Mint Chocolate Mana Potion
Mint-chocolate-flavored mana potion.
What kind of hideous hybrid was this supposed to be?
I quietly closed the lid and looked at Hong Su-jeong.
She met my gaze with a faint smile.
You fed me mint chocolate without saying a word, and now you’re smiling like you’ve done something worthy of praise?
“Won’t this be a problem?”
“Huh? What will?”
She tilted her head on purpose, acting as if she had no idea what I meant.
As if she didn’t know exactly what I was talking about.
“It’s a flavor people either love or hate.”
Hong Su-jeong raised her eyebrows.
She pointed at the healing potion and asked, “You’re fine with Solxone?”
“That one tastes good.”
“Mint chocolate tastes good too.”
“……”
Fine, maybe it could be.
People’s tastes were all over the place.
While I liked Solxone, Taecheon had spat it out the moment it touched his tongue.
Do-hee had said it tasted good too, but she couldn’t hide the habit of twisting her lips whenever she lied.
I could accept that everyone’s palate was different.
I could even understand that there were people who liked the sensation of eating chocolate while brushing their teeth.
So I didn’t think mint-chocolate mana potion was inherently bad.
Not if it weren’t the flavor of the mana potion I had ordered myself.
I did not want a taste that mixed toothpaste and chocolate.
Never. Absolutely never.
“Well, I’ll admit there are poor souls out there who can’t even appreciate the taste of mint chocolate.”
Maybe my expression had been obvious.
Hong Su-jeong added that in a hurry.
It wasn’t really an excuse.
She had just called me a “poor soul.”
Who was she calling poor?
The poorest thing here is your tongue, since it thinks that tastes good.
“Do you remember? When you opened the lid, the chocolate fell out.”
“Yes, I remember.”
It had been brown and oval.
If I’d realized it was chocolate, I wouldn’t have drunk it.
No, maybe I still would have.
I hadn’t known there’d be a mint taste in that green liquid.
“We can make it so the chocolate doesn’t fall out when you open the lid.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep. You pressed the lid down to open it just now, right? If you just twist it open without pressing, the chocolate attached to the lid won’t come off.”
“Ha, that was clever.”
I tried it immediately with the glass bottle in my hand.
I pressed the lid and twisted.
The lid opened with a faint catch, as if something was locking it in place.
That catching sensation was probably the mechanism that made the chocolate fall off.
I closed it again, then opened it without pressing this time.
It came open smoothly, with no catch at all.
“Ooh.”
“If you open it like that, the chocolate will stay on the lid. Then it’ll just taste like mint.”
“That’s not bad.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Honestly, I didn’t hate mint by itself.
Chocolate either, come to think of it.
If I had to be specific, I liked both, and I drank and ate them regularly enough.
What I hated was the way mint’s cool sting and chocolate’s sweetness got mixed together.
If it was mint, it should taste only like mint. If it was chocolate, it should taste only like chocolate.
Why on earth did they have to be mixed together like this?
“Since people can choose the flavor based on preference, I think it’ll be fine as it is.”
“Hehe, good thing I had the lid custom-made.”
“Custom-made? You made that on purpose?”
“Yep. I asked Jae-i to do it.”
“Jae-i? Yu Jae-i?”
“Yep.”
I looked down at the lid in my right hand.
Nowhere on it was the initial J.Y. engraved.
Well, I supposed they wouldn’t bother engraving initials on mass-produced bottle lids like this.
Hong Su-jeong said it as if it were nothing. “For the record, Jae-i likes mint chocolate.”
“...I’m the sort of person who respects other people’s tastes.”
“Oh, really?”
She looked at me with one corner of her mouth curled up.
That expression made me embarrassed, so I decided to change the subject.
She likes mint chocolate, huh.
I wondered what Solxone would be like.
I hoped she’d like it.
“Oh, right. Could I ask you to handle the potion sales?”
It seemed better if she sold them rather than me doing it myself.
Even if they’d received quality certification from the food and drug authority, a professional would be better than some amateur.
She was a potion maker, after all, and probably had her own sales network too.
“Of course, customer. I’d be happy to.”
Hong Su-jeong beamed and bowed her upper body.
It wasn’t the crooked, lip-curling smile from before.
This was a business smile, all bright and fake and sweet.
She could pocket a commission in the middle, after all.
And if they sold at a high price, her cut would be nice and fat.
Ah, I should ask how much she planned to charge.
“What price do you think would be appropriate when selling them?”
“For a healing potion, around 30 million won per bottle, and for the mana potion maybe 15 million? That seems about right.”
“That expensive? Will they even sell?”
Ordinary low-grade healing potions went for 500,000 won.
Mid-grade ones were 2 million, and high-grade ones usually sold for around 20 million because there weren’t many on the market.
As for mana potions, low-grade ran at 250,000 won, mid-grade at 1 million, and high-grade at 10 million each.
But Hong Su-jeong had just named prices 10 million and 5 million higher than that, respectively.
She nodded.
“They’ll sell, of course. A-rank hunters are already in a situation where they can’t get high-grade potions and are scrambling for mid-grade ones.”
“Fair enough...”
The potion market was in bad shape right now.
Like she said, there had even been news reports about A-rank hunters hoarding mid-grade potions.
That misinformation had even spilled over into A-rank hunters throwing their weight around.
There was clearly no need to worry about the potions not selling.
Now then.
There were fifty bottles of each, so if we sold them all...
2.25 billion won.
Two leaves had turned into that absurd amount of money.
No matter how little I cared about money, that was still a huge sum.
My hand naturally reached into my pocket for my smartphone.
Then I opened the mailbox, received the two leaves, and held them out to her right away.
“Please make more.”
“Ahhh.”
Hong Su-jeong made a strange noise.
I stared at her in shock, but she was looking only at the leaves in my hand.
She didn’t care at all about the fact that I was looking straight at her.
And I was the type who didn’t care much about other people’s stares, too...
If anything, Hong Su-jeong was even worse than I was.
She took the two leaves I handed over and hugged them close like treasures.
Since I had already appraised them once, I didn’t appraise them again.
“Ah.”
A sigh escaped my lips.
Because something else came to mind when I thought of appraising.
The bee stinger I had taken by killing a bee-man, and the morning dew I had received from Saessak.
I took both out of my inventory.
The morning dew was stored in a nursery glass cup, a droplet barely the size of my pinky fingernail.
“What’s with the cup?”
“Could you appraise this for me?”
“Huh? The cup? It looks like some cheap thing from a supermarket.”
“No. I mean the dew inside it.”
“Dew?”
She came closer, still clutching the leaves to her chest.
She peered into the cup and let out an “Ah!”
She had noticed the morning dew inside.
“Holy crap! World Tree dew? How could you just bring something this precious in a cup?”
She shook her head and left the cold storage room.
“Come with me. I’ll give you a container to put it in.”
“You don’t have to-”
“No. I don’t want to see that thing sitting in there.”
“......”
She closed the cold storage room door and held out her hand to me.
Once she’d gone so far as to call the morning dew “that thing,” I had no choice but to hand it over.
When I gave her the cup, she immediately strode ahead.
The place she led me to was the sterilization room.
Several glass bottles and tools were being disinfected under a UV lamp that cast a blue glow.
She took out a long glass bottle shaped like a test tube and poured the dew into it.
“This dew contains clean mana.”
As she pressed the lid on firmly, she kept explaining the morning dew.
“That mana has the effect of calming the mind of whoever consumes it.”
“The mind?”
“Yep. If you take it, you should be able to resist most mental-type skills without much trouble.”
Saessak had said it was sent to comfort me.
I hadn’t expected it to have an effect like that...
She handed the test tube containing the morning dew and the glass cup back to me.
As soon as I took them back, I handed over the bee stinger.
Hong Su-jeong flicked the stinger with her finger and listened quietly to the sound it made.
“Mm, I think this will take some time. I’ll appraise it with Pinecone and contact you.”
“Please do. By the way, what about Violet Violence?”
“I still need a bit more time. Two days, give or take?”
“I see. Please contact me as soon as you have the results.”
“Yep, I will.”
After saying that, Hong Su-jeong stared at me.
I knew exactly what that look meant, so I left Crystal Workshop immediately.
I shut the green metal door, the same color as a mana potion, and checked the time.
11:15.
I had told Kim Jae-sik to meet me around noon so we could have lunch together too.
That still left forty-five minutes before our appointment.
“......”
It seemed like it was about time to check.
I got into the car and opened the skill window.
An S-rank skill marked with a NEW! badge caught my eye.
Manager’s Primer, Volume 2.
This was the skill I’d obtained when Saessak grew into a young sapling.
Honestly, I’d been avoiding it on purpose until now.
Volume 1’s chapter on pruning had been shocking enough to leave a mark.
Volume 2 was definitely not going to be normal either.
“Manager’s Primer, Volume 2.”
When I activated the skill, a blue book floated up in midair.
Feeling the rough texture, I turned the pages.
Volume 2, like Volume 1, was written in an unwelcoming tone.
[Welcome, new caretaker of the World Tree.]
[And congratulations on fulfilling two conditions and obtaining Manager’s Primer, Volume 2.]
“Two?”
So there was something other than growing it to the young sapling stage?
Apparently expecting that question, the text below explained the two conditions right away.
One was, as I had guessed, growing the World Tree to the young sapling stage.
The other was carrying out pruning at least once.
[Having accomplished these two things, you may now call yourself a “true caretaker of the World Tree.”]
[Of course, this is only your first step, so do not become arrogant.]
[The world is full of dangers that cannot be overcome by the power of the World Tree alone, so in the future, you will need to...]
“Yeah, yeah. Cut the preamble.”
I skimmed quickly through the pages.
The beginning was mostly just telling me not to get arrogant.
It seemed the purpose was basically to educate the reader’s character.
Of course, after reading it, I could infer one thing.
He was the one who had become arrogant after gaining the power of the World Tree.
That bastard, Doning na Thor, had also said in Volume 1 not to treat the World Tree like a tool, and then turned around and talked about making beauty products and selling them.
He had definitely gotten carried away with his own power.
He probably hoped the next caretaker wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes.
[As I have already said above, this world is full of dangers that cannot be overcome by the power of the World Tree alone.]
[There will certainly come a time when you face things even the World Tree’s regenerative power cannot endure.]
I agreed.
My regeneration was unmatched.
But it was not all-powerful.
The previous World Tree had known that too, which was why he had sent a log when I fought the Skeleton Lord, even going so far as to correct the quest difficulty.
If that log hadn’t been there that day, I would have died.
My body would have been reduced to nothing but bones by the Skeleton Lord’s ability.
[Therefore, I pondered a way to reinforce that regenerative power...]
Reinforce regeneration?
So he was trying to push its strengths even further.
[And in the end, I discovered the only possible means.]
[It was this.]
“Oh?”
[The skill World Tree Root.]
World Tree Root?
What was that supposed to be?