Potion Crafting
"I've only got six million won left. I need money."
Karen felt something almost refreshing in this long-forgotten thirst for cash. Shopping after a hundred and sixty years — that was the problem. A week after settling into the house, he'd been savoring a long-overdue stretch of rest, sprawling across the sofa and the bed, tumbling down the internet for the first time in a century and a half, and naturally, he'd started ordering things.
"A fridge? Yeah, I need one. I'll grab that Bespoke Pro that's trending these days. A washer-dryer set? Obviously! Mood lighting would be nice too. An addiction cushion? Gotta have one on the sofa. And if I'm lying on the sofa, I need a TV!"
Buying things one after another like that, fourteen million won had flown out before he knew it. On top of that, this was a high-risk area with frequent gate appearances, so ordinary shipping ran over ten thousand won a pop. For appliances, delivery alone came to around a hundred thousand — of course the money was pouring out.
"Samsaek, you're a Spiritual Beast, right? How should we make money?"
"Kku-ing, couldn't we just sell the stuff you fed me?"
"Hmm... if only this had come through properly."
Karen stroked the necklace hanging at his throat. If the colossal magic subspace bound to it had transferred intact, he could have sold any random thing rolling around inside and been set for life. But when he'd ridden a gate through dimensional travel, only the emergency subspace engraved on his soul had been able to cross over with him.
"Not that I can sell this..."
He reached out, and space crackled as it swallowed his arm. When his hand emerged, it held a bottle of the Elixir he had given Samsaek, and a smooth, round orb.
Samsaek hadn't been suffering from any particular illness, so the Elixir had only treated his external wounds — but it was the legendary miracle draught everyone had heard of. Even Karen kept no more than a few bottles of it as emergency stock.
"Looking at the effects alone, it's a miracle. The conditions are a bit picky, though."
Its power over external wounds was absolute, but dig any deeper and most alchemists couldn't even use the stuff properly. Even in the modern world, no matter how good a medicine was, pharmacists and doctors existed for a reason — someone had to read the patient and prescribe accordingly.
And the other one...
"Wh-what's that. Kku-ing."
Samsaek's eyes went round at the orb in Karen's palm. A human wouldn't have seen a thing, but to a Spiritual Beast's eyes, the power radiating from that pebble-looking bead was so immense it made his fur stand on end in an instant.
"An artificial Dragon Heart."
It was his specialty piece, modeled after a dragon's heart he had once happened to encounter. Its performance fell short of the real thing, of course, but this single item could have easily shouldered a nation's entire power supply for several hundred years. It was eco-friendly energy, too — not a scrap of harmful residue.
"If these things get out into the world, it's going to get insanely annoying."
These were the kinds of objects that had drawn flies from every direction even when people already knew he held tremendous power in the other world. Pulling them out here? Just imagining the aftermath was enough to send a headache rolling in. Maybe later. After living at a dead run for a hundred and sixty years, Karen just wanted to rest for now.
"Better not take it out. Kku-ing."
When Karen slipped the artificial Dragon Heart back into the subspace, Samsaek finally let out the breath he'd been holding. Just holding the thing was enough to unleash that kind of power... Samsaek was no fool. He himself had been dragged into conflicts over healing abilities that were nothing compared to the master standing in front of him. Items like these didn't even need to be discussed.
"So, got any good ideas? You've gotta earn your keep, Samsaek. You've been poking around the internet this whole time."
Karen himself could handle simple shopping and watching videos. For this kind of work, Samsaek the Spiritual Beast was actually better at it than he was.
Samsaek started digging for information, tapping the smartwatch Karen had bought and fitted onto his front paw. The band had been made by combining rubber with all sorts of stretchy materials, so even if Samsaek ballooned back up to the size of a midsize car, the watch would be fine.
Watching him slurp his way through a Churu while flicking through floating browser windows, Karen had to admit the cat was far better at this than any human.
At first, when Karen had been fumbling through his shopping, Samsaek had stepped in, tapped a few things, and set up easy payments. Even the Churu currently clamped in his mouth — he'd bought a few samples himself, figured out his own tastes, and gone right on ordering more.
"Master! How about this?"
After rummaging through site after site, Samsaek shoved a page in front of him.
An intuitive name you could understand at a glance — an online exchange where hunters traded everything from miscellaneous odds and ends to items worth hundreds of millions.
"This is... oh?"
The auction house homepage had plenty of categories — weapons, armor, materials, and more — but the page Samsaek had pulled up was potions.
"This is your specialty, right, Master?"
It was something they'd talked about while rolling around the house for a week, swapping quite a few stories. Everyone had a beginning, and as an alchemist, Karen's first profession had been herb gatherer. Later he had picked up all sorts of things, golem crafting included, but his roots were in making medicines — so potions were where he truly excelled.
"Let's see... mostly mana potions. What's with these effects? An F-Rank mana potion fills thirty percent of an F-Rank awakened's total mana? And a B-Rank one also fills thirty percent of a B-Rank awakened? Isn't this garbage?"
Karen said it with genuine disgust, but in truth even that was revolutionary with current technology. The company that had first hit the thirty-percent figure was raking in a fortune off the patent.
"The materials are made by refining monster blood. The refining methods are each company's top-secret."
That much came up easily just from searching.
"Let's do this. Do they sell monster blood at the auction house?"
"Kku-ing, they sell it by type. The cheapest is gnoll — the dog-headed ones — then goblin..."
"Order the cheapest."
"But online it says the refining rate drops with weaker monsters..."
"Refining rate doesn't matter. It's just a difference in the concentration in the blood. Gnoll blood can make F-Rank potions."
"Got it. I'll order three million won worth of gnoll blood."
"Order empty ten-milliliter plastic bottles for the potions too."
"They say if you don't put it in glass it won't work, because of the potion's unique toxicity? That's also why civilians can't drink them..."
"Samsaek."
"Kku-ing?"
"Don't you trust your master? It's not even an Elixir. Glass bottles are a luxury for a measly mana potion."
Three days later, a massive shipment of fresh gnoll blood arrived packed in ice, and Karen stuffed the lot of it into the large-capacity subspace contained in his necklace. Unlike the subspace engraved on his soul, it had no time-stop spell — but as an item designated a national treasure even in the Empire, it carried a charm that made time crawl, so it would keep for a while.
"Bottles ready?"
"Kku-ing!"
Samsaek lined up the plastic bottles with telekinesis. Karen reshaped his Shield Magic into a funnel and slotted it into a bottle's mouth, then poured his own mana into the gnoll blood and set to work.
The blood rolled to a boil as if it had been dumped into a scalding kettle. From the gnoll's distinctive brown, beads of blue liquid began to form, sliding down the funnel and filling the plastic bottle. It looked like he was simply heating it, but inside he was stirring the blood at tremendous speed and applying pressure to peel the mana free — an extremely difficult piece of work.
"Whoa... as expected of Master! What percent is this?"
Samsaek's eyes went wide at the liquid that had nearly filled the bottle.
"I only did fifty percent for now, so it wouldn't stand out too much. This should be enough. Next!"
Isn't fifty percent a lot too?
Samsaek's Spiritual Beast instincts sent an uneasy prickle down his spine, but when Karen called him again he went right back to focusing on his job.
"We'll never finish doing them one at a time. Stick in dozens!"
At first he had treated it as a test run, work he hadn't done in a long time. Then he got bored and impatient. Karen hauled gnoll blood packs out of the subspace, jammed funnels into dozens of plastic bottles at once, and started the same process all over again.
"Hey. Look at this."
"What is it now?"
A middle-aged F-Rank hunter who was easily past forty pulled a small plastic bottle from his bag and held it out to his partner.
"I bought a fifty-percent potion, that's what."
His partner just looked at him like he was an idiot and clicked his tongue. He'd known the guy was gullible. He hadn't known he was this gullible.
"Aigoo, there's no such thing, you moron! Where'd you get conned this time — some snake-oil salesman in front of a gate?"
Internal Gates, the kind monsters never came out of, lasted a long time, so commercial strips sprang up in front of them and attracted every kind of character imaginable. Food trucks, bars, even flashy snake-oil peddlers putting on fire shows. But this was the first time he'd seen a hunter fall for it instead of a civilian.
"I bought this at the auction house, I'm telling you."
"Huh? The auction house? You can't pull scams there. Last time some gutsy bastards tried, they went missing, remember?"
The hunter tilted his head. Then he took a closer look at the bottle his partner was holding out, and the color did seem darker than other potions.
"First time I've seen a potion in a plastic bottle. What... whatsit... there was some reason you can only use glass, but still — fifty percent is way too much, isn't it?"
"Slimes!"
A familiar sound cut their conversation short, and both men snatched up their weapons. The F-Rank dungeon they were in was primarily slime territory — the lowest-tier monsters, whose only means of attack was their own mildly acidic bodies.
"H-huh? Why are there so many?"
That was only true when there were a few of them. Dozens of slimes suddenly boiled into view, and the two of them spun around — only to find slimes behind them as well.
"Damn it! Let's fight. Dozens is doable."
Getting hurt in an F-Rank dungeon left you with nothing, so they'd wanted to run — but slimes were still just slimes. A messy, grinding fight between men and slimes broke out at once.
"Urgh. My mana's almost gone."
These hunters' abilities were simple, as befitting F-Rank. Physical Enhancement — as long as their mana held, they could harden their bodies past anything a civilian could manage. But there were more slimes than expected, and a crisis found them fast. Slimes slapped on and peeled off all over, melting their clothes and leaving their skin swollen an ugly red.
That was what made slimes terrifying in a cluster. One or two, you could take a hit and walk it off. Dozens latching on at once? Even wasps could kill you if enough of them swarmed, and these things, weak as they were, had acidic bodies.
"Drink this! Potion! I bought one for you too."
"You... don't tell me you didn't bring regular potions?"
"I've got these."
"You crazy bastard!"
He swore, but the emergency potions they usually carried were twenty percent at best. That might have bought them a little time. It wouldn't have changed the ending. With no other options, his partner carved a wide arc through the slimes with his blade, then popped the cap and drank.
"Khh."
They made that distinctive middle-aged sound and tossed the empty bottles — and then both of them felt something off. Awakened could instinctively sense how much mana they had left, and the well that had been scraped nearly dry had just surged back up to half.
"...This isn't a scam? It's actually fifty percent?"
With their strength returned, the two of them finally finished off every last slime and collapsed panting on the ground. After a wipeout like that, slimes wouldn't dare come near this stretch for a while.
"See? I told you it was fifty percent."
He didn't particularly want to inflate the ego of the gullible idiot puffing up his shoulders beside him, but this time he had no choice. It had saved their lives.
"Nice one, you bastard. So how much did you pay for this?"
The price mattered. An F-Rank twenty-percent went for a hundred thousand won; a thirty-percent for three hundred thousand. The reason the cost jumped so hard with every extra percent was the toxicity — you could only drink one a day.
Still, at this level it'd be worth stocking a few bottles for emergencies. Over a million won, obviously?
"I paid five hundred thousand."
"...What's the seller's name. Buy them right now!"
"There's a per-person limit, though?"
"Buy up to the limit. Hurry."
The reason it was such a cheap five hundred thousand won wasn't for any particular reason.
"Fifty percent for five hundred thousand. Nice and clean. List it on the auction house for five hundred thousand."
It was just whatever he felt like.