Kays Translations

Chapter 88: Discovery

The compounding equipment had been moved, and I had finished improving the first long-term storage box. At last, I was ready to make potions whenever I wished.

I wanted to test the new apparatus immediately.

Unfortunately, it was already time for dinner. Even without specific instructions from me, the servants had prepared everything perfectly. As expected of House Heine, the household needed me only for exceptional decisions.

“It feels a little lonely,” Rosalia said.

Only Rosalia, Mira, and I sat in the enormous dining room. Mira was absorbed in a plate of fruit, smearing juice throughout their fur. They would require a thorough bath afterwards.

“Yes. I wish we could eat with the knights and servants, but our positions make that difficult. At least Mira is with us now. The room feels livelier than before.”

“Kyu?”

Hearing their name, Mira launched themselves towards me.

“Wait! Your fur is covered in juice.”

Too late. My clothes were sticky.

Rosalia laughed at the sight. At least the commotion seemed to ease her loneliness.

After dinner came bath time. Rosalia entered with Mira as though it were the most natural arrangement in the world.

Earlier, she had announced that she would bathe Mira herself. Somehow, I had ended up doing the washing while she watched.

I used the shower to rinse the fruit juice carefully from Mira’s coat. It was surprisingly difficult.

“Mira, could you try eating a little more neatly?”

“Kyu?”

They tilted their head as though the request made no sense.

Rosalia squealed at the adorable gesture and hugged them, undoing half my work.

This wouldn’t do. Mira needed a bib—perhaps even a small set of clothes.

Afterwards, Rosalia took them to the hot-and-cold air blower to dry their fur while a servant dried hers.

I used the opportunity to return to my room and lock the door.

I activated Subspace and retrieved the potion book inherited from Grandmother. The effort drained me, but I spread the old volume across my desk.

I had only skimmed it in the royal capital. Now I intended to examine it thoroughly. Grandmother had ranked among the world’s leading magic pharmacists; her life’s work should reveal much about this world’s potion-making traditions.

The opening pages contained a contents list followed by rows of potion names. Some words were misspelled, and several characters were impossible to decipher.

The handwriting was unquestionably Grandmother’s. Why would a master of her stature make so many errors?

The first recipe described an elementary healing potion with detailed illustrations. Anyone able to read the instructions should have been able to reproduce it.

The method resembled the one I knew. At the very least, it didn’t instruct the maker to boil medicinal herbs into the foul sludge Grandmother had once produced.

More strange errors appeared as I continued.

Roughly two-thirds of the way through the volume, I encountered a second contents page. This one was written clearly in the modern script.

With growing unease, I found its elementary healing-potion recipe.

There it was: the method Grandmother had actually used—the revolting potion that tasted almost worse than the injury it treated.

“What’s this book?”

I returned to the beginning and finally noticed the truth.

The first section wasn’t written in the script used by the people of this age.

I had read it effortlessly because the game system—or whatever power had accompanied my reincarnation—allowed me to understand languages automatically.

Grandmother must have copied the ancient text despite being unable to read it. The characters I couldn’t identify weren’t her spelling mistakes in ordinary writing; they were places where she had miscopied unfamiliar symbols.

It was a lost ancient script.

Along with the language, the correct techniques of potion-making had apparently been lost.

Grandmother had probably discovered an ancient manual and tried to recreate its recipes from the illustrations. The elementary potion page showed herbs placed in a vessel and heated from below, but without understanding the words she couldn’t know the exact temperature, timing, or stopping point.

Could she not have discovered the proper method through repeated trials?

Perhaps not. Father had warned that other magic pharmacists would desperately covet this book. Manuals preserving ancient methods must be exceptionally rare. If each master guarded fragments and passed them only to a chosen disciple, progress would remain painfully slow.

The final third of the book appeared to contain Grandmother’s own recipes, written in modern language after years of imperfect experimentation.

Every one of them gave me a headache.

They were the sort of medicines for which patients could only say, ‘At least it saved my life.’

“Big brother! Big brother!”

“Kyu!”

Rosalia rattled the locked door and called anxiously. Mira joined her.

This was bad.

I hurriedly hid the book in the safe beneath my bed and opened the door.

“What’s wrong? Why are you making so much noise?”

“The door wouldn’t open,” Rosalia said.

“Kyu…”

Their cries had attracted several servants.

At this rate, finding enough privacy to study the book would be more difficult than making the potions themselves.

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