Granny’s mood was at an all-time high when she walked away from the participant’s entrance. She whistled a merry tune out of her childhood as she strode down the stone corridors of the colosseum. A female servant stepped in her path and asked for her name and identification card. She obliged by showing the young woman her golden alchemy alliance medallion.

“I am sorry if I was impolite. I hadn’t seen … ”

“It’s all right. I don’t like to prance around with my medallion like the others.”

“Of course.”

With a smile on her face, she entered the alchemy alliance’s senior member’s private booth. The room was furnished with luscious sofas from the south. Highly trained servants at the bar served various refreshments and delicacies. Scattered through the room were all the important figures of alchemy in Trianon. The requirement to join was to reach MasterCraft level. Socializing was not one of her strong suits, but she wasn’t incapable. So, she walked over to some old colleagues and chattered about work as an alchemist.

Suddenly, someone put hands over her eyes and a giggling voice asked: “Who am I?”

Granny groaned and turned around. “Silvia, you don’t change.”

Indeed, her old friend, Silvia, was standing pouting behind her. “You are no fun, Sophia.”

Granny would have scolded her for using her real name, but she couldn’t keep the news to herself. She winked at Silvia and whispered: “I have news that could rattle the very foundation of the Alchemy’s Alliance.”

Silvia was a tattletale through and through and, judging by her eager eyes, she was hooked. They took a place at a balcony as far away from prying ears and Granny began: “I have a new apprentice that …”

Granny was cut off by Silvia’s squeal of excitement. “At last!”

Granny smiled and added: “I wouldn’t be so fast to judge … How should I say this? … He is different in that …”

Their conversation was interrupted by booming laughter from another group of Alchemists. “Do you know what her apprentice wanted for the tournament? Three kilos of wyvern leaf! What a joke.”

As expected, the voice belonged to Evudor, the royal alchemist and one of the people she hated most in this world. Since she had been ten years old, Evudor had tried to capture her attention. On her sixteenth birthday, she had rented an entire inn with talented musicians. She had invited most people she knew to celebrate with her. During the dancing, Evudor had climbed up onto the stage completely sober. What followed was the most embarrassing minute of her entire life. Evudor sang a cliché love song in his teenage cracked voice. It wasn’t like she hadn’t told him before that she wasn’t interested and so she shouted: “I don’t like you. I don’t love you. You are nothing to me.”

After that fateful night, something in him had snapped, and he determined that if he wouldn’t get her, no one would. With renewed vigor, he had managed to succeed the previous royal alchemist. He used the power to turn her life into hell. Every time she would find love, he would send people after the person and he always had someone watching her. After several relationships that had failed, she created an invisibility potion. With the help of the invisibility potion, she would sneak out of her apartment. Soon, she found a handsome young and intelligent young man - The love of her life. Over the course of half a year, their relationship deepened, and they decided to get married. They had bought a house in a small city in Osma where she could set up a shop. On the day of their departure, she only found the cut-off head of her future husband in their usual meeting spot. From then on, she swore that she would never try to find love as the pain of having it torn away would be too great.

She knew that Evudor still wanted her to come to him and ask for forgiveness or permission to marry. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction to then say: ‘No’.

The painful memories made her boil with rage and she shouted in the direction of the mockery: “Ten platinum coins that my apprentice will qualify for the finals.”

Evudor emerged out of the crows with a mocking grin and scratched his bald head. “Come on Sophia, ten platinum coins are change. How about twenty-five platinum coins?”

Granny cursed herself for a fool. Now half of her yearly salary was on the line. “All right. Because you can swim in gold and my apprentice is so bad, let’s change the odds. Twenty-five platinum if my apprentice loses, fifty if your apprentice loses.”

“Deal.”

Both fractions glared daggers at each other, and alchemists murmured excitedly. By now, servants were finished setting up the different workstations of the students. Silvia, her childhood friend, tugged at her sleeve and whispered: “Are you crazy Sophia? Do you even have that much money?”

“I can sell some of my ingredients if I must.”

“Look at the prince’s setup … and your apprentice’s setup … “. Silvia groaned when she saw Granny’s crossed arms and continued: ”How long have you had him as an apprentice?“.

Granny picked her nails and murmured: “One day.”

Silvia froze up in horror. ”Are you …? No, you are serious. You can’t expect him to compete against someone who has trained for eight years in the craft of potion-making?”

“He will win.”

“Come on Sophia. Apologize to Evudor already. Ignore your pride for the moment. Look … Even if we assume that your apprentice is a god reincarnated, he doesn’t have any the tools. Evudor has the newest technology. ”

“It is wyvern leaf.”

“What? What do you mean? Wait …” Understanding dawned on her friend’s face. “You can’t expect … ”

“Yes, I can. Believe me.”

“Three Kilos in three hours? Are you crazy? My highest speed at which I can extract the sap is thirty seconds for one leaf. I have practiced for ages.”

The only thing that Granny believed was the fact that Res was going to lose. Yet, the pain of begging for forgiveness would be greater than losing her stock of potions and herbs. She looked her colleague in the eyes: “I have to admit that I am gambling. But … This boy is a monster. “

A look of thoughtfulness crossed the other alchemist’s eyes: “You are one of the most talented alchemists I know of. Those words out of your mouth, hold a lot of weight. You know what?” Her friend called over to the servant at the bar, so the entire room could hear. A mischievous grin crossed her face: “Servant, I want to bet two platinum coins on the boy making it into the finals.”

The entire room fell silent at the declaration and Granny gave her friend a thankful smile. One by one, the announcer called out names and the young alchemists entered the arena. Granny creased her brow when she saw a young lady who wore tight-fitting open robes.

“That outfit belongs in the red-light district, not an alchemy tournament”, Granny mumbled. Loud, she asked: “Silvia, who is your apprentice?”

“Do you see the fat girl with the number 72?”

“I thought you were an alchemist focused on beauty?”

Silvia chuckled: “I picked her up when her mother told me to remove all the fat before her husband arrived. As if I could remove sixty percent of a person with one pill. When testing for compatibility with my fat burners, it turned out that she had impressive aether control. If your apprentice can extract wyvern leaf, I doubt that her control is as impressive.”

Granny had to suppress a grin, as she whispered: “I know this comes a little late, but he has never done it before and I have taught him nothing.”

The look on Silvia’s face was gratifying and Granny had to steady her. “You are joking, am I right?”

“No, I am not. He will win.”

Silvia looked at her with new eyes: “You have gone insane. Do you want him to die?”

The prince entered accompanied by fanfares and Granny answered: “Let’s see them in action first, shall we?”

Res entered the ring as the last competitor and sat down on the wooden platform. “Sophia, I am not one to judge early, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt for now. By the way, I heard that the prince will make a potion at the level of apprentice 1.”

“Look closer at his workstation. In particular, the part of the workstation that is somewhat covered by our viewing angle. You will find the reason for his ‘talent’”

Silvia pulled out a spyglass and broke out into laughter. All heads in the lounge turned around and looked at their colleague. “Everyone! Please do me the favor and examine the prince’s workstation!” Murmurs of confusion rippled through the crowd, but many obliged. Evudor had to watch in shame as one by one, alchemists laughed at his apprentice.

One of the younger alchemists shouted: “Wait, I can make some letters out. I can make out Leeching Brittlebush – Yellow. Wolpertinger Fang – green. He has color-coded his jars!” All around her, people had to reign in their laughter as not to insult the royal family. Evudor wanted none of it. He screamed out his lungs about ‘insulting the royal family’ ‘Death by rope’ and ‘done for’. All the laughter got stuck up everyone’s throats. By now, the tournament had already begun and people turned to the apprentices.

Res was holding one of the wyvern leaves in front of him and flung it away suddenly. With her spyglass, Granny could see that the telltale poison was oozing out of the leaf. After the twentieth unsuccessful attempt, alchemists around her snickered. “Is he here to waste the Alchemy’s alliance resources? Seems like it.”

After the hundredths unsuccessful attempt, Evudor spouted tales about Res being a beggar she picked up from the street. Meanwhile, Silvia had become restless. “Do you think he can do it? He has already wasted so much time.”

“Hmm.”

She had to admit to herself that she had given up hope. She still wondered what she had expected. She listened in to a discussion next to her but was repulsed by the slimy way Evudor portrayed the prince. An irregularity hit Granny when she looked at Res: He wasn’t throwing the leaf dripping with poison away. She already wanted to signal for a healer, when Res took out another leaf from his linen sack and held it over his mouth.

“Hey Sophia, what is your apprentice doing there? He will die!”

“I have no idea.”

With the reflection of her spyglass, she gave instructions to the healers to be on guard. Three minutes later, the dragon dancing pill of number 34 exploded. The medics rushed and fed the scantily clad young woman healing potions. She refocused on the prince who continued with his premade choreography. Movement in the edge of her vision caught her attention, and she turned in time to see a drop of green liquid.

Silvia’s excitable nature came to light when she hugged Granny and shouted: “HE DID IT!”

At first, everyone in the room assumed they were speaking of Silvia’s apprentice who had completed a difficult stage of her potion. Granny clamped her hands over Silvia’s mouth and whispered: “Don’t draw too much attention to him.”

Silvia nodded and then added: “The problem is that the jury didn’t see it. It is also difficult to prove.”

Granny only grinned and answered: “He is a quick learner.”

Indeed, Res continued to extract the sap. More attentive alchemists took notice and pointed at Res. What Granny didn’t expect was that Res’s rate would improve exponentially. There was a natural control limit at which point one couldn’t improve the extraction speed. Yet, Res decreased his time even past the average of two minutes per leaf. Soon, everyone was whispering about the absurd aether control of her apprentice. Some praise about her teaching skill was undeserved, but she didn’t care if it hurt Evudor.

“Sophia, you planned the complete thing out, didn’t you? But how did you hide the existence of such a talented apprentice? Why doesn’t he collect the drops in a glass vial?”

“You won’t believe me, but he has never done this before. He only joined the tournament because he could have access to infinite amounts of herbs.”

Silvia looked at her old friend with an uncertain smile. “Sophia, you can drop the act now. I assume that you have been teaching him since he was two years old. Look, he has reached even my limit of thirty seconds per leaf.”

Granny kept silent and Silvia realized she meant it. Silvia looked on in horror as Res continued to reduce his time to five seconds. With that, Res had beaten the fastest extraction on record by one second. Silvia couldn’t tear her eyes away from the monster born in front of her. As if he had heard Silvia’s thought, Res extracted the sap of two, three, then five leaves at a time. Alchemists were bombarding her with questions and everyone’s gaze was fixed on the mad boy. Granny watched Res in silence. In reality, she was astounded like everyone, but couldn’t show it. The alchemists realized they couldn’t get more information out of her. Wild speculations about the origins of the mysterious young man sprang up.

An old alchemist pointed at Res: “He can even split his mind. With such powers, he may even become more than a master at my age!”

Another alchemist added: “We haven’t had someone at the King Stage for over a century. Even I would be hard-pressed to extract the sap from multiple leaves at the same time.”

“Do you think … ? No, that couldn’t be.”

“Imagine if he were to reach the Domination stage.”

A hushed silence fell over the room at the words: ‘Domination Stage’. Finally, the results were announced and, to no one’s surprise, Res’s display qualified for the finals.

A shout pierced through the silence like a spear through a blanket: “Sophia! 400 Platinum and I will take him in as my apprentice.” Evudor strode through the crowd as if he owned the place. “I will take this annoying brat out of your hands. You should be thankful.”

Granny steeled her gaze and hissed at him with all the pain she had had to endure by his hand: “I cannot sell someone. If I could, you would be the last person I would sell anyone to.”

Evudor laughed, but his eyes were like steel. “My dear. I was only joking. Do I look like I would buy people? No, I am a man of my word. Here are your recipe and your fifty platinum.” He threw a check for fifty platinum coins in the olive branch bank towards her. ” I have tasks to attend to. Goodbye.”

The gathering dispersed as everyone informed various powerhouses of the developments. Silvia eyed Granny with concern. “He gave up much too easily.”

“I know that. He won’t try anything soon though. I still have some time.”

“Let’s hope you are right.”