Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 165: Lessons from Julius-sensei
“Julius-sensei, what do you think?!”
“Lord Giovanni, please stop calling me sensei. May I speak completely frankly, without holding anything back?”
I could almost hear everyone swallow.
Apparently word had spread that I’d arrived at the Royal Magic Pharmacists’ headquarters, because the other royal magic pharmacists had gathered around us as well.
“Lord Julius, there’s no need to hold back,” one of them said. “We had already begun to suspect it ourselves. Things can’t continue like this. Please tell us everything you notice.”
So apparently I wasn’t going to escape being addressed with an honorific one way or another.
Which was better, sensei or Lord Julius?
A surprisingly difficult question.
“Very well. First of all, before we try to make the Panacea, the magic potions used as its foundation need work.”
“Ooooh…”
The Royal Magic Pharmacists looked up towards the heavens.
They hadn’t imagined that the problems began that far back in the process.
But they did.
No matter how skilfully you combined lowest-quality ingredients, you were still only going to get something made from lowest-quality ingredients.
“So first I’ll teach you how to make the two magic potions used in the Panacea: the Advanced Healing Potion and the Strong Antidote. Let’s begin with the Advanced Healing Potion. Could you bring me the ingredients?”
“Immediately!”
One of the royal magic pharmacists said that and ran off somewhere.
Right.
We would start there.
No running inside the compounding room.
I should write it on a sheet of paper and stick it to the wall.
By the time we moved from the back room into the compounding room, the various ingredients had been arranged on the worktable.
Medicinal herbs, Careless Grass, forest elk antlers, and purple slime powder.
Their quality was a mixture of average and low.
Honestly, they’d done reasonably well to get even that far.
And then there was the water.
Well water.
Not distilled water.
Wait a second!
“Um… there are quite a few things I’d like to say.”
“What is it?”
“First: don’t run inside the compounding room. It’s dangerous whether you collide with something or simply trip and fall. Great Principle of Magic Pharmacists, number one: Never run in the compounding room. Repeat after me.”
“Great Principle of Magic Pharmacists, number one: Never run in the compounding room!”
Every Royal Magic Pharmacist repeated it in perfect unison with a completely serious expression.
I had complicated feelings about this, but if it improved safety, fine.
At this rate, should I introduce pointing-and-calling safety checks too?
“Next, this is well water, isn’t it? The instructions should have specified distilled water.”
“Er…”
Every Royal Magic Pharmacist looked away.
Apparently all of them had been using well water.
Good grief.
Well, Grandmother had used well water too.
Who had started this whole fashion of using well water?
If I ever found them, they were getting an iron claw.
“Listen carefully, everyone. Making it takes an extra step and may feel troublesome, but always use distilled water. Well water lowers the finished potion’s quality. It also reduces the extraction rate of the active components contained in medicinal herbs and similar materials.”
“Surely not.”
“I’ve never heard that before.”
Confused voices rose from several directions.
I was going to have to drill this into them properly.
What a troublesome set of disciples.
“Great Principle of Magic Pharmacists, number one: Always use distilled water. Repeat after me.”
“Great Principle of Magic Pharmacists, number one: Always use distilled water!”
Their voices lined up beautifully.
Hmm, hmm.
At least their unity was excellent.
Now I just needed to make them actually use distilled water so they could experience the difference and say, “It’s true!”
All right.
Then we’d start by making an elementary healing potion.
…I felt as though my ambitions were steadily getting lower and lower.
This was rough.
“First, let’s prepare distilled water. Then we’ll begin with the absolute basics and make an Elementary Healing Potion. Could someone make the distilled water?”
“I’ll do it, Julius-sensei!”
“Yes, thank you. While that’s being prepared, may I see where you store your ingredients?”
“Of course. I’ll show you. The icehouse we use is amazing.”
Fine.
Sensei was fine now.
I gave up.
Sometimes giving up was important in life.
What concerned me next was the way they stored their ingredients.
Storage conditions made an enormous difference to freshness.
At my family home, there was a long-term storage box made by modifying a safe inherited from Grandmother. Thanks to that, the quality of stored ingredients could be preserved to a reasonable degree.
It would have been ideal if they had something similar here.
But judging from the ingredients I’d just seen, their storage methods probably weren’t very good.
Fresh medicinal herbs should have been easy to obtain in the royal capital, so I’d expected them to be high quality almost as a matter of course.
Instead, they were merely average.
Maybe poor storage was the reason.
With that thought in mind, I followed them towards the icehouse they were so proud of.
And what I found there was-
“Um… rather than an icehouse, isn’t this just a room where you’ve put blocks of ice to make the air colder?”
Everyone stared at me with expressions that said, What?
How had this happened?
When I heard icehouse, I pictured a gigantic magic tool that chilled the entire room until it was basically a freezer.
Was my common sense the part that was wrong?
I’m sure that was how icehouses worked in the game.
This wasn’t a freezer.
It was just a refrigerator.
And an old Showa-era refrigerator at that.
“The icehouse I know was cold enough that water left inside would freeze.”
“Ah, I see. What you’re describing, Julius-sensei, is the type of icehouse used during the age of the ancient advanced civilisation. Unfortunately, we don’t have one here.”
What…?!
But that was a problem.
The Royal Magic Pharmacists’ Corps probably received rare and valuable materials from countries all over the world.
I couldn’t stand the thought of letting things like that deteriorate into rubbish.
“If you don’t have one, then we’ll make one.”
“What?”
“I may not look it, but I’m fairly confident in my ability to make magic tools. If there isn’t a proper icehouse here, we simply have to build one. It’s really that simple.”
The entire refrigerator began buzzing with excited voices.
Heh heh.
This might turn out to be much more fun than I’d expected.
yep. it’s coming!! the trouble is coming. hahahahaha.
thanks for the chapter.
It seems like the author lost his train of thought regarding the storyline of this story. It was clearly said in the beginning that potion technology of this world is lacking and that is why he was sent to this world in the first place.
However, now he seems to be astonished by the level of potion tech.
Both can be related. The fact that they use well water instead of distilled water is a good example besides the fridge vs freezer.
The MC has the “craft” skill so doesn’t need the tools but it takes lots of magic. One method is faster at the cost of resources where the other is slower but has more staying power (sprinting vs jogging).