stunned by what was happening inside her own body, Remillion sat dazed for a moment before snapping back to her senses and frantically changing clothes. The potion's performance was one thing—but she had immediately grasped the aftershocks it would cause.
I need to talk to him about this potion right now!
Bang!
Dressed for going out, Remillion slammed open her lab door and sprinted down the midnight corridor of the faculty dormitory.