Helice spent the next few weeks browsing, reading, and understanding magical principles. Compared to what she found with Amis's scrolls, these were clearly more profound. Some of them aligned with the knowledge from her previous life.
Now she understood why people would often engage in regular tasks rather than study any magi profession; they were extremely expensive. Other acolytes would often just take tasks like the librarian and other minimal jobs Helice didn't care to know about, where they earned a certain amount of Aether crystals per week. Naturally, the clan took their share of their wages before handing the rest to them.
Helice wasn't prepared to live off scraps. After days of going through the magical principles of potion-making and charm casting, she felt it was time to begin experimenting.
This brought her to her current location: the Baron family bank. She needed money, and the family bank was the only place she could get it. Rain and Tasha had warned her against this. Most people would often try their luck with a magi profession, thinking they could do it themselves, only to end up becoming a slave to the Baron clan forever. Even their children's children would not be allowed to leave until their debts were paid in full.
After a few minutes, it was her turn. After signing another document, Helice was handed fifty Aether crystals. That was five months' worth of her quota, plus the extra amount she would have to pay in a year as stated by her contract, totaling over 170 Aether crystals.
Helice returned to her room with the fifty Aether crystals. She didn't have any place to securely store them, but the lodge offered by her contract with the Baron family would suffice for now. Now all that was left was to purchase the items necessary to start her experiments.
Helice made a list and requested them from the family store. Two days later, her lab was ready. She didn't want to waste more crystals on renting a separate space to use as a lab and had chosen to use her living room instead.
The items comprised multiple test tubes, a heating compartment, and five pieces of charm paper. Most would think she was crazy. While others spent years attaining mastery over one magi profession, she was actually thinking of learning two.
In fact, this was one of the main talents of Minerva from Earth before she died. She had a photographic memory and was impossibly good at multitasking. After weeks of studying the magical principles of both charm casting and potion-making, she was finally ready. The idea was to concoct a basic healing solution and a basic lightning charm at the same time.
With the amount of magical principles she had studied, she couldn't wait to check her psychic scaling. She would be sure to purchase a psychic scalar when she made enough money.
Very quickly, the room was encased in a cocoon of heat as she began following the process of concocting a healing potion. After a moment, the test tube heated up with the necessary materials. The test tubes were connected to each other with a small, see-through pipe. Helice felt like she was back on Earth again, as the entire room looked like an actual laboratory.
As the tubes heated up, she began carving the lightning rune on the charm paper. Beads of sweat covered her face; she was once again the mad physicist from Earth. Her hair became disheveled as she was engrossed with concocting and carving a charm. It was easier said than done.
Beginners could only carve charms on charm paper. Advanced charm casters could carve on any object. She'd read that real magi could carve charms on an object just by looking at it. Stuff like that would require a heaven-defying amount of psychic power.
Days passed with limited success. Helice hadn't been seen in the past five days, not that anyone cared. She never socialized with people. Tasha and Rain had only seen her because she had suddenly shown up to beg for money. Not only did they refuse her, but they also discouraged her.
"Success!" she screamed in her room. She'd finally managed to brew a basic healing solution, or at least she thought so. It looked the same as in the books. All that was left now was to test it. A single healing solution would usually go for 2 Aether crystals.
The end result was a green liquid sealed within a small, round bottled container. Helice didn't hesitate to cut her hand open; then she drank the healing solution. It worked, and her injuries were healed in moments without any scars. After that, she turned to her charm paper. Compared to potion-making, charm casting was proving to be more difficult, especially since it involved using psychic powers.
But Helice wasn't deterred. She stopped making charms for now and focused on making more healing solutions. Five days later, she managed to make ten sets of healing solutions; this was worth a hundred Aether crystals.
Ordinarily, she could have sold them to the Baron family, but she refrained from doing so. She had decided to sell them in the underground market. This was totally legal and not against the contract. She then arranged them in a wooden crate. The entrance to the underground market could only open at night, so naturally, she had to wait for nighttime before heading out.
In the meantime, she began practicing charm casting. The basic lightning rune was almost complete. Charm casting was a slow and meticulous process, lest she accidentally set off lightning in her room, as she had done a few times before.
Thankfully, the room had protection runes. Apparently, Helice wasn't the only acolyte to think of using their room as a laboratory. Countless marks could be seen on the walls. Aside from the multiple tubes connected to each other that almost took up the space of the entire room, there were also burn marks. The room was barely recognizable from the day she arrived. Helice didn't care; even her bedding had been blown to pieces.
After more than three hours, the lightning charm was now seventy percent complete, and its destructive capabilities were beginning to show. It looked like a bolt of lightning trapped on a piece of paper, struggling to get out.
Helice decided to take the incomplete lightning charm with her to the underground market. She would sell it if she could. Even if it was only incomplete, it could still unleash the attack equivalent of a lightning bolt from the sky.
By the time she was done, night had already graced the world with her presence. Helice donned her acolyte robe; this time, she pulled on the hood, letting it cover her face, but her silver hair still fell out from the side.
She had been too preoccupied with work to care about her appearance. Her hair had become overly long and now had a tattered look. However, she just hid it behind her hood and left the room, quickly heading out.
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