"Dear Madam Wall,
I have read the latest volume of Wuthering Heights. It was as engaging as ever. I have already reread it five times, and the image of Lady Sisi refuses to leave my mind.
I am sorry I haven't written to you lately. You may have heard that my family recently suffered a terrible upheaval, and I have been busy trying to make a living.
In my spare time, only your books offer me a little comfort. Forgive my presumption, but I would like to ask your advice about writing literature.
Reading your work has not only comforted me but also given me inspiration and a passion for writing. I would like to try becoming a writer myself. I have a few ideas... (Mostly settings from anime or novels I read in the past.)
(Polite pleasantries)
I hope you can offer me some guidance.
Your fan and friend,
Lorne Dysenk"
"This should be all right."
Leaning over the desk in his inn room, Lorne finished the letter, slipped it into an envelope, wrote the address, affixed a stamp, and handed it to Lucky.
"Lucky, help me put this in the mailbox. The one just outside the inn." Lorne pointed to a mailbox on the ground floor outside the window.
Lucky drooped her ears, looking rather reluctant, but still took the envelope in her mouth and went downstairs.
Lorne had actually written the letter out of necessity. His finances had reached a dire state, chiefly because he had expenses but no income.
He had also considered putting on the monocle and hunting for overlooked bargains in Diagon Alley or other secondhand markets.
But after trying it himself, he discovered that the gap between reality and his imagination was far greater than he had expected. First, Tingen was a small place with little aristocratic wealth, making it difficult to stumble upon some impoverished noble selling off family possessions for a pittance.
Second, using the monocle for appraisals consumed too much spirituality. Just a few extra appraisals could drain Lorne dry, so he did not dare use it for long.
The best way to increase his spirituality was to continue with Advancement, but that trapped him in a vicious cycle.
Advancement required money, earning money required using the monocle to find bargains, using the monocle for longer required more spirituality, and gaining more spirituality meant Advancement.
Thus, Lorne could only try to exploit his advantage as a transmigrator, earning money through the knowledge in his head that did not belong to this world.
His first thought was to return to his old profession and invent something mechanical.
But this world's technology was still at the steam-engine stage, far removed from that of his original world.
In his original world, even the most outdated textbooks contained information about gasoline engines.
That was another thing that puzzled Lorne: this world seemed to have no concept of petroleum whatsoever.
By rights, hundreds of years had passed since Roselle improved the steam engine. In his original world, they would have developed maglev trains by now, yet this world was still stubbornly fixated on steam engines.
Besides, he knew little about this world's mechanical engineering industry and had no one to consult, so Lorne had to shelve the idea for now.
Next, Lorne chose his backup plan: follow Roselle's example and become a literary plagiarist.
Although Roselle had copied plenty of works, there had to be some left over. Besides, literary plagiarism was practically a standard profession for transmigrators, so he was simply following tradition.
Having frequently read transmigration novels before coming here, Lorne knew roughly how to go about being a literary plagiarist.
The only problem now was that he did not really understand this world's publishing process or its readers' tastes.
So he wrote a letter to his novelist pen pal, hoping for professional guidance.
Although the original owner of this body didn't really like her work, his letters were mostly full of encouragement and praise.
She probably didn't know what he really thought, either. Surely giving me a little guidance shouldn't be a problem? Lorne thought uncertainly.
"But writing a book takes time, too. Isn't there some way to make money quickly?" Lorne muttered to himself.
"Meow~" Lucky, lying on the bed, glanced at Lorne before closing her eyes and going back to sleep.
Actually, there was a way to make money quickly, summed up in one word-gambling. But Lorne did not dare try that.
He had been unlucky before transmigrating, and since arriving here, he had suffered one misfortune after another. If he really tried gambling, he would probably have to pawn the clothes off his back before the night was over.
"That really was wishful thinking."
He turned his head and caught sight of the Wish-Granting Box by the window. His expression suddenly changed.
The Wish-Granting Box supposedly gives you the steps to solve any problem. Could it directly tell me how to make a fortune...? An unrealistic idea suddenly occurred to Lorne.
"Ugh, what am I thinking? Nothing could possibly be that easy." Despite his words, Lorne's eyes remained fixed on the wooden box.
"I still don't know this box's negative effects. Trying it rashly might..." Lorne had already moved in front of the wooden box.
"I should be more rational..." His hand was already resting on the lid.
"Is there a way to make money quickly...?" Lorne asked, looking at the box before him.
Just as before, the box began trembling slightly upon hearing the question.
After about two seconds, the lid opened on its own.
As on the previous two occasions, a piece of paper appeared inside out of thin air. Written on it was:
"Put on the monocle and leaf through the Ancient Book you bought earlier."
"The Ancient Book? The one I bought in Diagon Alley?" Lorne frowned. Its contents were written in peculiar scripts that he could not understand at all.
"The monocle doesn't seem to have any deciphering or translating functions, does it?" When Lorne had tried hunting for bargains in secondhand markets, he had used it to examine ancient books written in unknown scripts, but it had shown no reaction and could only display their age and value.
The most concrete example was that Lorne had once used it to examine Roselle's Diary without obtaining any corresponding interpretation.
"Forget it. I'll give it a try." Lorne dug out the book, put on the monocle, infused it with spirituality, and began leafing through it.
"Still can't understand it, as expected."
"Like this bit here, Sequence 9: Seer. I can't make any sense of..." Lorne pointed to a page in the book.
!!!
Wait, what the hell was that?!
Recovering from his shock, Lorne hurriedly lowered his head and read on.
Main ingredients: 10 milliliters of Lava Octopus blood + 50 grams of star crystal. Supplementary ingredients: 100 milliliters of pure water + 13 drops of night-scented herb juice + 7 golden mint leaves + 3 drops of hemlock juice + 9 grams of dragon's blood grass.
This was actually a potion formula!
Even after reading the page, Lorne had yet to recover from his shock and instinctively turned to the next page.
Sequence 8: Clown Main ingredients: 1 crystallized horn from an adult Hornacis Gray Mountain Goat + 1 whole human-faced rose. Supplementary ingredients: 80 milliliters of pure water + 5 drops of mandrake juice + 7 grams of black-edged sunflower powder + 10 grams of golden cloak grass powder + 3 drops of hemlock juice. Sequence 7: Magician Main ingredients...
When he flipped farther back, the writing became incomprehensible again.
But what he had already read was enough to shock Lorne.
Three whole potion formulas, and all of them formed a set belonging to the same Pathway.
If these were real, how much would they be worth?!
Happiness had come too suddenly. Lorne felt lightheaded, and if he had not braced himself against the desk, he might already have collapsed to the floor.
"Wait, what exactly is this Notebook?"
Before you continue