Chapter 43 - Workshop

Along the hallways where the library was located, Venedette gave Petunia a key to a door that looked similar to all the other doors in this hallway, except- instead of a room, we were greeted by a dark staircase that will lead down until the basement, according to Fily.

So that was the reason why Venedette advised us to grab a lamp from the library.

"Can you turn this on?" Petunia gave Fily a stick, telling her to use it for turning on the lamp on the purple cloud beside her.

"A magic wand? You witches actually use this?" Fily grabbed the stick and inspected it, it was a well-decorated twig with fake small leaves peeking randomly from the inside.

It looked magical.

"We are not witches and it's a lighter." Petunia cleared her throat and laid comfortably in her cloud while waiting for Fily to use the stick.

"Okay," Fily said and looked at it for a moment before pulling down a leaf using her thumb and a little fire was suddenly lit on the tip of the twig..

"Wow." My jaw dropped after seeing the little fire.

Fily inserted the tip of the wand with fire into the lamp and the fire became bigger inside it.

"Okay, we're good to go." She said, closed the lid of the lamp, and blew the fire on the tip of the magic wand before giving it back to Petunia.

Petunia let the wand lay in front of her and the purple cloud suddenly ate it, hiding it from our line of sight inside its greyish purple color.

So the cloud serves as Petunia's backpack too, I guess.

"Follow me," Fily announced confidently as she went inside the door ahead of us.

Soon enough, Petunia followed after her and so did I.

I was the last one to enter the door so I decided to close it.

There must be something important in here for them to lock it, right?

"It's my first time seeing a door that leads into a staircase," I murmured after catching up to them.

The stairs and walls were made of damp stone where small vines were almost growing between its cracks, there was also water streaming from its little gaps. The staircase may be narrow but the width was just enough for the three of us to fit into.

"I guess we could call it a secret staircase then?" Fily tried to humor us while holding the lamp at head level to maximize our vision but the place was still too dark and unfamiliar for me to join her cheerfulness.

I don't like small spaces.

And dark small spaces.

Thank goodness my gemstone was always emitting a cyan light to keep me from being completely blinded by the darkness.

As we went deeper down the staircase, Petunia and Fily started playing a game.

"What ingredient is that?"

"Chmeraline?"

"Wrong. It's Yvutin."

"It's not!"

"It is! Come closer!" Petunia made Fily walk faster so I also followed after them.

"You're right," Fily admitted her defeat after sniffing the faint scent in the air as we drew near to the end of the staircase.

"See that!? I am more intelligent than you!" Petunia bragged while floating around Fily.

"That's not fair! Your super sense is greater than mine." Fily groaned which led their argument to continue even more.

"Uhh, guys? I think we're here." I stopped in front of them after seeing the end of the staircase with the light from my gemstone.

But since the light of my gemstone was weak, I grabbed the lamp from Fily to see more clearly and finally saw a wooden door not far away from us.

"There's a lot of doors," I mumbled after roaming the light around and finding out there were more doors beside it.

"Which door do we need to go to?" Petunia stopped arguing with Fily but Fily was not letting it go.

"If you're so intelligent then why don't you tell me which way we should go?" Fily challenged her.

Petunia rolled her eyes at Fily and exerted a deep sigh.

"Navigating this castle is not a requirement for being intelligent." She tried to reason which made me shake my head.

"Come on you two, stop fighting already." I went in between them and they both looked away from each other.

"Hmph."

After a while, I noticed Petunia sniffing around and quickly grabbed the wand out of her purple cloud which she started swirling around, shooting little flames in different directions that lit up some of the hanging lamps around the room that I didn't even notice was there all along.

"Cool," Fily remarked before leading us into a room on the right corner with an old letter in her hands.

"Grimisha (Gum), Clariden, Sprite, Atecmacin, and Zlace," Fily read out the contents of the paper that she was holding, "this is all that you need?"

Petunia nodded as a response while checking out the jars of different ingredients in this room.

Some jars were glowing while others were not.

"Do you need my help locating them?" Fily asked again after a while which made Petunia quit her inspection and started swirling around her magic wand again to light up this room before answering Fily's question.

"No." She confidently said and went on her way to find the ingredients that she needed to fix her gummy cloud.

While they were busy checking out the ingredients, I stumbled across a red jar that looked a lot like jelly or slime.

'What is this Mr. Gemini?'

[Soft red grask jelly]

His response was quick as always.

'Is it food?'

[Depends on what other ingredients you will combine with it.]

Really?

I wonder if I could make this go inside my gemstone?

Mr. Gemini wouldn't tell me how to put things inside but sometimes I could summon things from inside, like for example, the Healing potions.

Maybe if I try mixing it with the healing potions and making it go back inside it may work?

Slowly, I tried opening the jar with all of my strength.

It was not hard to open but it was not easy either.

Just right to keep a lid shut forever and open it when necessary.

I turned the medium-sized jar sideways to measure the consistency of the translucent liquid and it seemed to resemble the consistency of a smoother strawberry jam.

The smell was sweet but there was a weaker scent of something like dish soap.

I was poking the jelly when Petunia suddenly spoke beside me.

"What are you doing?"

"Sorry I was just curious."

"Curiosity will kill you kid that is an acid." She said and pushed the jar back to its place on the shelf away from my fingertips.

"Excuse me?" My brows furrowed because of what she said.

"Did you touch it?" She asked me with a serious face.

"I just poked it." I showed her my index finger which I used to poke on it a little.

"Why aren't you injured-" As if on cue, a realization dawned on her face.

"You really have the slime!" I was taken aback when she suddenly celebrated in front of me.

The slime? Which slime was she talking about? The energy slime?

"Yes I do but-"

"Here are the ingredients that we need to fix your Gummy, Pet." Fily appeared in front of us carrying a lot of ingredients and materials too.

"Don't ruin the mood, you imbecile. Petunia is my name, not Pet!" Petunia said fiercely to Fily and then smiled right back at me.

"Who cares, come on this is heavy!" Fily carelessly grabbed Petunia's Gummy with her as she led the way to where the Alchemy workshop room was.

I didn't get to tell Petunia the main problem with my Energy slimes.

That they're stuck inside and I have yet to find a way to bring them outside, even learning how to induce them would be a big step forward.

If only I could find a way to use that Liquity.

[Liquity- Allows the user to manipulate the matter of anything after being induced with the Energy slimes.]

And to induce the Energy slimes… I don't know how to do it.

"Here we are. Light it up miss wizard cat." Fily threw Petunia's cloud inside the room on the left of this hall and told her to light the place up with her magic wand lighter which she did follow obediently after a series of mocking Fily and planning to talk back to her but decided to let it go instead.

When Petunia completed lighting up the room, my eyes sparkled from the view of a miniature real forest on a table that resembles an island in front of us.

There were also empty desks lined up along the walls of the room while the shelves above and below it were full of cylinders and jars for potions.

There were even real trees on the corner of the room whose roots were perfectly lined up along the wooden tiles of the floor!

"A workshop for alchemists!" I exclaimed beside Petunia who was also fascinated with the view.

"You bet it is." Fily smirked at us after seeing our reactions.

"Cool." Petunia remarked.