The recipe for the Killer Whale potion was now in Eryn's hands.
Aerin's current goal was clear: Alchemy Lv2.The real question was how to obtain the skill.
Hunting Drowners for loot boxes was one option, but he had no illusions about his luck — and even if he got a box, there was no guarantee it would contain an alchemy skill.The other option was to learn it the hard way.
If the School of the Wolf's longsword techniques could be recognized and improved by the Witcher's Codex, there was no reason alchemy couldn't be as well.
Thus.
After leaving the apprentice dormitory, Aerin headed straight for the eastern tower.
This morning, Vesemir had mentioned there was an alchemy room on the second floor of the southern tower — there, surely, someone skilled in alchemy could be found.
Kaer Morhen in 1179 was a far cry from the ruin seen in the year 1272.
With the mortality rate among witcher apprentices so absurdly high, the vast stronghold wasn't exactly bustling with life.Yet it wasn't dead either.
Maybe it was because winter was near, and the witchers who roamed the world were returning home.Even just walking here, Aerin had crossed paths with four or five white-haired, cat-eyed men, twin blades strapped to their backs.
Blacksmiths, tailors, and material shops lined the main avenue leading to the keep, scattered here and there.If not for the shopkeepers all bearing the unmistakable look of aged witchers, Aerin might have mistaken the place for an ordinary, thriving fortress.
"So, what year was it?"He couldn't help but wonder.
What year would this towering castle fall into ruin?When would the School of the Wolf — once mighty and proud — be brought to its knees, leaving only Vesemir, Geralt, Eskel, and Lambert to defend it in that final, desperate siege?
Ever since he'd found a thread of hope for surviving the Trial of the Grasses, he couldn't stop thinking about the future he'd been trying to ignore.
That was the curse of foresight.
Knowing what would happen made it impossible not to dread tomorrow — and the day after.Worse still was knowing only the end, but not how or when the end would come.
The road to the alchemy room was uneventful.
No one stopped him, no one demanded to know why he wasn't writhing in pain during "rest time" at the dormitories.
The excuses he'd prepared went unused.
After climbing the long corridors and steps of the tower, Aerin arrived at the alchemy room.
The heavy wooden door was shut.
Knock knock — knock knock.
He rapped on it.
Creaaak—
The door opened to reveal a girl, a little older than him, with dark red hair and a clean, delicate face.
"Who are you looking for?" she asked.
A girl?
Wasn't the School of the Wolf's sorcerers supposed to be male?
Though it struck him as strange, Aerin stuck to the plan.
"This is the Wolf School's alchemy room, right? I'd like to learn alchemy."
"Learn alchemy?"She looked him over with clear surprise before answering, "This is the alchemy room, yes... but it's private."
"Private?"
That caught him off guard.
Vesemir had directed the apprentices to get treatments and "lunch" from an alchemy room — yet this place wasn't even owned by the School?
Did sorcerers already wield such authority here?Or had cracks between the witchers and the sorcerers already begun to show?
Aerin froze for a moment.Then, fishing out the illusion pendant from beneath his collar, he asked carefully:
"Then... can I study under whoever owns this place?"
"I can pay."
The girl was about to respond when a mature woman's voice called from inside.
"Mary? Who's at the door?"
"A little witcher," Mary answered, turning back. "He wants to pay to learn alchemy."
"A little witcher? Paying to learn alchemy?"The woman's voice dripped with amused disbelief."Among all those muscle-headed brutes, there's one like that?"
Click, click, click.
The sharp tapping of heels approached.
Aerin, standing stiffly at the door, felt a rare wave of awkwardness wash over him.
Mary, too, looked uncomfortable, forcing a crooked smile before stepping aside.
The footsteps stopped.
And then Aerin saw her.
Kaer Morhen's deep autumn chilled even the weeds on the roadside, coating them in a delicate frost at dawn — as if nature itself honored the season's deathly stillness.
Yet the woman before him showed no such respect for the season.
She wore a sheer deep-V dress, light enough that it almost seemed to glow.The silk fabric shimmered like fire, embroidered with golden thread and tiny pearls.
And her hair — that same burning red as the silk — flowed freely down her back.
For a split second, Aerin thought it was the height of summer.
She was beautiful in a way that seemed almost unreal, like a porcelain doll carved by cruel hands.But no — she was no male sorcerer.
Aerin's instincts screamed that perhaps he had come to the wrong place.
Still...He was already here.
"Can I study alchemy under you?" he asked, forcing the words out and lifting the pendant in his palm. "I can pay with this magical pendant."
The woman's eyes flickered when she saw the pendant.
Her gaze turned strange, complicated.
"You know the name of that necklace?" she asked softly.
"Vera's Illusion Pendant," Aerin answered.
She nodded.
"That's its name," she said — then added, as if tossing a match into a pool of oil,"And I am Vera."
Aerin: (⊙_⊙)?
!!!
Pfft—
A suppressed laugh burst out beside him.
"Sorry," Mary apologized quickly before running back into the room.
Aerin, burning with humiliation, withdrew the pendant and made to leave.
But the woman — Vera — spoke again.
"You can."
Aerin froze.
"Can what?"
"You asked if you could study alchemy under me," Vera said calmly. "I said yes."
Without waiting for his reply, she turned and walked back inside.
Aerin scrambled to follow.
Bang.
The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind him on its own.
"Magic," Aerin thought to himself, heart pounding.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of oranges and cardamom — a sharp, exotic sweetness that hit the senses.
The thick red carpets, the vivid oil paintings, the lace curtains hanging over cold stone windows — everything about this room screamed bedroom rather than laboratory.
Only the four alchemy worktables shoved against the far walls clung stubbornly to the room's supposed purpose.
Mary sat at one, grinding something in a mortar, flashing Aerin a quick smile before returning to her work.
"Sit," Vera ordered, pointing to the seat beside her.
Aerin obeyed stiffly, unsure whether to put the pendant away or leave it out.
"What should I do with this?" he asked.
"Why are you asking me?" Vera arched a brow. "It's yours."
Then, as if realizing something, she added,"And don't worry. I won't take payment."
Aerin tensed.
"Then what do you want?"
Nothing in this world came free.
He wasn't naïve enough to believe a stranger — a sorceress no less — would simply offer to teach him out of kindness.
"Just answer one question," Vera said, raising one long, pale finger.
"Why do you want to learn alchemy?"
That's it?
Still wary, Aerin thought carefully.
In case she could read his mind, he decided it was safest to tell the truth.
"I want to brew a potion to survive the Trial of the Mountains," he said.
"You're still an apprentice?!" Mary gasped from across the room, clearly eavesdropping.
Aerin nodded.
Her shock wasn't unwarranted.
Between monster studies, swordsmanship, signs, and adapting to mutagens, witcher apprentices barely had time to breathe.
Without the rare Essence of Purity he'd consumed, Aerin would still be curled up in the dormitory, unable to walk.
Yet Vera showed no surprise.No curiosity.She simply accepted his answer, or perhaps didn't care at all.
Snap.
She flicked her fingers.
A black leather-bound book floated up from Mary's table and drifted through the air, landing softly in front of Aerin.
It opened itself to the first page.
Without even pausing to acknowledge his wide-eyed stare, Vera began the lesson.
"Since you want to brew a potion, we'll start with the basics — Alchemy and Potions," she said.
"Potions, as the name suggests, are substances infused with magic..."
Ding![A new skill clue has been discovered: Alchemy][Spend 10,000 small experience orbs to unlock this skill?]
10,000?!
Aerin's mind reeled, blank and spinning.
What kind of insane cost was this?