Apply It Yourself
Apply It for Me
With the money I'd made at the black market, I bought all the herbs.
They were common enough that I hadn't even needed to go to the black market for them.
The key ingredient, tiger beastfolk blood, I secured by soaking the bloodstained handkerchief in water and wringing it out several times.
It was heavily diluted from mixing with the water, but I only needed a small amount, so it was fine.
Alchemy was a skill of mixing ingredients together anyway.
A little water getting in was no problem.
All the ingredients were ready, but one big problem remained.
"No tools."
Up until now, I'd just thrown everything into a cooking pot and boiled it.
One-star potions could be made that way.
But the recipe I had to make this time was a three-star one.
It required various processing steps and the tools to go with them.
"Originally, a magic cauldron solved all of that."
A magic cauldron changed into whatever tool was needed based on alchemy proficiency.
Thanks to that, as long as I raised my proficiency, I never needed to buy separate tools.
But right now, I didn't have such a magical item.
I asked around for tools, but since alchemy was the exclusive domain of the nobility, proper equipment was hard to find on the market.
Most of it was custom-made, and the production time was long, so I gave up.
No matter how much I racked my brain, only one option came to mind.
"Time to get a whole lot more shameless, huh?"
***
"You want to borrow... alchemy tools?"
"Yes."
"I've seen many alchemists in my time, but you're the first person I've ever met who asked to borrow alchemy tools because they didn't have any."
Countess Veloz was radiating pure disbelief.
We'd met on the agreed date, but instead of bringing the medicine, I'd asked to borrow alchemy tools. Of course she'd be dumbfounded.
I couldn't let myself get cowed here.
I had to act confident, as if I had something to back it up.
"It's not that I don't have them. It's that I didn't bring them."
"Isn't that the same thing? You could have just made the potion and brought it."
"Wouldn't you feel more at ease seeing for yourself how clean the environment is and how fresh the ingredients are? Isn't this a potion you'll be using personally?"
I'd heard once that restaurants have open kitchens to earn customer trust.
I tried saying it with that kind of vibe... Did it work?
"...As it happens, there are some tools left behind by an alchemist who came before. Use those."
What kind of insane alchemist would leave expensive alchemy tools behind?
She was just saying that to hide the fact that she was an alchemist herself.
As expected, she didn't let even a trivial piece of information slip easily.
Every time this happened, I wondered how in the world this secret got revealed in the main story.
I was about to do alchemy with the tools the butler brought...
How the hell do I use these?
In the game, I just put ingredients into the right tool and clicked away.
Here, there were heat controls and tubes and holes I couldn't even guess the purpose of.
Even someone like me, who threw away manuals without reading them, found these too complicated to even attempt using.
But asking her openly for help...
Hmm, that seemed like it would tank my credibility.
Imagine going to a hospital and the doctor holds a scalpel backwards and asks the patient, "Do you know how to use this?"
Even if you were already under general anesthesia, you'd try to crawl out of the operating room.
Then let's go with Shameless Plan, Round 2.
"I'll give you the opportunity to participate directly in making the potion."
An awkward silence hung between us.
"...You're not using these for the first time, are you?"
Sharp.
Maybe it came from seeing a lot of con artists.
If I panicked and froze here, it was all over.
I had to push her without giving her time to think.
"These are the ingredients going into today's potion. Touch them yourself and smell them to check their freshness."
Like a fine-dining server explaining the ingredients for a dish, I laid out everything I'd brought.
"This lavender here will be finely ground until no fibers are visible, and this waterside mushroom......"
I pretended to be an expert, recalling the game tutorial I'd mostly skipped through.
But my opponent wasn't a clueless beginner. She was a proper alchemist.
"Are you joking with me? If you're going to run a scam, at least make it plausible!"
Was my shallow knowledge exposing my level that quickly?
"Five ingredients going into one potion?!"
"Pardon?"
"I— ahem, even the most brilliant alchemist I know has never combined more than four ingredients at once. Five? You came here to scam without even researching the industry properly."
"Five is... a lot?"
Even among three-star recipes, this one was on the low end for ingredients.
"Don't you know about the incident where a potion made from six ingredients was tested on a goblin, and it produced a Goblin Master that fought on equal footing with a Sword Master?"
Right.
Even potion-making was fundamentally alchemy.
Experiments could produce dangerous results.
Of course, I had the ability to check potion information, so I'd never unknowingly use a dangerous product.
"Even the elixir that uses a total of five ingredients has only had four of them identified. The last one hasn't been found, so it's still incomplete. And you're telling me you'll make a potion combining five ingredients, just like that elixir?"
Every time the number of ingredients increased by one, the possible combinations grew exponentially.
And if you added processing methods on top of that, it was beyond words.
Even if you somehow made it, you had to carefully verify what effects it had.
Because something like the Goblin Master incident could happen.
But in my head remained the results that countless players had discovered through repeated saving and loading.
"I'm not trying to scam you. Above all, I'll be the first to test the finished potion."
I said this, showing my arm with the skin condition.
"At least that means you're not trying to hand me a fake."
I'd said I would test it on my own body, but she still didn't seem to believe me.
I hadn't wanted to reveal this much.
"The potions I sold at the black market also had five ingredients. I'll show you the process of making one myself."
I could make a one-star Lowest-Grade Mana Recovery Potion without Countess Veloz's help.
I took the necessary ingredients, put them in the pot, and boiled them.
When the potion was complete, Countess Veloz called over a maid.
It was a maid named Sera, a woman who served as a food taster.
"It's a mana recovery potion. Try a sip."
Sera scooped a spoonful of the blue potion from the pot and swallowed it.
After waiting for the effect to spread through her body, Countess Veloz asked.
"How is it? Does your body feel strange?"
"No, nothing strange. I feel mana rising... and above all, it's delicious!"
Once she'd fed it to the maid she'd summoned and confirmed it herself, Countess Veloz's eyes changed.
"Can you trust me now?"
"...You'll need to make a lot of medicine. The skin condition has spread below my face as a side effect of a previous treatment."
***
At first, Countess Veloz had helped half-heartedly, focused on hiding her identity. But at some point, she stopped bothering to hide it and began participating actively.
She seemed to consider it an opportunity to grow as an alchemist.
Thanks to her help, I was able to complete the potion.
[Mid-Grade Cleansing Potion]
Effect: Removes cosmetics remaining on the skin. Completely eliminates effects caused by cosmetics.
It was exactly the description I'd seen in the game.
If an effect was caused by cosmetics, it removed it regardless of whether it was positive or negative.
It was a drastic effect, but its versatility was just as narrow.
Because it only worked on products classified as cosmetics.
But for Countess Veloz, whose skin condition came from cosmetics mixing on her skin, it was a perfect fit.
I sprayed a small amount of the potion onto my forearm, which showed the same symptoms as her skin.
The swollen skin quickly began to subside.
"This potion only removes symptoms caused by cosmetics. Side effects from other treatments will need to be treated separately with recovery potions."
Countess Veloz had summoned every alchemist she could to test potions for her skin condition.
Because of that, the side effects had worsened from the start, and new symptoms had appeared.
Of course, this was ten years before the main story, and she wasn't yet cornered enough to slather on just any medicine.
She would have used only verified drugs, so the recovery potions available to a noble like her would be enough to treat it.
'Originally, I should've sold my own treatment potion here too to make a tidy profit.'
But I only had lowest-grade potions for now, so it was too embarrassing to show them off.
They were revolutionary for commoners or beastfolk who couldn't obtain potions, but for a noble like Countess Veloz, they'd just be one more ordinary potion.
Even after seeing the treatment happen before her eyes, Countess Veloz said nothing.
Was she too far away to see the healing clearly?
I thrust my smooth, scar-free arm right in front of her face so she could see it well.
Since it had only been a week since the skin condition appeared, the cleansing potion alone was enough to treat it.
'The treatment worked well.'
'Wow, dude, you're freaking amazing.'
I'd expected some kind of admiration like that, but she remained silent.
I couldn't read her expression because of the mask, so instead I glanced at the hand holding her fan.
The hand gripping the fan was trembling.
Was she... angry?
'Right, I'm playing a commoner, aren't I?'
Because I was hiding my status as a prince, Countess Veloz thought I was a commoner.
And I'd forgotten the class difference between noble and commoner, rudely shoving my arm at her like a home-shopping host presenting a product.
Countess Veloz shot up from the sofa.
She pointed at the door with her fan.
I thought it was an order for me to leave, but the person actually kicked out was someone else.
"Butler, wait outside for a moment."
The butler bowed his head and left.
Unlike a certain someone's servant, he followed orders faithfully without a word of complaint.
I should've had a maid like that.
Seriously....
Once the butler was completely gone, Countess Veloz turned her back to us.
What was she planning to do, sending even the butler away?
Just as I was trying to gauge whether this was a positive or negative signal—
Her cloak slid to the floor.
Then her arm covers fell, and her top fell.
Instinctively, I lowered my head and fixed my gaze on the pile of clothes on the floor.
I wanted to look up, but I had a feeling that doing so without permission would bring serious trouble, so I held back.
"Do you know something? The skin condition that spread below my neck isn't actually from a treatment's side effects. I caused it myself by applying the problematic medicine."
That was news to me.
It was something I hadn't heard even after maxing out her Affection.
"Do you know why?"
I'd suffered from the same skin condition for a week.
It hurt less than the Petrification Disease, but it was absolutely not a pain I'd want to spread over a larger area.
And yet she'd deliberately applied it herself...
"Is it so you could test it on your body first when the treatment was completed?"
She'd used everything below her neck as a testing ground to protect her face.
"You're clever. That's right. My face is the most important thing in the world to me, after all. One mistake of applying an experimental potion to my face was more than enough, wasn't it?"
"Then, will you apply the medicine to your body first?"
"Yes. The day after the skin condition appeared on my face, I applied the same product to my upper chest as well. After that, I applied every potion I used on my face there too, so the condition should be nearly identical."
As long as the cause was cosmetics, it didn't matter what other medicines she'd layered on top.
Because the potion I made didn't treat the disease—it erased the cosmetics remaining on the skin and their effects.
Still keeping my eyes down, I held out the bottle so Countess Veloz could take the potion.
My head was lowered, but I could tell she was approaching.
Because a long shadow fell across the floor.
The shadow on the floor traced her curves in vivid detail.
I learned for the first time that a shadow alone could be this indecent.
I sang the national anthem at full volume in my head and hoped she'd take the potion quickly.
But Countess Veloz just stood in front of me, still.
Neither taking the potion nor returning to the sofa.
"Apply it yourself."
As if to confirm I hadn't misheard, Countess Veloz pushed my outstretched hand—the one offering the potion—back toward me.
"Men are infuriatingly strange, you know. No matter how pretty I did my makeup, their eyes always went to my chest."
As if anyone could keep their eyes off a size like that.
It was a presence that even a cloak couldn't hide, so imagine if she'd worn a dress.
That was why I couldn't apply the medicine myself.
I didn't trust myself to only apply the medicine.
When I hesitated, she whispered sweet words into my ear.
"It's an area I've already offered up as a testing ground for treatment. I've given up on it. So if the treatment succeeds... then you may do as you please with it?"
As I please...?
"But if it's the wrong medicine, I'll have you rot in the underground dungeon for life for the crime of toying with a noble. The crime of touching a noble's chest without permission is that great."
She was right—her chest was big.
No, the crime was big.
High risk, high return.
"Since I started wearing the mask, this is the first time I've let myself hope for a complete cure. So don't betray me."
What was there to agonize over?
All that lay ahead was guaranteed success.
I opened the potion bottle.
At the same moment, underwear with sky-blue lace fell onto the pile of clothes on the floor.