Funeral Overture

Gagnor lay in bed, stroking the Level 7 Storage Ring on his finger as he pondered.

He was currently dirt poor.

With only a few silver coins to his name, he couldn't help but feel a pang of sentimentality, recalling his days as a workhorse in Driftwood Town and subsisting on meager rations back in his rural hometown.

So, after recovering from the initial joy of obtaining the Level 7 Storage Ring, Gagnor had only three things on his mind.

Making money, making money, and making money!

In truth, the space within the Level 7 Storage Ring was far more than he needed; he simply didn't have that many things to store.

Therefore, he had considered selling the Level 7 Storage Ring and buying a Level 3 Storage Ring instead, which would leave him with a substantial amount of cash.

Gagnor wasn't entirely sure how much a Level 7 Storage Ring was worth, but he had some knowledge of the prices of lower-level Storage Rings.

A Level 1 Storage Ring sold for about five gold coins—or "five hundred silver coins," as ordinary people preferred to describe it. A working stiff could afford one if they gritted their teeth and saved up.

According to Gagnor's subjective understanding as a transmigrator, the consumer positioning of a Level 1 Storage Ring was roughly equivalent to an ordinary private car, or perhaps a bit higher, in his previous life.

A Level 2 Storage Ring had twice the space of a Level 1 Storage Ring, but its price was about four times as high. Roughly estimating, a Level 7 Storage Ring should be worth at least a hundred gold coins, equivalent to a top-tier luxury car.

If a young working stiff earning a few thousand yuan a month happened to get their hands on a top-tier luxury car, the rational choice would be to sell it, and Gagnor had a similar idea.

But he didn't dare sell it.

He was just a Level 1 Apothecary who hadn't even officially obtained his Apothecary badge, yet he possessed a Storage Ring as high as Level 7?

Falaro wasn't a peaceful and prosperous land. In this world where ordinary people usually wrote their wills before going on a long journey, Gagnor didn't dare let others know he had such a thing.

So, he could only keep it for himself and claim it was a Level 1 Storage Ring to avoid attracting too much attention and speculation.

Selling the Storage Ring wasn't realistic, so he considered other ways to make money.

Selling Magic Rune ink or Lesser Wind Orbs?

That seemed okay, but if he wanted to earn a lot, he had to obtain a large amount of magical beast blood, which was also a bit conspicuous and easily associated with Blood Elves. If he were targeted by the Church because of that, the trouble might not be any less than selling the Storage Ring.

Were there any methods that were easy to operate, profitable, and safe?

Gagnor thought about it and gradually realized that simple operation, quick money, and safety were perhaps an impossible trinity, impossible to have all at once.

To make a killing, you either had to have the skills or dare to take risks.

He had skills, but not many.

He dared to take risks, but not very much.

Gagnor then took out the Blood Magic Notes and flipped through it, wanting to see if there were any money-making methods more suitable for his constitution.

After some browsing, his gaze gradually stopped.

"Pseudo-Elixir..."

Elixirs referred to a class of high-level potions, requiring Eternal Bloom Plants as essential ingredients, with powerful effects. Some elixirs could also have permanent effects on the user, such as the Elixir of Refined Wisdom, which permanently increased intelligence, the Titan Elixir, which made people tall and strong, and the Elder Elixir, which extended lifespan.

Usually, only alchemists could make elixirs, or rather, only those who could make elixirs were worthy of being called alchemists. Gagnor was just an apothecary and naturally didn't have the ability to make elixirs.

However, the Blood Magic Notes recorded something called "Pseudo-Elixir." The production cost and threshold of Pseudo-Elixirs were far lower than those of true elixirs, but they could still produce strengthening effects on the user.

Of course, the strengthening of Pseudo-Elixirs came at a price, and not a small one, such as shortening lifespan, damaging intelligence, infertility, gender fluctuation...

"Gender fluctuation" was Priest Green's translation. Gagnor wasn't sure if it was accurate, but it sounded quite terrifying.

He himself certainly wouldn't want to take Pseudo-Elixirs, but according to the Blood Magic Notes' author's records, Pseudo-Elixirs were quite popular during the Blood Elf era.

Especially Pseudo-Elixirs whose only side effect was shortening lifespan.

In the eyes of some radical Blood Elf adventurers, shortening lifespan wasn't even a side effect—they wouldn't live to a ripe old age anyway.

To this end, some Blood Elf apothecaries specialized in researching and making Pseudo-Elixirs, then selling them to radical adventurers for profit. The author of the Blood Magic Notes did this in his early years and seemed to have made a lot of money.

The human world now had similar things, but they were gentler than the Blood Elf's Pseudo-Elixirs, with smaller side effects, weaker effects, and higher material costs, so they weren't popular.

Gagnor looked at some Pseudo-Elixir recipes.

Pseudo-Elixirs didn't require high-end materials like Eternal Bloom Plants, just low-level magical beast blood and herbs, and only a small amount was needed.

The only slightly troublesome thing was that making Pseudo-Elixirs required mastering spells first.

Not only Pseudo-Elixirs, but making true elixirs also required magic. After all, the full name of elixirs was "magical synthetic potions." Many alchemists even simply wrote spells in the "materials" column when writing recipes.

Fortunately, the spell required for Pseudo-Elixirs, "Simple Activation," was just a Rank 1 spell, which shouldn't be too difficult to learn.

Seeing this, Gagnor pondered.

Should he try making Pseudo-Elixirs?

The difficulty was acceptable, and they should sell for a high price, as for the risks... he wasn't sure.

But regardless, "Simple Activation" was worth learning. After all, it was one of the few spells recorded in the Blood Magic Notes that he might be able to master at present, and besides being used to make Pseudo-Elixirs, Simple Activation could also be used to improve the quality of ordinary potions.

In addition to "Simple Activation," there were six other low-level spells: the cantrips "Gather Blood," "Dissection," and "Pseudo-Cooking," and the Rank 1 spells "Blood Arrow," "Blood-fueled Dash," and "Blood Disguise." These weren't strictly Black Magic and could be learned.

He should learn the spells first.

With the blessing of "Return to Youth," Gagnor was confident that he could learn these seven spells within a year.

Thanks to recent translation and study, he could already directly read a small amount of Blood Elf text, at least he recognized the numbers.

So he flipped through the entire book again, including the untranslated sections, and discovered that the spells recorded in the Blood Magic Notes seemed to reach a maximum of Fourth Circle, enough for him to study for a long time.

Setting the Blood Magic Notes aside, Gagnor picked up Funeral Overture instead.

Since buying this book, he had only read the introduction; he hadn't even looked at the main text.

Funeral Overture was written by Randolph, known as "the person who understands Blood Elf history the best on the entire continent," and also the dean of Ax Magic Academy.

This book is Randolph's classic work, an indispensable read for anyone who wants to understand Blood Elf culture and history.

He opened the book.

The first page of the main text contained only one sentence.

"Life is the overture to a funeral."

This sentence deeply touched Gagnor. He continued to turn the pages, gradually becoming engrossed in the content, marveling at Randolph's unique writing style and his extensive knowledge of the Blood Elves.

So for most of the next few days, he spent his time reading Funeral Overture, until Ryan, who had finished delivering the letters, came to find him.