Origin Witch - Inside the Glass

The copper lamp’s focused beam struck the silver cocoon and the weave split a hairline wider. Corinne leaned in, breath held, thumbs braced on the bench edge inside the fourth-floor greenhouse.

The air inside the greenhouse was warm, humid, and smelled rich, a heavy, sweet blend of turned forest soil, fresh pine sap, and the spicy cinnamon scent of her young Fire-Bell shoots growing along the western trough. In her right hand, she held the small glass jar containing the Elven Monarch Chrysalis.

Through her Spectacles of Discernment, the silver-wrapped cocoon was pulsing with a faint, rhythmic pale-blue light, a heartbeat so slow it only flickered once every twenty seconds.

[Elven Monarch Chrysalis (Grade-S)] [Status: Incubation Phase (92% Ready)] [Current Environment: High Botanical Density (Met) / Anseic Fluid Channel (Met)] [Missing Catalyst: 1x Pure Mana Core Injection]

Beside her knee, Steelwool was standing on the rim of the wooden trough, its steel-gray feathers fluffed up against the warm humidity. Its big honey-colored eyes were fixed on the silver cocoon in her hand, its head tilting from side to side as it let out a curious, low click-click.

“Don’t even think about it, bird,” Corinne grumbled, nudging the owl chick’s beak away with her pinky finger. “It’s an S-Rank butterfly, not a moth for you to snap at.”

She reached into her Pouch of Preservation, pulling out one of the Grade-D green monster cores she’d harvested from the Mud-Swamp Hydrake yesterday. The core was a jagged, fist-sized crystal that glowed with a deep, murky emerald light, cold as ice in her gloved palm. She set the green core flat on the stone workbench beside the glass jar.

She drew her Moonstone Carver from her belt. Using the transparent crystal blade’s Strength-boosted tip, she made a precise, three-millimeter score across the top point of the monster core.

A small crack split the ore.

A tiny, razor-thin fissure split the green crystal. A single drop of liquid, pure Grade-D elemental mana, glowing like melted emeralds, leaked out from the core, pooling in the small groove she’d carved. Corinne uncorked the glass jar, picked up the silver cocoon with a pair of brass tweezers, and laid it gently over the cracked monster core.

The stew gave a thin, continuous hiss.

The moment the silver silk touched the raw liquid mana, a soft, high-pitched hiss filled the warm greenhouse. The silver threads wrapped around the cocoon didn’t melt. They began to unravel, turning into thousands of microscopic, glowing silver filaments that reached out like tiny roots, digging deep into the green crystal. The emerald core began to shrink, its dark green color draining rapidly as the cocoon drank the raw elemental energy directly out of the stone. The slow, twenty-second heartbeat inside the chrysalis sped up.

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

The silver silk turned semi-transparent, revealing a slender, shimmering shape resting inside, a creature no larger than a human palm, with thin, iridescent wings folded tightly against its back like sheets of blown glass.

Steelwool let out an alarming keek! and hopped two feet backward into the dirt trough, its feathers standing completely on end as the ambient mana density inside the greenhouse spiked by three hundred percent.

“Hold your horses,” Corinne whispered, leaning her face closer to the glass, her black frames reflecting the blinding silver light.

A crack, and a spit of white sparks.

The green monster core shattered into a pile of dull gray dust. At the exact same moment, the silver chrysalis split open down the center. A cloud of fine, glowing silver powder, smelling strongly of crushed white lilies and fresh rain, erupted from the cocoon, filling the central greenhouse aisle with a soft, sparkling mist.

Out of the silver powder flew a butterfly. It wasn’t a normal insect. Its wings spanned eight inches across, forged from semi-transparent, pale-blue crystal that caught the afternoon sunlight, shimmering with every shade of cyan, silver, and deep violet. Its body was slender, elegant, made of a glowing white porcelain-like material, with two long, thread-like antennae that trailed glowing silver dust behind it as it flew.

The butterfly didn’t fly wildly toward the glass dome overhead. It hovered in the warm air two inches above Corinne’s open palm, its translucent blue wings beating in slow, silent strokes that didn’t make a single breath of wind.

Corinne held her breath, her eyes locked onto the glowing creature. Through her spectacles, the gold text box flared in her vision:

[Elven Monarch Butterfly (Grade-S Spirit Beast)] [Status: Newly Hatched / Bound to Corinne Mercer] [Talent: Life-Thread Transmutation (Grade-S)] [Primary Capability: Automatically filters impurities from surrounding alchemical herbs, boosts nearby plant growth rates by 300%, and purifies liquid potion batches during brewing.] [Secondary Capability: Can bind with the owner’s sensory network to provide localized 360-degree botanical vision.]

Purifies potion batches. Boosts growth rates by three hundred percent. Corinne’s fingers closed into a tight, trembling fist against her knee. She had built a ten-cauldron workshop. She had secured an infinite source of pure Anseic spring water. She had hired Piper Bell to supply her with pre-sorted herbs. And now, sitting on her palm, was an S-Rank spirit beast that could triple her greenhouse yields and automatically strip the last eight percent of impurities out of her potion brews without her needing to spend three hours running oak-barrel filters.

“Well, well,” she whispered, a thin, breathy laugh escaping her raspy throat. “Look at you, little silver-wing.”

The butterfly fluttered its clear blue wings once, flew up into the air, and landed gently on the bridge of her black frames, right between her eyes. A tiny, cool sensation, like a drop of cold spring water touching her forehead, spread through her mind. At once Corinne’s vision expanded. She didn’t just see through her eyes anymore. She could feel every single plant inside the greenhouse. She could feel the roots of her ten Fire-Bell shoots drinking the warm heat from the buried Fire Element Essence in the western trough. She could feel the moisture levels in the black forest dirt. She could feel the tiny, microscopic spores of wild moss growing along the oak floorboards. A complete, real-time three-dimensional botanical map of her entire fourth-floor greenhouse unfolded inside her mind.

“Botanical vision,” she gasped, her hands gripping the edge of the oak trough as her head spun from the sudden influx of sensory data.

Steelwool, seeing the glowing silver butterfly sitting right on Corinne’s nose, couldn’t contain its curiosity any longer. The owl chick let out a loud keek!, hopped out of the dirt, and snapped its beak straight at the butterfly’s trailing silver antennae.

Steelwool snapped its beak straight at the butterfly’s trailing silver antennae.

The butterfly didn’t even bother to dodge. It simply let out a tiny pulse of pale blue light, and Steelwool’s beak froze mid-air, held back by an invisible, springy cushion of soft mana. The bird stumbled backward into the dirt, shaking its head in confusion, letting out a series of offended, raspy click-clicks.

Corinne couldn’t help it. She let out a loud, genuine laugh that echoed off the high glass dome of her greenhouse, a rare, clear sound that she hadn’t made since before the car crash five years ago.

“Leave it alone, Steelwool,” she chuckled, reaching down to pick up the confused owl chick and settling it onto her lap. “She’s out of your league.”

The Elven Monarch Butterfly flew off her spectacles, circling her head twice before descending toward the western soil trough. It landed gently on the tip of the largest Fire-Bell shoot. Where its tiny porcelain feet touched the dark stem, a wave of pale silver light washed down into the leaves. The small, two-inch green sprout visibly shivered, growing an entire inch taller in five seconds, its red bell-shaped blossom unfolding slightly to reveal a drop of rich, glowing orange sap inside the petal cup.

Corinne watched the plant grow with an unblinking, sharp focus behind her wire frames.

“Three hundred percent,” she whispered to the quiet room. “Three hundred percent faster.”

She reached into her spatial bag, pulled out her yellow notebook and ballpoint pen, and opened a fresh page. She drew a new structural trade map:

[INPUT: Piper Bell Herbs + Anseic Water + Fire Element Essences]

[PROCESSING: The Spire 4th Floor Greenhouse (Elven Monarch Boost)]

[BREWING: Abyssal Meteorite Cauldrons + Spirit Purification]

[OUTPUT: Grade-D High-Purity Elixirs (100% Market Control)]

She looked at the finished diagram, her thumb pressing the pen cap until it clicked. General Caldwell and his five hundred armored mercenaries from Sector 665 were marching toward her border with catapults and tower shields. They thought they were coming to conquer a sector of scattered, dying outcasts. They had no idea that the girl sitting in the high obsidian spire was currently building a botanical war engine that could supply an entire sector with liquid fire and pure acid.

Corinne closed her notebook, tucked it into her tunic, and picked up Steelwool.

“Come on, bird,” she said, her voice dropping into that familiar, cold, razor-sharp focus as she activated Zephyr Float and drifted down the heartwood stairs toward her second-floor laboratory. “Time to go fill thirty more iron pots.”

— Origin Witch —