Aurora tilted her head back and drank all three compounds in sequence.

Clean, decisive movements. The kind that came from trusting someone completely, without reservation.

The potions went down.

At first: three distinct coolnesses, like three separate streams of clear water moving through her from the inside.

Then the cool transformed. A gentle warmth replaced it—the specific warmth of a perfectly-timed bowl of hot soup on a cold day—spreading outward from her stomach, slow and steady, reaching into her limbs, her fingers, the spaces between her ribs.

Aurora closed her eyes.

She needed to concentrate. To listen carefully to what was happening inside her, the changes too fine to catch without deliberate attention.

It wasn’t just the potions taking effect.

It was something more than that.

Coordination.

Three separate medicinal currents, moving as if they had volition, following some predetermined path through her body—meeting, merging, supporting one another, building a dynamic equilibrium that felt perfectly balanced.

Nothing was being suppressed by force. Nothing was being jolted or overdriven. It was more like the work of the most precise kind of craftsperson, making careful, unhurried adjustments to a mechanism that already worked, bringing it closer to what it was supposed to be.

The restless cellular agitation from the infection settled.

The energy reserves that the high-intensity metabolism had been quietly grinding down received a gentle, continuous refill.

Even the faint accumulated fatigue in her mind—the residue of sustained combat readiness, of never fully standing down—was quietly eased by a current of clean coolness that she hadn’t known was possible to feel.

She stayed with it for about a minute.

Then she opened her eyes.

Those steady, quiet eyes of hers now held something they didn’t usually hold.

Disbelieving joy. And a trembling brightness.

“The effect this time...”

Her voice had an actual tremor in it. Not a subtle one.

“It’s incredible!”

“It’s almost twice the effect of the first set—no, maybe more than that!”

She snapped her head up and looked at Pandora, the shock and elation on her face entirely undisguised.

“My Lady, this has completely surpassed the results I was getting from the full twenty-seven-potion regimen!”

“Not just the potency—the coordination, the way it works with my body instead of against it, that smoothness without any burden—this is just... this is unbelievable!”

Double the effect.

The first batch Pandora had brewed had achieved approximately seventy percent of the original twenty-seven-potion stack.

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If Aurora’s subjective experience was accurate—and right now it felt very accurate—then the second batch had landed at something close to a hundred and forty percent.

That was an absurd number.

In the depths of Unit 039’s malachite eyes, something moved. Involuntary. Impossible to suppress.

Her gaze returned, without her quite choosing it, to the slight, slightly tired-looking girl who had just walked out of the workshop.

That calm face—with its faint edge of weariness and the small, almost self-conscious smile resting on it—gave nothing dramatic away.

But something was moving behind Unit 039’s eyes anyway. Quiet and unsettled.

“Ha, really? Good, then!”

Pandora laughed softly and pressed her fingers against her own temple, looking every bit like someone who’d just exhaled after holding their breath for a long time.

Her words, though, were carefully shaped to leave room for interpretation.

“Probably just a lucky streak, honestly—inspiration hits when it hits, and there’s no stopping it. Most of the time it’s nowhere near this smooth. Failing fifteen times in a row is pretty standard.”

It sounded like modesty. It also sounded like an explanation for why the improvement had been so dramatic.

Unit 039 took a small step forward.

The movement was perfectly proper, perfectly deferential in form. But when she spoke, something in the tone carried a faint probing quality that hadn’t been there before.

“Miss Aurora, subjective physical sensation can sometimes be influenced by emotional state, anticipation, or even environmental factors. It doesn’t always correspond precisely to objective efficacy data.”

Her gaze moved to Aurora, her voice level.

“As it happens, there’s a precision blood analyzer in the corner of this workshop. Would you allow us to use a single drop of your blood to confirm the objective results?”

A brief pause.

Then she turned, as if just remembering to do so, and looked toward Pandora with a consultative air.

“Miss Pandora, what do you think? It might also provide more reliable data for any further refinements to your formulation.”

Aurora surfaced from the rush of her own excitement and looked at Unit 039.

At that face, which had maintained its standard attendant’s smile throughout, and which was now being just slightly—specifically—too proactive.

Aurora’s eyebrows drew together. A note of displeasure had entered her expression.

“Unit 039, you...”

This Live Iron Golem attendant was overstepping.

“It’s fine, Aurora.”

Pandora raised a hand lightly, and the mild smile on her face didn’t shift at all. As if she’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

“039 is probably just curious. The numbers do sound a bit hard to believe. Let her run the test—data is more convincing than feelings anyway.”

Aurora looked back at Pandora, pressed her lips together for a moment, and said nothing.

My Lady had made the call. She wouldn’t refuse.

But the small seed of suspicion she’d been carrying about Unit 039 had put down a slightly deeper root.

The three of them turned and walked back into the workshop they’d only just left.

Unit 039 crossed directly to a cleaned metal workstation in the corner of the room.

On it sat a silver-grey instrument approximately the size of a compact travel case, its surface shaped with complex flowing lines and fitted with several small display screens.

Unit 039 powered it up with movements that were unexpectedly smooth and thoroughly professional.

The machine produced a low, resonant hum. A row of indicator lights came on one by one in dim blue.

Then 039 produced a single-use sterile lancet and a small glass collection plate.

Under Aurora’s slightly narrowed, slightly evaluating gaze, she worked with exact, steady hands—taking a single drop of blood from the tip of Aurora’s finger, transferring it to the glass plate, and sliding the plate into the machine’s designated slot.

A faint mechanical sound began.

Analysis initiated.

Less than two minutes passed.

A clear chime broke the silence of the workshop.

Unit 039 turned and withdrew her gaze from the largest display screen.

When she looked at Pandora again, the face that so rarely showed anything real had a strange, complicated expression on it. One that didn’t quite resolve into any single identifiable emotion.

Pandora’s expression hadn’t changed at all. Still that easy, unhurried smile. Like someone who already knew the answer and was just waiting for the test to catch up.

She even got there first.

“So? The objective numbers should be pretty decent too, right?”

It was phrased as a question. But there wasn’t any actual uncertainty in it.

The 【Assisted Alchemy】 had failed this time—but not from lack of skill.

In the final critical steps, Pandora had deliberately broken away from the pull of that intense guiding inspiration. She had forced the brewing process to become less than perfectly optimal, pressing down on the final quality of the result with intent.

That deliberate downgrade meant it hadn’t reached what the System would classify as 【Perfect-Grade】.

But every step before that final intervention had still been close to perfect.

Which meant the finished product, despite its intentional ceiling, still sat considerably above the first batch she had brewed.