Funeral Overture

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

He was desperately poor now.

He had only a few silver coins left to his name. Unable to help being reminded of the past, he thought back to the days he had worked like a beast in Driftwood Town and eaten husks and weeds in his rural hometown.

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

Make money, make money, and make money!

Actually, the space inside the Level 7 Storage Ring was clearly excessive for him. He simply did not have that many things to store.

That was why he had considered selling the Level 7 Storage Ring and buying a Level 3 Storage Ring instead, which would leave him with a large amount of cash on hand.

Gagnor did not know exactly how much the Level 7 Storage Ring was worth, but he had some understanding of the prices of lower-level Storage Rings.

A Level 1 Storage Ring sold for around five gold coins—or, as ordinary people preferred to put it, "five hundred silver coins." A working person could still afford one if they gritted their teeth.

Based on Gagnor's subjective understanding as a transmigrator, the consumer positioning of a Level 1 Storage Ring was roughly equivalent to an ordinary private car in his previous life, or perhaps something slightly more expensive.

A Level 2 Storage Ring had twice the space of a Level 1 Storage Ring, but cost around four times as much. By this rough estimate, a Level 7 Storage Ring had to be worth at least a hundred gold coins—equivalent to a top-of-the-line luxury car.

If a young worker earning a few thousand yuan a month happened to obtain a top-of-the-line luxury car, the rational choice would of course be to sell it. Gagnor felt the same way.

But he did not dare sell it.

He was only a Level 1 alchemist who had not even officially obtained a pharmacist's badge, yet he possessed a Storage Ring as high-level as Level 7?

Falaro was no peaceful utopia. In this world, where ordinary people usually wrote their wills before traveling far from home, Gagnor did not dare let anyone know he had such a thing.

So he could only keep it for his own use and claim to outsiders that it was a Level 1 Storage Ring, lest he attract too much attention and speculation.

Selling the Storage Ring was impractical. He had to think of some other ways to make money.

Sell Magic Rune Ink and Lesser Wind Orbs?

It seemed feasible, but if he wanted to make a lot of money, he would have to obtain large quantities of magical-beast blood. That would also attract attention and make people think of the Blood Elves. If the Church targeted him because of it, the trouble might be no less than selling the Storage Ring.

Was there any way to make a lot of money easily?

After racking his brains, Gagnor gradually realized that simplicity, quick money, and safety might be an impossible trinity. He could not have all three.

If he wanted to make serious money, he either needed skill or had to dare take risks.

He had skill, but not much.

He dared take risks, but not that much.

Gagnor then took out the "Blood Magic Notes" and began flipping through it, hoping to find a way to make money that suited his constitution better.

After looking through it for a while, his gaze gradually came to a stop.

"Pseudo-Elixir..."

An elixir referred to a type of high-level potion that required an Eternal Bloom Plant as an essential ingredient and had powerful effects. Some elixirs could even produce permanent changes in those who consumed them, such as the Elixir of Refined Wisdom, which permanently increased intelligence; the Titan Elixir, which made people taller and stronger; and the Elder Elixir, which extended one's lifespan.

Generally speaking, only alchemists could make elixirs—or rather, only those capable of making elixirs deserved to be called alchemists. Gagnor was merely a pharmacist, so naturally he lacked the ability to make them.

However, the "Blood Magic Notes" recorded something known as a "Pseudo-Elixir." The cost and threshold for making one were far lower than those of a true elixir, yet it could still strengthen the person who consumed it.

Of course, the strengthening provided by a Pseudo-Elixir came at a price, and not a small one at that. It could shorten one's lifespan, damage one's intelligence, cause infertility, or lead to fluctuations in one's sex...

"Fluctuations in sex" was Priest Green's translation. Gagnor was not sure whether it was accurate, but it certainly sounded terrifying.

He definitely was not willing to take a Pseudo-Elixir himself. However, according to the records of the author of the "Blood Magic Notes," Pseudo-Elixirs had been quite popular during the age of the Blood Elves.

Especially Pseudo-Elixirs whose only side effect was a shortened lifespan.

In the eyes of some radical Blood Elf adventurers, a shortened lifespan did not count as a side effect at all—they would not live to a natural death anyway.

For that reason, some Blood Elf pharmacists specialized in researching and producing Pseudo-Elixirs, then sold them to radical adventurers for profit. The author of the "Blood Magic Notes" had done precisely that in his early years and seemed to have made quite a lot of money.

The human world also had similar things nowadays, but they were milder than Blood Elf Pseudo-Elixirs, with weaker side effects, weaker effects, and higher material costs. As a result, they were not popular.

Gagnor looked over some Pseudo-Elixir formulas.

Pseudo-Elixirs did not require high-end materials such as Eternal Bloom Plants. Low-level magical-beast blood and herbs were enough, and only small quantities were needed.

The only troublesome part was that making Pseudo-Elixirs required mastering a spell first.

This applied not only to Pseudo-Elixirs. Making true elixirs also required magic. After all, the full name of an elixir was "magically synthesized potion," and many alchemists even simply wrote the spell in the "materials" section when recording a formula.

Fortunately, the spell required for Pseudo-Elixirs, Simple Activation, was only a first-circle spell. It should not be too difficult to learn.

At this point, Gagnor began pondering.

Should he try making a Pseudo-Elixir?

The difficulty was acceptable, and he should be able to sell it for a high price. As for the risks... he was not sure.

Regardless, Simple Activation was worth learning. It was one of the few spells recorded in the "Blood Magic Notes" that he might currently be able to master. Besides being used to make Pseudo-Elixirs, Simple Activation could also improve the quality of ordinary potions.

Besides Simple Activation, there were six other low-level spells: the cantrips Gather Blood, Corpse Dismemberment, and Pseudo-Cooking, as well as the first-circle spells Blood Arrow, Blood-fueled Dash, and Blood Disguise. None of them counted as Black Magic in the strict sense, so he could learn them.

He would learn the spells first and worry about the rest afterward.

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

Thanks to his recent translation and studies, he could already read a small amount of Blood Elf writing directly. At the very 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 as high as the fourth circle—more than enough to keep him studying for a long time.

After setting the "Blood Magic Notes" aside, Gagnor picked up "Funeral Overture."

Since buying it, he had only read the introduction. He had not yet read the main text.

The author of Funeral Overture was Randolph, known as "the person on the entire continent who best understands Blood Elf history." He was also the headmaster of Aks Magic Academy.

This book was Randolph's classic work. For anyone who wanted to understand Blood Elf culture and history, it was an indispensable must-read.

He opened the book.

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

"Life is the overture to a funeral."

The sentence affected Gagnor deeply. He continued turning the pages, gradually becoming absorbed in the contents and marveling at Randolph's writing, so different from that of ordinary people, and at the depth of his knowledge about the Blood Elves.

Thus, for most of the next few days, Gagnor spent his time reading "Funeral Overture," until Ryan came looking for him after delivering the letter.