"You know, Lyssa," Celia said as she swallowed the sweet treat. "Your baking is incredible. It's hard to believe you live all the way out here by yourself."
"Baking is just tasty alchemy," Lyssa replied, taking a sip of her tea.
Slurp.
"It's all about precise measurements, temperature control, and the correct order of reagents. If you mess up the flour-to-butter ratio, the structural integrity collapses. It's a failure, just like my distillation experiments."
Celia smiled softly.
Despite the girl's cold, clinical vocabulary, these quiet moments were incredibly peaceful. They were slowly forming a quiet, comfortable bond in the middle of the isolated wilderness.
Of course, the peace never lasted for very long.
On the second day, Celia was sitting at the table, enjoying a quiet morning, when the entire cabin suddenly shuddered.
BOOM!
The walls rattled, and dust drifted down from the ceiling beams.
"Lyssa!" Celia shrieked, instantly panicking. She bolted from her chair and rushed down the hallway into the lab. "Are you alright?! Was that a magical backfire?!"
She burst through the door to find Lyssa covered in soot, blinking through a cloud of yellow smoke, calmly writing in her notebook.
"Experiment 447... exothermic anomaly," the child muttered.
Celia let out a long, exhausted breath, as she rubbed her temples.
By the third day, the novelty of the danger had completely worn off.
Celia sat at the table alone, holding a delicate porcelain teacup halfway to her lips. She took a slow, deliberate sip.
BOOM!
A massive explosion rocked the back of the house. The teacup rattled violently in her saucer.
Rattle, rattle, clink.
A shockwave blew open the kitchen cabinet doors, and a faint smell of burnt sulfur wafted through the floor.
Celia did not even flinch or bother to stand up. She did not even turn her head.
With a perfectly straight face, she calmly set her teacup back down on the table.
Clink.
She picked up another cookie, and took a slow bite.
Crunch.
"She really needs to work on her reagent-to-mana ratio," Celia muttered to herself, completely unfazed as a second, smaller explosion rattled the windowpanes.
Pop!
That night, the forest was beautifully still. Celia stood out on the porch. She leaned against the railing as she stared up at the pristine, unclouded northern sky. The stars were brilliant, scattered like diamond dust across a dark velvet canvas.
"I've been comfortable here," Celia whispered to the night air, her expression turning serious. "Lyssa is good company, and this place is safe. But I can't stay forever. I have to solve the riddle Kian gave me."
She clenched her fist. "I have to leave tomorrow."
---
The morning of the fourth day arrived. Celia packed her leather traveling pack, tightening the straps and slinging it over her shoulders. She walked down the familiar hallway to Lyssa's tiny lab, intending to say a proper thank you and goodbye to the eccentric little Alchemist.
But when she pushed the door open, she noticed Lyssa was frantic. The young girl was rushing between shelves, her short violet hair disheveled, rapidly mixing various colorful fluids into a large glass beaker.
Celia walked toward the chaotic workstation. As she drew closer, her eyes fell upon two iron cages sitting on the edge of the table. Inside the first cage was a standard, glowing-eyed Dungeon Rat—a pest she recognized instantly from her early Adventuring days. But in the second cage was a small, round monster that looked remarkably like a tiny, chubby bear cub.
"What is this beast?" Celia asked as she leaned in closer to inspect the creature.
"Oh, you're here," Lyssa said without looking up, her hands blurring as she measured out a yellow liquid. "That beast is called a Myrkub. It's a Fodder-class monster. I'm going to extract sweat from it to use as a catalyst. It's already my 448th failure, but I'm hoping to get some kind of stable reaction if I mix it into a hydrolized ether solution."
Celia looked at the cute-looking beast. It had big, glassy eyes and soft, dark fur.
"It's adorable," Celia said, tilting her head.
"Don't let that cuteness fool you," Lyssa warned, her voice dropping into a stern tone. "Even if this cub is incredibly weak by monster standards, it's still a monster. It possesses feral instincts that could easily kill a weak civilian, like a human child."
But you're a child too, Celia thought, a sweatdrop rolling down her neck. Is she seriously keeping dangerous monsters in her house like they're common pets?
Without a hint of hesitation, Lyssa pulled on a pair of thick leather gloves. She unlatched the first cage, reached in, and grabbed the squirming Dungeon Rat by the scruff of its neck. Then, with her other hand, she opened the second cage and hoisted the snapping Myrkub out into the open air, completely disregarding the danger.
To an Adventurer like Celia, handling such weak creatures was trivial. But in Celia's eyes, Lyssa was nothing more than a fragile human civilian child.
Does this little girl not have a single shred of a sense of danger? Celia thought, her heart skipping a beat as the Myrkub bared its tiny, sharp teeth inches from Lyssa's wrist.
Lyssa calmly carried the two thrashing beasts over to the center of the table and dropped them both into an enclosed, rectangular glass prism that looked like a fish aquarium. She slid the heavy glass lid shut and sealed them inside.
The two little monsters immediately bumped into each other, startled by the sudden confinement.
"Why did you put them together in one container?" Celia asked, stepping forward anxiously. "What if they start a fight to the death?"
"They will not," Lyssa said dismissively as she tapped the glass with her quill. "I put them together because a Myrkub has to be physically beside a Dungeon Rat in order to produce sweat. That's what the Magical Researchers discovered roughly a decade ago. Ever since that discovery, its sweat has been heavily sought after and used in high-grade alchemicals."
Celia's eyebrows knitted together in sheer confusion. "Why does one beast need an entirely different species near it just to sweat?"
Lyssa noticed the profound look of confusion plastering the elf's face.
"Just watch," Lyssa said, pointing a gloved finger at the glass prism.
Curious despite herself, Celia leaned down, her sharp eyes focusing intently on the two beasts inside the enclosure.
Then, it happened.
A faint, unmistakable yellow glow began to emanate from the skin of the Dungeon Rat. It pulsed softly, a standard phenomenon. But in the blink of an eye, the glow vanished from the rat. The very next moment, the Myrkub suddenly began to radiate the exact same vibrant, yellow light.
Celia was completely stunned. Her breath hitched in her throat as she recognized the nature of the glowing energy. "This is..."
"That's Aura," Lyssa said plainly.
"But... with the exception of Dungeon Rats, Fodder-class monsters are fundamentally incapable of emitting Aura!" Celia argued, her voice rising in disbelief as she snapped her gaze toward the young girl. "They don't possess Mana!"
"Technically, you're entirely right," Lyssa said. She picked up a small glass vial and a thin syringe, preparing to harvest the moisture dripping from the now-glowing Myrkub. "Myrkubs are fundamentally incapable of producing Aura on their own because they have no Mana inside their bodies to begin with."
Celia tilted her head, her mind grinding to a halt. She was utterly unable to comprehend the logic of what she was hearing. Lyssa had just stated the creature had no Mana, which meant generating an Aura should be a structural impossibility. It defied a core law of the Universe.
Lyssa looked up, seeing the total bewilderment in Celia's eyes. She smirked slightly and turned back to the glass prism. She pointed her quill directly at the resting Dungeon Rat.
"The Mana didn't come from the cub," Lyssa said, her voice echoing with a chilling, brilliant clarity. "The Mana came entirely from that Dungeon Rat."
"Came from...?" Celia repeated, her voice barely a whisper.
"Yeah," Lyssa affirmed, her violet eyes gleaming with the raw intellect. "The Myrkub didn't generate it. It absorbed the Mana directly from an external source."