Episode : 116

Words : 1580 Updated : Sep 19th, 2025

Chapter 117 of "My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!" starts unveiling mysteries: Chapter: 231 Lloyd led his trio of borrowed alchemists – Alaric the Meticulous, Borin the Enthusiastically... Keep reading!

Chapter: 231 Lloyd led his trio of borrowed alchemists – Alaric the Meticulous, Borin the Enthusiastically Volatile, and Lyra the Pragmatic – into the now-cleaner, but still very rustic, main floor of the mill. Several large, heavy-bottomed iron cauldrons, procured from the estate’s deepest storage and scrubbed to a dull shine by Martha and Pia, sat waiting over newly constructed, fire-brick-lined hearths. The air smelled of damp stone, old wood, and burgeoning, if slightly chaotic, potential. “Alright, team,” Lloyd announced, clapping his hands together, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. “Welcome to the official Research and Development wing of Ferrum’s Cleansing Elixirs. Our mission for the foreseeable future: to transform this,” he gestured to a large, sealed jar of clean, rendered tallow, “and this,” he pointed to a carefully stoppered jug of the potent hardwood lye solution they had created, “into a stable, replicable, and exquisitely fragrant liquid soap. Without,” he added, looking pointedly at Borin, “any unscheduled structural modifications to our new facility.” Borin grinned sheepishly, already eyeing the hearths with a speculative gleam that suggested he was contemplating ways to ‘optimize’ their heat output with a judicious application of powdered dragon-breath crystals. Their initial task was to scale up Lloyd’s original, successful soft-soap recipe. This fell squarely into Alaric’s domain. The quiet, bespectacled alchemist was in his element, his earlier nervousness vanishing, replaced by a focused, almost reverent, intensity. He produced a set of finely calibrated bronze scales, a collection of glass beakers marked with precise measurements, and a thick, leather-bound journal, its pages already filled with his neat, spidery script. “Based on your initial prototype, my lord,” Alaric began, his voice quiet but firm, “and accounting for the ambient humidity and the specific density of this particular batch of tallow, I have calculated the optimal initial ratio of fat to our current lye solution to be approximately 2.37 to 1 by weight for achieving initial trace. I recommend we begin with a small, precisely measured test batch of five kilograms.” Lloyd listened, impressed. He had worked by feel, by sight, by the half-remembered instincts of a hobbyist chemist from another world. Alaric was approaching it with the rigor of a true scientist. “An excellent starting point, Alaric,” Lloyd agreed. “Proceed.” Under Alaric’s meticulous direction, the first scaled-up batch began. The tallow was weighed, melted under a carefully controlled heat that Alaric monitored with a strange, long-stemmed thermometer he’d produced from his robes, and the lye was added with a slow, steady precision that was almost painful to watch. The stirring, a task assigned to the ever-diligent Pia, was maintained at a constant, metronome-like pace. It was a perfect, by-the-book replication of Lloyd’s initial success. And it worked. The mixture reached trace, was infused with a carefully measured dose of rosemary hydrosol, and was set aside to cool into a thick, creamy, perfectly functional soft soap. “Success,” Alaric declared, making a final, neat notation in his journal. He looked up, a rare, faint smile of satisfaction on his face. “The process is replicable. Quality is consistent.” “Consistent is good!” Borin boomed, who had been watching the meticulous process with a growing, almost desperate, impatience. “But is it optimal? Is it fast? Can it be... better?” He practically bounced on the balls of his feet, his experimental energy demanding an outlet. “My lord! Alaric’s method is sound, yes, for a baseline. But slow! So slow! We could be making batches three times this size in half the time if we just... optimized the reaction!” Before Lloyd or Lyra could intervene, Borin was already at work. “The lye creation!” he declared, grabbing one of the buckets of hardwood ash. “Leaching is for peasants and grandmothers! A true alchemist catalyzes! A small pinch of ground sunstone, added to the water before leaching, should dramatically increase its ionic potential, allowing it to absorb the alkali from the ash far more rapidly!” He produced a small, glowing yellow pebble from a pouch and, with a cheerful grin, ground it into a fine powder and mixed it into the water. He then turned his attention to the boiling process. “And this low, steady heat... it’s so... timid! The saponification process is an exothermic reaction, it wants to go! We should encourage it, not coddle it! A burst of intense heat at the initial mixing stage, a ‘thermal shock’, should kickstart the emulsification! We could add a small quantity of powdered fire-salts to the tallow just before adding the lye!” Chapter: 232 Lyra, who had been observing Borin’s enthusiastic pronouncements with a long-suffering sigh, finally stepped in. “Borin, the last time you used powdered fire-salts to ‘kickstart’ a reaction, we had to re-thatch the entire roof of the west wing laboratory and Grand Master Grimaldi’s beard smelled of odor for a week. Perhaps we should test your ‘optimizations’ on a slightly smaller, less flammable scale?” “Nonsense, Lyra! Go big or go home!” Borin retorted cheerfully. “Lord Ferrum is an innovator! He understands the need for bold experimentation!” He looked at Lloyd, his eyes wide with pleading, experimental fervor. “My lord? Just one batch? My way?” Lloyd looked at Borin’s eager face, then at Lyra’s exasperated one, then at Alaric, who looked as if he were about to faint from the sheer, unmitigated horror of introducing uncontrolled variables into his perfectly balanced equation. Part of him, the sensible, pragmatic part, knew this was a terrible idea. But another part, the curious engineer, the man who had built a flying battle suit on a foundation of bold experimentation, was intrigued. What if Borin was right? What if there was a faster, better way? “Alright, Borin,” Lloyd conceded, a decision that made Alaric audibly whimper. “One batch. Your way. But,” he added, holding up a warning finger, “we do it outside. Far away from the mill. And we use a smaller cauldron. And Lyra, you will be in charge of the fire extinguisher bucket. Several of them.” The result was... educational. The sunstone-infused lye solution Borin created was indeed incredibly potent, floating the test egg so high it practically bobbed on the surface. And when he added it to the fire-salt-laced, superheated tallow, the reaction was not so much ‘kickstarted’ as it was ‘launched into low orbit’. The mixture didn’t just hiss; it roared, erupting in a thick, bubbling, furiously expanding foam that overflowed the cauldron in a tidal wave of hot, caustic goo. The resulting ‘soap’ was a strange, unsettlingly vibrant green color, smelled faintly of sulfur and regret, and possessed a texture that was less ‘creamy’ and more ‘sentient, angry sludge’. “Well,” Borin said, peering at the bubbling, greenish mess that was now slowly eating its way through a patch of grass, looking not disappointed, but fascinated. “That’s... interesting. The catalytic reaction was far more vigorous than anticipated. Note to self: reduce fire-salt quantity by approximately ninety percent for next attempt.” “Note to self,” Lyra muttered, dousing a small, smoldering patch of Borin’s robe with a bucket of water, “never let Borin near the main production line. Ever.” After that particular excitement, Lloyd gently but firmly guided them back to his own proven, if slower, methods. The lesson, however, had been valuable. Borin’s enthusiasm, while dangerous, was a wellspring of innovation. Lyra’s pragmatism was an essential brake. Alaric’s precision was the bedrock of quality control. They needed each other to function. They spent the rest of the day refining the core process. Lyra, true to her nature, meticulously documented every step, timing each stage, identifying bottlenecks. “The stirring is the primary time sink, my lord,” she pointed out, watching Pia and Martha laboriously turning the heavy paddles. “Borin’s idea for a water-powered mechanical stirrer, while overly ambitious for today, has merit. A simpler, hand-cranked gear system could increase efficiency by fifty percent until the water wheel is fully operational.” Alaric, having recovered from the trauma of the ‘green goo incident’, focused on the scent infusion. “The rosemary hydrosol adds a pleasant note, my lord, but much of the volatile oil is lost to steam during the crude distillation. If we were to use a proper sealed retort, a ‘spiritus rector’ as the Grand Master calls it, we could capture a far purer, more potent essential oil. The resulting fragrance would be stronger, more refined, and require a much smaller quantity per batch, ultimately saving on raw material costs.” Lloyd listened, absorbed, integrating their insights with his own vision. This was it. This was the process of innovation. Trial, error, analysis, refinement. He had provided the foundational concept, the spark. But his team, his strange, brilliant, slightly unhinged team, was now fanning it into a true, sustainable flame. The soap empire wasn’t just his dream anymore; it was becoming their shared creation. And it was going to be magnificent. And hopefully, significantly less green and sludgy in the future. --- --- The following weeks at the old grain mill, now unofficially christened ‘The Elixir Manufactory’ by a very proud Master Elmsworth, fell into a rhythm of controlled, productive, and occasionally slightly alarming, chaos. The initial, frantic phase of cleaning and basic repairs gave way to a more focused period of experimentation and process refinement. The synergy between Lloyd’s vision and his team’s specialized skills began to bear fragrant, if sometimes bubbly, fruit.

Episode : 116

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