After a few more hours of training, Mack took a bath and went to meet the herbologist. He wished to know how those serums worked in his body.

It was only the second day of Mack in this city, but he already knew it the same way any resident, not because of some special memory, but because the city was indeed very small, and along with his passive scan, Mack could ‘see’ everyone around him while he walked the dark and empty streets.

Getting close to the herbologist store, Mack waited a few seconds for his scan to come back, and as he expected, the herbologist was alone.

Mack knocked on the door, and a horsehead peeked at a side window.

‘I never get used to those horsehead, this thing always freaks me out, geez’

Thought Mack to himself, but his eyes were fixed on the herbologist.

A few seconds later the door opened, and Mack took a step inside, the door closed again, and the street became empty again.

Inside the store, the herbologist kept looking at Mack and distress could be seen in the way his hands kept rubbing against each other behind his back..

“You should have come yesterday. What happened?”

Asked the horsehead.

Mack looked at the horsehead’s eyes for three long seconds, but no answer came from his mouth.

“Lets get started, here is the blood.”

Said Mack, extending his hand that held a flask with blood inside.

The horsehead grabbed the flask with both hands as if was the most precious thing in the world and walked in the direction of stairs that lead to the upper floor.

Mack followed along, and when entering the upper floor, a small lab could be seen by the side along with other daily living facilities, the horsehead walked to the small lab and put the flask over a desk.

“You will wait or you prefer to come tomorrow?”

Asked the herbologist.

Mack again didn’t say anything, and kept looking in to the guys eyes, he hated to respond useless questions the more, of course he would wait. Who would be so dumb to just trust a stranger with that? Thought Mack, but just kept looking at the man without saying a word.

“~OK~”

Said the horseman, already grabbing some liquids by the side and heating them on something akin to a microwave machine from earth.

“Because you didn’t come yesterday, I already prepared all the basic stuff that could have been prepared without harming the formula”

Said the Horseman, mixing the blood and the already heated green oil in another flask.

After mixing them well, Mack saw the horseman grabbing a single petal from the Fire Bird Flower and putting over a torch that had blue flames.

The reddish yellow color of the petal faded and a single drop of a red substance fell inside another flask.

The horsehead mixed that red substance with some white powder, and a pink paste was formed.

“This is the process to remove the impurities of the petal oil, most herbologist just neglect this, but I’m a professional.”

Said the horsehead, as if proud of his honest and correct attitude.

Mack then saw the man grabbing something akin to a pistol from Earth, but with a long beak in it, and inserting the beak inside the paste, and when the man pulled the trigger, smoke rose from the paste as if it was boiling, but Mack could also see small and thin electric currents passing over the paste.

After a few seconds, the former pink paste was now a red powder. It seemed as if all humidity had left the paste and formed a powder with a red color and some way crystalized, just like sugar from Earth but red in color.

“Ok, now is the most boring part, as we dont know the purity of the warlock blood. We need to make trial and error until we get the right distribution percentage of each ingredient”

Said the horsehead, looking at the two flasks in front of him.

Then he put a glass pane in front of him, smeared a blue powder over it and, using two pipettes one each hand, released a drop of each of the liquids over a corner of the glass.

The horseman looked at the result, and, seeming not satisfied, did again.

Time passed, and the horseman kept doing the same for several minutes, until he had to clean the glass pane because it was already full of trials and errors and he had no more space for a new one.

“This blood you got seems to be of a very, very low quality. I don’t even remember doing so many trials before.”

Hearing what the horsehead said, Mack’s brows furrowed, but he didn’t say a thing. It was his blood, but one thing made Mack wondering….

‘What if the blood ‘purity’ influence how I manipulate essence?’

Mack’s thoughts ran wild for a few seconds, thinking about his ancestor and how many generations had gone by and how to ‘purify’ his own blood…. but he had no clue about what to do.

“Finally!”

Said the horsehead, looking at one trial he just made.

Mack looked at the drops mixing together and forming a new kind of liquid, more viscous, and more reddish in color, even with the blue powder below, as if the new mixed liquid could not be affected by the powder below.

The horseman grabbed on flask by the side and used the same percentage distribution of the two liquids, mixing them at the same time.

The two liquids mixed and, just like the trial, it become viscous and more red, even when comparing to Mack’s own blood.

“Its ready?”

Asked Mack, this single process of trial and error had taken a lot of time already. He feared the process would be even more time-consuming.

“Just one more step, and this is where the experience shows itself.”

Said the horsehead, raising his chin a bit, while grabbing a metal box by the side and putting the flask inside.

Mack quickly looked at the box and it had one side open, with all the other sides fully engraved with rune circuits in it.

The horseman grabbed four tiny essence crystals from his pocket and put inside four small holes in the box.

The rune circuits activated, and an exquisite glow could be seen inside the box, moving everywhere inside the box, but not leaving it.

“This is a small essence furnace, as some people call it, you need to let it ‘boil’ on essence for a while, the time depends on the ratios and purity and also the formula, as those can be different from person to person.”

And just as the horseman said, the liquid inside the flask started to boil, and a reddish black smoke could be seen rising from it.

After a few minutes, the man turned off the furnace and grabbed the flask. Mack expected it to be hot, but to his surprise, the horseman grabbed with his own bare hands and put inside some kind of modern syringes made of metal.

“Done, three serums, if the quality was not so bad we could have made more of them.”

Said the horseman, giving two serums to Mack and holding one for himself.

“Are they very potent? How do I know they worked?”

Asked Mack, not sure how the effect would be.

“It depends. As you can see, the process itself is very barbaric because we don’t have the right equipment, only amateur ones. And the effect depends on the quality of the blood and the affinity of the user too. If the user already has a high affinity, more serums are needed. If lower, less serums, if none, one is enough to make a big difference already. Are you going to use them?”

Asked the horseman, pointing to the serums on Mack’s right hand.

“Yes, why?”

Said Mack, still thinking if he should kill the guy or not.

The process was not that hard, and if he killed him, he could have the equipment, too.  But while thinking of this, Mack looked outside the window, and sun was almost to rise again. The process seemed simple, but took a lot of time, and time was the only thing that Mack didn’t have to spare.

Unknown to the horseman, his life or death was decided just now. 

“Do you remember those flowers you took the other day? Well, if are going to use the serums yourself, remember to make a tea of those flowers and drink it, they will clean your body of any residual impurities of the serum, or in the long time, your body will create what we call it a ‘immunity’ to the serum because of so many impurities.”

Mack looked at the horseman again, even knowing that Mack was a stranger, and knowing that Mack could easily kill him for just one serum, he still gave advice to Mack.

‘I guess some people are just born good.’

Thought Mack, because he will never be able to relate with people like that.