Chapter 70: Intelligent Potion Works
After parting ways with the Summers siblings, Cole didn’t immediately begin refining potions for sale. Instead, he spent the next several days studying the market.
Soaring Dragon City was enormous, and its population was made up of warriors, wizards, merchants, adventurers, and countless ordinary civilians. Every day, millions, if not billions, of mana stones changed hands across the city, and among all those transactions, potions occupied an enormous share of the market.
There were already countless potion stores scattered throughout the streets and alleys of Soaring Dragon City, including businesses similar to his newly established Intelligent Potion Works. Yet despite the competition, demand showed no sign of decreasing. Every day, new knights and wizards joined the city’s population, and every one of them required resources for cultivation.
More importantly, there were only so many potion masters.
A potion master could refine only so many potions in a day, regardless of how large their store was or how much money they possessed. As long as the number of consumers continued increasing, there would always be room for another reliable potion store.
Because of this, new potion stores were actually welcomed by the Divine Brilliance Empire.
The empire even provided a subsidy of one thousand mana stones to anyone willing to establish a mana potion store, provided they could prove their qualifications and register themselves properly.
Unfortunately, Cole couldn’t enjoy this benefit.
He hadn’t registered himself with the Potion Master Association yet.
Without official credentials, the empire naturally wasn’t going to hand over a thousand mana stones to some random fellow who walked in claiming he could refine potions. Humanity had apparently decided that bureaucracy was preferable to handing dangerous liquids to strangers. For once, the decision wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
With that thought in mind, Cole continued wandering through the city’s commercial districts.
He visited potion stores of different sizes, observed which products sold quickly, noted their prices, studied customer traffic, and quietly recorded the reactions of buyers. Every piece of information was fed into the A.I. chip.
The enormous amount of data was rapidly processed.
Prices.
Demand.
Customer preferences.
Supply.
Competition.
Profit margins.
The A.I. chip organized everything and presented the results before Cole through simple formations and neatly arranged data, allowing him to understand the complicated market at a glance.
This was an extremely important step.
Cole didn’t want to open his store only to discover that his shelves were packed with potions nobody wanted to buy.
There was no point possessing an extraordinary refining ability if he couldn’t turn it into profit.
After three full days of research, Cole finally narrowed down his options to three potions.
The first was the most obvious choice.
The Tier One Mana Potion.
Cole’s expression became slightly strange when he thought about it.
If possible...
He really didn’t want to refine Mana Potions at all.
The ingredients used in Mana Potions required careful handling and multiple refining steps to preserve their precise mana properties. Even a slight mistake during preparation could affect the final result, making the entire process unnecessarily tedious and time-consuming.
Unfortunately, Cole had no choice but to refine them.
No matter how confident he was in his ability to make other potions, if Intelligent Potion Works didn’t sell Mana Potions, most warriors wouldn’t even bother stepping through the door. They would simply assume the store had nothing useful for them and move on to the next shop.
That would mean losing customers before he even had the chance to make a profit.
Cole had no intention of allowing something so stupid to happen.
Once the first potion was finalized, his gaze shifted toward the second option.
The Mana Recovery Potion.
Unlike the ordinary Mana Potion, this potion wasn’t primarily used to replenish mana. Instead, it helped restore the body after consuming large quantities of mana potions, allowing a warrior to return to peak condition more quickly.
The reason it was necessary was simple.
The human body wasn’t naturally designed to handle large amounts of mana.
Repeatedly consuming Mana Potions placed considerable strain on the body. The accumulated damage might not be obvious after one or two uses, but over time, the wear and tear could become increasingly severe.
The Mana Recovery Potion existed to deal with precisely that problem.
Cole’s gaze eventually moved toward the final potion.
An attack-type potion.
Light Storm Potion.
Unlike the first two, this potion wasn’t merely designed to support cultivation.
Once consumed and activated, it could summon a violent living storm capable of tearing through an enemy’s defenses and annihilating them beneath an overwhelming barrage of light and wind.
And this wasn’t some ordinary Tier One potion.
It was a Tier Two potion.
Even Moon-Rank warriors would have to take its power seriously.
In this world, potions, formations, and treasures were broadly divided into tiers, beginning from Tier One and continuing upward. Each tier corresponded roughly to the level of power possessed by warriors as they climbed through the cultivation hierarchy.
For Cole, the Light Storm Potion was therefore more than just another product.
It was the weapon that could give his store an edge.
Once the three potions were finalized, Cole immediately left the store to purchase the necessary ingredients.
The materials required for the first two potions were relatively common. With the enormous size of Soaring Dragon City, finding them wasn’t particularly difficult, and Cole managed to collect everything he needed without wasting much time.
The Tier Two Light Storm Potion was another matter.
Some of its ingredients were considerably rarer, and Cole couldn’t simply walk into an ordinary medicinal store and purchase them in bulk.
He had to wait.
And wait.
For two entire days.
Only after spending that time did he finally manage to gather all the necessary materials.
As for where Cole had obtained the money to purchase everything...
Naturally, it had come from Ethan.
After all, Ethan was his subordinate now.
And in Cole’s opinion, everything belonging to a subordinate was essentially another part of his own resource pool.
There was absolutely no reason to let perfectly good money sit unused while his potion business was struggling to get started.
With the final ingredient secured, Cole looked at the collection of materials before him.