The Alchemy Pot and the Happy Water

"This is an expected result."

Angell looked as if he had foreseen it all after hearing the news that Kata had passed the mana assessment.

That child was a player high up on the leaderboard, and Angell had taken note of him.

"He plays the game many times a day, doesn't he? That means he is practicing meditation repeatedly every day. With such high-intensity training, it would be strange if his mana level didn't improve."

"In other words, can one become a mage just by working hard?" Enlise asked with sparkling eyes.

Seeing her like this, Mithril couldn't help but twitch its whiskers.

"Unfortunately, the talent ceiling..." is already determined.

Mithril wanted to answer this way.

But Angell suddenly reached out from behind and firmly pressed Mithril into the pot.

"Yes!" Angell said to Enlise, "As long as you work hard, most people can become mages."

"I will work hard!"

Enlise said excitedly.

In truth, she was already working very hard.

Before this, after discovering that the games on the game table were exercises for meditation, Enlise had been persistently using the games to train her own meditation ability, and this incident with Kata clearly gave Enlise even greater motivation.

However, after Enlise walked away, Mithril poked its head out from the alchemy pot and rubbed its nose with a paw: "You are deceiving her!"

Mana has a limit.

Just like IQ, once a person is born, the upper limit of their mana level is already fixed.

Angell was the person who understood this best.

He had been an intermediate mage for a hundred years, and after staying in the Mage Tower for a century, he was still an intermediate mage. This wasn't because he didn't work hard, but because the mana limit of this body in this lifetime determined his mana level.

"It's not deception! It is a fact that as long as one does not have an 'Anti-Magic Constitution,' those without talent can become magic apprentices or even low-level mages after putting in the effort!" Angell retorted, "The proof is that there are far more mages among the nobility than among the commoners."

"That was fine in the Magic Era, but in this era, both low-level and intermediate mages are useless."

Therefore, many nobles no longer put great effort into becoming mages.

This was the direct reason for the decline in the number of mages.

Mithril wanted to sigh whenever this topic came up: "If an ideal is destined to be shattered, it is better not to have hope in the first place."

"According to your theory, one could give up on every profession if they lack high-level talent," Angell frowned, "Besides, for me, increasing people's mana levels is necessary."

To make money more effectively.

Currently, because people could only manage meditation levels, Angell could only create small games with simple operations and extremely low mana consumption, much like the limitations of early electronic games.

But looking at the development of this world, the vacuum tube computer should have already been born, so it was only a matter of time before it evolved into an electronic computer. At that point, the head start gained by the game table would be lost.

During this period, Angell could only stabilize the foundation of the rune games by increasing the mana levels of the players and creating more complex games to cultivate a group of "veteran players."

This concerned the future of the workshop; it was no joke.

Fortunately, things seemed to be going smoothly. In just one month, one child had already passed the mana assessment, so others should have reached a corresponding level after clearing those few games.

Angell was optimistic about this.

However, Mithril did not know about the history of computer development in another plane, so naturally, it did not know Angell's plan. It looked at Angell and twitched its ears: "You really..." Do you want to revive the Magic Era?

As a mage, one would naturally not want to watch magic civilization decline, right?

The black cat thought so.

It retracted its claws and extended a paw pad, wanting to pat the hand Angell had been pressing on it, but before it could finish its thought, it heard a hissing sound from beneath it.

Then, a mechanical voice rang out: "Food appraisal complete, generating menu."

"Menu?" Angell looked curiously beneath Mithril.

It was an alchemy pot.

Because the monster hostess from the Adventurer's Guild had been eaten by Mithril, the bartender and the cook could no longer be sent over. Angell had originally planned to go to the Career Agency to post another recruitment notice, but noticing a set of magic pots in the warehouse's backlog, he decided to try using them first.

This pot was quite magical.

As long as food was thrown into it, it could analyze the recipe.

Then, by finding the ingredients according to the menu and putting them back into the pot, it could generate food identical in taste to the original.

Unfortunately, its recipes deviated slightly from normal ones, and it ultimately lost to the oven.

Angell could not understand what "deviated slightly from normal recipes" meant, so he had been experimenting with the pot's effects before Enlise ran over because of the Kata incident.

Angell did not expect that pushing Mithril into the pot would also have an effect. He took the recipe out from under the pot.

[Dish Name]: Angell's Left Hand

[Ingredients]: Human flesh, human bone, a bottle of gentleness, a bottle of spellcasting gestures, plus a lot of "clumsiness."

[Special Effect]: When petting a cat or stroking a head, the target's favorability +5

What the hell is this?

"Wait a second, aren't you inside the pot? Why is it my hand?" Angell asked, feeling strange.

"Because I don't count as food!" the cat inside the Cat Pot replied righteously.

Angell was highly skeptical of this.

He suspected that Mithril itself had been synthesized using this pot and materials from an Argumentative Spirit.

"Try something else."

Angell's interest was piqued.

He lifted Mithril out of the pot and placed the sandwich Enlise had made for lunch inside.

[Dish Name]: Enlise's Heartfelt Sandwich

[Ingredients]: Two slices of bread, one leaf of lettuce, one fried egg, two slices of ham, a dash of apple jam, a spoonful of longing, a spoonful of worry, a spoonful of leftovers.

[Special Effect]: Can fill your stomach.

Angell said, "The first part of the ingredients is fine, but what the hell is the stuff at the end?"

"Longing and worry are Enlise's feelings for you, and 'leftovers' refers to the fact that you didn't finish eating it, right?"

"..." Because a ham sandwich with apple jam is just weird!

Even after transmigrating for over a hundred years, he still found it impossible to understand the local palate.

Angell muttered to himself in his heart.

"These emotions are redundant, but they must be included, otherwise this pot cannot make anything," Mithril sighed. "It's also because of this that it couldn't be sold."

"Only a White Mage capable of reading emotions can use this pot, right?" Angell frowned. "Are all the recipes like this?"

He looked around and, unwilling to give up, walked to the center of the room.

A massive magic machine stood there.

Its exterior looked like two giant culture tanks; one had potions of different colors swirling inside, while the other contained burning flames, yet bubbles constantly sprayed out from the fire, fused with the potions through the tank's pipes, and were compressed into a drink that was poured into a cup.

"This thing doesn't involve human hands, so there shouldn't be any strange ingredients mixed in, right?"

As Angell said this, he put a cup of the drink into the Alchemy Pot.

[Dish Name]: Happy Water

[Ingredients]: One glass cup, one spoonful of Luck Potion, plenty of water, three mouthfuls of lung exhaust.

[Effect]: Grants a small opportunity.

"You added something strange at the end again!" Mithril said after reading the recipe.

Angell shook his head. "No, this recipe is quite accurate." Isn't lung exhaust just carbon dioxide?

Although it was subtle, the result was correct.

"This exhaust is very strange, meow!" Mithril retorted. "But this drink itself is already weird. To think you actually came up with the idea of adding water and bubbles to alchemy potions and selling them to customers as 'Happy Water'."

"I couldn't just watch those alchemy potions expire, could I?" Angell said.

Normal alchemy potions didn't have this problem at all.

Magic products usually didn't have expiration dates; a magic sword could be used by a dozen generations of Heroes, and a golden apple dug up from ruins would maintain its original effects. Alchemy potions were usually just meant to be drunk.

But that batch of alchemy potions in the Magic Gear warehouse was specially produced.

It was said that cheap drugs had affected the sales of alchemy potions, so the Workshop Master at the time had cut corners on materials to manufacture this batch. As a result, the price was higher than regular medicine, they had an expiration date, and the effects weren't as good as normal alchemy potions. Consequently, they failed the Drug Regulatory Department's inspection and were a complete disaster.

Mithril had mentioned it once before, and when Angell went to get the Alchemy Pot, he remembered this matter. He took the batch of potions out, diluted them with water, and sold them as drinks. He even categorized them based on the different alchemy potions: Lucky Happy Water, Strength Happy Water, Spirit Happy Water, Healing Happy Water, and so on.

Mithril felt it was too unscrupulous. "This batch of potions already had poor effects, and you even diluted them with water—they're completely useless, meow!"

"It's precisely because the potion effects are insufficient that they can't be sold as medicine, but rather as drinks," Angell said. "Actually, the alchemy potion is just a bonus; the carbonated water alone should be quite profitable."

However, thinking of cola was because of the alchemy potions.

It seemed that the original cola was invented by a pharmacist—Angell's memory of this part was a bit fuzzy, as he hadn't paid much attention to it in his past life—so when he thought about how to sell the alchemy potions, he thought of cola.

Naturally, Angell didn't know how normal cola was produced, so he used magical means based on the ingredients.

"Only you would think that carbonated water could make money!" Mithril argued as usual.

The Black Cat was not a fan of this drink that made you burp.

"...Only me?" Angell paused and asked curiously, "Has no one else here 'invented' carbonated drinks?"

He remembered that soda and the like had been created a long time ago.

Given the level of technology here, they should have been created long ago.

"Only you would make such strange things!" Mithril said.

Perhaps they just looked down on this kind of drink?

Angell thought about it, but ultimately felt it had nothing to do with him, so he didn't delve into it further.

Besides, just then, a golden tabby cat came in to pick up some Happy Water, so Angell placed the cup in his hand onto its tray.