Translation: Charlotte
Editor: Weasalopes

I continued making potions.

No, to be exact, mana potions.

I didn"t have that many empty potion bottles left.

I kept using【Quick Recreate】,

My 23rd potion was a grade C-, but besides that, I managed to consistently get Grade C potions.

I didn"t notice that 【Physical Enchant: Aqua】 had expired.

Ah, how annoying.

I had to manually re-cast it.

I paid more attention to making mana potions than normal potions.

I thought it would be easy because Bunraku was adding and replenishing the liquids for me.

But as I continued, I realised that that wasn"t the case.

Making normal potions was easier.

Or maybe I only felt that way because it was difficult to get high-grade mana potions.

80th potion.

I stopped making mana potions when I hit that point.

I ran out of Paingra.s.s.

I still had Magic Mushrooms though.

I moved away from my workbench.

I headed towards the pot in the corner of the room.

There was a fireplace there.

Next to it, a coal-like fuel.

The corner of the room was also where I put the ingredients to make gla.s.s.

Silica sand, limestone, trona.

I looked around for gla.s.smaking tools.

All I had were a blowpipe and a pair of strong scissors, the same kind you would find in the workshops in Remut.

Looking closely, there was also a workbench with a special ring mechanism to rotate the blowpipe.

And then, some wooden moulds.

Although if I was just going to make potion bottles, I wouldn"t need a mould.

Just using a blowpipe should be enough.

Oh, that"s right.

Metalskin.

That Summon Monster would probably know how to use this stuff.

Metalskin was on the second floor.

In the room I slept in the day before.

I"m not hiding anything there!

「I want to try making gla.s.s in the workshop… Could you help me out with that please?」

I tried using words.

Metalskin walked past me and down the stairs, as if to lead me.

Metalskin turned around and waved its arm to signal me to follow.

The destination was not the workshop.

It was one floor below the workshop.

It was another room I"d never been in before.

There was a unique atmosphere inside.

It was a warehouse for storing various raw materials.

Metalskin first taught me where to find all the ingredients.

Silica sand.

Limestone.

There was Trona too.

The place was pretty difficult to get to, but it wasn"t that difficult to memorise the way.

Bunraku followed me, and looked about too.

There were a lot of other things too.

Coal and oil.

Sulfur.

I saw copper ore too.

The room didn"t have a fireplace.

Made sense, a single fire spell could probably blow up the whole building.

Great.

Metalskin led me back to the workshop and pointed at all the tools I would need.

They were all in a drawer under the desk.

They were mostly made out of wood.

There were moulds to make potions and mana potions too.

After that, Metalskin proceeded to show me how to use the blast furnace.

Of course, it wasn"t turned on.

I suppose when it came to starting a fire, a human would probably have to be involved.

I heard the sound of the ventilation, even though there wasn"t anything like a draft chamber around the machine.

It was a mystery.

I placed some fuel in the blast furnace and used【Pyrokinesis】to light it.

I used【Physical Enchant: Aqua】to increase my DEX stat.

I used【Resist Fire】to deal with the heat.

I prepared a bucket filled with water for cooling.

First, I had to make the raw gla.s.s.

I heard how to make it from Fay and Mitsurugi while we were chatting in Remut.

Well, it would take a while for it to melt.

I put up with it and kept stirring.

The temperature of the furnace had to be kept up.

I got Bunraku to keep blowing air into it.

As long as it wasn"t too hot, Bunraku would still be fine.

Bunraku is a wood puppet.

Yes, a wood puppet.

It would be no laughing matter for Bunraku to suddenly catch fire.

The first bottle I made was Grade C-.

Of course, a failure.

But it was usable.

I tried using【Air Current Control】along with the other spells.

It got me a burst of Grade C+ bottles.

But I still had a long way to go.

I wanted to be able to get a decent Grade when using【Quick Recreate】.

I wanted to hit at least Grade B-.

But…

At some point I had lost sight of my goal.

The work itself was fun.

I reached Grade B-, but I kept going anyway.

After making about 50 bottles, I tried changing up the size.

This time, I moved on to making mana potion bottles.

Even though there was less liquid required to make mana potions, their weight was still the same.

In other words, the walls had to be thicker.

It took more than 30 attempts for me to hit Grade C+.

Grade B-?

It almost 100 attempts to finally get it.

It was a tough job.

I kept going, hoping to consistently be able to get Grade B- bottles.

I got distracted again.

《【Gla.s.smaking】Level Up!》

《【Heat Resistance】Level Up!》

I was pa.s.sionately working at it, so I wasn"t surprised at the level-up.

It made sense.

And I was enduring a good deal of heat during the work.

I had made sure I didn"t get dehydrated too.

I licked salt from time to time.

Not Holy Rock Salt though!

I kept making more mana potion bottles.

I managed to consistently get either Grade B- or Grade C+.

When about 90% of my work became Grade B-, Master walked in.

「Keith, are you making gla.s.s bottles?」

「Yes. I"m making some at the Guild"s request.」

「Huh… That"s strange.」

Why is that?

That was all, really!

Juna picked up a bottle and a.n.a.lysed it.

Her eyes were serious.

「Aurnier, you"re making both potion and mana potion bottles?」

「Well, yeah. mana potion bottles take priority, though.」

「You could probably make them in advance then.」

「Now why would I do that?」

「So you can watch the tournament with me, Aurnier!」

Master looked like he was in shock.

What on earth…?

「Well, I already turned down requests that would force me to have to skip the tournament…」

「Nice! Right, Keith?」

She had such a friendly way of referring to me and Master.

That thought suddenly popped up in my head.

Maybe it was just my way of dodging the question.

I make gla.s.s bottles.

Master makes potions.

Juna makes mana potions.

It was a pretty good labour system.

The Healgra.s.s I just collected disappeared at an amazing rate.

My supply of Paingra.s.s and Magic Mushrooms was starting to dwindle too.

I couldn"t keep up with the bottle demand either.

I started using【Quick Recreate】.

I shut off the furnace.

It was then, more than ever, that I had to watch my MP bar.

My MP bar wasn"t infinite.

「Use these.」

Master handed me a few mana potions.

They were all below Grade C.

Good point…

I could keep my MP bar in check with this.

Although it felt a bit foul.

It felt like I was stealing something.

Metalskin brought in dinner.

The time was already 7 pm.

Already that time?

The work desk was filled with potions and mana potions.

I took a desk out of my《Item Box》and had my meal there.

「Keith, I"m going to have you make mana potions after this.」

「OK.」

「We have enough I think. I"m going to deliver them tomorrow, you want to come with?」

「I think I"ll train for the tournament…」

Yep.

Just hanging out with Master would probably take half a day.

The tournament was in three days.

There were only two days after tomorrow.

And if I wanted to try fighting Deva Kings, it would take at least the whole morning to move from Master"s house to the Wind Spirit Village.

I had to use my time wisely.

And to make it in time for the tournament, I had to be there by at least two days from now.

And one day of training would probably get eaten up by the travel.

Honestly, I doubted that there was a point in trying to level-up for the tournament.

I wasn"t convinced that I could level-up any skills to really make a difference.

Thinking about it that way, I suppose it wouldn"t be a bad idea to accompany Master…

「Aren"t you tough-headed.」

「Even though there"s a better way~」

「Master, please keep some things to yourself…」

「Tsk.」

Huh?

Hmm…

Was I missing something?

After finishing my meal, I got to making mana potions.

I made enough for three bottles every round.

At the third round, I got three Grade C+ mana potions.

I tried using【Quick Recreate】, and got Grade C.

Pretty good.

「You can take everything that I"m not planning on delivering.」

Master told me that after I realised that my《Item Box》was more full than usual.

What…?

23 mana potions?

I decided to take it as my remuneration.

「Well, that"s enough for today. You can spend tomorrow as you wish.」

「Aurnier, you"re a strict one~」

「If you can"t learn, you can"t stay here.」

「We have different ways of teaching though?」

「Well, looking at Master right now, he"s grown to be a lot more kind I think.」

「I might cry if you"re mean, you know?」

「Don"t say that, please.」

Hmm…

What was it?

What was I missing here…

Such ideas ran around within my head.

I didn"t find an answer.

I left the house and walked out to the garden.

Obsidian was outside the entire time, and flew down on my shoulder.

Hmm…

I decided to go for some night hunting.

Leaving Volf, Obsidian, and Creep, I recalled Rig and Bunraku.

I summoned Mumyo and Zuiun.

Hmm?

I suppose I could check out the arena too.

It should be the same as last time.

But I wanted to refresh myself.

Even without an opponent, I could get into Battle Mode.

Nice.

As expected, it was the default.

A 50m square.

I could get Obsidian to fly around, but it was still a bit cramped.

What?

I had a choice of opponents.

Volff

Obsidian

Mumyo

Creep

Zuiun

Wait, what?

Huh…

I guess it"s possible to fight party members in the Battle Mode?

As training rather than compet.i.tion?

Well that was convenient…

There were more settings too.

3 on 3 was an option.

Of course, 1 on 1 was there too.

It seemed like a set of three one on one fights was possible too.

Huh… I didn"t know that.

How careless of me.

The default setting was a square arena, with a 50 metre side.

Match set when one of the HP bars reach 10%.

An MP bar that won"t go below 10%.

A match time of 10 minutes.

At that time, the result will be determined by the amount of HP remaining.

All sense settings at 100%.

No weapon limitations.

No spell limitations.

No martial arts limitations.

No recovery items.

A one on one match.

The settings were pretty detailed.

I felt like giving it a shot.