Lucky?
He couldn't shake the feeling that she'd been expecting him.
Linde paid the Gold Seal notes and reached out to take the pouch.
Inside was a dark, lumpy crystal, radiating an ominous aura.
"That's a Scavenger's Crystal," Mika explained. "You might not find one in a hundred Scavengers."
"One out of a hundred Scavengers," Linde mused. So, the so-called Heart of Calamity was a material harvested from monsters.
He thought to himself, "So I can just issue a quest for players to grind, then buy them up. It shouldn't be a problem; it's not inherently scarce."
Others might worry, but Linde wouldn't.
As long as the players could grind it out, there wouldn't be any problem. Grinding was precisely what players excelled at.
And there was no way all the Scavengers would die out. If those guys were truly wiped out, the world would be at peace.
Linde asked, "Have you made similar potions before?"
"The Circle of Magic is shattered, duh!" Mika said with a 'duh' expression. "Lots of people are reclaiming the Circle of Magic's power through Calamity monsters. It's just that nobody around Puley Town knows it. That Ronin guy also wanted me to help him brew a potion."
She pouted, her lips full enough to balance an oil can, looking annoyed. "But he's afraid I'll steal his potion recipe. He keeps everything hidden and wants to learn how to make potions from me. But potion-making isn't something you learn! Only those chosen by Uni, who can hear her voice, can do it."
She puffed out her chest proudly after saying that.
Linde didn't dwell on what she meant by "hearing" anything. What Ronin was doing had nothing to do with Linde. They'd keep to their own sides of the road.
He was only thinking about the potion problem now.
Mika clapped her hands together. "Since you gave me a free potion recipe and trust me so much, give me another 100 Gold Seal notes, and I'll take care of getting all the other ingredients and even brew it for you directly. What do you think?"
Maybe potion recipes are really valuable, but whatever. Linde's interests lay not with NPCs, but with the players.
"And you just happen to have leftover ingredients, right?" Linde asked.
"Hehe." Looking at the beautiful girl smiling and showing off her little bunny teeth, even though she didn't say anything, Linde already had his answer.
He nodded. "Alright!"
"It just so happens I brought everything with me."
Linde: ...
She really is a hamster spirit, hoarding everything on her person.
As long as he could increase his power, Gold Seal notes and whatnot didn't matter at all. Whatever.
He watched her pull out a full set of tools from a small bag that seemed to hold far more than it should.
She lit a fire and started simmering in a cauldron.
From time to time, she added something dark or something iridescent. The liquid inside the small cauldron changed from white to yellow, then to black.
When she added the Heart of Calamity, the liquid began to bubble vigorously, and the color turned an even more ominous purple.
Mika, holding a spoon, gently stirred the cauldron liquid, muttering something under her breath.
Ignoring her cute and delicate appearance, she was practically identical to Gargamel from The Smurfs.
Linde didn't understand what she was doing; he just stood quietly to the side.
Most of the night passed. Linde, who had been traveling during the day and was now burning the midnight oil watching over things, was mentally exhausted.
Suddenly, a strange smell wafted over, and he snapped to attention, looking at Mika's cauldron. The liquid had turned a light golden color, radiating a powerful allure.
She carefully poured the potion into a small bottle, taking extraordinary care with each step. She even deliberately opened the window, letting the moonlight, like shards of glass, shine in.
Through the potion bottle, the moonlight fell on the light golden liquid.
Suddenly, it stirred up a flurry of tiny bubbles. When the bubbles disappeared, the liquid inside was only a slight orange-yellow.
"Done!"
She handed Linde a small, thumb-sized bottle of potion, saying wearily, "The potion is complete, but you must follow the rules for drinking it. You must find the dawn that cannot brighten before drinking it."
Linde stared at the potion, which was an unappetizing color. If he hadn't watched her complete the steps himself, Linde would have really thought this potion was ice tea he'd found near the crane.
"The dawn that cannot brighten must refer to a cloudy morning."
He thought it would be best to ask Grandmother Eluna about this. As someone who had personally witnessed the scene of the church clergy collectively taking a potion and then all dying, Grandmother Eluna surely knew what a dawn that cannot brighten was.
Mika quickly cleaned up her cauldron, waved goodbye to Linde. This potion brewing session had taken a toll on her too.
Linde didn't waste any time and hurried to the church.
"That refers to a mental fog, a neither-here-nor-there state, an inverted consciousness," Grandmother Eluna said in her uniquely mystical and rambling way. "In a daze, one can hear the whispers of the gods, while a self-assured clarity makes one foolish and ignorant. Perhaps you need to eat some kind of untouched weed? Who knows."
"I get it!" He understood her subtle hint.
Linde walked out of the church and bent down to pluck some weeds from the cracks in the brickwork.
Seeing this, Grandmother Eluna led him to the room filled with distorted corpses. If he failed, he would become one of those with a twisted body.
He stuffed the nasty, juiceless weeds that even scratched his tongue into his mouth, chewing them.
His mind quickly descended into a confused and muddled state.
Linde seemed to see a lot of little sprites doing the "social shuffle" dance in front of him. He couldn't tell if he was standing on the ground or hanging upside down from the ceiling. At this moment, was he supporting himself on his hands, or was his butt stuck to the wall? Anything was possible; he only felt amusement.
It seemed that all the rules had become unimportant.
Words flew out of the book Praise the Sun, and they were like chains, wrapping around Linde and controlling his body, preventing him from running away.
Time to drink the potion.
But Linde could no longer open the potion. Grandmother Eluna came over and shoved the potion into Linde's mouth, or was it his nose? He couldn't tell.
The tune of "Two Tigers" suddenly started playing again.
He felt a tearing pain in his body, and a surge of energy flooded into him. His heart beat rapidly, like a pile driver.
A roar echoed in his ears, but the louder the roar, the more Linde felt he knew.
The words flying from Praise the Sun burrowed into his body, forming a circle right over his heart.
They also locked away the madness there.
When Linde opened his eyes, all the commotion and agitation stopped.
Grandmother Eluna was holding Praise the Sun, silently watching him.
"Blegh! Ptooey!" Linde bent over and spat out the weeds mixed with phlegm and blood.
He felt stronger than ever before, his vision was clearer, and his nose could smell deeper scents. He could smell beef jerky.
What he felt even more clearly was the power in his body, containing a sense of explosive expansion.
He could even hear Grandmother Eluna's frail and weak heartbeat.
With each breath, the heightened hearing and perception were suppressed, gradually returning to normal, shifting from passive to active control.
"Eat something," she offered Linde a piece of jerky that still retained its tiny paws, long tail, and even grey fur and pointed snout. Linde immediately shook his head. "No, thank you."
Rats were a rare source of meat, but Linde felt he could hold out a little longer.
He swayed as he stood up, relieved that his legs weren't spiraling in grotesque ways. In fact, his body was even stronger. Even though he was starving and struggling to stand, Linde still had the feeling that he could knock out his past self with one punch.
There was still a strange power within him. He tried using the method recorded in Crowley's diary, guiding the power to flow out.
Boom!
A burst of flames erupted from his palm, the high temperature leaving a burnt smell in his hair.
The force of the explosion even pushed him back a few steps. The corpses on the ground covered in the flames were instantly blown to pieces, and some began to burn.
"Only about one-twentieth of my internal energy was lost."
Crowley's Blast of Fire was more powerful than he had imagined.
However, it seemed he couldn't throw it very far.
"Grandmother Eluna, thank you so much for your help," Linde sincerely thanked the old nun.
Then he asked, "Were there others who succeeded before me?"