Ashton the furniture in Sam's office to the walls, making space for some other tables that he could put his tools up on. He had to make sure that he could reach everything as fast as he could, so he put three tables into a 'U' shape, and sorted the tools in the most efficient way he could.

  And it worked out really well; he managed to place everything onto the tables that he needed, and even gave himself a bit more space for more materials.

  "Uhm... Why are my chairs in the hallway?" Sam stepped into his office, staring at the setup that Ashton had put together.

  "Oh, I needed some space. I'll be making a few potions now, and I can't really do it anywhere else."

  "Why not?"

  "Because this is the only space nobody goes to. I can't deal with people bothering me, because I need to completely concentrate," Ashton explained as he placed the gathered ingredients the Backpacker was handing to him onto the table into their designated spots.

  "Hm, I guess you would always shut down when you had to do two things at once."

  "Well, how could I ever concentrate if someone is talking to me about random shit I don't care about at that moment when I've got something way more important going on that needs my full attention?"

  "Anything I can do to help?" Sam asked, leaning against the doorframe, but Ashton quickly shook his head.

  "Seriously just make sure that nobody disturbs me."

  "... You think I can stay and watch? What you had me make last night was pretty interesting." Sam wondered, curiously looking at the setup.

  Ashton just shrugged. "Sure. But the rule still applies. Be quiet and don't disturb me."

  "Aye, aye." With a happy smile, Sam grabbed his desk chair and pulled it up in front of the door to sit down, so that he could act as a barrier in case someone tried to walk in.

  Satisfied with that solution, Ashton got started.

  First things first, he had to summon the elementals. Since he didn't have a contract with a being that was specifically skilled at potion brewing, he had to improvise a bit to help him with all of this. There were a few processes that needed the influence of magic. So, Ashton summoned all five of his elemental contracts, and got to work.

  For the potion, he first had to dry the materials for the potion. He grabbed the small bundles of herbs and placed them onto one of the towels, which he quickly folded over the plants. With his hand placed loosely onto the pattern that was now faintly visible on the fabric, Ashton let his mana course through the spider silk. The enchanting pattern stitched into the towel was activated quickly. It wasn't a massive effect, but it was just used as a 'filter' for the water magic that Ashton was now applying.

  By simply drying a plant using water magic, it was possible for some important qualities to be extracted together with the water. This enchantment was practically preventing that from happening, leaving the important magical patterns within each plant intact for a more efficient brewing process.

  Ashton placed each bundle of dried plants to the side, then dried the towel itself before folding it back up and putting it back in its spot. Next, Ashton put each of the dried plants into a bowl. It was a simple ceramic bowl that he had engraved as a replacement for a mortar and pestle after realizing that he really needed something to properly grind everything down to the degree he wanted.

  It had a simple enchanting pattern in it, with which Ashton could basically change the mana within each dried plant to tear the physical object apart,

  crushing it into a dust. This was only really possible for these dried plants that wanted to fall apart with a slight touch anyway, though.

  This specific pattern also allowed Ashton to change exactly how finely he wanted to grind each material down, since different levels of coarseness were needed from different materials.

  Ashton placed each pile of ground-down dust onto a separate piece of paper, so that he could easily funnel it into the pots, and made sure to note down which material was which as well. He had good memory, but even he made mistakes sometimes and wanted to avoid that as much as possible. Ashton did not have enough materials with him to be able to risk it.

  Next, Ashton grabbed some nuts and berries that he had found while out and about the past few days. Using one of the knives that he engraved earlier, he chopped each of the nuts up as rough as he could, grouped as per the type of nut, and then placed the first pile of chopped nuts into one of the glasses engraved with an 'extraction' enchantment. But for this to properly work, Ashton poured some water into the glass together with the nuts. Because what was being enchanted weren't the nuts, but the water itself, to turn it into something that leeched out the oil from the nuts while the right mana was supplied.

  Like that, soon enough, Ashton ended up with small bits of oil from the different nuts, which he kept in small plastic tubs for now. He roughly cut up the different small berries and placed them into the French press, using it to filter out all the actual juice. The enchantments placed onto the press helped Ashton squeeze out every last bit of magic in these berries.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  With this, Ashton finally had all the ingredients ready to go. There were more than just these of course, but the others didn't directly need any special treatment beforehand, and just needed to be boiled to get their magical qualities out.

  For this, Ashton filled a pot with water that was purified through the undine, and placed it onto a small stand. The salamander stood underneath it and used its flames to heat the water up. Relatively early on, Ashton placed the bark of an oak tree into the water while it was still heating up, adding other whole materials at different points. He fished most of it out once the boiling started, and then poured in two of the herbal powders.

  The enchantment placed onto the metal pot itself was helping infuse everything into the water itself, and Ashton made sure to keep control of the mana at all points in the process.

  After about two minutes of fully boiling, Ashton poured the liquid off through a coffee filter into a glass to strain out all the rough bits floating in the now murky brown water. Using the undine, Ashton quickly cleaned the pot before activating the enchantment circle on the glass.

  Over the course of the next five minutes, the water turned from a murky brown into a deep orange colour. Ashton carefully poured the liquid through a pour-over usually meant for coffee, but instead of coffee grounds, he used some of the other powders he had prepared and poured the liquid through that. Of course, since the liquid had cooled down a bit, it didn't take in too much of the powders' qualities, but just enough that the orange liquid turned into a rust brown.

  Ashton repeated the process, heating up the liquid to different temperatures before pouring it back through coffee filters with different combinations of powders in them. This wasn't exactly the traditional method of brewing a potion, but it did the job shockingly well.

  Before long, the liquid was a deep, dark red, like old blood.

  The liquid was then poured into another one of the glasses, and Ashton grabbed something that he had been keeping hidden until now. He didn't feel great about it, but sadly, he had more use for this than the dead body that he body he took this from.

  It was a gold wedding ring. He placed it into the liquid and watched as it quickly fell to the bottom. It was weird. Considering how much blood he had on his hand, looting a wedding ring off a corpse shouldn't make him feel so bad, but somehow it still stung.

  Ashton activated the enchantment circle, and attuned the liquid in the glass toward the specific mana pattern that gold possessed. Almost every material had their own mana pattern, and it was actually a pretty good way to gauge how much of which material was in something. This ring was roughly 60% pure gold, and the rest were metals like zinc, copper, or nickel. Pretty normal, as far as Ashton knew. But he really just needed the gold for this, and since he didn't have the means to split the gold off the rest yet, he had to make sure that the magic he was about to use really only targeted the gold.

  Channelling the gnome, Ashton focused on the gold. This was the first time he was really doing this, but he explicitly knew that this was possible. It would take him a while, but without this, the potion couldn't be finished. Basically, he tried to target the gold with the gnome. Theoretically, an earth elemental could be used to manipulate any minerals, though the purer they were, the harder it was. Metal elementals were a thing as well, but the ink was too expensive for Ashton right now.

  Either way, since the concoction so far was also attuned toward the gold's mana pattern, it reacted as Ashton tried to control the gold in the ring. Like this, slowly but surely, particular minerals in the liquid were splitting of and sticking to the ring.

  It took twenty whole minutes for this step to be finished, but Ashton slowly took out the formerly smooth ring and could feel the rough bumps on the outside of minerals that had stuck to it. Ashton put it aside and poured the liquid back into a pot over the salamander's flame, though a different one. This time, the enchantment was made to make sure the water was using as much of the heat's energy to evaporate as possible, making it evaporate before even boiling. With the sylph, Ashton created a wall of air and kept the steam circulating in a sphere around the wisp. The liquid formed small droplets as the steam cooled off and fell back into the pot, enriching the liquid with the wisp's pure mana.

  He felt a bit bad for the wisp, but it seemed like they enjoyed the heat from the steam. Maybe it was a bit like being in a sauna, though it wasn't like a wisp could sweat. Even if it looked like that.

  For now, he let the elementals keep the process up like that in a loop, while Ashton focused on the berry juice that he pressed earlier. It had been in a glass for a while now, which Ashton had been using to properly attune the mana within the juice to what he needed. In the process, part what was left in the juice fell to the bottom of the glass as sediment, and Ashton could slowly pour off the only pale pink liquid at the top, adding it to another glass.

  Ashton slowly added the different nut-oils to the liquid, using the enchantment to make them mix together and basically turn into an opaque, pinkish white liquid the consistency of heavy cream.

  And finally, as one of the last steps, Ashton mixed together the pinkish white liquid and the mana-enriched liquid from the pot. Together, it turned into a bright, opaque red, and that liquid was placed into a small jar with engravings on the outside.

  Ashton closed the air-tight jar and placed a magic stone onto the top of the jar, which acted as the power-receptacle for an enchantment, which would automatically work to slowly align the mana in the liquid into a particular stable pattern, which Ashton had forced the mana in the magic stone into earlier. This had to happen over the course of at least two hours to keep the overall integrity of the potion intact, so it was easier to let it happen automatically rather than Ashton sitting here and slowly adjusting it manually.

  The liquid couldn't be disturbed once this process was started, so Ashton carefully placed it to the side.

  "Alright. That's done, now. Just got to wait a bit longer." Ashton placed his hands onto his hips with a satisfied smile.

  "Is... that the healing potion? When whatever is happening there is done, you can get rid of the rest of the bugs in you?"

  "Huh?" Confused, Ashton looked at his friend. "No, when the two hours are over, I'll have one of the ingredients for the healing potion. And that's the easiest one, overall. I just made it first because it takes a while to 'set' in that jar."

  "There's still that much more for you to do?"

  "Did you think it was going to be easy to make a potion like this?" Ashton scoffed lightly. "Be happy that I'm using advanced knowledge for tons of shortcuts. Someone less experienced than me would take a full week to make a single dose.

  "... How long is it going to take you?"

  Ashton thought about it for a moment and looked around at his setup. "I should get the other base ingredients ready by the time that first part is done, and then I need just a couple minutes to finish it. Then that needs to set for another six hours at least, so... eight hours?" He suggested, a small grin forming on his face. "But this is a pretty time-intense recipe. Lots of waiting, you know? By the time the healing potion is done, I should have a couple other rare potions done."

  Potions that should, if all works out well, help Ashton knock out the Observer's quest by dawn tomorrow.