A Butler’s Crisis

"Hmm..." Mateus grimaced as he tried to come up with an excuse to explain why he hadn't managed to produce even a single pill near Consummate Quality.

"Unbelievable," Lunabelle saved him the trouble as she said, "If I didn't see it for myself, I wouldn't believe it."

"Really?" Mateus tilted his head subconsciously.

"This is the first time you're using my old pill furnace, yet you still managed to make Excellent Quality Pills. Moreover, to my knowledge, you didn't take any supplements to increase the pills' quality or success rate."

Externally, Mateus cooly said, "Right..."

Internally, however, he was giving his thanks to a probably nonexistent deity of luck, 'RN-Jesus giveth.'

"If you're this efficient, given the barebones entirely-cold approach you took to refining these first set of Mortal Energy Tempering Pills," Lunabelle drew Mateus out of his thoughts, "I struggle to imagine how much more you could improve after you refine and use your own pills as well as get used to the pill furnace to bolster your Alchemy."

To her point, Mateus found himself eager to find out as well. Grinning maniacally, he popped the best 91% Refined Mortal Energy Tempering Pill he had just freshly concocted into his mouth like candy, and continued on to refine more sets of pills.

With just the Energy Tempering Pill — its first effect, which was applicable for purposes other than cultivation, anyway — Mateus' Energy Quality instantly doubled from 15.2 units to 30.4. It would only last for a minute, but that would more than carrying him through half the alchemical processes.

As he refined more pills, ones that could boost his Energy Control and restore his Energy Reserves, and as he got used to the pill furnace, the quality of his pills would slowly but surely increase.

...

Meanwhile, with Head Butler Kingston…

"Come in," A man welcomed Kingston to open the door and enter the room. The moment Kingston complied, he felt his stomach drop precipitously at the sight of not one, but two people in the room.

"Sir, Madam," Kingston bowed at the sight of the two people before entering and closing the door behind him. Having already steeled himself for this moment, he hardly flinched as he said, "the young heiress has brought home a guest."

"A guest?" The man asked, his inflection confused for he didn't understand the serious air about Kingston. He and the woman that were in the room before Kingston had entered, had been sitting on cushioned seats and enjoying a drink together.

"That's odd," the woman said as she scanned Kingston with her piercing gaze, "Lunabelle's never brought anyone, anywhere." After a short pause, she asked, "What, did she see one of her mentors on her way to or from the Alchemy Department and managed to get an additional session, or something?"

"No..." Kingston struggled to hold his composure under the woman's stare. "She brought home someone I've never seen before."

"Is she finally making friends?" The man asked, sounding hopeful, before he took a sip of his drink.

"It is long overdue," the woman added.

"The young miss… she, uh… brought home a Beginner Mortal..." Kingston dragged on his words, knowing the futility in his attempts to stop the inevitable.

"What could she possibly want with a—"

"—boy..."

The man spit out his drink.

The woman blanched.

The world stopped.

"SHE WHAT?!" Both screamed, emotions so distrubed that the very Laws of reality around them began wavering.

'They're taking it better than I thought,' Kingston thought as he hardly felt a strain on his being as he discreetly exerted his own power over the Laws of Space and contained what would otherwise shake the entirety of the Central District; if not the whole of the Sect heartland.

"Where are they?!" The man disintegrated his glass of alcohol.

"Sir, if you would just calm down and hear me out—"

Kingston was cut off as the woman darkly threatened, "Kingston, spit it out before I drop kick you off of the planet."

"Just… Trust me and use your Sense to first check on them in her room," Kingston said as he took a defensive stance and braced for the worst.

"You let them go to her room?! Alone?!" In a fraction of a millisecond, the man went from lazily sitting while enjoying a drink, to fully armored-up and ready for war.

"She is halfway done with collapsing her Foundation and he is a mere Beginner Phase Mortal," Kingston said, hoping he could reason with the two. "Having seen and probed him first hand, there's no way he could possibly take advantage of her."

"Like that was ever a concern!" The woman spat. "We should be worried about what she'll do to him if she's lost herself to her condition!"

"Unlikely," Kingston cringed as he felt them start pumping out their fully fledged killing intent. "She wouldn't have calmly walked over with him and shown herself to any of us, me especially, had that been the case. The way she carried herself and spoke about him, besides the fact that she still hasn't done anything aside from watch him refine pills, is proof enough that she merely respects him as an Alchemist; as insane as that sounds..."

"You better hope..." The man slowly stopped talking as he followed Kingston's advice and began to spy on Lunabelle and Mateus.

The woman, turning to see the man freeze with a look of shock, followed suit. What she saw, though, didn't exactly correlate to her imagination. Lunabelle was simply watching Mateus as he seamlessly chucked in material after material into his pill furnace.

"What's with that look... Aiden?" The woman asked, more than a little distraught that the man needed to be called out by name to respond.

"That boy is flash processing herbs with rudimentary Water energy," Aiden said.

With that, the three adults in the room seemed to come to a nonverbal understanding as they decided to take their seats in the room and simply supervise for the time being. Minutes later, after Mateus finished refining his first batch of pills and had his conversation with Lunabelle, the tension in the room all but cleared as they understood the two's relationship.

For the next couple hours, however, they would not dare to let their Senses stray from Lunabella's room.