Research (3)
After the meal, I resumed my experiments.
Mixing blood and water half and half had failed as well. Should I try lowering the concentration of troll blood even further?
This time I combined them with only a quarter of the blood.
"Failed again...."
Was troll blood simply not the answer? I kept reducing the concentration and trying again, but failure followed failure. The results lost more and more of their elasticity, turning into thin liquids that seemed to give off a nauseating smell.
Just now, only five drops of actual blood had gone in, and the combination still failed. It really did seem that mixing in troll blood was the problem.
"Do I need something like a neutralizing agent...?"
It had been the same when combining Scrap Iron. Maybe what I needed wasn't just any medium, but a special one?
Should I try the Attunement Agent I'd discovered while making Scrap Iron? I didn't have much troll blood left, so I needed to attempt something different.
"Young Master, could you get me some sand?"
"Sand?"
"Yes — fine sand, no stones. I don't need a lot."
"I'll go get some."
He left at once without a word of complaint.... It would have been better if I'd gone myself, but I ought to accept help while I still had the luxury.
I tried combining ointment with just a single drop of troll blood.
This time the reaction was different from every previous attempt. The distinctive phenomenon that appears when a combination succeeds began to show itself. A force acted on the contents, mixing them together and drawing forth light.
"Oh — could this be a success?"
But only one drop of troll blood had gone in. Percentage-wise, it wouldn't even be one percent. Would there be any effect at all?
I continued the combination for now. Rainbow light filled the room, announcing success, and I quickly checked the result inside the pot.
"This is...."
Viscosity, form, color, even the smell — all of it was a familiar product.
"It's just regular ointment."
"Did the combination succeed?"
"Oh, you're back?"
The Young Master had brought the sand in a pouch.
"Yes, but it doesn't seem to have any special effect."
No matter how I looked at it, it was ordinary ointment. Less than one percent troll blood apparently hadn't made much of an impact.
"And I can't even test the effect...."
It really was just ointment. I transferred the result into an empty wooden barrel and marked the lid.
"What are you planning to make with the sand?"
I opened the pouch and checked its condition. Hmm — fine. Soft sand, just as I'd wanted.
"This must have been hard to collect?"
"It was a bit of a hassle."
Filtering out stones and wood chips had been the hard part, he said....
"Thank you for the hard work."
"Not at all. I'm getting a good show out of it, after all."
Was watching me research entertaining? It bothered me a little, but time was too precious, so I decided to focus on the experiment. I mixed fine sand and water to combine an Attunement Agent. Once the yellow-glowing water was complete, I transferred it to a bowl.
"This isn't just muddy water, is it?"
"No. It's a special medium used for combining."
The Young Master looked at the result with curious eyes.
"Huh. Truly fascinating."
I shrugged.
What I was about to do wasn't all that different from before. I was simply using Attunement Agent as the medium instead of water. This was a combination I hadn't even tried back in the village, so I felt a mix of slight tension and anticipation. First, I attempted to combine the Attunement Agent with medicinal herbs.
"Hmm...."
The moment I started, I could tell it would fail. So Attunement Agent alone wasn't enough?
Now I had three options: mix in water, mix in troll blood, or mix all three — blood, water, and Attunement Agent.
"What should I try first?"
"Are you thinking of mixing water and blood?"
"Yes."
"I believe it would be better not to mix in the blood."
"Is that so?"
Why?
"I've heard that among mages, there are those who use monster blood."
I decided to listen seriously to the Young Master's account this time. My own knowledge was biased and tangled with memories from my past life, so my common sense and information didn't match this world — they were all jumbled together. My thoughts and knowledge might not align with this world's common sense at all.
"And so?"
"Ahem. Mages usually use blood when inscribing magic circles, I'm told."
Blood naturally contains mana, so it's good for that, or something of the sort?
"Is that so?"
"And magic that uses blood generally has a poor reputation."
Ah — could black magic exist in this world too?
"Most of them are magics used for negative purposes."
"Like curses?"
"Yes. Especially magics that use human blood."
Even so, there weren't many substitutes for blood, so it seemed quite a few people still used it quietly.
"Hmm... then, should I not use blood...."
"But why are you using troll blood?"
"Uh... trolls have excellent regenerative power, right? I'm using it hoping that regenerative power gets infused into the result."
"So there was a reason."
In the Young Master's eyes, using blood had clearly seemed negative. Then should I try without the troll blood? For now, I mixed Attunement Agent and water to manufacture ointment.
Of course, it failed....
Adjusting the ratios and combining again and again, time flew by.
"Hah. There's no answer."
My eyes ached and I was exhausted, so I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
"Perhaps you should rest a bit? Everyone is worried."
"I suppose I should."
I got up casually and left the room.
"Finally out."
"Sis? What's wrong?"
My sister and Sister Mary's expressions didn't look good.
"Um, well...."
Sister Mary hesitated, then opened her mouth.
"They're telling us to leave quickly."
"Did you hear a reason?"
My sister and Sister Mary shook their heads. Apparently they hadn't even been told why. What had happened? Had they been stabbed in the back by adventurers before?
"Ha. And here I was hoping to experiment comfortably. So much for that."
I'd started researching and wanted to take it a bit leisurely, but them constantly acting like they wanted us gone was irritating.
"They won't even sell us food, so even if we wanted to stay long, it'd be hard."
We had some provisions, but not enough to live comfortably.
"We could go to the mountain and forage."
The Young Master's suggestion wasn't impossible. For a few days we could hunt animals and pick mushrooms and the like....
"Forget it. If they hate us that much, it's easier to just leave."
Was there any need to stubbornly stick around?
"That's true as well."
I was a little curious about the reason, but weren't these people we'd never see again anyway?
"Ugh. Now I'm just in a bad mood for nothing."
"More importantly, what will you do with this?"
Sister Mary held out a thoroughly washed wild ginseng.
"Ah, right — we had this."
"There are two ways to eat it...."
First, chew it raw. Chewing it slowly and thoroughly in the mouth lets the enzymes in saliva work, supposedly improving absorption of its effects. Second, decoct it — boil it into a medicinal tea. Some people insisted that thoroughly boiling it down into a concentrated extract was the real way.
"We'll decoct the stem and leaves, and eat the root raw."
"Are we splitting this?"
"Wouldn't that be best?"
I first separated the stem and leaves and steeped them as tea, then roughly divided the root into four pieces. It was quite large, so each piece was about the size of a thumb.
"Alright, everyone eat."
I handed each person a piece of root and tea steeped from the stem and leaves.
"Thank you for the meal."
The Young Master expressed his gratitude and popped the wild ginseng into his mouth in one go. Seeing that, I felt reassured and ate mine as well.
The moment I chewed the wild ginseng, a bitterness sharp enough to numb my tongue hit me. I endured it and chewed thoroughly. Was it because of the size? Or because it was an old ginseng? It was incredibly bitter. I endured and endured a bitterness that nearly brought tears to my eyes.
Looking at the others, they all seemed to be in a similar state. After thoroughly chewing and gulping down the ginseng, we drank the tea as a palate cleanser — but that was bitter too.... Still, there was a sensation of the mouth being refreshed.
"Does it feel like it's having some effect?"
I still couldn't feel any medicinal kick.
"Yes, it seems to be coming on."
The Young Master suddenly put on a serious expression, moved to a corner, and plopped down. What was going on? My sister was also sitting in a chair with her eyes closed.
"Do they have some different effect over there?"
"Who knows."
"Then I'll go finish my experiments."
"I'll help you from now on."
Sister Mary tried to follow, so I stopped her.
"Look after those two. It seems important."
"But...."
"If I leave them like this, I'll be too distracted to experiment."
Sister Mary nodded with a somewhat sorrowful expression.
"I'm entrusting them to you because you're Mary."
"Understood."
Perhaps taking my words as a command, formal speech came out for a moment. Leaving the two with Sister Mary, I went straight back to experiment.
Should I continue from earlier? The Young Master had viewed using blood negatively, but I still wanted to try it.
"I think I need to use a different Attunement Agent too...."
This yellow Attunement Agent was probably Earth attribute. I really needed to make Attunement Agents of other attributes as well....
I mixed water, Attunement Agent, and troll blood in a 1:1:1 ratio and attempted the combination. Somehow I felt it would fail even as I tried. This was part of the trial and error, right?
The result was failure, as expected....
Next I changed the ratio and reduced the troll blood, but the same result — failure, failure, failure.
"Looks like using blood really isn't the answer...."
I'd almost used up all the troll blood anyway, so should I try combining without it? But I'd almost used up the Attunement Agent too, and I was out of medicinal herbs......
"Did I waste too much?"
Having stayed in one posture for so long, my body was stiff, so I got up and stretched. Then I went outside to check on the situation.
"My sister and the Young Master...."
Still meditating.
"What on earth is this?"
Was the wild ginseng the problem? As time passed, vitality was surging through my body. But that was about it, wasn't it?
"What will you do?"
"I'll just keep experimenting. Call me if something comes up."
I went back into the room and resumed experiments. Since I was out of medicinal herbs, should I try combining poison?
"With limited materials, I need to conserve."
The manufacturing method for refined poison is a combination of poisonous herbs and water. Adding poisonous mushrooms can increase the toxicity. But for an experiment, did I need to use poisonous mushrooms too? More materials meant it took longer, but the effect became stronger. The consumption of materials and Holy Power was greater accordingly.
"Hmm...."
What attribute would poisonous herbs be? Earth? Wind? Fire? Definitely not Water, so one of the three. But Wind somehow didn't feel right.
"Earth attribute is the most likely...."
Then wouldn't it work well with the yellow Attunement Agent?
"Huh?"
Having made the Attunement Agent, I hadn't had time to research further, so this was a thought that only now occurred to me. Wasn't it possible?
An idea suddenly flashed through my mind. Poisonous herbs presumed to be Earth attribute, Attunement Agent confirmed as Earth attribute....
Adding the same attribute to amplify the power! This was a guaranteed success!
I tried combining the poisonous herbs with the Attunement Agent. The moment the combination began, a reaction appeared that told me this had succeeded — the way the materials mixed and melted together, the sensation of power being properly injected.
"But isn't this just regular poison?"
I pushed that thought aside and continued combining.... After thirty minutes, a small pill remained in the pot along with rainbow light.
Normally when manufacturing poison, it came out in liquid form?
"Is it because I used the Attunement Agent?"
I was doubtful whether this was even poison. No — I'd used poisonous herbs, so it had to be poison, right?
Without caution, I picked up the finished product with my bare hand. That moment, a tingling sensation hit my fingertip.
"So it is poison?"
I calmly set the pill down and checked my finger. The tip had turned green. Even after wiping it with a cloth, it remained stained green — and the area was gradually expanding.
"Wh-what?!"
Was the poison spreading? The sensation at my fingertip was going numb, and pain spread as time passed. Startled, I used Holy Magic detoxification, and the green invading my finger faded away smoothly.
"Whoa...."
The toxicity was this strong? Even a deadly poison made by combining poisonous mushrooms and poisonous herbs together probably wouldn't be this bad. And the transmission power of refined poison made from ordinary poisonous herbs wasn't this strong.
But this poison pill? The moment it touched skin, the toxicity transferred and began to spread. The toxicity itself wasn't enormously strong, but the spreading speed was astonishing.
"What would happen if I ate this?"
Unable to restrain my curiosity, I lightly licked the poison pill. That moment, my tongue seemed to go numb and throbbed with a stinging pain. I used detoxification immediately, but residual pain left a stinging sensation.
"Well, a success is a success...."
Mixing Attunement Agent with poison had created a poison pill. I'd just tried it on a whim, and it succeeded....
"This is why I can never stop researching."