Evan Hale woke up to the smell of smoke and herbs instead of the dull scent of his office back on Earth. The air was warm and dry like a workshop heated by open furnaces. When he opened his eyes he saw wooden beams and shelves covered with jars filled with powders leaves crystals and pieces of monster shells. His first instinct was that this was a themed escape room. His second was that he was definitely nowhere near home.

He stood and felt the stone floor under his shoes. Someone had placed him in front of a table with a set of strange tools. He saw scales made from copper a rusty burner a heavy mortar and a pile of mismatched manuals written in rough ink. Every book looked like it was copied by hand with different handwriting. None of the steps were clear. Some instructions said heat until warm. Others said crush until it feels right. One book told him to add five drops without ever saying five drops of what.

He spent a moment flipping pages and realized the truth. This world used alchemy but no one had any idea how to make it consistent. Nothing was standardized. Every alchemist must guess their own ratios. Every recipe was a half secret that masters passed only to trusted apprentices. That secrecy made every potion rare unstable and expensive.

His old job came back to him. He had worked in logistics and process engineering. He had spent years telling people the same thing over and over. If you do not measure it you cannot improve it. If you do not standardize it you cannot scale it. He never imagined the same idea would matter in a world of magic.

A weak voice spoke from behind him.
“You are the outsider the river brought here” the old man said. The man had a long robe darkened by smoke and stains. His beard looked like it had been dipped into a brewing pot. He leaned on a carved cane and studied Evan with tired eyes.
“For three days you slept. I thought you would not wake”

Evan looked around. “Where am I”

“This is the small town of Oakedge. And this is my workshop though calling it a workshop may be generous. I am Master Loras”

Master Loras looked like he had been doing alchemy his entire life yet nothing in this place resembled a modern production room. It was cluttered chaotic and dangerously close to catching fire.

“What is this place exactly” Evan asked.

“An alchemy shop or what is left of one. Monster attacks have made ingredients scarce. The Royal Monopoly Bureau raised the fees again. Many of my batches fail and the guild adventurers stopped buying from me. I fear the age of small alchemists is ending”

Evan walked to the furnace. There was no heat gauge no timer no way to keep track of what temperature the potions reached. He felt the heat and tried to guess. Maybe around four hundred degrees But that was only a guess.

He turned back to the old master. “Why does no one use standard measurements or tools”

Loras blinked. “Because no alchemist shares their secrets. You learn heat by feeling. You learn ratios by instinct. It has always been this way”

Evan exhaled slowly. This world was trapped under its own traditions. If no one shares recipes no one stabilizes them. If no one stabilizes them no one improves them. That explained why every potion was unreliable.

He studied a failed batch on the table. It contained sediment that should not have been there. The liquid separated into layers. He stirred it gently. The formula could have worked but the heat was inconsistent.

“You could fix this if you kept track of ingredients and temperatures with a simple card or chart” Evan said.

“A card for each batch” Loras asked. “Why would anyone do that”

“To know what went wrong and make it better next time. To teach others exactly how to repeat it”

Loras stared at him like he had just spoken a foreign language. And maybe he had. This world did not know process control or repeatable manufacturing.

Evan ran a hand along the table. “If this world wants better potions someone has to build a system. You have magic. I have knowledge. Maybe that means something”

That night Evan stayed in the workshop. He cleaned the table arranged ingredients by type and weight used charcoal to mark heat zones around the furnace and wrote simple labels for vials and jars. Then he took a damaged poster and flipped it over. On the back he sketched the first draft of an idea no one in this world had ever tried.

The Alchemy Workshop System
A place where potions were made with clear instructions repeatable steps matching tools and reliable ingredients.
Not a secret workshop
But a franchise

The world’s first alchemy startup

When dawn came Evan felt strangely alive. He had no idea how long he would stay in this world but if he was here he would build something that mattered. Something this world had never seen.

Loras watched him write the word Standardization on the poster.
“What does that mean” the old man asked

Evan smiled a little even though he was exhausted. “It means the beginning”

Outside he heard travelers speaking about ingredient shortages and unstable mixes. He heard rumors of the Royal Monopoly Bureau tightening control. He heard people complain about the chaos of the black market.

He looked at the messy workshop again. It was full of problems but also full of potential.
If he wanted to survive he needed income. If he wanted income he needed a product. If he wanted a product he needed stable formulas.

A fire sparked to life inside him.
He would fix this world’s alchemy whether it wanted to be fixed or not.

The era of secret masters was ending.
The era of scalable alchemy was about to begin.