What Do You Mean There Are Other Transmigrators In My Harem Fantasy?

Chapter 782: This Guy Is A 'Genius' Alchemist

Ok… This is really weird…

I didn't think that Lisa would actually support that guy over me and even claim that I could learn from this guy.

I mean… Sure, I also believe that there's always something that you could learn from someone else but… It kind of felt like Lisa was saying I was inferior to him.

My first thought was that this Lisa might be an imposter and I checked her with [Screened].

[Screened] confirmed that it was indeed Lisa though it showed the fake race and stats that was caused by her artefact.

Still, I knew it was Lisa at least.

The next hypothesis I had was that she was being mind controlled or something which I felt might be possible. That means this guy or someone else managed to control Lisa either through magic or maybe through letting her drink some potion.

I wasn't really sure if I was right about this so I decided to just wait and see for now. Perhaps I might find more information about it later when I stay for the 'extra classes' with Lisa and this Bracca guy later.

For now, I went through the lesson while keeping an eye on both Bracca and Lisa, trying to see if there was anything odd about their actions.

But aside from keeping things professional between myself and her on account of Bracca being here, I didn't see anything odd with Lisa.

Speaking of which, Yisra ended up pairing with another student but at least she wasn't left out. I'll have to remember to apologise to her about this later.

As for Bracca, he just felt like your typical arrogant idiot who gained a little achievement for himself and thought he was above everyone else.

"That's not how you grind the herbs to brew a mana potion, are you even sure you know what you're doing?" The idiot asked with a tone of voice that clearly suggested he believed I was an idiot.

"I have done this before, Bracca… It is not my first time brewing--"

"Yeah but you must be the slowest in the entire class aren't you? The way you're holding the mortar and pestle is just completely wrong!"

I really, really had to hold myself back from going off on him.

The only reason I didn't was because of how weird Lisa had acted earlier and I still wanted to see if he was behind it. That's why I was still willing to play the position of a dunce just to make him underestimate me.

Unfortunately, my classmates didn't share the same sentiment as I did which was why they kept glancing towards me and the idiot.

They must be wondering why I wasn't refuting him since they all knew what I was capable of and his claims were completely false.

I would always be the first one to complete my potions and Lisa even appointed me to help out other classmates that were struggling with their potions as well, so it was a known fact in the class that I was a capable alchemist.

Some of them looked like they wanted to speak up on my behalf but I shook my head at them and they stopped themselves, though they were still clearly confused about why I would stop them.

I gave him the best pathetic look I could muster, "My apologies… Maybe you could show me how it's supposed to be done?"

He stretched out his palms and gestured to me, "Hand them over then. I'll show you the proper way to do it."

I obliged and he snatched them out of my hand before holding the two objects in pretty much the same position as I did before he started grinding the herbs.

"You see? If you position your thumb here, you can put more strength into your wrist movement and grind up the herbs more efficiently and also make the end result finer. Not like what you were doing before."

I'm just going to say that what he said was a load of bullshit.

How he was holding it isn't even a better position than mine. And I could even tell that this was true because he was taking much longer than I would need to grind the herbs in his mortar right now.

Partly because my strength and dexterity stats were way higher than his which kind of proved my point that it literally didn't matter…

I still kept my mouth shut though and just pretended to watch him grind the herbs with fake interest.

Lisa came by right then and looked at what he was doing.

That seemed to spur the guy on even more as he started exaggerating his movements to show that he was putting all his strength into what he was doing.

Lisa gave him a nod, "Very good form, Bracca. Continue."

She then walked off to inspect the progress of the other students.

Wait… Really?

Now I'm actually quite convinced that something was done to Lisa or she was being controlled somehow.

There's no way she would be praising something like that under normal circumstances.

Still, I kept my mouth shut and just watched Bracca smirk at me with a look of pride on his face, clearly trying to show that he was better than I was.

He eventually finished grinding the herbs and placed the mortar back on the table. Seriously though, in the time it took for him to grind this, I could have done this four or five times… That's how slow it was…

I took the mortar and brought out my own binding agents that I've been using for all my potions.

I've done my own experiments on this and I've always used honey and strawberries since these not only work as binding agents, it makes the completed potion taste sweet and refreshing as well, perfect for me~

What's more, it has the added effect of mimicking the 'quenching of thirst' feeling so you won't feel especially drawn to wanting another drink of it. That is done in order to avoid the addictive properties of the Toras herb used to make mana potions.

The moment I brought those out though, Bracca immediately scowled at me, "By the gods… Are you actually trying to have a snack in the middle of class? I can see why you are such a poor student now."

I frowned at him, "I'm using these for the potions?"

"Ha? What are you even talking about? Why would these even be part of the potion making process?"

"As the binding agent and to change the taste?"

He gave me the look where he was clearly questioning my sanity again, "What are you talking about? Those aren't the binding agents you use to create a mana potion!"

I could have explained it but his question made me curious what the 'normal' binding agents for a mana potion were.

So I acted dumb and tilted my head at him, "Ah… Sorry… What are the binding agents to create this mana potion?"

He then took out a literal twig and what looked like tree bark, "These are! I can't believe you don't even know this! This is like the most basic of basics!"

Err… Wait… Let me guess… Whoever taught him to make this potion used these as the binding agents and he was never taught that the binding agents could be different?

I looked at Lisa and she was busy guiding another group of students so I think she didn't hear what he said.

The really funny thing was the fact that the other groups beside us were each using different binding agents to create their own mana potions as well. But I think he was so absorbed in himself that he didn't notice.

I decided not to point that out to him since I was curious how this might turn out. Who knows? Maybe this might create some super powerful mana potion for all I know.

We went with his binding agents and the good news was that he didn't protest the rest of the procedure so I managed to create several bottles of mana potions in the end.

Obviously, we weren't the first to complete the potion and a few others had finished theirs ahead of us, something that has never happened to me in this class before.

The guy grumbled, "Finally. If it weren't because of your cluelessness, we could have finished this in half the time."

Half? I could have finished it in a quarter…

Whatever, let me just pick up one of the bottles to try it…

As I was reaching for the bottle, he suddenly blocked me with his hand and scowled at me, "What are you doing?"

"Err… Testing the potion?"

"Oh by the gods… Not only are you incompetent, you are also stupid and rude huh? We need to submit these potions to Professor Lisa! Not drink them ourselves! Who the hell even thinks like you do?!"

…

Not gonna lie, I really want to punch his face right now…