CH 176

Name：Unfairly Fired From the Healer's Guild After Five Years of Dedicated Service Author：Okamoto Takeya
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Episode 176 – Charlotte’s Brewing Stand

After walking around the 2nd floor, I found the area where the brewing stands were placed. Like all the other products, it was a bit of a mess, but, as far as I could see, all of them were high-quality brewing stands.

As I took a closer look at the number of brewing stands placed side-by-side, I found something interesting about one of them. It looked just like any of the other brewing stands, but it had the word ‘Charlotte’ engraved in small text on the side of it. This name left a strong impression on me because it was also engraved on the brewing table at Elf’s Tears.

I couldn’t get any details, but I remembered the grandma saying that Charlotte was an acquaintance of hers. The brewing stand wasn’t equipped with any special features or anything like that. It was simply a high-quality brewing stand that she had made.

In other words, this brewing table was made by an acquaintance of the grandma, and it was an item that had her stamp of approval.

Hmm… I want it. I really want it.

My body started to fidget restlessly with materialistic desire, but I quickly shook my head, reminding myself that I couldn’t buy anything of this size in my current state.

….Ah, but I still want it so bad.

For a while, I examined the brewing stand more intently than I did when I was appraising plants, but no amount of observation was going to improve my situation. I glanced at the price tag to see if I could manage to buy it somehow, but to my surprise― it cost 50 platinum coins. Even if I solved the problem of finding a place to put it, the price tag was so exorbitant that no matter how hard I struggled, I wouldn’t be able to buy it even after making full use of [Plant Master].

I also checked the price of the brewing table right next to it, which said 10 platinum coins. While it was still expensive, I could somehow find a way to afford it soon. But in comparison, Charlotte’s brewing stand was five times more expensive. I had heard that it cost 100 platinum coins to build a house in Grezesta, so with the price of these two brewing stands combined, it would almost be possible to build a house.

I stood there, dumbfounded by the ridiculous sum of money in question, and my will to buy such a thing was immediately dampened as if I had been doused by a bucket of cold water.

It just costs way too much. Is it expensive because it was made by Charlotte, or is this brewing stand just that expensive?

As a friend of the grandma’s, I was guessing that it was the former.

…For now, my goal was to live in a house where I could put this brewing stand… and also to earn enough money to be able to afford this brewing stand. Now that I had a goal other than the one I had made in Grezesta about getting stronger, I left Green Formula, dreaming of the day that I would be able to buy that brewing stand.

When I exited Green Formula, the sun was already setting, painting the scenery in a vivid shade of orange. When I had left the Perfect Circle General Store, it had still been before noon, so I had really spent quite a long time here.

Plants with levels that were all over the place… Potions with all kinds of effects… Peculiar items that evoked curiosity… To me, the Green Formula was a paradise of a shop. I couldn’t help but spend a long time there, yet I didn’t regret it one bit.

I was able to discover that a plant could have a negative level, and I also learned that a plant could grant many more effects than I had previously imagined. I was looking forward to appraising the new plants that I had bought and checking out the high-level plants. I wanted to go back to Ponpokotei as soon as possible to go through the results of today’s shopping, but before that, I wanted to go check on the movements of the [Azure Alliance].

I walked happily up to the Dungeon monitors while carrying the plants and potions I just bought in one hand. Maybe because it was already late out and most people were finished with work, there was a crowd of people in front of the Dungeon monitors, as if the quiet stillness I saw this morning was a lie. And while there were a lot of people, there still weren’t as many as yesterday.

On the weekdays, the peak times of the Dungeon monitors seemed to be in the evening and at night. Pushing my way through the crowd with a familiar hand, I headed for the monitors that were showing the 20th to 30th layers to search for the [Azure Alliance].

Hmm… Let’s see. If they were at the 26th layer this morning, then… Oh, there they are!

In the Safe Area on the 20th layer, I found the three of them resting in a tent. As usual, Dion and Smash were preparing food while Ahmed was eating away to her heart’s content, but all three of them seemed to be in good spirits. Most importantly, they didn’t seem to be injured in any way.

After watching them for a while with a grin on my face, I left the front of the Dungeon monitors.

Looks like the pace of their return is much faster than I expected.

Rather than having the monsters getting stronger the deeper one went, the pace of their return would most likely increase steadily since the monsters got weaker the closer you got to the surface. At this pace, they would definitely be back by the day after tomorrow. The risk of them suffering any sort of tragedy was almost zero now, so all I really had to do was wait for them without worrying about anything else.

Now that the long awaited reunion with the [Azure Alliance] was a reality set in stone, my body was starting to feel even more restless than the time I had seen that brewing stand. To resist my urge to dive into the Dungeon to go and meet them right now, all I could do was sprint back to Ponpokotei with every fiber of my being in an attempt to dispel that impulse.