Chapter 12. The Start of the Solo Run (3)
Chapter 12. The Start of the Solo Run (3)
4
"I-it's not much, but... please come in."
The pharmacist fumbled awkwardly as she led me inside.
The shop looked like a storm had swept through it.
"It really is shabby, though..."
She wasn't exaggerating.
Glass bottles lay shattered and scattered across the floor. A bookshelf had toppled over, spilling books everywhere. Dust drifting through the air was a bonus.
It was a complete and utter mess.
-Whoa.
The guardian spirit was impressed.
-I heard plenty of times in my life that I never cleaned up after myself, but this young lady's got me beat. Her hygiene standards are truly reassuring. Hey, do you seriously want to drink an elixir made by this girl?
"Um, are you really going to commission me for 20,000 gold worth of work...?"
As if they'd rehearsed it, the guardian spirit and the pharmacist asked at the same time.
I gave a wry smile.
"If you can't trust me, shall I pay in advance?"
"Th-that won't be necessary..."
The pharmacist waved her hands frantically, then stopped short.
"...No. I-if it's possible, then yes, in advance after all."
The pharmacist's face had gone completely red. She seemed ashamed just to be saying such a thing. Of course. Her finances must be so bad she couldn't even manage basic courtesy.
"Take as much money as you need from my vault. I'll let the Merchant Alliance know in advance."
"As much as I need..."
The pharmacist murmured blankly.
"Yes, though of course my fortune isn't unlimited either. I'd appreciate it if you could keep the budget within 20,000 gold."
"Ah, um. What kind of drug did you want to commission...?"
Maybe the enormous budget had scared her off. The pharmacist looked happy on one hand, but her expression was uneasy on the other.
"Excuse me, but I-I can't manufacture narcotics. Because of my personal convictions, narcotics are the one thing I really... If that's what you came to commission, I-I'll have to refuse..."
"Oh-ho."
I nodded inwardly.
'She seems naive, but she really is the kind of person who'll grow into the Alchemy Ministry Head later.'
There weren't many people who could firmly refuse when tens of thousands of gold was on the line. Even less so when their shop had just been destroyed. And yet she'd declared outright that she wouldn't manufacture narcotics.
This pharmacist looked weak on the outside, but her pride was incredibly strong.
"Haha. It's absolutely not narcotics, so don't worry."
"Ah... W-well, that's a relief. What kind of drug did you want to commission, specifically?"
"Hmm."
I glanced at the guardian spirit. Ever since entering the shop, the guardian spirit had kept his mouth shut, as if something didn't sit right with him. Only after I gave him a look did he finally sigh.
-Hah. Well, fine. She doesn't look like she's any good, but I'll tell you the recipe.
He should've done that from the start.
-Listen carefully. Rabbit-pig liver, balloon-cat eyes, desert earthworm shell...
"I'll tell you now. Rabbit-pig liver, balloon-cat eyes, and..."
Following the guardian spirit, I recited the elixir's ingredients one after another.
"Ah, please wait! I-I'll write it down!"
The pharmacist hurriedly scribbled down the recipe. A whopping 23 ingredients. The longer the recipe went on, the more serious the pharmacist's expression became.
-Well, that's enough for the ingredients. How it's made depends entirely on the pharmacist's skill.
"That's enough for the ingredients."
"..."
The pharmacist quietly looked down at her notebook. Biting her nails nervously.
"If these are combined like this... it's a formula that maximizes reflexes. Not relaxing, but tensing. No, with this combination, maybe I should call it awakening rather than tension."
-Huh?
The guardian spirit stared at the pharmacist.
Whether he did or not, the pharmacist kept muttering.
"This is an incredibly sophisticated formula. Ah, I might just be fooling myself by looking at the ingredients alone, but... rather than drying or refining the ingredients separately, you brew them all at once in the freshest possible state, right?"
-Well, that's right, but...
I nodded.
"That's correct."
"I knew it! Normally, desert earthworm shells contain a trace amount of poison. One way to neutralize it is to ingest rabbit-pig liver, and depending on the method of ingestion, the effect...!"
The pharmacist chattered excitedly. The girl who'd been stammering and fumbling just moments ago had vanished—the pharmacist before me now was a chatterbox if there ever was one.
Right. The world had people like this too.
'Someone with poor social skills but excellent ability.'
And yet someone who threw herself wholeheartedly into the field she loved and would someday achieve great results. I didn't dislike these [specialists].
"Can you have it ready within a few days?"
"Ah."
I cut off a conversation that seemed like it could go on forever. The pharmacist blinked as if snapping back to her senses. She'd apparently gotten lost in her own world while talking.
"S-sorry! It's been so long since I've seen such a beautiful formula that I couldn't help myself...!"
"It's fine. So, how many days will it take?"
"If I have enough money... I-I can have it ready within four days. Normally I could do it faster, but I need to buy new equipment and tools..."
Four days.
"I can wait that long, no problem."
Because before the regression, getting a single dose of medicine from this person took a year at minimum.
Four days didn't even count as waiting compared to that.
-Hey, I still don't approve.
Even after we'd wrapped up and left the shop, the guardian spirit kept grumbling.
-There are so many people who talk a good game but have terrible skills. Those types always end up becoming quacks. Tch. Looks like you're just throwing your money away!
"So where did you learn that recipe?"
-It's a formula I created myself. The finest, most supreme elixir I barely managed to make by personally drinking all sorts of poisons. In your world, it's a precious tonic you couldn't drink even if you wanted to!
I let out a chuckle.
"The pharmacist praised it as an incredibly sophisticated formula."
-...
"She could recognize the formula's true worth at a single glance, so try trusting her. She may not look it, but in ten years she'll be the highest-ranking person in the Alchemy Ministry."
The guardian spirit clamped his mouth shut. With his already fierce face and his mouth closed like that, he looked exactly like a giant toad.
-You just insulted me in your head, didn't you? Huh?
"This ghost is trying to frame an innocent man now."
I played dumb.
Seriously, he was annoyingly perceptive.
5
Four days passed in no time.
During that time, the pharmacist withdrew gold coins from my vault without hesitation. Someone from the Merchant Alliance came to confirm, "Is this really all right?" but I told them to leave it be.
No matter how much money it cost, receiving medicine from the future Alchemy Ministry Head was practically free.
-Zombie, want to make a bet?
"Ugh, what now?"
-That girl's going to take the money and run. I'm sure of it. I may not know much, but my eye for people is killer. That girl, as far as I can tell, was born with the face of a master thief! Hurry up and kill yourself, Kim Zombie! Kill yourself four times and go back four days!
Obviously, the ghost had no eye for people whatsoever.
At noon on exactly the fourth day.
The pharmacist came to my lodging personally, carrying the elixir packed up in bundles.
"S-sorry. I wanted to deliver it a bit sooner, but combining everything took longer than I expected..."
"No, you promised from the start to have it ready within four days, so that's fine."
The elixir the pharmacist had made came to a total of three boxes.
At three doses a day, that was a whopping 30 days' worth.
If I'd used the shop the guardian spirit knew about, I'd have gotten two days' worth at most. This boasted a full 15 times the efficiency.
'And the potency will be even better, too.'
This was how money was meant to be spent.
I felt pleased for no particular reason, and a smile rose to my lips.
"Um..."
"Yes?"
"I-it's strange to ask this now, but... why did you give such an expensive commission to a nameless pharmacist like me?"
The pharmacist fidgeted with her fingers.
"O-of course, I'm confident in my skills. Just looking at the formula you commissioned, I think there are only about two people in Babylon who could properly understand and make it... But people only treat me like an eccentric, so..."
"Hmm."
Why I'd entrusted the elixir production to this person, of all people.
Needless to say, it was because the pharmacist before me was a once-in-a-generation genius. The guild master of the Alchemy Ministry. I also had the calculation of building a connection in advance with someone who would someday grow into the owner of a major guild.
But.
'That's not the only reason.'
This was before I'd crossed 4,000 days and regressed.
It was the story of when the Flame Emperor set fire to the slums. At that time, despite being a top-ranked hunter, the woman before me had arrived at the scene faster than anyone else and taken command of the fire response.
While helping people, the Alchemy Ministry Head had muttered:
-That man called the Flame Emperor, I don't like him.
-You could say he gives me a bad feeling... It's not polite to talk behind someone's back in a place like this, but still. I think Miss Saintess should meet someone better.
A person who'd seen through the Flame Emperor's true nature.
'She probably guessed it purely on intuition, with no evidence.'
Even so, this pharmacist had remarkable discernment.
Skilled, kind enough to rush to the scene of a disaster, and perceptive enough to recognize a psychopath. Wouldn't it be a loss not to befriend someone like this?
I opened my mouth.
"You just seemed like a good person."
"Excuse me?"
"I said I helped you because you seemed like a good person. Well, even if I hadn't helped, you would've succeeded on your own anyway. But since good hunters like us should succeed, we can help each other out later, right? Mutual aid."
"..."
"We can't just let crazy psychopaths be the only ones who succeed. It's infuriating. Let's both do our best, boss."
I told her exactly what I felt, without any lies. I couldn't have been more honest than this. How she took my words was up to her now.
The pharmacist stared at my face intently, then spoke.
"...You're right. Yes, you have to succeed first before you can change the world, after all."
Her tone sounded like she was resolving something.
"Thank you, customer! As you said, I'll do my best too!"
The pharmacist clenched her fist tightly.
"If you ever have another order, please contact me anytime! I'll always prioritize your commissions!"
"Then I'm the one who should be grateful."
We shook hands with smiling faces and parted ways.
Unfortunately, my smile didn't last long.
-Well, well. It's been a while since I've seen a guy who calls himself a good hunter with his own mouth. And it's the first time I've seen someone accept that like it's the most natural thing in the world. Hey, are you two insane? Tsk tsk tsk. You're out of your minds.
"...I know I said something embarrassing, so let's just go train."
The next day.
We headed to the hunting grounds. Our backpacks were generously packed with sleeping bags and the elixir.
The difference from usual was that we'd come to the 3rd-floor hunting grounds instead of the 2nd floor.
Monsters that were still a bit too much for a low-ranking hunter like me—goblin packs, orcs, and the like—were scattered about, prowling here and there.
I stared at them from a distance and asked.
"What do we do now?"
-First, drink the elixir.
I nodded.
And without any hesitation, I gulped down the elixir I'd brought in a thermos.
"Hmm."
The taste itself was ordinary.
With lemon flavor and even honey added, it was actually a little tasty.
I'd imagined it would taste like ginseng extract, and I was thinking that was a relief when—
"Ugh...!"
Thump.
My heart beat harder than usual.
At first I thought I was imagining it, but I wasn't. Cold sweat streamed down my back in an instant. The strange thing was... I began to perceive each and every drop of sweat running down my back with incredible clarity.
'What is this?'
Thump.
It wasn't just the sweat. The texture of the air wrapping around my fingers. The pressure. The feel of the ground beneath my soles. The time it took to blink once felt long, incredibly slow, as if it took a full 30 seconds.
"Th-this... is..."
-It's the elixir's effect.
While everything had slowed, only the guardian spirit's voice was exactly the same as usual.
-It makes the time you take to perceive phenomena extremely slow. Well, you can think of it as helping you feel time as endlessly long. I hate to admit it, but that girl's medicine-making skills were pretty decent.
It was horrifying.
Every single strand of hair, hundreds of thousands of hairs, all felt vividly alive, as if crawling. I could even feel the blood vessels in my eyeballs squirming. If I'd drunk this without knowing, I would've mistaken it for poison rather than an elixir.
-Can't you feel it?
"Wh-what... are you... talking about...?"
-The thing squirming in your heart.
Thump.
There was something. No, something was flowing. That something wasn't blood.
It was far smoother than blood, and far finer than veins. But something was unmistakably flowing through my entire body. That flow was slowly spreading, passing through my heart.
Something I'd never once clearly felt in my entire life.
-That's aura.
The guardian spirit said.
-Any hunter who enters the Tower carries aura in their body. They just live without being aware of it in daily life. How consciously you can use this aura—in short, how freely you can draw it out and wield it—that's what decides the fight.
The guardian spirit let out a laugh.
The laughter echoed in my head for over 20 seconds. The guardian spirit's laugh must have lasted only the briefest instant, but for some reason my consciousness felt it as 20 seconds.
A fatigue that made me feel like I'd collapse if I let my focus slip for even a moment.
-Normally, in this state, you'd quietly train alone or sit in a lotus position and slowly get used to the flow of aura.
Within that.
Something massive approached me.
-But that takes too long, doesn't it?
Thud.
Footsteps.
Like the laughter, the footsteps echoed long. I barely managed to lift my head and look straight ahead—a large orc was advancing toward me.
-If you've got no talent, your body has to suffer.
Goddamn it.
-Now then! If you don't want to get hurt, draw out your aura and use it, Kim Zombie! You have to train through real combat no matter what! You won't die even if you die, so what's the harm in wrecking your body a little?
"You damn... ghost...!"
-Huh? I can't hear what you're saying because you're a loser who can't even use aura.
The guardian spirit burst into roaring laughter again.
-Does it hurt? If you don't like it, kill yourself. Oh, but then your kill count goes up from 4,000. Then old man Marcus will be super nice to you too, right?
Ah.
My partner was a real piece of shit.