📍 Hisan Bar — Kiyoshi and Sakura's Room | Morning
The letter arrived with the morning.
Kiyoshi read it twice. Then he handed it to Sakura without comment.
It was from Kavato. Short, neat handwriting, the kind that came from someone who spent a lot of time writing things down precisely.
I am heading to the capital for my alchemy master registration. I need guards on the road. It's a proper quest — 4 gold coins for the two of you. Let me know.
Sakura read it. Then read it again.
"4 gold," she said.
"4 gold."
She folded the letter and put it on the table. "We're going."
📍 Alchemy Guild — Front Gate | Next Morning
Kavato was already at the gate when they arrived, which was not surprising. He was the kind of person who arrived early to things and then bounced slightly on his heels while waiting.
He saw them and his face did the thing it always did — the wide, genuine smile that arrived before he'd decided to smile.
"Kiyoshi! Sakura!" He looked between them. "The Healing Sword and the Lightning Reaper — I heard about your sixty quests. Everyone at the guild was talking about it one day."
"You're an adventurer now?" Kiyoshi asked.
Kavato straightened slightly. "Alchemist and adventurer. E rank." A pause. "The adventurer part is new."
"E rank adventurer escorted by a C rank and a B rank," Sakura said. "You're very well protected."
"I know." He said it without embarrassment. "That's why I asked you specifically."
Sakura glanced at Kiyoshi. He shrugged slightly.
"Let's move," she said. "We can talk on the road."
📍 The Capital Road — Outside Ramiya | Morning
The road out of Ramiya was wide and well-kept — trade route, used daily. Once they were past the city gate and into open country, the pace settled into something comfortable.
Kiyoshi walked beside Kavato. Sakura took the wider view, eyes moving.
"What's the registration for?" Kiyoshi asked.
Kavato's expression shifted into something more focused — the way people look when they're about to explain something they care about. "I made a new potion. The Sleeping Potion. To register it officially, I have to go to the capital AMO and the Alchemy Masters' hall. Once it's registered under my name, it's mine — the formula, the rights, everything."
"What does it do?"
"Exactly what it sounds like." Kavato pulled a small case from his bag — two compartments, one holding a dark powder, the other a clear liquid. "Two forms. The powder form: inhaled, it puts an E-rank to sleep in thirty seconds. Lasts one to three hours, depending on the dose. The liquid is faster — fifteen seconds, two hours of sleep. Both have antidotes."
"Works on monsters?"
"Tested it. Yes."
Kiyoshi looked at the case. "I need some of that liquid."
Kavato blinked. Then he smiled. "First batch is yours."
"Thank you."
Sakura glanced back at them. "Where did you even find a carnivorous plant pollen formula. That's not in any standard guild text."
"Hekima," Kavato said simply. Then, after a pause: "My master."
The name landed with a weight that hadn't been in the conversation before.
Kiyoshi waited.
Kavato talked the way people talk when they've been carrying something for a long time, and the road is long enough to finally put it down.
His family was Ramiya nobility — the lord's house. His father and both older brothers were sword-users, warriors, the kind of men the family had always produced. When Kavato awakened as an alchemist, his father hadn't said much. He hadn't needed to. The family's sword style was famous. An alchemist son was an inconvenience.
"Alchemists are considered low-level," Kavato said. "Common work. My father wanted a warrior. My brothers are both stronger than me. So the plan became — make my second brother the next lord. Cut me out."
"Your own father," Sakura said.
"He banned me from using the family name." He said it evenly. The evenness was practised. "So I couldn't use it to get into the alchemy gangs either. There are four alchemy masters in Ramiya — three of them run gangs that control pricing and production. The alchemy guild oversees them. To study under any of the three, you join their class. I tried. None of them would take me." A short pause. "I think my father paid them not to."
Kiyoshi said nothing. There wasn't anything to say to that.
"The fourth master is Hekima," Kavato continued. "He doesn't run a gang. Doesn't take students. Lives in the End Mountains." He glanced at Kiyoshi. "You know the mountains south of Tabaeya."
"We were just there."
"Then you know what lives there. Poisonous everything. There's a legend about a three-headed snake called the Taipan — one bite, a hundred E-rank casualties. Nobody goes there by choice."
"You went there by choice," Sakura said.
"I explained my situation. He opened the door, looked at me, and said—" Kavato's voice shifted into a flat imitation— "That sounds very sad. Get lost." He smiled. "Then he shut the door."
"What did you do?"
"Stood there for three days."
Kiyoshi looked at him. "Three days."
"He let me in on the third evening. Made me do all the housework first. The river near his house gets poisoned periodically — something upstream — so I had to walk to the far river for clean water every day. After lunch he'd teach. Formulas, extraction methods, compound theory." The smile changed slightly — warmer, less forced. "He's the best teacher I've ever had. He just makes you work for the door first."
The road stretched ahead of them. Open country, the capital is still hours away.
"He sounds difficult," Kiyoshi said.
"He is." Kavato was quiet for a moment. "He's also the only person who took me in when every other door was closed. So."
He left it there.
Sakura was watching the road ahead. She didn't say anything. But she'd stopped scanning the perimeter for a few minutes, which meant she was listening.
Kiyoshi turned the small vial of sleeping potion over in his hand.
First batch is yours, Kavato had said. Not here, take it. First batch. Like it mattered whose hands it went to first.
"Tell me more about the formula," Kiyoshi said.
Kavato's face lit up immediately.
They walked, and he talked, and the capital grew slowly on the horizon.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Eighteen ✦
World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Eighteen
ENTRY 070 — THE SLEEPING POTION (KAVATO'S FORMULA)
Derived from the pollen of the carnivorous red flower — a plant found in the End Mountains that uses pollen inhalation to sedate prey before trapping and consuming it. Kavato extracted and refined the compound into two forms.
Powder form: inhaled, onset thirty seconds, duration one to three hours depending on dose. Effective on E-rank targets including monsters.
Liquid form: ingested or absorbed, onset fifteen seconds, duration two hours. Antidote reverses effects within thirty minutes.
This is Kavato's original formula — not derived from any existing guild text. First registered formula by an awakened alchemist in recorded history.
ENTRY 071 — THE ALCHEMY STRUCTURE IN RAMIYA
Four alchemy masters operate in Ramiya. Three run production and pricing gangs under oversight of the Alchemy Guild. Joining any of the three requires entry into their organisation. The fourth — Hekima — operates independently in the End Mountains and takes no formal students.
Kavato was blocked by the three guild-aligned masters. He believes his father paid them to refuse him.
End of Chapter Eighteen Codex.