Imanaged to talk a little sense into Gwendolyn, getting them to allow the mayor to cosign the document. And just like that, the Wingston family financed the city. Apparently their haul from the Black Cross was so much that they considered removing the gold coins from circulation, mostly to not be suspected of anything. So, in essence, Kyushu received funding through blood money. Somewhat.
The mayor invited the nobles to dinner and arranged for them to spend the night in a private house. They planned to set off in the morning, as they had another place to visit before heading home.
I headed into the lab the moment I got back to the shop and dumped a few of the fruits on the main table. Time for trial and error.
First, I glanced at the descriptions of everything, hoping to gain a little insight, hints for taking the next step. I simply could not expect the system to help me out with even the slightest thing. It didn’t so much as tell me how to earn the next special potions.
[Heavenly Potion Making Set. Item rank: S. Item quality: Superior. Excellent quality bottles and linked to the MMABS for more production at the cost of spirit coins. With substances packaged in this set, you may find it easier to work with exotic materials and even monster samples. It is recommended to use a magic cauldron.]
[Nature’s Heart Magic Cauldron. Item rank: S. Item quality: Superior. Owner: Nate Sullivan. A cauldron capable of handling and reshaping even the most stubborn ingredients. This is also perfect for pill creation. Effects may rise beyond expectations for the items used in here.]
[Fruit of Elating Wonders. Item rank: B. Item quality: Superior. The fruit, while safe for human consumption, gives no benefits. A magic chef can make it useful for both spirit beasts and magical beasts. A superior magic chef can make it useful for humanoid beings.]
Pill creation! I totally forgot about that. No, I didn’t want to directly create those, detouring from my already-difficult class, but if I could convince Harmony to add this to her lessons, we’d be unstoppable. She’d get a start at a younger age, right?
“Harmony!” I called. Moments later, she entered. Cheetara hopped from her shoulder to mine, looking down at the fruit with a curious gaze. She even swatted at it when I lifted it up to her.
“Did you find out anything about the fruit?” the blue-haired girl asked. She took a seat in one of the chairs.
“Not yet,” I replied, then turned to look at her. “I have an idea. Unless you’ve finally dropped the stubbornness and have come up with a better path?”
Judging by the glare and determination in those eyes, the teenager hadn’t changed her mind in the slightest. I could make a bad angst joke here, but her willpower came from a place that had nothing to do with being troubled. I think. Maybe after a few years of getting to know the brat, I’d look back and understand. “What do you know about pills? And no, I’m not referring to drugs or anything bad. I mean of the magical variety.”
“I don’t know much about them, except from a little reading and rumors,” Harmony said. “They’re like your potions in a way, but with various differences. Like there are no pills that can summon dragons or give you night vision.”
“Pills are mostly used for healing, improving your cultivation, assistance with body purification or something like that, I can’t remember the exact wording of that paragraph,” I said. “There are some capable of curing poisons, but potions are far superior in that regard. Potions are better with healing too.”
“Why are you asking me this?” Harmony asked, likely preparing for a verbal battle.
“Because I want you to add this to your path,” I replied. She seemed taken aback, having the fight ripped from her. “Becoming a potion maker is only the tip of the iceberg.”
“The tip of the what?”
“Fucking idioms,” I said. “Anyway, in order to follow this path, you’ll need to form something unique about yourself. Anyone can sling magic balls, toss ingredients into a cauldron, and call it a day. However, ever since I arrived here, there has been no talk of pills.”
“You can get them from the capital,” Harmony said. “On account of having bags of gold. No one wants to compete with the monopoly of House Sigil. They control most of the common resources needed to produce them. With the capital backing the—”
“I’d like you to be the first to challenge them,” I interrupted. “You’re my apprentice, right? We take shit from no one, produce the best of the best products. Let’s outperform any asshole that wants to claim everything for themselves.”
Harmony thought over my words for a while, her expression troubled.
“As for the materials to get started, well, you’d better make those dungeon dives count,” I said, smiling wryly.
“Mandi’s right. You truly are a demon,” Harmony said, voice tired.
“The path of magic isn’t supposed to be easy, right?” I said, chuckling. “I learned that the hard way as Andros kicked the crap out of me.”
I froze as Harmony’s aura briefly spiked ridiculously high, but when I turned back to look at her, everything seemed calm.
“I wonder what these things taste like,” I mused aloud after deciding not to probe into that aura outburst. “I’d better wash this first. Want to try one?”
“Are they really safe to eat?” Harmony asked.
“They are, but without a magic chef to refine them, they’ll give us no benefits,” I replied.
As Harmony watched her master, who radiated with invisible impossible aura, walk away, she mentally chastised herself for being such a child. She wasn’t present for the Black Knight fight and knew she’d probably have gotten in the way, but still hated being so powerless to help, which was why she pushed herself.
If Nate could come to town with nothing and form it into a hidden gem of a potion shop, then she could stop with her arrogance. There was a lot to learn from him and thankfully, the young woman finally beat away any childish jealousy of Milia. Her feelings were of admiration and, really, jealousy of Nate for being able to accomplish things. Whereas she didn’t so much as know where to begin with her life.
She knew she owed a debt that she couldn’t repay, not that Nate would allow it. Pill creation…
The idea of competing with House Sigil felt insane, preposterous, foolish. No… That was exactly what she should do. If she didn’t take any risks on the road of pushing herself, Harmony wouldn’t stand out.
Lucas had blacksmithing, Mandi created gadgets. Harmony’s addition to the secondary skill would be something that most people were afraid to do. Her eyes widened. Just what could this man be planning for them? Steeling her resolve, she made the decision to not only create the magic pills but excel at it. Now where could she find a book?
After washing the fruit, I headed back into the lab to see Harmony still sitting, petting Wolverine.
“Hey, that’s my best buddy,” I said, grinning. Wolverine sat, his tail wagging. It made me wonder if he had smelled the strange fruit and entered the lab out of curiosity.
I dashed into the kitchen, grabbed a clean cutting board, and returned to the lab. A few slices later and Harmony, Wolverine, Cheetara, and I took the first bite.
“Milia, do you want to try the fruit?” I called.
I motioned for everyone to clear up their scrunched-up faces.
“Don’t think you’ll be able to trick me into eating that,” the dryad said as she walked in moments later. “You’re supposed to cook it first. Then it becomes quite sweet. I thought you knew that, since you mentioned finding a magical chef to make the fruit beneficial.”
“I still wanted to try it raw,” I said. Wolverine groaned.
Thankfully I cut everyone very small pieces, so no one complained.
I experimented for a few hours with the fruit, but the only thing I could scrape together was pure concentrated sour. For now, I’d just let them stay preserved in the storage ring until finding a magic chef. Instead, I made shadow potions, though I only managed to create a few.
I stepped outside and took a moment to admire the teens practicing their craft. Lucas was forging something at the blacksmith, but for some reason, not a single sound escaped from it.
“Isn’t it great, Sir Nate?” Opal asked, slamming into me with mania. “Using only a lowly D-ranked base, we cranked that blubber up to prevent all material sound from leaking out of the noisy forge. But the red-haired dwarf boy can still talk to us. Not that I recommend disturbing him. He’s had some insight while banging that hammer.”
I peeled the gadget pixie off my face. “So how are things? You’re fine with human food?”
“Food? Oh that, I only require fruit, mana, and water. There’s plenty of that around,” Opal said. “The pixies in the forest are hospitable too. Having a dryad as queen sounds sweeeeet! If only my home forest was so lucky.” She fixed me with a wide-eyed gaze, then a grin. “You should tell Milia to conquer our forest! Then give me special treatment. That’d show those normal brains not to laugh at me just because I’m D-ranked.”
I sighed. “Just get over your inferiority complex already.”
Mandi left a wooden tinkering table she’d set up to join us.
“You’re progressing a hell of lot faster than I’d thought possible,” I said. “Magic sound-blocking devices?”
“It’s quite complex at first, but Opal taught me… Drilled the instructions, formulas, and even theories into my head,” Mandi said. “It felt like having tutoring all over again. She’s not even allowed to make something herself, just assist.”
“If I do it for you, you’ll never learn,” Opal said, proud smile on her face. “You’re Sir Nate’s apprentice, a real master magician who doesn’t understand the complexity of his own power. A good thing too. If he grew too strong quickly, standing next to him would get difficult. Well… I’m sure he’d have mastered aura control by then. Or drink an unpleasant potion for it.”
“You sure talk a lot for—”
Opal smashed back into my face again, her gaze full of mania. “Sir Nate, Sir Nate-Nate-Nate! Mandi’s a genius. In fact, your apprentices are all geniuses. But they’re also severely lacking. One day, it will be possible for Mandi to create…” She paused for a dramatic effect, I could tell by the way she narrowed her eyes, and rubbed her hands together. “The last item in the book.”
“What’s the last item?” I asked, curious.
“That is an excellent question, yet the mystery continues to plague us,” Opal said. “It’s covered with a spell that will only deactivate when its owner is ready and worthy.”
Mandi sighed. “It’s a blurry page that will almost blind you if you stare at it too long. I’ll have to study and practice more. It could take months, years, who knows.”
“Keep it up,” I told her, still feeling strange about the crazy possibility that I somehow picked up geniuses. I knew their potential was high, especially in comparison to the weaklings I stopped bullying the town when I first arrived, but geniuses? I wasn’t so sure about that. Even I knew that geniuses were not only extremely rare, but could perform crazy feats with little effort. Mandi, for one, didn’t even have a core, relying on external mana. “Hey, Opal. See the mana gathering device?”
“Yes-yes-yes, I’ve noticed it already and that’s what we used to power the sound buffer,” Opal said, smashing into my face again, hugging it tightly. I resisted the urge to swat and squish her, instead opting to peel the overexcited pixie away.
“Stop doing that or I’ll start carrying bug spray,” I said.
“Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t help but be proud of pulling off things from such a book already,” Opal said, flying around in a manner that made me wonder if she secretly possessed a storage device crammed with energy drinks. “Oh, I’m so glad I received this summon! I can already feel my body preparing itself to rank up and I’m not even interested in such a thing. As long as Mandi allows me to accompany her, I’ll help push her to even the mythical gadgetmancer. If they actually exist.”
“You mean technomancer?” I asked.
“Te-techno what?”
“Never mind,” I said. “What’s a gadgetmancer?”
“A magician that specializes in gadgets, of course,” Opal said.
Mandi rolled her eyes. “She made that up. But… even if I form a core, I’d love to push my ability to create things as far as possible. The core will allow me to infuse things with my own magic. If I can figure out how to create that flying pole from the stories…”
The redhead began to mutter to herself while assembling pieces of metal, wood, and what appeared to be a wooden… rune together. The pixie used her magic like a screwdriver or mender. Mandi jotted down a bunch of what looked like equations in a notebook. “These circuits are a pain in the… Just a little more.”
Leaving the redhead and Opal to their devices, I entered the spiritual room. I figured now was a good as time as any to test this thing out. Sitting down on a mat, I closed my eyes, entering the meditative state, though not before recalling the spiritual room’s description. Okay, I didn’t recall it, I read it from the system menu. Thank fuck it kept at least some logs.
[F-ranked Spiritual Room. Item rank: AAA. Item value: Extraordinary. Meditation in this room will greatly boost all Daos, or connect those lacking a Dao. At F-rank, mana cultivation is increased by 5%. Chance for enlightenment at F-rank increases to 1%. Upgrade for increased boosts, enhanced or added features. Upgrade price: 150,000 spirit coins and 1 angel summoning potion. Good luck with that!]
I didn’t expect any enlightenment or anything special on the first use and planned to just rest for a bit, mind on the Dao of Creation. There was so much to learn about the mysterious power. With a new damn near eternal lifespan, I had plenty of time to hopefully grasp the secrets behind it. Maybe at some point, I’d learn why I didn’t get kicked back to my world for refusing to jump headfirst into thousands of adventures, saving the people from God knows what for some reason.
Suddenly, I found myself pulled into a vision with the inability to escape. The first thing shown to me was a ship on a dark and stormy night. It didn’t take me long to figure out that they were pirates. The somewhat rowdy atmosphere gave that away.
A man whose features I couldn’t see, perhaps a blond, was killed by another pirate, his body tossed into the sea like garbage.
“Farewell, Yomi. I’m the pirate king now,” said a sinister voice. “Nariah will be mine and she will give birth to sons capable of conquering the oceans you claimed in your lifetime.”
I felt Yomi’s emotions and thoughts at that moment. Betrayal by someone like a brother to him, angry at himself for being so soft on his crew, angry at himself for letting his guard down, angry at himself for leaving his wife behind to weep.
Thankfully the vision cut out the moment the other man started toward the room of what was likely Yomi’s wife. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to know. One more emotion revealed that his wife, however, was secretly a fire-based magician. Unfortunately, his betrayer that he saw as a brother, his ex-best friend, was also a magician, though not as strong as Yomi. Just far more cunning, calculating, ruthless. The usual shitstorm you’d get from people like this.
[Fates intertwine…]
A new vision appeared and this time, it showed a kid escaping in the dead of the night after shaking off some freakishly strong girl. In fact, they appeared to be siblings.
The vision skipped ahead, probably a day or so, I wasn’t sure. However, I saw something shocking. A map. And Kyushu just happened to be written on it, circled.
Suddenly, the driver looked up, right at me, his mouth curling into a grin consisting of shark-like teeth. He had on some kind of tinted glasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes. His ears were pointed like an elf’s, hair black, and he gave off… somewhat of a no-fucks-given demeanor. Like life was funny to him.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, master magician. I kill enlightened who learn too much. Now be a good boy and begone. And don’t make this a habit. I’m the only nice one, after all.”
My vision abruptly ended as if the driver fucking shoved me back into my body. So many chills. That guy held enough… something within, but it was impossible to get any vibes about him, other than extreme danger.
The sad part was that they were headed this way by lightning horse and would be in Kyushu soon.
The vision was a glimpse of the past! That fucking guy spoke to me from the past!
[Greater Vision achieved. No impurities present in your body due to unique mana.]
[Quest. Host. The opportunity for your shop to increase its ranking to D has arrived. Do not shun Alexander. Be careful of battling the driver. Reward: Shop rank increase quest and 1,000 spirit coins. Do not fail.]
I sat there dumbfounded. Judging by the events connected through the system, I figured this was likely just a one-time thing and the teenagers wouldn’t have to deal with it.
The kid… A shop quest. Oh shit. Was he that Alexander? All the circumstances pointed to this.
The system was bringing me another apprentice. But… what did he have to do with the pirate king? Could Alexander be his son? Or was there something more to this that only the kid himself could explain?
