Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿

Thud!

Closing the door of the lab, I let out a sigh. Lee Pyeonghwa was going to kill time nearby and then rejoin me after I finished the experiment so we could return to the hospital together, and later, if Han Jaeyeong asked, we’d settle on the excuse that we’d been sightseeing around New York. Of course, whether Han Jaeyeong would actually believe that was another question.

That’s not what matters right now.

In any case, this finally bought me some breathing room. I looked around inside the lab.

They’ve got the basics… but only the basics.

No matter how great a mage I was, I couldn’t just whip up potions in the corner of a hospital room. Potions weren’t something you could make by tossing ingredients into any old pot and boiling them. To make potions from monster materials, you needed nonstandard levels of heat and mana, and tools durable enough to withstand both. Needless to say, such tools were expensive, and potions made with such expensive tools were even more expensive. That was why businesses renting out labs where Hunters could make potions were so common.

Legally, you were supposed to use potions made by officially certified guilds, but just as cheap illegal drugs were tacitly widespread in Korea, the same was true in the U.S. I’d only heard about it before, but seeing it in New York for myself, I was genuinely surprised at how easily you could rent a lab just by installing an app. It was basically an Airbnb for laboratories.

Truly a case of pretending not to see what was right in front of you. Using illegal drugs was prohibited, but there were no regulations on short-term lab rentals like this—so in effect, there was no way to control the distribution of illegal potions. Human laws always lag behind the times.

Of course, it was impossible to make truly high-grade potions in a lab equipped with only these basics, but the potion I needed right now wasn’t all that complicated. As long as I had a mana furnace capable of producing enough heat and a vessel that wouldn’t melt under that heat, it was doable. Everything else I could somehow make up for with my own mana and knowledge.

Even so, just renting this place for half a day had cost over a million won.

“This should be enough. All right, come out.”

“Grrr!”

Clink! Lobo’s invisibility necklace fell to the floor with a clear sound as it was tossed off, and Lobo, who’d been secretly following me around under invisibility magic all this time, rolled across the floor, causing a massive amount of his fur stuck to the carpet.

…They’re going to charge me for the carpet, aren’t they.

Well, that was something to worry about later.

I reached down and patted Lobo’s head. “Good job.”

He happily accepted my touch. “Woof!”

Last night, after I’d ordered him to collect the hearts of low-grade monsters, he’d faithfully carried out the task.

“Woof!”

As he barked, he dumped the monster hearts he’d gathered onto the lab table with a clatter. Raw organs, their blood still not even dried, filled the workbench.

“Good condition. You handled them cleanly.”

“Woof!”

My creations had always been the ones gathering materials for my potion-making in the past, so they were well-practiced at this kind of work. Lobo puffed out his chest and lifted his head proudly.

Still, monster hearts alone weren’t enough to complete the potion. On the lab table were the materials I’d asked them to prepare when I rented the lab. I examined them.

Milky Way grass, cicada mushroom, enhancement herb… This isn’t Ophiopogon, there’s lavender mixed in. And the quality of the Milky Way grass isn’t great either. Too many impurities.

They’d said they would prepare the materials if I paid, but charging well above market price for this level of quality? A sigh escaped me, but there didn’t seem to be any alternative right now.

I’ll just have to make do with this somehow.

The combined level value and physical reinforcement level are unbalanced. Excessive use of mana may cause bodily collapse. Please proceed with caution.

I glanced at the system message. Yes, in reality my body was already collapsing under the strain of handling this mana. I was barely holding on thanks to my innate control and mastery over mana, but an ordinary person would’ve burst like a water balloon and died long ago.

There were two ways to resolve this situation. The first: abandon the mana I’d crammed into this body and leave only as much as the flesh could handle.

Normally, once mana had expanded like this, it was impossible to simply release and erase it. But in this case, the mana lodged in my body hadn’t been acquired through a proper route, it was siphoned from the mana the lifeless idol had absorbed. That meant the mana, which hadn’t originally been mine, was even now trying to disperse if I relaxed my grip just a little, so if I gave up holding onto it right now, the current problem would be easily solved.

But after finally recovering this much mana, it was far too wasteful to give it up. Honestly, it still felt nowhere near enough. So abandoning the mana was out of the question.

Which left the second method: strengthening this body enough to endure the mana raging inside it now.

The currently recommended Stamina and Strength stats are 45.

Your current Stamina is 21, and Strength is 25.

Easy to say, but how was I supposed to raise stats barely in the 20s all the way into the 40s? If I followed the orthodox route and leveled up normally, I’d die before succeeding in reinforcing my body. Usually, reaching numbers like that required at least several years of training. As for physical training, what I’d done through the guild’s underground VR sessions and basic military training was more than enough. So the second method was out too.

“Physical training just doesn’t suit me.”

As if to remind me of something, a system message popped up.

The quest "Doing Good Deeds Will Bring Blessings¿" is in progress.

“What, you’re telling me to raise my stats by doing good deeds? When am I ever going to get around to that…?”

Whine!

“Oh, right.”

Lobo tugged on my sleeve, urging me to hurry with the experiment. Or rather, it was closer to him complaining that I hadn’t praised him even after seeing the materials he’d gathered. As an apology, I gave his head a rough rub and issued another order.

“Could you light the furnace for me?”

He obediently wagged his tail, opened his jaws, and produced a blue flame. He lit the mana furnace sitting in one corner of the lab. The mana furnace quickly heated up, glowing blue as it began to burn.

I poured the Milky Way water into the massive cauldron set atop the furnace. Water made by soaking silver in it for twelve hours and purifying it under moonlight has a cleansing effect, and the various herbs would neutralize the toxins in the monster hearts and soothe my body.

In other words, this was the third method I’d chosen. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t grand enough to be called a “method”; it was just a temporary patch using a strengthening potion.

I dropped the remaining herbs into the Milky Way water in the proper order as it began to boil.

Even if the quality isn’t great, as long as the basic ratios are right, that’s enough. What matters is the monster hearts.

The most important thing in making potions is extracting and absorbing the maximum amount of components with minimum loss. Even if you ate a monster heart raw, the components I needed wouldn’t be absorbed. Through this refining process, I had to extract only the components I needed from the heart.

So how do you extract only the necessary components?

By the book, to precisely separate what you need, the monster heart itself requires multiple treatments. First, it’s best to soak it for at least 24 hours in purified water mixed with gold powder to remove toxins, and it’s also better to remove impurities from the heart. But right now, I had neither the money nor the time for that.

I’ll just brute-force it with mana.

Compared to using tools, it lacked finesse and precision, but it wasn’t unusable.

I extended my mana and grasped the monster heart. The moment it entered subspace, where time stops, it throbbed as if still alive. And then—

Crunch! The monster heart burst open in midair, spraying blood as it was spread thin.

Carefully wrapping it in mana so its vitality wouldn’t dissipate, I continued the work with caution. It was something I’d done hundreds, even thousands of times before. I sliced out only the necessary parts and refined the toxins away with mana before dropping them into the cauldron. It probably looked like something an evil witch would do, but there was no helping it.

This brings back memories.

In my previous life, I’d been born a princess, but I’d spent longer living alone in the wastelands after being chased out by the emperor. Back then, I couldn’t easily approach human cities, or rather, I didn’t want to, so I lived a self-sufficient life. Thanks to that, I mastered how to make decent potions even with wild weeds and impurity-ridden minerals.

In a way, should I thank Orbis for that too? If I’d lived my life purely as a princess, I might have suffered even more when I reincarnated into Jeong Daon’s miserable family circumstances. If I meet them in this life, I should at least say thank you.

Of course, I intend that thanks to be delivered in the form of death.

Splash!

The last heart Lobo had brought disappeared into the roiling cauldron, but the work wasn’t over yet. I had to stir and stir again so the components of each herb and monster heart swirling inside the pot would blend properly, and simply stirring normally wouldn’t suffice. As I stirred the contents of the cauldron, I continuously infused mana into it, using that mana to skim away remaining impurities and unnecessary components. Whether I was an archmage or not, this was something that could only be achieved by investing time and care.

I need to draw out as much of the active components as possible. It has to last me at least two weeks.

So what changes if I can hold out for two weeks?

“Orbis, that bastard really is stupid.”

They probably meant to connect my previous world and Earth through the pull of my soul, but there’s one thing they overlooked.

You weren’t the only one who left behind a legacy in that world.

Once I find my hidden cache, I can shake off these physical limitations in no time.

The moment I realized in the last dungeon that that world was the one from my previous life, I immediately thought of the cache I’d used back then.

Every archmage leaves behind a grimoire organizing their vision, along with hidden items, and I was no exception. Of course, the system had existed in my past world too, so there was an item inventory. But from the moment I became the “Destroyer of Worlds,” I could no longer rely on the system, so I had no choice but to store my assets separately.

To be honest, it had felt pretty bitter at the time, but who knew it would end up helping me like this? If I’d kept everything in my item inventory, it would all have vanished the moment I died in my previous life.

My physical level is too low? If I find my cache, that will be a trivial problem. The grimoires needed for enlightenment, and all the various elixirs I experimented with throughout my life, are there in abundance. Thinking that way, this hardship really is nothing more than momentary pain.

I curled my lips upward as I stirred the cauldron. “Orbis, you son of a bitch.”

I don’t care about Earth’s fate.

But if Orbis’ goal is to resurrect my previous world, that’s another matter.

“I’ll make sure you learn thoroughly that even a world already ruined can be ruined once more, and utterly so.”