Chapter 15 Black Market Fair <TOC> Chapter 17 Frost Sword Maiden
Translator: SumTLMan
Having formulated his escape plan, Rayne paid no attention to the stalking assassin who watched him outside the lab.
Even though Pythius had deliberately left the lab and left him all alone, he hadn’t rashly chosen to flee.
Besides, the “Black Market Fair” was still two days away, and Rayne also had to make some preparations in advance.
……
Late at night, he enters into the dream world.
The dream world created by his “Wisdom Brain” is no longer a library but a 1:1 replica of Pythius’s magic potion lab.
Not only was the equipment on the operating platform complete, but even the potion materials in the lockers were exactly the same as in the real world.
Rayne didn’t do anything else but went straight to the platform, picked up the test tubes and measuring cups, and started to try his hand at configuring the antidote to [Zombie Potion]…
To an outsider, he would look like an apprentice magic potion master who had only been in the profession for a few days. It would be overreaching if he were attempting to configure a finished magic potion.
Even for the gifted students at the Royal College of Magic Potion, the top school in the Omagh Empire, purification, extraction, fusion… These necessary steps require at least a few months of dedicated practice before they can attempt to fuse the materials into a finished potion.
What kind of apprentice would start off by preparing a finished potion after just a few days?
Rayne, however, is a special case.
…….
In this world, magic potion masters are highly regarded, and their numbers are relatively scarce. The reason for this isn’t because few people want to study the discipline, but because the threshold for this discipline is… Extremely high!
To get started in magic potions, apart from the vast and boring theoretical knowledge this [Scholar] profession requires, one must also be prepared for “tossing money”.
A magic potion master apprentice needs a lot of hands-on training to progress and become a formal magic potion master.
The amount of material wasted in this process is absolutely mind-boggling to the average person. Even for many noble families, it’s unlikely that they can train a formal magical potion master by tossing all their money away…
Moreover: “Tossing money” may not necessarily be rewarded, and the second threshold dissuades the vast majority of people.
Talent, hard work, opportunity, mentorship…
This is the second, third, fourth and fifth threshold…
None of these thresholds is indispensable.
It’s also because of these high thresholds: Becoming a “magic potion master” is a profession that only nobles and emperors can afford to pursue. The beginning entry point is often the end of a lifetime’s worth of struggle for ordinary people. With this struggle, they’re destined to have a higher status than any other transcendent profession.
Rayne, however, doesn’t have to worry about the “tossing money” threshold.
With his “Wisdom Brain”, he has the advantage of being a “Divine Sage”!
In the dream world, he can waste an unlimited number of materials.
As long as his “Wisdom Brain” has recorded the magic potion materials, the potency, properties, pharmacology… All can be translated into precise data and recreated in the dream world with 100% simulation.
If he fails, he can fail again and again. Even if he makes a mistake, there’s no risk of “blowing up”.
This is the most crucial reason for Rayne directly experimenting with refining a finished potion.
……
In the dream world, Rayne began experimenting.
On his left hand was the antidote formula, and in front of him was a projection showing Pythius’s entire refining process used to make the potion during that day.
He didn’t even have to think about it at all. He only had to follow the projection of the process step by step as he began experimenting.
He takes whatever materials Pythius takes…
Whatever Pythius does next, he follows…
How many degrees of heat, how many times of purification, fusion time to the millisecond… All of this data was recorded precisely by his “Wisdom Brain”.
After all, this was only a primary potion, not yet involving some of the more complex reaction processes required by high levels of control and transcendent ability. To say it simply, even an apprentice could successfully configure this potion if the projected movements were entirely copied.
But even so, Rayne had failed countless times during the refining process.
He had failed hundreds of times just during the purification and extraction process for a dozen materials to the point of becoming the standard example of what not do during the refining process.
And this is the usual case regarding the configuration of potions. One small mistake can lead to the failure of an entire potion refinement.
Luckily, the twenty times faster time flow in the dream world and an unlimited supply of virtual materials gave him plenty of opportunities to make such extravagant refinement attempts.
If it were anyone else, not mentioning the effort it takes, just practising with these high-grade materials, even the top noble apprentices wouldn’t dare be so extravagant.
……
At night, Rayne continues practising the experiments in his dream world.
During the day, when Pythius left the laboratory, he went straight to working on his experiments.
Finally, it’s paid off.
After many failed attempts, Rayne, with his “Wisdom Brain”, finally succeeded in configuring an antidote that only a formal magic potion master can prepare!
So… Has Rayne’s pharmacology skills now reached the level of formal magic potion master?
No, not even close. There’s still a long way left to go.
His foundation wasn’t even as good as that of an ordinary magic potion apprentice.
For an ordinary academy attending magic potion master apprentice, it would take about a year or two of basic study of introducing pharmacology to refine this finished antidote.
But Rayne, who has the aid of his “Wisdom Brain”, directly skips this entire process.
The formal magic potion master assessment is like a college entrance exam, requiring a comprehensive evaluation of all subjects. If he were studying at the college, he would be considered an “eccentric genius” type who was seriously off the beaten path and could only solve one kind of problem.
He doesn’t have the understanding and huge theoretical basis involved in the entire potion configuration process. What are the properties of a single material, how does the fusion of medicinal properties work together, how do temperature fluctuations affect the potion’s potency…
He didn’t have to think about any of these problems at all.
All Rayne had to do was copy the stolen procedures recorded by his “Wisdom Brain” and learn from Pythius’s every move.
He worked on one potion’s specialized configuration for two whole nights with the equivalent of a month’s worth of hard work.
Only then did he succeed in configuring a finished potion that only a one-star magic potion master could theoretically refine.
……
Of course, the astute Pythius also noticed traces of his lab bench being tampered with and some materials that clearly belonged to the [Zombie Potion] antidote being missing from the locker.
In the old man’s view, Rayne’s behaviour was, naturally, an overreached attempt to configure the potion.
Haha, you want to fly before you learn to crawl?
What a foolish thing to do…
Pythius didn’t care and pretended not to see, leaving Rayne to his own devices. At most, only a bit of material was lost.
In this way, two days passed peacefully.
Finally, the destination was reached.
…….
The banditry in the southern part of the Omagh Empire had been a persistent problem for decades. The imperial army had arrived countless times to exterminate these slippery bandit gangs, but they’ve never been successful. With hundreds of bandit gangs’ strength, this group could even take over some of the region’s larger territories.
And this time around, the site chosen for the “Black Market Fair” was as discreet as ever.
The terrain on the shore of “Storm Lake” is so open that if the Imperial army is spotted, the bandits will be able to flee in all directions. A complete siege would be absolutely impossible.
Today is a rare day with fine sunny weather.
The fog on the earth is light and thin, and the visibility was relatively high.
By the time the “Demon Weasel Bandits” arrived on the shores of “Storm Lake”, over a hundred bandit gangs, large and small, had gathered.
The bonfires stretched for dozens of miles, and the crowd was buzzing with activity.
Strange steam-powered mechanical cities of all shapes and sizes were stationed around the lake, resembling herds of bison drinking collectively on the grassland.
Chimney towers had black smoke rising above the clouds. Hyenas, crabs, barrels, octopi, hedgehogs… The mechanical cities are dark with strange and bizarre forms full of steampunk flavour.
Amongst all the steam-powered mechanical cities, three “War Beast Grade” castles stood out from the rest.
Their black-painted armour, each painted with a ferocious one-eyed wolf’s head, stood out.
These were the “White Wolf Bandits”, one of the three largest bandit gangs in the Omagh Empire. They are the ones who had called for this fair.
The gang leader was impressively one of the “Ten Legendary Demon Hunters”, a legendary figure who had unlocked the fifth-order genetic lock limit for bandits, and a man who had a 180 million lire bounty offered by the Omagh and Sidhe Empires for his head… The [White Wolf] Barzel Gustav!
This lively Black Market Fair is full of wanted criminals with bounties of at least 10 million. Even the arrival of a notorious gang like the “Demon Weasel Bandits” didn’t cause any waves.
This was the pinnacle of bandit gangs gatherings and revelry for robbers.
……
“What a gathering…”
Rayne lamented, his eyes quivering with excitement as he looked at the hot bazaar in front of him.
This was the moment he finally saw the dawn of “freedom”.
At these words, the corners of Pythius’s mouth lifted in an imperceptible smile, and without looking back, he said: “Come on, I’ll show you my magic potion master peers…”
“Yes, Teacher.”
At these words, Rayne cleverly followed Pythius’s lead and took a step down from the mechanical city.
Chapter 15 Black Market Fair <TOC> Chapter 17 Frost Sword Maiden