Origin Witch - Piper's Supply
“Why am I the gardener?” Corinne muttered, shoving a cork into a tube with a sharp squeak. Fill, cork, stack. Fill, cork, stack. The wooden desk on the lower floor was stacked high with empty glass vials. Fifty-two cork stoppers lay arranged in neat orderly rows along the timber margin, smelling faintly of oak sap and dry rubber. She sat on her floating straw pile with a cold damp cloth wrapped around her forehead to block the pounding headache that always hit her after eight hours of continuous cauldron work. Her hands moved steadily, filling test tubes with the clear emerald-green Grade-E potion using her glass funnel.
It was tedious mechanical labor, but her mind was running fifty miles an hour.
Her storage grid was nearly empty of fresh herbs. The thirty roots of Bitter-Grass and two dozen Yellow-Tail stems she’d dug up yesterday were gone, boiled down into the two hundred vials sitting in her stasis crate. If she wanted to brew another batch tonight, she’d have to spend four hours floating through the dangerous forest canopy, digging in the dirt with her iron trowel like a mole.
Four hours of digging meant four hours she wasn’t reading Basic Alchemical Potions. It meant four hours she wasn’t studying rune arrays. It meant four hours of exposing her dangling useless legs to whatever wild beasts were stalking the underbrush.
“Inefficient,” she said. “I’m a brewer, not a gardener.”
Her Magic Desk chimed. A private message icon flashed green in the corner of the screen.
[Private Message from: Piper Bell]
Corinne tapped the glass.
[Piper Bell]: Hi Corinne! I just got the 10 potions you sent for the filter schematic! OMG thank you so much! My stomach cramps stopped almost instantly after I drank the first one! The creek water poison is completely gone! [Piper Bell]: Um, I wanted to ask, do you need more herbs? My talent is called ‘Wild Flora Intuition’ (Grade-E). I can see glowing outlines around wild herbs through the bushes from fifty yards away! I’ve been picking them all morning because I don’t know what else to do, and my wooden cabin is literally overflowing with weeds! [Piper Bell]: [ATTACHMENT: IMAGE_0114.JPG]
Corinne clicked the image attachment.
The photo showed the interior of a tiny crude log cabin. Stacked against the wooden walls were massive neatly tied bundles of fresh green plants. Dark-green serrated leaves, bright yellow blossoms, pale purple orchids, thick brown roots, there had to be at least sixty or seventy pounds of fresh herbs piled up inside that small room.
Corinne’s eyes narrowed.
Wild Flora Intuition. A utility talent specifically built for foraging.
[Corinne]: How much do you have? [Piper Bell]: Right now? About eighty pounds! I have Bitter-Grass, Yellow-Tail, Stone-Orchids, Evening-Blooms, and some weird thorny red vines I haven’t identified yet! [Piper Bell]: But, I don’t have an alchemy setup, and I don’t have weapons to fight wolves if they come near my cabin. I just need food, water, and those potions so I can keep my mana up!
Corinne leaned back, her lightened body hovering six inches above the straw mattress as she calculated the numbers in her head.
Eighty pounds of herbs. If she went out to dig that much herself, it would take her three days of backbreaking manual labor. But this girl, Piper, was sitting on a mountain of raw ingredients, terrified of wolves, unable to use them.
[Corinne]: I’ll buy everything you have. But I have strict rules. [Piper Bell]: What rules?! [Corinne]: Rule one: All herbs must be washed clean of mud in fresh spring water. Rule two: Taproots must be intact, if I see snapped roots or crushed leaves, I reject the bundle. Rule three: Herbs must be sorted by species into individual ten-pound bundles. [Corinne]: My exchange rate: 1 pound of clean, pre-sorted Grade-E herbs = 1 Grade-E Mana Potion (Restores 50 MP).
On the other side of Sector 666, inside a cozy leaf-covered log cabin, eighteen-year-old Piper Bell stared at her Magic Desk screen, her mouth wide open.
Fifty Mana Points per potion.
One pound of weeds, stuff she could gather in twenty minutes without leaving her front yard, for fifty points of pure clean magic. That meant she could cast her intuition skill continuously, stay hidden, and never worry about dying of dehydration or ether-poisoning again.
[Piper Bell]: DEAL! I’ll start washing and sorting them right now! Give me an hour!
Corinne closed the private chat thread. A quiet satisfied feeling settled in her chest.
Her raw material pipeline was secured. Piper Bell would be her dedicated herbalist, supplying her with raw plants while Corinne stayed safely locked inside The Spire, focusing all of her time on alchemy and reading.
“Now,” Corinne said, turning her eyes to the main regional market interface. “Time to mobilize the rest of the outcasts.”
She tapped her profile management settings.
Using the Magic Desk’s high-resolution camera function, she laid a pristine stem of Bitter-Grass and a fresh Yellow-Tail flower flat against the dark timber desk. She snapped three crystal-clear close-up photos, highlighting the sawtooth leaf margins, the pale taproot structure, and the four-petal cluster shape.
She opened her public profile blog, a feature almost nobody in Sector 666 was using because everyone was too busy panicking or screaming in the main chat, and posted a detailed step-by-step guide:
[ARTICLE: Sector 666 Standard Herb Identification & Harvesting Guide] [Author: Corinne Mercer] [Content: Clear visual guides for Bitter-Grass and Yellow-Tail. Instructions on how to extract roots without bruising the plant fibers.]
Below the guide, she posted her new public store listings:
[Corinne’s Store – Grade-E Inventory Refresh] [Listing 1: Grade-E Mana Potion (Restores 50 MP over 10s) * 100] [Price: 60x Basic Material Units (Wood / Stone / Vine)] [Listing 2: Grade-E Mana Potion * 1 -> Seeking: 1 lb Clean, Pre-sorted Herbs (Bitter-Grass / Yellow-Tail)] [Listing 3: Grade-E Mana Potion * 2 -> Seeking: 1x Grade-E Monster Core]
[Note: Do NOT send me mud-caked weeds or broken roots. Any dirty or damaged herbs will be rejected instantly, and the sender will be blacklisted from purchasing future potions.]
She set the store status to Active.
Ten seconds passed.
The public [Regional Chat] channel didn’t just scroll, it practically imploded.
[Zhao Dulai]: WHAT THE ACTUAL HOLY MOTHER OF GOD IS THIS?! [Lin Feng]: 50 MANA POINTS?! FIFTY?! IN ONE TUBE?! [Karapo]: IS THIS A TYPO?! YESTERDAY IT WAS 10 MANA POINTS FOR 10 MATERIALS! NOW IT’S 50 MANA POINTS FOR 60 MATERIALS?! [Math-Nerd-Mike]: EVERYONE WAIT! LET ME DO THE MATH AGAIN! [Math-Nerd-Mike]: 60 materials for 50 Mana Points, that’s 1.2 materials per Mana Point! Yesterday’s crude potion was 1 material per Mana Point! Her new price is actually 20% MORE EXPENSIVE per point of magic! SHE IS INCREASING HER MARGINS AGAIN! DO NOT BUY IT! [Garrett Thorne]: Mike, you are an absolute unredeemable dumbass. [Garrett Thorne]: Yesterday’s potion took 10 seconds to give you 10 MP. This new one gives you 50 MP in the exact same 10 seconds. In a fight against a Grade-E mountain cat, 10 MP gives you one weak wind-slash. 50 MP gives you FIVE wind-slashes back-to-back. It’s not about the material efficiency, you pencil-pushing idiot. It’s about BURST CAPACITY. [Garrett Thorne]: @Corinne Just sent 5 Monster Cores for 10 potions. Pleasure doing business with you. [Elodie]: Sent 2 Monster Cores. Thanks for the quick trade, Corinne. [James Bellman]: WAIT! I HAVE HERBS! I HAVE A WHOLE BAG OF THAT YELLOW-TAIL FLOWER! HOW DO I TRADE IT?! [Asang Singh]: Look at her public profile! She posted a full picture guide! She’s accepting herbs directly for potions! [Lin Feng]: HOLY SHIT! WE CAN FARM HERBS TO BUY MAGIC?! WE DON’T EVEN NEED TO CHOP WOOD ANYMORE?! [Victor Capone]: @Corinne. Little girl, you’re smart. You’re giving the peasants a way to earn their keep. My organization will match your herb trade rate, bring us herbs, and we’ll give you shelter protection. [Unknown User 8812]: Capone, shut your trap. Corinne’s potions actually work. Your protection doesn’t stop timber wolves. [New-Year-Joy]: @Corinne You selfish greedy witch! You have hundreds of these potions! People are dying out here from creek poison, and you’re charging 60 materials or monster cores?! You should be handing them out for free.
Corinne sat on her floating bed of straw, her cheek resting in her palm as she read New-Year-Joy’s post.
Her face didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t blink.
She tapped New-Year-Joy’s profile, selected the administrative dropdown, and clicked [Permanent Blacklist].
System Notification: User ‘New-Year-Joy’ has been permanently banned from entering Corinne’s Store or purchasing any listed items.
In a damp dirt shelter three miles to the north, a middle-aged man named New-Year-Joy was sitting in front of his Magic Desk, angrily typing a follow-up rant about human rights and social responsibility.
Suddenly, a red error box flashed across his screen: You have been blacklisted by the store owner. Access denied.
“WHAT?!” he screamed, slamming his fist onto the wooden desk. “SHE BLACKLISTED ME?! JUST FOR TELLING THE TRUTH?! SHE’S A MONSTER! A SOCIOPATH!”
Back in The Spire, Corinne didn’t even register his screaming.
Her store notifications were pinging continuously like a machine gun burst. One after another, vials cleared from her inventory, replaced by wood, stone, vines, monster cores, and pre-sorted herbs, the digital counters spinning up too fast to read individual names.
In less than three minutes, all one hundred vials of Grade-E Mana Potions were completely wiped clean from her inventory.
In return, her storage grid was bulging:
Wood: 3,420 units. Stone: 890 units. Vines: 1,100 units. Grade-E Monster Cores: 18 units. Fresh, Pre-sorted Herbs: 42 pounds.
Corinne closed the exchange interface, leaning her head back against the smooth pine wall of her bedroom.
The room was quiet except for the soft rustle of the wind blowing through the glass sliding door out on the second-floor balcony. Down below, deep in the dark green Canopy of Outcasts, thousands of survivors were currently crawling through the dirt, digging up roots, chopping trees, and hunting beasts, all sweating and bleeding just to earn a single green vial from her desk.
She picked up her crystal Moonstone Carver, turning the blade over in her hand, watching the blue light flicker across the transparent edge.
“Burst capacity,” she whispered, remembering Garrett Thorne’s words in the public chat.
She smiled, a small sharp dangerous little smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
She closed her eyes, pulled her blanket over her waist, and let her weightless body settle comfortably into the straw, ready for a long quiet sleep before tonight’s brew.
— Origin Witch —