"Sigh, please don't give her unnecessary hope. It will only lead to more disappointment," the old woman said, with a hint of disappointment in her own voice.
Ning caught that and used his analysis on the old woman. She was an Aether Grandmaster in the art of Enchanting.
'Why does she sound so defeated though?' Ning wondered. He could have opened Omni-analysis to learn a lot more about the woman, but he didn't want to suffer from the mental pain that would give him.
The information would never be worth that pain.
Finally, they reached a room on the upper floor, and Ning looked at what looked like a kitchen.
There were two massive black cauldrons bubbling on top of the two gas stoves, dimly lit by a black, sooted light overhead.
In fact, the entire room was black, with seemingly no ventilation in the room.
'That's not good for oneself,' he thought. The woman quickly ran up to the cauldron and started stirring it.
Then, with her enchantment, she stirred the other cauldron too.
Ning walked a little closer and saw that the cauldron was filled to the brim with water and… something floating in there.
He wondered what it was. The woman reached into the cupboard and pulled out a giant flat plate that she kept on the counter.
Then, she reached into the handle of her cane and pointed it toward the plate. Suddenly, dozens of items appeared out of nowhere, surprising Ning a little.
'She put her storage gem in the cane?' he thought in surprise. The little girl walked up to the grandma and jumped onto the counter before sitting down in front of the items and separating them into a bunch.
Once everything was separated, Ning finally looked at them.
At first, it was hard to tell what they were. Those things weren't the easiest to guess. Not to mention, Ning wasn't really knowledgeable about the flora and fauna of this place.
Ning could see some leaves, some branches, some stalks of grass, some dried fruits, some raw fruit, some ripe ones. Some flowers of various colors.
And finally, perhaps the most shocking, bones and meats. 'Bones and meats of what?' he wondered and got a little closer.
He couldn't tell what they were from just looking at them, but the purple lines passing through them did give him an idea.
'Aether beasts,' he thought. Those were Aether Beast's meats and bones for sure.
'Have they learned how to use the body of an Aether beast?' Ning wondered.
There were still many different things about the Aether beasts and the vegetation in the Aether forest that he didn't know about.
In fact, the humanity of this planet seemed to be only tapping into the potential from the usage of those beasts.
The previous Emperor of Xandria had managed to figure out that eating the gems of the beasts made you stronger.
And now, this woman had somehow figured out how to use them in the potion.
As he watched, the woman started cutting the ingredients, measured them on a cup or a measuring spring, and tossed them into the boiling water.
Flower and leaves she would toss without doing anything, fruits and meats she would cut into small chunks, and for barks, roots, and bones, she would crush into tiny powder before tossing it into the water.
Once she put in the necessary ingredients, she started stirring again. The little girl watched from the countertop, with her hands supporting her head, while her grandma kept on stirring.
"Do you want me to help you stir, Mrs. Gaani?" Ning asked. Watching an old woman and a little girl work, while he stood and watched didn't feel right for him.
The old woman jumped a little when she heard him. Only then did she remember that there had been someone else with them.
"It's alright, young man," she said with her squeaky voice. "I may be old, but I have enough strength to do what I want to."
Ning nodded. "I see. Please do not hesitate to make me work if you feel like it," he said. The old woman might be old and have weak bones, but she was still an Aether Grandmaster.
A simple Enchantment would make her body stronger and more durable than a young man in his prime. This was something she could easily handle.
For an hour, Ning watched the old woman stir and stir and stir. It wasn't just one cauldron too. She stirred both cauldrons.
After an hour, she finally stopped stirring and put the lids on the cauldrons.
Ning still looked at those cauldrons with fascination in his eyes. The process of making potions was nothing like the process of making pills.
And yet somehow, these two things did virtually the same thing.
"Do you not need to stir?" Ning asked.
"No, now I need to let it boil and bring out the remaining stuff from those ingredients," the old woman said before bringing out a book from her cane.
She saw Ning looking at her so, "Please," she said, asking him to turn around.
Ning nodded and turned around. Then, he continued looking at the book from his back.
'That's a list of potion requests, right?' he thought, looking at the filled pages. 'Just how many captains request for potions?' he wondered.
Potion to heal, a potion to fall asleep, a potion of poison —All sorts of requests were written on that list.
One of those requests caught Ning's attention. 'The strongest poison,' it wrote.
'I knew it,' he thought, with a sigh. Then, the woman flipped to the recent pages and crossed two potions from the list.
'How is she so confident?' he wondered but didn't ask.
Then, he saw another request in there that caught his eyes once again.
A potion to help you fall asleep, it wrote. That wasn't a very interesting request, but what was interesting was the person who had made the request.
If the woman had indeed written it right, then the requester of this potion was the lord of the tower.
