Always Be Careful of Explosions
Once the destination had been set and the work laid out before me, all that remained was to prepare accordingly.
The goal was to sell potions on the black market.
I immediately set to work brewing.
The ingredients were a mix of items Aaron had given me and things I had bought cheaply after wandering through the shops on my own.
Back in the golden age, when alchemists were active, all of these ingredients had apparently been expensive. But in these current times, when non-alchemists ran around pulling scams, they had become relatively inexpensive materials.
In any case, they were easy enough for me to obtain.
Of course, they weren’t top-tier materials like the ones Aaron had prepared for me. But that also meant they were the kind of materials suited to me.
The finest ingredients Aaron had given me were not fitting for me now. It would be like hanging a pearl necklace on an orphan with four silver coins to her name. So it made more sense to use cheap materials and make potions out of them.
“Huh? I saw this being sold at the ingredient shop! It wasn’t super cheap? Five copper coins, I think. What’s it called?”
“Ice Crystal Herb. It’s a main ingredient in potions that treat bruises.”
“Making a potion for five copper coins... Well, then, what’s this? How much is it?”
“It’s called amber sap mucilage. It’s an ingredient used in scratch remedies. It speeds up skin regeneration, so it helps heal scraped skin. It was seventeen copper coins for a basket.”
“A recovery potion, no, no... the ingredients are this cheap? And this one? What’s this powder? It looks kind of scary.”
“It’s powder made by grinding redstone ore. If you spread it on the skin, it helps stop bleeding quickly.”
As Sera listened to my explanation, she went pale.
“...Uh? Redstone ore? Isn’t that the stone that’s supposed to make blood clot solid if it touches a wound wrong?”
“Yes. That’s how it stops bleeding.”
“No, then that just turns you into a corpse. If you cut off an arm or a leg, there’d be no blood at all, I bet.”
I had almost begun speaking in alchemist terms out of habit, but I decided to respect Sera’s completely innocent intelligence.
“You need to reduce the toxicity as much as possible. So this is less a potion and more like an ointment. If you ate it, it could probably treat internal injuries too, but then the efficiency would be terrible, so it’s better to drink a potion made specifically for internal wounds.”
“Wow... Lulu, you’re so cool.”
Sera’s eyes began to sparkle.
Apparently she saw me as gold coins.
“Sera, I’m not a gold coin.”
“But you’re Lulu, who gives birth to gold coins.”
“Does your world have a goose that lays golden eggs too?”
“Yeah, and it really does lay golden eggs.”
It wasn’t a metaphor. It was real.
“Then what do you do with the golden eggs?”
“They sell them, I guess?”
“How much can you buy them for?”
“Fifty gold coins. But even if you pay that much, raising them is apparently so difficult that almost nobody who tries to raise one to adulthood ever makes a single coin of profit.”
Fifty gold coins.
That was an absurdly expensive sum.
How many orphan Lulu’s could you buy with that?
“Where is it?”
“Silberia Kingdom.”
The kingdom built by elves.
It was also one of the places Aaron had told me, under no circumstances, to go.
“I want to see it.”
“Then we can go together next time!”
“All right.”
When it came to alchemy, gold was the obvious answer, wasn’t it?
The golden egg sounded like it would make a good ingredient.
“Ah... but if you go there, you might have to be a little careful.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the disciple of the Third Calamity...?”
“It looks like Master did something in Silberia Kingdom.”
“Uh... you don’t know? It’s a pretty famous... uh... event...”
“Yes. Please tell me.”
“He split the World Tree in half.”
The World Tree would be nothing more than a big tree to us, but to elves it was practically a god they worshipped.
And Aaron had split it.
Just imagining it was thrilling.
“Did he cut it vertically, or horizontally?”
“H-horizontally. But the part you’re curious about is weird, isn’t it?”
“If he cut it vertically, then he just wanted to cut it. If he cut it horizontally, then he cut it because he needed to. That’s the important part. By the way, if he cut it horizontally, then I suppose he used it as material.”
“Come to think of it, maybe...? No, hold on, thinking of the World Tree as alchemy material to begin with is weird. Is that alchemist thinking?”
“Everything in the world is divided into two categories. Alchemy materials, and things that have not yet become alchemy materials.”
After talking with me for a while, Sera eventually flung herself onto the bed.
“Talking to you makes me feel like my brain is going weird.”
It was only natural that a non-alchemist would struggle to accept the will of a sublime alchemist. It was like an ant trying to understand human language.
I could understand Sera perfectly.
“Please get some sleep so you won’t be tired tomorrow.”
“What about you? You’re not sleeping?”
“Yes. I’m used to staying up all night. I’ll sleep after I finish all this.”
“My friend’s staying up all night to work, and I’m not going to sleep? That makes no sense! I’ll keep you company! I can even be your assistant!”
I stared at Sera for a moment, then nodded.
“All right. Then I’d appreciate the help. Please bring me some Iron Thorn Fruit from over there.”
“Yep! This one, right? But does such cheap material really go into potions? What are you making?”
“It’s used for a strength-enhancing potion. It’s one of the ingredients in the potion you drank earlier.”
“Wait, that bottom-rank elixir was made with ingredients this cheap!? That’s the real magic, isn’t it?!”
“It’s not an elixir, it’s a potion. And it’s not magic, it’s alchemy.”
“It’s amazing either way! Come on, tell me what else I can help with!”
Proudly playing the role of my assistant, Sera lasted all of thirty minutes before proudly passing out.
“Sera, please get up onto the bed and sleep.”
“Rooooroooroo...”
After putting Sera onto the bed, I continued brewing by the moonlight pouring in from the window.
And then morning arrived.
The finished potions numbered 141 bottles.
*****
“W-wait.”
“Yes?”
“What did you just say?”
“A potion that replenishes blood. Vampires are said to love it most.”
Vampires used blood magic.
So they suffered from chronic low blood pressure.
Being nobility or having reached a higher level would apparently ease it, but even so, blood-replenishing potions were still a great help.
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“What, are you trying to start a war on the black market or something?”
“A war? This is a potion that saves people.”
“If this, the recovery potion, and the hemostatic potion can all be mixed together and drunk without side effects, then that’s basically the level of a bottom-rank elixir. If you sell this, you might really cause a huge disaster!”
Stopping blood, closing wounds, replenishing blood loss—wasn’t that exactly what a potion was supposed to do?
Yet Sera was reacting with such exaggerated alarm that I couldn’t help finding it strange.
Besides, calling a potion an elixir?
An elixir was something only a high-ranked alchemist could barely manage to make, after gathering all kinds of precious materials.
An elixir made that way could cure any disease and heal any wound.
Of course, it couldn’t revive someone whose death had already been decided, but it could even save someone who was only half-dead.
I’d heard that creating a truly perfect elixir required absurd ingredients like dragon god blood. But the dragon god had been killed by the First Calamity in some distant age.
In any case, although it was true that nobody could make the immortality elixir every alchemist dreamed of, an elixir was still an elixir.
So no one could dare assign a rank to it. Calling it low-grade or high-grade was an insult to the very concept.
“To call a mere potion an elixir... just how far have non-alchemists let potion quality fall?”
“No... isn’t this just common knowledge?”
“Come to think of it, maybe it was.”
-The quality of potions in this world is miserable right now. If it’s even half as good as the potions you make, bloodshed will break out all over the place. So be careful what you do. If necessary, I can even get you a book on common knowledge. Though I don’t know whether such a thing exists.
-No, it’s fine. I’ll be careful.
Suddenly, I remembered my conversation with Aaron.
At the time, I had postponed checking because I wasn’t especially curious about the ecology of non-alchemists, but Aaron had still told me that the state of potions was deplorable.
I just hadn’t expected it to be this deplorable.
“Then I won’t sell it. It would be a problem if a potion meant to save lives ended up killing people.”
“Yeah, that sounds best. But what’s this?”
“An explosion potion.”
“...If a potion explodes, shouldn’t you stop calling it a potion? And what if a potion meant to save people blows up?”
“It was made as a potion, so it’s a potion. And a potion only has to save the person who uses it.”
“...That’s not wrong, but then what is it? You’re selling this too? Lulu, do you know how many bounties were put out on the person who made this?”
It had been written in the book Gehrik gave me.
Thanks to memorizing all of it, answering wasn’t difficult.
“Two platinum coins.”
“Exactly! So why did you make it!”
“That’s why I wrote it here.”
[This product was manufactured for throwing only. Any use other than throwing is strictly prohibited.]
[If sealed at will, it is designed to explode exactly 15 seconds after the seal is removed. Secure a safe distance immediately upon opening.]
[The manufacturer bears no responsibility whatsoever for bodily or magical injuries caused by misuse outside the designated purpose or by handling outside specifications.]
“...Fifteen seconds? If I move it into another bottle, will it still explode?”
“Yes. I made it so it will definitely detonate when exposed to air beyond a certain threshold.”
“...How on earth do you even make something like this?”
Sera muttered to herself, then shook her head.
“Still, no.”
“All right.”
“What? Why did you agree so easily?”
“Because I didn’t make it to sell it.”
Sera’s eyes went wide.
She looked as if she was wondering what on earth I was talking about.
Then, after mulling over my answer, she gave me a look of utter disbelief and said, “Then why did you write a warning label on it?”
“For me to look at.”
“Why? If you made it, shouldn’t you know better than anyone?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s why sometimes I want to eat it. If I actually ate it and felt the taste in detail, I might be able to make a better explosion potion, but Master told me never to eat it.”
“Ah...”
Sera grabbed her forehead and staggered.
“A headache? Should I give you a pain-relief potion?”
“No, forget it. Potions are precious. Anyway, you’re not selling that, right?”
“Yes. Today I’ll only sell recovery potions and enhancement potions.”
“Good. Then how many bottles is that? One, two, three, four...”
“If you only count the recovery potions, there are forty-two bottles in total. The enhancement potions make thirty-eight. So, eighty bottles altogether.”
“Heh-heh-heh...”
Rubbing her hands together, Sera pointed outside.
“Let’s go! Starting today, we’re rich!”
“But where is the black market?”
“First we need to get an entry pass, right? I know how to get one, so just trust me!”
“Yes, I trust you.”
“Honestly. Lulu, you’d really be in trouble without me, you know that? Hm?”
*****
After going to get an entry pass and failing to return for five hours, Sera greeted me from prison.
“Lulu! You finally came to rescue me!!”
“I got caught too.”
Sera’s face fell.