The next morning, I woke up glaring at the most difficult potion among my lists. No, I hadn’t forgotten about it. In fact, I thought about the damn thing every day! Every moment of the day. I glanced at the instructions of the water breathing potion.
[1 herb of any kind, 1 mermaid scale, angel-purified water or holy water, 3 fish tails from Lesser Dragon-ranked spirit fish. Do not boil these until a sap, just boil for 2 minutes. Let cool for 1 day. Boil for another 10 minutes, add more angel-purified or holy water. Let sit. Then add a touch of water mana or three handfuls of pure mana.]
Fuck. By leaving this potion uncreated, my developing pride as a potion maker felt damaged. Okay, to be honest, I was also afraid of fucking it up too many times and then having to painfully find the ingredients again. After all, things didn’t work out so well with the skeleton king’s dust. This also felt like one of those potions that had consequences for screwing things up, like with my attempt at infusing the power of my Dao with the energy potion.
I laid back, falling deeper into thought.
If I could crack the code, I should be able to create my very first original liquid of… something that may catch the interest of other potion makers and even alchemists. The hope would be for spirit coins, but gold could fund other things. Like buying standard materials for my apprentices. I would accomplish something soon or I’d pass out trying, dammit! This would not end up as an endless stream of me failing again and again, nor would I solely focus on being this town’s magical guardian.
You know, I’ve said this to Milia and Harmony before, but something felt off about the prices in this town. Shouldn’t inflation affect the entirety of a kingdom? Sure, I was looking to contribute a ton of supply to the mix, but would it matter? People were leaving, but plenty of minor nobles stayed.
My eyes widened. Well, I’d be lying if I hadn’t already suspected market price manipulation. As a shopkeep, I’d benefit from it should I start selling market goods. But from the perspective of a man wanting the town to actually grow, until things changed, I believed people would continue to leave. So the question was, why did prices drop a little? Perhaps people were comparing my heavily discounted potions to the goods of town to the mayor? Let’s say that was the case, then the only reason why one of the minor nobles didn’t send someone to burn down my shop was because they were afraid of the forest and my pets.
I crawled out of bed, allowing my thoughts to drift to what we discovered the prior night. Wolverine followed me. In addition to sects standing at the forefront of magic, there were also academies. However, I was pretty sure they’d be just as formidable as the sects. The two organizations were very similar. But they also weren’t cults. Both had a power structure. For sects, the patriarchs ran things, while academies had headmasters. Master magicians, being extremely rare, held a special position among everyone. Only three openly identified themselves, snatching power, but… that person running the adventurer’s den. The maid. Who the hell was she?
Well, there were a few that had matriarchs instead, come to think of it. Like the Valkyrie Sect. Another thing I couldn’t help but wonder about was the criteria for founding an academy. What if I accidentally started one without noticing?
What if… I pushed toward this eventually? Or at the very least, fixed our schooling situation. There may be kid in the picture one day. Fuck, if I had artistic talents, I’d draw as many comics and manga as possible for the kid, get him or her initiated into awesomeness properly.
I hoped they wouldn’t be into swords, though. I’d be damned if my son or daughter became Kiroto or Asuna. The hero was pretty much a spellsword himself and sure, a cheat potion maker wasn’t anything creative either, at least I had the chance to unlock greatness. Or blow myself the fuck up.
Seriously, accidentally summoning a fucking dragon. I actually found myself chuckling at the absurdity as I joined my fiancée for breakfast. Cheetara meowed before devouring her fish.
“Good morning to you too, Cheetara,” I said. “Milia, lovely as ever; blueberry pie isn’t a breakfast food.”
The dryad blushed. “What blueberry pie?”
“There’s a bit on the side of your lip,” I said, then kissed it off.
I wanted to punch myself for not being smooth and saying something clever, maybe rip off a cool one-liner from a movie. Dammit, this was what happened when you spent too much time working at Home Depot. Not that I hated working there.
A little after breakfast and stretches, the apprentices arrived. I nodded at them for walking here together. They were listening after all. In fact, they all chatted among each other before entering the shop.
Lucas the half-dwarf, Mandi a non-magician, and Harmony, a reborn magician. I had somewhat high hopes for them. We needed a less human individual to round this out, although I doubted it’d be another apprentice.
They greeted us upon entry, Mandi making sure to hug the hell out of everyone. She lingered too long on me, which prompted a light bonk from Milia. I chuckled, shaking my head, figuring it was just how the teenager interacted with people she looked up to. Harmony’s brief glare and pout at her probably meant something, but there were too many things to do to care.
Cheetara ended up joining me in the lab, riding my shoulder, of course. I pulled the red cube from my storage ring, activating it and glancing at the available options.
[Current options. Buildings. Tools. Garden. Forges. Equipment and Devices.]
“Let’s see, I’ve already gone through buildings and equipment,” I said. “Wait a fucking minute, the Buildings option had an E-ranked mana forge, but forges is its own category.”
Cheetara meowed in reply, almost seeming to shrug. I shrugged back. “I guess there’s only one thing to do, Cheetara.”
She meowed, as if saying, “Select it.”
And so I selected the forges option, knowing damn well I likely couldn’t afford anything from it. The system’s prices were fucking highway robbery. I wondered how many people who got sent to other worlds dealt with it.
[Forges. Currently unlocked:
1. Basic Blacksmithing Forge. Price: 2 spirit coins.
2. Advanced Blacksmithing Forge. Price: 10,000 spirit coins + Basic Blacksmithing Forge that has been used for at least 1 month.
3. Midgard Forge. Price: 10,000,000 spirit coins.
4. Satovian Forge. Price: 50,000,000 spirit coins + Midgard Forge.
5. Heavenly Forge. Price: 5 heavenly spirit coins. This price is reduced to 100,000,000 spirit coins if you possess a Mana Forge.]
I suppressed the sudden urge to bang my head against the wall. Another currency was one thing. I’m sure kingdoms had multiple ways of trading. But a super version of the already difficult to obtain spirit coins was the last thing I wanted to deal with. Maybe they were rewarded to the one person that defeated an S-rank dungeon.
Closing the window, I selected tools.
[Tools. Currently unlocked:
1. Dungeon Detector. Price: 30 spirit coins.
2. Heavenly Blacksmithing Tools. Price: 50 spirit coins, requires a good forge.
3. Gadget Assist Pixie. Price: 80 spirit coins.
4. D-ranked Mana Striker Device. Price: 100,000 spirit coins.
5. D-ranked Oracle Spirit Stone. Price: 150,000 spirit coins and one C-ranked or higher standard mana stone.
6. Mana Steam Engine. Price: 395,000,000 spirit coins.]
I needed to figure out how to unlock more tools; however, I was interested in just about everything it had to offer. The pixie was an obvious clue to help Mandi out. With a dungeon detector, we could map out as many dungeons as possible in the area. Although I wouldn’t count on being able to secure them to rent out to people.
The S-ranked dungeon maybe, but that’d indirectly make me responsible for their deaths. Even if I had them sign a waiver, sleeping at night wouldn’t be possible. The obvious conclusion to the problem was to have extremely strict requirements. The downside to that was attracting those kinds of people.
What was to stop them from just annihilating me and the town?
I selected the last option, deciding to finally get a scope of the special system I had in my hand.
[Garden. Currently unlocked:
1. Upgrade to Garden of Eden. Price: System error.
2. Upgrade to Garden of Yggdrasill. Price: System error. You are not prepared to confront Yggdrasill.
3. Upgrade to Heavenly Garden of the Dao. Price: System error. You are too weak and poor.]
I almost blew a gasket at what I hoped to be the most easygoing of the options. Annoyed with what was essentially the ruthless truth of the system, I dismissed the prompts. Finding myself a good corner, I sat down and meditated, pondering on the Dao of Creation. Cheetara curled up next to me. Somehow, I could tell the kitten was meditating too.
Drew Starrigon, third son of Duke Starrigon, opened his eyes from meditation, haggard, but still filled with enough anger to glare at his jailer.
“Hey ungrateful brat, I need to report back to the Lord Ruler,” he said for the third time this day. “You know my position and what happened was just the collateral damage of my job.”
The hero, Ramon Thunderblade, ignored Drew, lost in his own meditation. Apparently guarding Drew and sending away the town guard was the perfect time for him to increase his strength. He apparently held a high regard for the potion maker. In fact, everyone in town did. It pissed Drew off to be ignored in favor of some peasant mixing chemicals that would one day blow himself up or poison the town.
Drew looked down at his anti-mana handcuffs and sighed. What an irony. His family owned the company that produced them. If they weren’t able to neutralize defiant magicians, then his family wouldn’t be so rich. They’d be a mockery.
I can’t believe I’m in this situation, Drew thought. The Hidden Demon faction from the Crimson Sect somehow failed, but how? They were stronger than the hero’s party. They were certainly stronger than that wolf and the cat, or he wouldn’t have bothered summoning them. The faction was expensive, after all.
He truly had no options thanks to this mysterious interferer. Was it the potion maker giving the hero’s party the strength to defeat members of a powerful sect? Not that they were high rankers, other than the officer, but not even the hero’s party should’ve been a match. The thought of this loss almost spiraled Drew into madness.
“Let me out of here!” he yelled. “My father will hear of this. I’ve been in here for days! Let me out already. I’ll go home!”
But no matter how much he demanded his release, even begged, no one answered. He’d received his due three meals by a plain-looking servant, a new chamber pot, and watched other unlucky jailed bastards get released. Due to being a magician, Drew would have to wait for the kingdom guards to arrive and escort him to a court.
The miserable failures of the Crimson Sect were supposed to pretend to be these guards, setting up a decoy courtesan brigade to delay the real soldiers. How could this have gone so wrong?
“I will kill you, potion maker,” Drew yelled internally. “Even if you flee, I’ll follow you to the ends of this land just to kill you.”
Drew briefly thought about saying the Peace Spawner’s name but thought better of it. He wouldn’t be able to guarantee his own damn safety should he summon the harbinger of evil.
He thought about requesting a message to be sent to his father, only to change his mind on that front too. That’d be almost as bad as summoning the Peace Spawner.
An hour later, I found myself amazed as I snapped out of a meditative state. I only knew an hour had passed because Harmony snapped at me.
“Wanda’s ass, what are you doing? We need your mana for the potions.”
I almost considered bringing up my motto—giving a fuck cost too much energy—but the blue-haired teenager had a point. Money didn’t grow on trees. The demand of taxes didn’t stop because one chose to take a day off from their job.
I would be that guy getting sent to another world only to find out I still had to pay taxes. Goddammit.
It took only a second or two to add the mana to the potions and soon, they were bottled and ready to be sold.
The market prices were already quite high, so the people weren’t necessarily getting spoiled from my maximum quality potions.
[Your disposition with the town of Kyushu continues to increase daily. By foolishly taking a hit with your profits, you have gained a very positive reputation. Keep it up and you may accidentally find yourself lord of the town.]
System, I’m not trying to be lord of the town, just a potion maker, I thought. No response came, of course. That made me a little nervous, but even I doubted the system would force me into politics. It didn’t force me into the hero class, after all. It was harsh, but not unreasonable, right?
That’d be the only somewhat nice thing I’d say about the bastard universe.
“The guy bringing the animals should be here today, right?” I asked Mandi.
Mandi nodded. “Any time now. After you beat up that hallow, I doubt the road has anything dangerous. Not even a wolf.”
I only stared blankly at the innocently smiling girl before moving behind the counter. Noticing she was studying the book I gave her while we waited for the first customer, I couldn’t help but nod in approval. Lucas didn’t bring his hammer, understandably, but he’d likely want to get some practice in soon. He and Harmony meditated, drawing in their preferred mana types until the presence of a customer opened their eyes. They were getting better. Even Milia winked at me, acknowledging the improvement.
I was by no means a veteran magician, but I certainly knew more than the teenagers at this point. This was a part of why I tolerated the hero’s party, barging over like they were old friends. In the dungeon, they taught me a lot, though Milia still gave me far more information than anyone I met.
It was almost as if Milia had gone adventuring at one point. From her perfect control of her weapon, her movements, her vigilance during our dungeon runs. She truly knew what she was doing.
Well, it wasn’t like I asked about it, and now wasn’t the time.
“Welcome to the shop, what can I get you?” I asked Tom’s wife.
She ordered two health potions, general medicine, and even a speed potion. Her eyes lingered on the Heaven’s Tears too long, examining the description. She flinched at the price. “Oh my, I can only imagine the intensity of such an expensive item,” she said. “Good luck with its sale.”
Later that day, just a few minutes before I planned to close the shop down for a lunch break, I sensed a presence approaching from the direction of the village. I stepped outside, drank a potion of eagle sight, and examined the approaching person.
It was a tan, lean man with… wolf-like ears and a wolf tail. Other than those odd features, he looked no different than any human, standing taller than even me at six feet three inches or so. A beastkin. Neat.
He had something strapped to his back, but that wasn’t what made me smile. Our barn would finally have animals! Two cows, one bull, a few chickens, a rooster, pigs, and two duck-like birds with multicolored feathers softly glowing with aura. A quick analyze revealed them as elicrones.
“He’s finally here,” Mandi said.
I wanted to do a dance but held back on account of not wanting to look like a complete idiot in front of our delivery guy.
“It looks like we’ll be eating good soon,” I said.
As he approached, I waved. Mandi waved far more eagerly.
“Sir Chenzu, you’ve finally made it,” she said as he approached, his own smile mirroring hers. A handsome wolf dude, I supposed, dressed in decent dark robes. I sensed magic from him, but assumed it was because of his species.
“Greetings everyone,” he said. “I hope I’m not too late. I presume you’re Sir Nate?”
“The one and only,” I replied, taking out a sack of gold and tossing it to him. He caught it, making it disappear through the storage ring on his finger. “Thank you for making this delivery.”
“It is not a problem,” he said. “The hen house is in my storage ring. Just tell me where you’d like it.”
I turned to Harmony. “You’ll be in charge of the elicrones.”
She frowned.
I took the man toward a suitable location just a short distance away from Beakwing’s barn. Chenzu not only set up the henhouse, but he even erected a pre-built fence around it. It looked quite nice.
“Ah, now that should do,” he said. “I’d play a song of a completed job or the man who spent his gold on booze, but I have a rather serious question, Sir scary master magician.”
I eyed him, keeping my expression neutral.
“What would you like to know, friend?” I asked, voice still pleasant.
His expression went serious for a moment then he bowed deeply. “I’d like a job as a farmhand!”
My eyes widened.
“Don’t worry about providing a place, I can stay at the inn until buying myself a home,” he added. “I have a friend here who can help me with that.”
A farmhand. Someone to make my life so much easier that I wouldn’t need to worry about the stumbling of the teenagers. Not that I planned to let them off so easily. Truthfully, I could do everything myself, but it’d take fucking forever and I had a shop to run.
“Give me a sec, let me run it through my betrothed,” I said, turning to Milia. I motioned for her to join me inside. “Harmony, come. I’ve got a question for you too.”
Mandi and Lucas kept Chenzu occupied.
“What’s the matter?” Milia asked.
“How much should I pay the farmhand?” I asked. “Given Mandi’s reaction, she knows and loves the guy, but I’ll have Wolverine keep an eye on him just in case.”
Milia nodded. “He’s making a good impression.”
Chenzu had taken out his lute and begun to play a catchy song, likely convinced by the redhead.
“Perhaps,” I said, smiling and trying and failing not to tap my feet to the music.
