CH 216

Episode 216 – A Busy Day Off

Today marked the end of the third day of gathering plants, and after a day off tomorrow, we would resume clearing the Dungeon the day after. From the second day onwards, I didn’t manage to find any new plant species or Pound Herb, but I did manage to gather more than enough plants.

Today and tomorrow, I wanted to work on making potions and items with the large quantity of plants that we gathered. Aruna noticed that my spirit of inquiry was piqued and that I was just itching to run off, and she told me it was okay to excuse myself.

“You can go now. Just like the last three days, there’s nothing to be sorry about.” (Aruna)

“Exactly. You should go ahead and sell the plants and make support items. It sounds like a lot of work, but thank you in advance.” (Rosalie)

“Thanks for your consideration… I’ll take you up on that then. I’ll be heading back first. I’ll make sure to develop some good items for the day after tomorrow.” (Lewin)

After saying that, I gave them a slight bow and left the Dungeon. Now then… I kind of want to go to Green Formula to buy some additional plants I might need, but I think I should just use the plants that I have on hand right now.

I managed to earn some financial leeway recently, but I didn’t want to squander it away so easily. While thinking of the combination of materials I would need, I made my way to the Laudungeon Company.

Immediately after I arrived at the Laudungeon Company, I got to work with brewing potions. I was currently wrestling with the challenge of making a potion with Focus Herb.

I converted the plants that we gathered on the first day into Recovery Potions and Magic Potions in order to sell them, but I quickly abandoned that idea after realizing that the increase in selling price wasn’t worth the amount of time required. If I had as much time on my hands as I did back in Grezesta, I would definitely continue making them into potions before selling them… But unfortunately, I had to continue clearing the Dungeon, so time was limited. Since I was in a position where no amount of money was ever enough, I had to prioritize making the potions I needed for clearing the Dungeon, even if I did want to sell the plants as potions.

“Hmm… The effect is still a bit too weak.” (Lewin)

What I was trying to do with the Focus Herb at the moment was to make a potion that would allow Rosalie to overcome her social anxiety. As demonstrated yesterday when we were clearing the Dungeon, Focus Herb could prevent the onset of Rosalie’s social anxiety. It allowed her to demonstrate movements that were even better than our first day of clearing the Dungeon together, granting her the ability to exhibit her full power.

However, using the Focus Herb in its raw state made the duration too short and the effect too strong. Also, when its effects ran out, the dizziness that it caused afterwards proved to be a hindrance in combat. As a result, I was brewing the Focus Herb into a potion while trying to increase the duration of the effect and tone down the potency a bit.

If possible, I wanted to make it so it would provide just the right amount of concentration boost, and last for the entire day, but this was rather difficult to achieve. If I could just dilute the potency appropriately like I did with the Strength Potion I made out of Dumbbell Weed, then I could make it easily. But this time, that wouldn’t work.

Unexpectedly, certain plants’ effects would change when paired with other plants, so I had to combine debuffing plants to shave off some of the potency. It was a lot of work, but there was a purpose for plants that I thought I would never end up using, so this period of trial and error ended up being so fun that I began to lose track of time.

…But in the end, even after spending three days on it, the potion that I was aiming for still hadn’t taken form. Although the potion was still incomplete, I had to go back to clearing the Dungeon. In the end, I managed to come up with a prototype potion that was at least minimally combat-effective.

“It was supposed to be a break but I’m super tired. I want to go back and sleep and prepare for tomorrow’s Dungeon attempt, but… let’s do just one more thing before then.” (Lewin)

I stepped out of the Laudungeon Company, and was greeted by the orange-dyed cityscape of Landaust. Since my money-making method with potions didn’t turn out well, I wanted to find a new avenue of income, which was the wholesale of Glutamate Herb.

Just as Clive was purchasing it at a high cost in Grezesta, as long as people knew about the effect of the plant, it would certainly be a highly demanded plant. But since I didn’t have any connections, I currently had no choice but to find a wholesale location myself. As expected, Tobias didn’t have any information about anything that wasn’t related to the Dungeon.

In my search for a shop that dealt with foodstuffs, the place I went to first was the dining hall where Tobias and I first met. As a dining hall with a large variety of different types of dishes, they would inevitably have to deal with a lot of ingredients. I thought that it would be good to ask them which stores they bought from in order to find potential wholesale candidates.

Besides, they probably didn’t have many customers right now in the early evening, so it should be a good time to talk to them.

“Welcome! You can take a seat wherever you’d like!”

“Um, excuse me. I’m not here to eat, I actually wanted to speak with you about something, would that be alright?” (Lewin)

I was aware that I was potentially being impolite, but this auntie who worked at the restaurant continued to smile at me.

“Oya? How unusual, for someone to want to speak with me! I’m free right now so it’s alright! So what did you want to talk about?” (Dining Hall Employee)

“Actually, I wanted to ask about where you buy your seasonings from.” (Lewin)

“Seasonings? Not food?” (Dining Hall Employee)

“Yes, the seasonings.” (Lewin)

The employee looked puzzled when I asked her about seasonings, and not the food ingredients. Being asked out of the blue about where you buy seasonings would certainly be a bit weird after all…

“Let’s see… We buy the ordinary seasonings from the street stalls on Main Street, and the ones that aren’t as widely distributed, we buy from the Merchant’s Guild!” (Dining Hall Employee)

In Grezesta, the Merchant’s Guild didn’t directly deal in the buying and selling of goods, so it didn’t cross my mind at all. But it seemed that the Merchant’s Guild in Landaust was involved in trade.

The scale of a Guild was certainly much larger than any ordinary shop, so there was a good chance that they would understand the value of Glutamate Herb, and offer a high price for it. This might be worth checking out…

I wasn’t sure if they were still doing business at this hour, but I decided to go check it out right away.