And it was during this forced meditation that Tori finally spotted the problem.

What, exactly, was magic?

She gained mana through meditation. The mana flowed through her body, and in the end she gave it a certain attribute and released it into the outside world, turning it into magic.

That attribute was an “element.”

Earth, water, fire, wind, light, darkness, life, lightning—and all sorts of strange elements. While forcing herself to meditate after swallowing red chilies, she finally understood the problem.

Fire element entered her body, then gathered inside it.

Mana and elements! They were two different things!

It was as if thunder had shattered the darkness in her mind. At last, she understood: the strange, dazzling, colorful dreamscape she sensed during meditation—the world that existed everywhere around her—was made up of elements!

But what she gained through meditation wasn’t elements. It was mana. And this mana—where did it come from? She couldn’t trace it back to its source.

In other words, the basis of Potion wasn’t mana, but elements.

Mana was a driving force, a high-quality fuel. Elements were the “attributes” that determined how that fuel burned and how it could be used.

It was like energy itself: bioenergy, kinetic energy, heat energy. Elements were a way to convert mana, a form of energy, into different kinds of energy.

She couldn’t help thinking of the “advanced Potion” the village chief had mentioned. The kind of advanced Potion that—once drunk—could make a person’s fighting strength skyrocket, and served as the mark of a true Potion Maker.

The village chief had once mentioned an advanced Potion called “Firebird Potion.” If someone took it while advancing, then after the advancement, their fire magic would be especially powerful. Even if they simply released mana, they could shape it into a firebird and send it to attack. In Tori’s terms, it was a potion that gave you extra skill points.

How did this Potion work?

Tori seemed to realize what lay at the heart of that medicine: it changed a person’s body, altering how their body absorbed elements. The Firebird Potion, for instance, made a person instinctively absorb fire elements from the air—from this colorful world—and release them in the form of a firebird. That was probably the result of some kind of transformation…

So ordinary Potion mainly depended on the proportions and structure of the elements in it, while advanced Potion changed the elemental structure of the human body. That meant it had to be tailored to each person—everyone needed a different Potion. First, you had to figure out the person’s existing elemental structure, then use the medicine to change it. That was why advanced Potion was so expensive, and why it served as proof that someone was a Potion Maker…

She got it!

She felt like she understood everything…

But understanding the principle didn’t mean she could actually make it.

Take red chilies, for example. So what if she knew they contained fire elements? How could she draw those elements out? And if she could draw them out, why not just take fire elements directly from the air herself? What was the difference?

There was still so much she didn’t know.

But…

She stayed in a meditative state and held another red chili in her hand. Mana gathered through meditation began to flow from her palm, spreading over the entire chili. This mana had no attributes at all. Simply put, it was a raw, still energy. Like oil: left alone, with no one to set it alight, it was just an ordinary liquid.

Give it an element, let it combine with that element, and it would become magic.

The mana slowly seeped into the red chili. At last, it touched the tiny trace of fire element inside. Flames sprang up. The red chili had caught fire all by itself.

Tori hurriedly tossed the red chili away, jolting herself out of her meditative state.

She’d almost burned her own hand.

Still, she had a few ideas now.

For the first time in a long while, she went down to the river and spent half the day searching until she found two sprigs of ice mint. Xilika was used to it by now. She had no idea what her daughter was up to anymore.

Tori entered a meditative state and sensed the water element inside the ice mint. After locating it roughly, she cut out the part of the mint that contained the element.

Then she took a red chili and did the same thing.

Next, she put the two pieces containing the most concentrated elements into a bowl and crushed them together.

When she felt she’d mixed them thoroughly, she returned to her meditative state. She sensed the elements, chaotically crossing and intertwining right beside her hand.

She slowly wrapped the tangled mass of elements in mana…

Then, under the mana’s influence, the elements began to change.

Flames and droplets of water—something entirely different took shape.

Tori suddenly opened her eyes. She didn’t need to stay in a meditative state anymore; all she was doing was releasing mana… The crushed ice mint and red chili began to dissolve at incredible speed. Under the mana’s influence, they seemed to break down, until only a tiny amount of transparent liquid remained.

Tori stared at the tiny puddle at the bottom of the bowl in disbelief. Could this be… Potion?

No, no, it probably wasn’t. Or maybe it was, but who knew what would happen if she drank it? And what had just happened? Something had taken place that she couldn’t understand. It had only been a simple mix, with just a little mana soaking into it. Why had it changed like that?

Had nobody else ever done this?

Maybe they just hadn’t gone as far as she had—stuffing themselves with red chilies so they could meditate in that state and observe the true nature of mana and elements.

But with this world’s advanced understanding of magic, they should already know. So this was knowledge being kept under wraps.

Was this something you could only learn at the Magic Academy? Or… did the Magic Academy only teach people how to use different kinds of magic—for example, the framework of the elements—without explaining their true nature? Did it simply provide a way to channel them and tell people how to use magic… was that what was going on?

She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t dare test the waters—not even with the old village chief. Maybe this wasn’t shocking knowledge at all. Maybe she was just overthinking it.

Still, it would probably be best to wait until she actually studied at the Magic Academy and compare what she’d learned with the textbooks there.

As for her own oddities, she’d just explain them as a “secret.”

After all, she’d managed to get connected with Ethan. Honestly, the old village chief didn’t matter anymore! Though Tori was grateful for the notebook he’d given her, if she really became a Potion Maker, she’d keep her promise and make an advanced Potion for Boris.

The next question was whether this tiny bit of stuff that looked like Potion was safe to drink—and what would happen if she drank it. Not everything called medicine was accepted as medicine, after all.

Mouse poison is medicine too. Who’d dare eat it?

It only sold because it was so useful for feeding to mice.

Should she test it on mice? But she had fewer than two mice left—and the nearby villages had all bought her mouse poison. Mice were probably impossible to find now.

Was there some other small animal she could try it on?

After all, the human body was pretty different from other creatures’ bodies. Mice were often used for experiments because they were actually quite similar to humans.

She needed test animals—and a person to test it on.

In the end, Tori decided to sacrifice one of her little mice and try something. She fed it the liquid.

In the end, as Tori watched in horror, the mouse slowly died—burning and freezing at the same time. That wasn’t right, was it?!

How could it die?!

What happened? It was just a mixture of red chili and ice mint! Why did it die? The mouse could eat a whole red chili without dying, and the same went for ice mint. Eating them together should’ve been fine—maybe it would get diarrhea at most. So why did it die?

What on earth had happened?

Tori didn’t understand. She really didn’t understand at all.

This didn’t obey the conservation of energy—even though she had no idea where mana came from, either, she couldn’t accept this result. After sitting there for quite a while, Tori finally pulled herself together.

No matter.

In a sense, this was Potion too.

In other words, just like mouse poison, different medicines had different uses.

She should stay optimistic. If Potion really could be made this easily, she’d have to question this world’s standards. What would there be to keep secret about this kind of knowledge?

She reconsidered the problem, and in the end, came to one conclusion: she was missing some kind of neutralizing agent.

Right. A neutralizing agent.

She didn’t know whether this world had a concept like that, but clearly, if she had to judge the failed Potion she’d made earlier, the fire and water attributes had clashed too violently. She needed something to neutralize them.

She ran another experiment, adding some fragrant grass, which seemed gentler, between the red chili and ice mint. And then—it exploded.

It exploded as soon as she covered it with mana.

The explosion of fire element carried a few ice shards with it and nearly ruined Tori’s face. Luckily, she sensed something was wrong and hit the ground at once. Even so, she ended up in a real mess.

“Could this stuff be used as a bomb? It feels like it packs a punch. At least, I can’t make this kind of mess with my own mana. It probably couldn’t kill anyone, but it could still hurt them.” She gauged her parents’ strength.

Gunpowder is medicine too!

She comforted herself again: this was an explosive made purely according to magical principles, with little to do with chemical reactions. The connection was in mana and elements.

She hesitated.

Maybe the problem wasn’t what ingredients she added, but how much of each ingredient she used—and the elemental framework. Magic had to be released through an elemental framework.

Otherwise, water magic would just keep making water. That was all.

But when people used water magic, especially for combat, they usually made ice instead. Tori’s own air-conditioning magic was another example.

It was a combination of water magic and wind magic. She used wind magic to blow away a small amount of moisture, lowering the temperature that way.

Before, she hadn’t understood the principle behind it. She’d only understood the physics. But now, she understood something deeper.

When she separated elements, mana, and magic, she felt the key was the elemental framework.