Time flowed quietly by like a stream, and more than half a month had passed since Roland returned from Pine Wood Town.
Roland's life had settled back into its former peaceful yet fulfilling rhythm.
He spent his mornings busy at the Blacksmith shop, trained on his own in the evenings, and studied ancient characters with Bronson at night. From time to time, he also tried new things to see whether he could awaken any new skills.
Bronson's research was progressing fairly smoothly as well. He had successfully designed Magic Runes that perfectly matched the skeleton, but engraving those delicate patterns completely onto the bone's surface would probably take quite some time.
The only regrettable thing was that the scholar's performance in alchemy was truly underwhelming.
He was extremely unfamiliar with the potion-brewing process, and his talent in that area was even more lacking.
After dozens of failures, he had not only failed to brew the potion that could activate the Shallows of Consciousness, but had also wasted most of the precious materials.
Seeing this, Roland, who had successfully brewed the Secret Potion for the Mithril Body-Tempering Technique, took on the task himself.
However, contrary to his expectations, brewing the potion for awakening the Shallows of Consciousness was far more tedious and complicated than he had imagined.
Every material required a different method of preparation. The slightest deviation in the amount added or the procedure would cause the entire effort to fail.
Compared to this potion's complicated brewing process, making the Secret Potion for the Mithril Body-Tempering Technique was practically as simple as mixing water and mud.
After several attempts, Roland failed as well.
The only thing worth celebrating was that he had accidentally awakened a skill related to alchemy during the process.
Because materials were in short supply, Roland instead