Several more hours had passed since Aurora’s friend—the young woman named Pandora—had first entered the workshop.

In that same stretch of time, Julian had led his elite team through the entire gymnasium complex, finished the clearing, and completed the hunt.

By any calculation, the brewing session over there should have wrapped up by now, one way or another.

“Yes. She finished it.”

Thorne pushed his glasses up his nose, his voice carrying a subdued quality, like someone still turning over what he’d witnessed.

“Oh? First try?”

Julian raised an eyebrow. A flicker of genuine interest moved through his brown eyes.

“So she really wasn’t just talking. She actually has the skill to back it up.”

Thorne was clearly not comfortable under Julian’s focused attention. He shifted his gaze to the side on instinct, one finger restlessly adjusting the rim of his round glasses.

“Yes. And immediately after completing the brew, she handed them to Miss Aurora for live testing. The feedback that just came back was... fairly positive.”

“The three compounds, used in combination, achieved approximately seventy percent of the effect of her original twenty-seven-potion regimen.”

“Hm. So what does that translate to, in practice?”

Julian crossed his arms, leaned slightly forward, and asked with a certain deliberate modesty.

Thorne hesitated. He seemed to be scanning his mental catalogue for the right comparison, taking a moment to find phrasing he was confident in.

“Quite exceptional.”

A beat of silence. Then the verdict, delivered with conviction.

“In terms of formulation precision and individual targeting alone, her work... might only fall slightly short of mine.”

He paused before adding the context that gave that statement its real weight.

“But considering she enrolled in the same cohort as Miss Aurora—she hasn’t been at this long. For a student at her stage, that level of talent is already very impressive. Honestly, it’s a little... startling.”

Something shifted in Julian’s expression. A genuine flicker, clearly real this time.

Thorne was the only dedicated alchemist in his team.

He wasn’t at the absolute top of the Dead City’s alchemist hierarchy, no. But he was far from the bottom of it either. His combat strength among the Third Rank was only middling at best—without his alchemical contributions, Julian wouldn’t have brought him into this core team at all.

And yet...

“That exceptional?”

Julian let out a quiet, thoughtful laugh. His fingers tapped a slow rhythm against his arm.

“The moniker ‘Empty Vial’ from the Ascension Road apparently has some basis behind it. Aurora’s eye for people might be better than I've been giving her credit for.”

He nodded to himself, expression settling.

“I should find an opportunity to meet this Miss Pandora.”

“Yes, Captain.” Thorne nodded in agreement.

“Hm?”

Julian caught it immediately—Thorne hadn’t moved to leave. He tilted his head slightly, a new question forming in his eyes.

“Is there something else? The look on your face suggests there’s more you haven’t said yet.”

“Yes. Also about Miss Pandora.”

Julian’s eyebrows climbed a fraction higher.

“What else? Did something go wrong with the brewing? Or is there something else worth my attention?”

As a Third-Rank heavyweight and the Vice Director of Eden, not every minor development warranted a personal briefing.

Thorne shook his head, his expression shifting into something distinctly odd.

“No. It’s still about the brewing. It’s just that... she hasn’t stopped.”

Julian’s brow furrowed slightly.

Even with furrowed brows, his features retained that easy, approachable quality—the look of a scholar wrestling with a difficult problem, rather than a warrior who had just carved open a monster.

“You said she already finished brewing.”

“She finished the first round, yes. But after receiving detailed physical response data from Miss Aurora, she started a second round.”

“A second round?”

The confusion left Julian’s eyes. Something more knowing replaced it.

“Refining based on feedback. That is the correct approach, really. Which means seventy percent isn’t her ceiling.”

He smiled, something appreciating moving through his gaze.

“Identifying the problem the moment results come in and acting on it immediately—that kind of sharp instinct and decisiveness does deserve to be called ‘genius.’”

Then he looked back to Thorne, his tone going slightly easier.

“But even with a few more percentage points of improvement on the table, that’s still just that. There’s no need to come interrupt me specifically while the second round is still in progress. Come find me once she’s finalized the last formula.”

“No—that’s not it!”

Thorne shook his head quickly. He even stepped forward a half-pace, with a slight urgency that wasn’t characteristic of him.

It was as if a specific image had resurfaced in his mind, something that had struck him hard enough to disturb his usual composure. A faint, incredulous excitement had crept into his eyes.

“Her performance during this second brew has been... significantly different from the first.”

“Certain techniques during the process—her handling of specific details, the micro-adjustments to temperature and solvent reaction timing—some of them have already exceeded what I would do.”

Thorne’s voice had a slight tremor in it.

For an alchemist to watch a junior apprentice—someone with a fraction of his experience—demonstrate craft that surpassed his own was no small thing to absorb.

“Exceeded you?”

Julian’s fingers stopped tapping.

“...Oh? Interesting.” 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He stared at an empty point in the middle distance, turning it over.

“This is only her second brewing session here, yes? Potion quality does improve as an alchemist accumulates technique, but at this speed...”

“Her alchemical talent is not ordinary.”

“Whatever she’s selling publicly on the open market is probably not the full picture of what she can do. Some of those rumors about her might actually carry real weight.”

“This is an interesting development.”

Julian pulled his gaze back to Thorne.

And then he smiled. That warm, gentle smile settling back onto his face with the easy comfort of something that belonged there—the same smile that made the hair on Thorne’s arms stand up every time.

“But let me ask you something.”

His voice was mild. Pleasant.

“Why didn’t you simply stay and keep watching? Why come find me now, in the middle of her second brew? Why not wait until the second round produced its final result, and then come report?”

Julian’s gentle gaze settled on him and stayed there, perfectly still.

Thorne swallowed without meaning to.

The midday sun was still filtering down through the broken skylights of the gymnasium. It provided its usual thin warmth, dutiful and indifferent.

And yet, for reasons Thorne couldn’t quite name, a chill had risen from the base of his spine and was climbing steadily upward.