“Did you have a good vacation?”
“It was nice to see my parents after so long.”
After getting an outing pass and leaving the academy with two students (including his own familiar), Felix returned to the academy after his trip home.
“I bet you had fun. You must have had a lot of fun.”
“Oh… Professor Lumillion?”
He greeted Professor Lumillion, whom he ran into while walking down the hallway for his first class in a while.
“W-was there anything unusual while I was gone?”
Felix flinched, taking a step back as Lumillion, who had spotted him, quickly approached with a tired look on her face.
“While you were gone…? While you were gone…!?”
“Y-you must have been very busy…?”
“Are you stating the obvious!? Even though the President approved it, I did all of your work while you were gone! All of it!”
In reality, Felix’s leave was approved without a hitch.
He was already hailed as a hero of the academy, and since he didn’t have any classes at the moment, there seemed to be no problem.
However, a professor’s job isn’t just teaching classes.
There’s scheduling classes, preparing and inspecting teaching materials, and a considerable amount of miscellaneous work.
Therefore, even with permission, coordinating schedules with other professors was an unspoken rule.
But Felix left the academy as soon as the approval stamp was issued, and the work he was supposed to do for nearly two weeks was left undone.
From there, the situation escalated into Lumillion, who had been the closest to Professor Felix recently, being burdened with all the extra work, and she had been grinding her teeth, waiting for his return.
“Still…! I brought back a lot of high-purity Magic Stones…?”
Still, Felix wasn’t completely shameless, so before leaving Karak—Zar, he had obtained high-purity Magic Stones from the dwarves and provided them to the academy.
“Of course, obtaining such excellent Magic Stones costs a considerable amount. It’s tight even with my salary. I appreciate that. This is actually just me grumbling.”
The high-purity Magic Stones were also delivered to Lumillion, so she thought it was a huge reward compared to the labor, but for some reason, she felt annoyed taking on Felix’s chores, so she grumbled.
“You really went through a lot~ Yes~ You’re the only one, Professor Lumillion?”
“Hmph…! Still, it doesn’t feel bad to be praised like this by you. I feel like I’m in a slightly superior position.”
‘She’s got a bad temper… but still better than my original body’s owner…’
As he rubbed his hands together and expressed his gratitude to Lumillion, who was grumbling for no reason, she shrugged her shoulders as if she didn’t dislike it.
Felix resisted the urge to mercilessly touch those rabbit ears that were twitching with excitement.
“By the way, you look very tired.”
“That’s right. Thanks to the work, I haven’t slept for 67 hours now.”
“Still, you’ve slept a lot more than back then. When we were preparing for the joint exam, we stayed up all night for a week.”
“This is nothing, I just feel a little tired.”
The two walked down the hallway side by side, talking.
Even though they hadn’t slept for almost three days based on simple calculations, the two shrugged as if they were used to it.
Since it was common for mages to skip meals and sleep when they were focused on research, this level of all-nighters wasn’t even a cause for concern.
“…By any chance, I have a pretty good Fatigue Recovery Elixir… would you like to try it?”
Felix, who had been glancing sideways at Lumillion, carefully put his hand into his pocket and said.
“Fatigue… Recovery Elixir?”
“Yes. It not only helps with fatigue recovery, but also helps with Magic Recovery?”
Clink
Felix took his hand out of his pocket and held up a vial filled with a liquid that had a subtle green glow.
“…Did you make it?”
“To be exact, it’s more of a ‘helped with’ kind of thing? But it’s still a prototype… I’d like you to give me feedback after using it, if possible…”
“Are you treating me like a lab rat!?”
“No, no! The clinical trials are already over, and it’s a safe medicine that I’ve used myself! Just feel free to use it, that’s enough.”
Prototype, Felix helped with the production, asked for feedback.
Lumillion became quite uneasy with each of those words.
On top of that, since it was a medicine given by Felix, she felt reluctant for some reason.
“Yes~”
.I’ll take it for now.”
She decided to take it for now and received the vial containing the green liquid from him.
“Then I’ll be going~”
Then, when a fork in the road appeared, Felix immediately walked ahead with quick steps.
‘Stage 1 success.’
Felix clenched his fist, hiding it from her as he showed her his back.
“—Substitute this formula here… phew… I can’t concentrate.”
Before she knew it, it was late at night.
Lumillion, who had finished her schedule for the day and returned to her lab, was still engrossed in research with the candles lit, even though it was already midnight.
But as expected, thanks to the fatigue that had accumulated so far, her brain was stiff and couldn’t turn smoothly, so she couldn’t concentrate.
“Should I make some tea to wake myself up…”
As Lumillion got up from her desk and wandered around the lab floor, muttering to herself.
“….Ah.”
Suddenly, Lumillion remembered something and found a vial standing in a corner of her desk.
“It was definitely… a Fatigue Recovery Elixir…”
It was the suspicious medicine that Felix had given her earlier that day.
“Hmm… is it okay to drink this…?”
She had taken it for now, but since it was given by Felix, she couldn’t bring herself to reach for it easily.
“…Well, I guess it’s okay to drink it, no matter what.”
But Lumillion hesitated for a moment, thinking that it couldn’t possibly contain any dangerous ingredients, and then reached out for the medicine.
If it were Rosaria, she would never have put it in her mouth, but Lumillion didn’t know Felix’s true inner self yet.
Pop
“…Sniff sniff… the smell is… grassy? But it’s not bad.”
Lumillion pulled out the cork stopper blocking the entrance and sniffed, and it smelled like grass lying in a meadow under the clear sunlight.
In other words, it wasn’t bad.
“Then, let’s see…”
The smell passed, so now it was time to drink it.
Gulp-Gulp-
“….Phew! Why does it taste like a sweet fruit juice when the appearance and smell make it seem like it would taste like tea?”
Lumillion had thought that it would taste like bitter tea just from the smell, but she had a bewildered expression on her face because
it tasted like a fruity drink with a subtle sweetness, unlike its appearance.
At that moment.
Whoosh-
“…Huh? Huh?! Huh?!?”
Lumillion was startled and groped her body as her entire body suddenly began to be dyed blue.
“M-Magic Power…!?It’s filling up this much?”
Originally, there were two ways for a mage to recover Magic Power.
The first is natural recovery.
Unless the mage’s vessel is broken, the used Magic Power is naturally replenished.
Except for meditating in places where Magic Power is naturally abundant, or intentionally concentrating and absorbing the Magic
Power floating around, it replenishes at a similar rate.
The second is taking a Magic Recovery Potion.
This is often used by mages who are always deployed in the field, unlike those who work in research.
For military mages who participate in battlefields where spears and swords and arrows rain down like rain, or adventurers who explore dungeons, every moment is filled with sudden unexpected situations, so they don’t have time to recover Magic Power leisurely, so potions are almost essential.
Although they can recover a large amount of Magic Power in a short period of time, it almost forcibly recovers Magic Power, so it also affects the vessel that holds Magic Power, and if abused, Magic Potion Addiction can occur frequently, so the future of mages who abuse potions is not so bright.
However, the potion that Lumillion drank was different.
The precise and high-purity Magic Power filled up very naturally, and not only did the Magic Power recover, but her overall physical condition definitely improved.
She could recover her physical condition so quickly, and as a result of carefully examining the inside, there was no strain on the vessel at all.
In other words, it was impossible.
“That crazy person. What did he make?!”
Lumillion, who was surprised by the phenomenon that occurred in her body, was stunned for a moment, but quickly came to her senses and hurriedly began to change her clothes.
She was reminded of the aftermath of this potion, not just its performance.
‘I need to talk about this potion right away!’
Bang!
Then, Lumillion, who had finished preparing to go out, hurriedly kicked open the lab door and began to run down the hallway of the faculty dormitory in the middle of the night.