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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Quetzhal on 2025-12-13 14:55:02+00:00.

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Chapter 46: Yeast

"Yeast," Cale said, very patiently.

Damien stared at him. The poor dreadshade looked like he was getting increasingly confused rather than enlightened, which, frankly, was a little insulting. This explanation had worked perfectly well with Vesuvius!

Although Cale supposed that Vesuvius hadn't actually had to worry about how yeast worked. It wasn't really necessary for the vision, and it was technically a vision. It operated on how they both understood the world. All Cale had needed to do was procure the ingredients, mix them in front of an increasingly fascinated elemental god, and then stick them in an oven.

Vesuvius had been both surprised and fascinated the fifth time he went through the process, when the dough rose and baked into a reasonably bread-looking loaf. He was familiar with his element burning things, charring things, and even with the general idea of cooking. What he apparently hadn't encountered yet—or hadn't paid much attention to—was baking, where the application of heat transformed raw dough into a different product entirely.

That was when he'd really gotten invested. Cale sighed wistfully; that had been a good few hours of baking. He'd have to find a way to repair the artifact quickly and get another one of those visions... although that meant he'd have to confront Imrys, and he did technically run away from her earlier.

Damien, who had no real way of realizing that Cale was in the middle of a nostalgic reverie, cut through his thoughts. "Yeast?" he asked helplessly.

"What? Oh. Yes. Yeast." Cale nodded distractedly.

"I don't... um... I don't know what you want me to do with that," Damien said.

There was a small jar sitting on the table between them. As far as Cale was concerned, the jar was just the starting point. It had been a long time since he'd had a good loaf of sourdough bread, and while he could technically get Alina to bake one for him the normal way, it just wasn't the same for him if it wasn't made from start to end with magic.

And now he had that magic. Sort of. He still needed to actually evolve the spell, but first he needed to get all the ingredients together, and he had to make his own starter. Cale had ended up running all over the academy grounds just to collect everything he needed.

Which was the following: a jar from Syphus (who had a jar collection, for some reason); several types of flour from Alina (who was very interested, but unfortunately busy trying to tame her mandrake root); water from Flia (who chased him back out of her room immediately after, muttering something about almost having it); and space from Imrys (which he had only acquired after promising to cast the next [Awaken Artifact] with her present.)

Now all he needed to do was to get Damien to accelerate the process of making the starter. Decay mana was closely related to fungal mana! All Damien needed to do was use his magic to accelerate the growth of the yeast in the air while he fed it various types of flour...

...Hm. Now that he thought about it, Damien would probably be a lot less confused if he'd said all of this out loud. He sort of assumed he had, but thinking back, he was pretty sure he'd actually just stared intently at his apprentice and then said the word "yeast."

"Damien," Cale said. "Did I ask you to make some yeast, or did I just stare at you and then say the word yeast?"

"The, um... definitely the second one," Damien said awkwardly. "You wanted me to make yeast? How do I even... shouldn't we talk about, you know, everything that just happened?"

"What?" Cale asked blankly. "Oh, you mean with our fire resonance class? I mean, we can't just run off to Haelforge to solve their problems. Professor Delia seems like she has it handled, and they have an alchemist that knows how to alleviate the symptoms of shimmerdust poisoning. Imrys already said she'd help fix the Firestorm Scale. I feel like everything resolved pretty neatly."

Damien stared at him. "First of all, they didn't," he said. "We have those... those fly things all over the academy! We have to do something about them!"

"If we did, they'd know we're on to them," Cale said reasonably. "What we should do is find out where they're coming from and destroy the source artifact before they can hide it. Which Sternkessel is doing, so I think we get to focus on baking."

Damien sighed. "And second, I was talking about our History of the Great Realms class," he said. "You know, the class we just had, where you took over the professor and started lecturing the class instead? Three students fainted, one of them somehow discovered a new spell, and I'm pretty sure you gave the professor nosebleeds for several different reasons."

Cale paused, frowning. That had been... a pretty normal class, it felt like. Certainly less eventful than most of his other classes had been. "What's there to talk about?"

"Everything!" Damien gestured wildly, then groaned at Cale's blank expression. "You can't just completely overturn centuries of..."

The dreadshade trailed off and sighed. "Nevermind. You're going to do it no matter what I say, aren't you?"

Cale shot Damien an offended look. "The textbook was wrong. And rude! I wasn't just going to let my friends be slandered. K'xoarcl might have a mouth in its exposed brains, but it also has feelings."

He paused. "Twice as much feeling per feeling, actually," he added. "We checked. Mathematically sound. It really messed up the utilitarians in that realm for a bit."

"I think if I question that I'm going to end up the same way our professor did," Damien muttered to himself. "Okay, um... just nevermind all that, then. I do have something I need to talk to you about, but that can wait until Syphus gets here again. I don't think I should let people overhear me. Especially if those fly things are around."

Cale shot him a curious look at that, but shrugged, choosing not to question it. "So, you'll help me?" he asked brightly.

Damien hesitated. "What did you want me to do? You wanted me to make yeast?"

"Fungal magic is closely related to decay magic," Cale explained. "All you need to do is figure out some sort of decay spell that accelerates the growth of yeast in this jar while I feed it."

Damien stared doubtfully at the various packs of flour Cale had brought with him. "Are you sure that's how you're supposed to make... whatever this is?" he asked. "Decay isn't usually something I would want to mix with food..."

Cale shrugged. "Mostly!" he said, beaming. "Technically you're just supposed to feed the starter with one type of flour, but I figure we can mix it up. Give the yeast a nice, varied diet. Enrichment, you know?"

"I don't think that's how that works," Damien said hesitantly.

"It'll be fine." Cale waved off his concerns. "Just hit the jar with a [Decay Bolt] or something. It should kickstart the whole process."

"We're not starting with [Decay Bolt]," Damien protested immediately. "That's just a full decay effect! It would make it rot!"

Cale paused. "Good point. What about [Yeast Bolt]?"

"I would have suggested that already if I had it," Damien mumbled. "I don't know how to make one."

"Would be a great time to try!" Cale gave him a friendly grin. "You never know what you're capable of. Besides, think about it—you'd be proving that you can use decay mana for much more than just death and rot. You'd be able to use it for baking. Which is kind of like healing, if you think about it."

"You lost me at that last part," Damien said, though he couldn't help but smile slightly. "But yeah, I guess... I guess that would be nice."

—

Damien stared at the jar and hesitated, feeling slightly ridiculous. There was no reason to feel nervous about his ability to follow through on Cale's absurd plan—especially since he was pretty sure Cale wouldn't blame him if he failed—but the guy was so sincerely excited about it that Damien just didn't want to disappoint him.

That and he was liable to come up with something even more worrying if this whole thing with decay mana didn't work out. Damien wasn't sure which one was worse. After everything Cale had helped him with, though, this seemed like a minor favor to return in comparison.

He just had to figure out how exactly he was supposed to do this. Safely. As powerful as Cale was, he wasn't invulnerable, and one of the few secrets he had been concerningly open about was the fact that he was still vulnerable to most non-magical kinds of poison.

Damien really didn't want his only effective mentor-slash-friend to die of food poisoning before they got to understanding his new mana aspect. Or after, for that matter.

Or ever, preferably, but from what Cale had said...

Damien studiously avoided thinking about that by engaging the one defense mechanism he'd practiced thoroughly with: changing the subject he was dwelling on. He still hadn't gotten the chance to talk to Cale about his new [Legacy of the Verdant Flame]; Syphus had been in a bit of a rush when they were meeting with it earlier, but had promised to meet them "soon." Damien was only willing to talk about this with Syphus in the room, especially now that he knew that the Red Hunte...

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