New Potion (Part 2)

In the dead of night, everything was silent.

Yet Romon felt no sleepiness at all. He first made a round through the shop at the front, carefully checking everything. Only after making sure all the doors and windows were shut did he return to his room and lie flat on the bed.

Although he had resolved to kill Bakar, Romon knew one thing: if he did not possess enough strength, then no matter how flawlessly he covered his tracks, he could still be arrested without explanation, thrown into prison, and killed.

When someone wanted to accuse you, they could always find an excuse. When the gap in strength was too great, evidence became insignificant. Just as humans could casually crush weeds and cockroaches beneath their feet, if the lord merely suspected him, did he really need evidence to kill him?

There was no need to consider much at all. A whim alone could condemn Romon to death, especially if there was an open justification. If it came to that, his only way to survive would be to flee.

But the baron alone had a Sixth Level warrior serving as a squad captain, along with a great many soldiers. The nobles tied to him by common interest possessed even greater strength. If Romon acted now, even a hundred Shennong Horn Spaces would not save him from death—flee? Where could he flee to? How could he evade the pursuit of nobles and the Guild?

So acting now would be utter stupidity. At the very least, he had to wait until he had gained a firmer footing. The best method was still to expand his influence among adventurers through the potion shop and raise his level.

All value was relative. Once he became stronger, killing Bakar would no longer carry such serious consequences.

Without a druid's guidance, he could only rely on the space to level up. He had been busy with the potion shop lately and had not tended the space for a long time. It had been quite a while since he last entered it.

This time, he wanted to solve two problems, so he planned to inspect the space. Taking advantage of his free time, he focused his mind on the Shennong Horn Space.

After one upgrade, the space now covered around five mu. The thirty fruit trees had clearly shot up quite a bit during this period.

Although the last upgrade had not increased the space's enhancement effect, a 10% bonus was already quite good. Most importantly, it could now accommodate larger living creatures.

It had once been able to hold only bees, but now it could hold small rabbits. To test it, he had caught a rabbit and placed it inside. It was doing quite well there and had even learned not to eat the medicinal herbs, eating only the designated plants.

Furthermore, the issue was no longer introducing new plant varieties. The last upgrade had allowed ten new species of plants, and no more. What he needed now was to accumulate enough power through planting to upgrade the space.

The space itself had always been a relatively perfect environment. After all these days, the plants that had already been growing well were now even more flourishing, brimming with green life.

During his previous visits, he had planted all the Earth seeds. Now, rows of green shoots, spaced some distance apart, swayed in the breeze.

The Light Orb still hung high overhead. Though it was slightly dimmer in early spring than in summer, it still fulfilled its duty, scattering light into every corner of the space and warming all things. The climate within the space remained more or less constant.

A gust of wind rippled the small stream. Several bees busily flew back and forth over the water, while butterflies fluttered their beautiful wings, their slender bodies dancing among the flowers and plants. Their forms complemented the bees' plump bodies perfectly. These were all things he had prepared back on Earth for pollination.

Between the trees, the grass grew thick, and the space was filled with the breath of life.

Still, there was one imperfection. As the space grew larger, water had become somewhat scarce. Romon had discovered this during his previous visits, but it had not been obvious before, so he had not dealt with it.

Now that he had some experience, when he found the space short of water again, Romon jumped out of bed. Seeing no one around, he went for a walk through the streets.

Snowflakes drifted down, and some vanished around Romon without notice. Snow immediately began falling inside the space, but as soon as it entered the warm environment, it turned into icy threads of rain.

He ran a lap around the town through the snow. The previously shallow stream in the space was soon filled to eighty percent, while the plants and trees quickly became nourished under the rain.

Only then did Romon stop drawing in water. Though he was still standing amid the snow, the rain in the space stopped as well. After only a short while, once the chill had faded from the rain, the climate inside returned to something between spring and summer.

From the perspective of the space, the Shennong Horn Space had been reinvigorated.

Romon focused his mind on the space once more, enjoying its fresh air and the warmth of spring. As he walked, a strange sight suddenly caught his attention.

The rabbit had perhaps bumped into a tree while taking shelter from the rain and suffered a minor injury. It was limping toward a row of plants. Romon knew animals had an instinct for self-healing, but the plants it was crawling toward were not medicinal plants.

Romon watched from the side in confusion.

The rabbit crawled up to an ordinary-looking plant, bit off a leaf, then continued toward another plant beside it.

It took another bite and swallowed both plants together.

Something that astonished Romon happened. The rabbit, which had been listless just moments ago, rested briefly before suddenly becoming lively and energetic again.

"This..." Romon stared wide-eyed. After the rabbit hopped away, he quickly stepped over to the two plants.

The first plant whose leaf the rabbit had bitten was a plant from this world, similar to grass on Earth and found almost everywhere. Romon had planted it here because of its tenacious vitality. By this world's common knowledge, this plant was completely useless. Other than adding a little greenery, it had no healing effect and had always been ignored.

Likewise, the plant beside it was also very ordinary. However, it was an Earth plant: a morning glory.

Could two of the most ordinary plants from two different worlds, neither of which had any medicinal effect at all, actually create a miracle when combined?

After his surprise, Romon was immediately overjoyed. What he needed most right now was a way to reduce costs. If... if he could use these two plants to make potions, the cost could be lowered by a great deal!

With that thought, he withdrew his mind from the space. At the same time, two completely different bundles of plants appeared in his hands.

In the stillness of the night, Romon began studying the two plants.

However, as he continued to observe and research them, even examining a mixture of the two plants, the result left him deeply disappointed.

"There isn't the slightest potion effect. What's going on? Did I see it wrong just now?" Romon's expression shifted as he stared at the plants in his hands, then closed his eyes again and sent his mind back into the space.

This time, he went straight to look for the rabbit.

Though it took some time to find it, as the master of the space, he only had to call, and the little rabbit hopped over on its own.

Looking at the rabbit before him, Romon picked it up and examined it carefully.

"I understand now." He chuckled, gathered some plants, and withdrew from the space again.

"Romon's tinkering again." Nick leaned back in his chair and muttered to himself.

"What is Romon doing?" Luo Laike asked curiously. He was the blacksmith's son. The shop needed a clerk, so they had hired him for five silver coins a month.

Nick shook his head. "Who knows? You could say he's working on a new potion, but he doesn't seem to be using any ingredients. I have no idea what he's doing. By the way, how many customers came in today?"

Staring at the empty shop, Nick asked weakly.

Luo Laike was somewhat depressed too. "Only three. They bought some fever-reducing potions and left."

"These people really go wherever the profit is." Nick looked out the door at the bustling scene before the potion shop across the street, speaking indignantly.

"But the potions across the street are indeed very cheap, and their effects are good too. No wonder everyone goes there to buy them." Luo Laike shook his head.

Although Romon had helped him get work at this potion shop, and the workload was much easier than before, Luo Laike still often felt stifled.

The reason was simple. Romon, who had once been in the same circumstances as him, had now not only become a Second-Level Druid but also his employer. That gap made him feel humiliated.

People were strange creatures. They could not bear to see others doing better than themselves, especially when that person had once been worse off than them.

Although Romon paid him wages and even let him read the shop's books for free, Luo Laike saw those actions as charity meant to humiliate him.

Because of this, although he needed the job, deep down he felt a profound estrangement from Romon and the potion shop.

"If only I could understand that book sooner!" Thinking this, Luo Laike shook his head and turned to wipe down the counter.

Nick continued staring gloomily at the entrance.

"Ha ha! Just as I thought!" At the same time, in a room in the back courtyard, Romon stared at a bottle of green liquid in delight.

"So combining Earth plants with plants from this world can actually produce such strange effects! Ha ha!" When Romon entered the space again, he discovered the truth behind the rabbit's miracle.

The rabbit had not recovered because it ate the mixture of the two plants. It had eaten medicinal herbs with healing properties beforehand, while its later actions had merely enhanced the earlier herbs' effect.

Once he understood the reason, Romon was in an excellent mood. What had worried him all along was that his potions cost more to make than those from Jefa's shop, while their effects were also inferior to Jefa's.

If his guess proved true, then by mixing Earth plants and plants from this world to create something like a Spell Catalyst, the effects of his potions could be greatly enhanced without increasing the cost. That would effectively reduce the cost.

Or, if he kept the original effect, he could reduce the raw materials by one-fifth. Although it was not like his initial idea of producing an effect directly, this result already satisfied him greatly.

After experimenting, Romon discovered something even more surprising: every pairing of an Earth plant and a plant from this world produced a different effect, and those effects could correspond one by one with different healing potions.

However, given adventurers' enormous current demand, Romon decided to first create a Spell Catalyst that could greatly improve the effects of healing potions.

After making the catalyst and conducting more tests, the results satisfied Romon fairly well.

During the brewing process, he only needed to add a single drop as a catalyst to improve the potion's effects by about one-fifth. Adding more, of course, was useless.

One-fifth more effectiveness was an enormous improvement. After all, it meant increasing a single bottle's effect by one-fifth out of thin air, which was entirely different from simply relying on quantity.

Taking more effective medicine was obviously different from taking more medicine. There were issues of price, side effects, and what the body could withstand. Otherwise, there would be no distinction between famous medicines and ordinary ones.

Even potions personally brewed by Fifth Level Jefa were only somewhat stronger than his. After all, making potions merely required the right preparation and combination. Jefa's advantage over him lay in his greater wealth and experience.

Romon decided to immediately begin making enhanced potions to attract customers. Holding up the small bottle filled with green liquid, a relieved smile finally appeared on his face.

"This time, I'm counting on you," Romon said softly.

In his previous two secret clashes with Jefa, he had been at a disadvantage. But this time, he had to win it back. The potion shop's business was not only tied to profits, but also to his influence among adventurers. For someone as weak as he currently was, having that influence or lacking it marked the boundary between life and death.

Today, I deliberately wrote an explanatory passage to explain why things were like this... I had wanted to reduce such exposition and simply tell the story, letting readers understand some of the choices for themselves, but it seems I still need to explain more. Just this once, though. What a tragedy.

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