Chapter 77
[Title: How Each Race Is Doing Ten Years Later...jpg]
Humans
(Skeleton drinking cola meme)
Elves
(Skeleton drinking soju meme)
Dwarves
(Skeleton drinking beer meme)
LOL
[Recommendations8321] [Dislikes502]
- Cemetery social club lol
- Have a drink~
- Look at those pointy ear bones on the elf skeleton lololol
- LOL, hard recommend
- Ah lol, the population is screwed
- One newborn = ten adult deaths
- For real, we'll all be dead someday;
The number of Gallery users was steadily declining every day.
It hadn't changed even after the marketplace appeared.
The population cliff had merely turned into a slow slide.
At least people no longer died from minor wounds, but there was still nothing to be done about serious injuries.
“It's a fantasy world. How can it not have red potions?”
Isn't a healing potion for 50p the standard?
Why was this the only place without healing potions?
But that wasn't the case.
Healing potions definitely existed here, too.
Witches could make healing potions.
- Witches are ominous, upvote lol
ㄴ Then we should... hunt the witches, right?
ㄴ Is the cooldown over already?
ㄴ Fucking human-hating bastards, cut it out
ㄴ I'll curse you, you human-hating freaks!!!
They had simply been persecuted by humans since the distant past.
The ingredients were absurdly expensive, and they had never had the chance to develop and research them.
As a result, potions had declined drastically, and healing potions remained only as legends.
VampireTillIDie: If witches had been the mainstream...
VampireTillIDie: Maybe we could have bought healing potions cheaply.
In other words, it was a disaster they had brought upon themselves.
All that remained was the legend that witches had once made healing potions.
Just the ingredients needed to try it—10 kg of pepper and 10 kg of salt—had produced an absurd result.
[Marketplace/Spices]
[10 kg of pepper] - 150p
“Is the marketplace at it again?”
I could just buy them and be done with it.
The witches were so poor they could barely afford to make ordinary potions, let alone healing potions.
Naturally, I didn't expect her to succeed in making a healing potion in one go.
So I sent 100 kg at a time.
Not long after I sent it, a reply came from the witch Morone.
Morone: I-is this really pepper?
Head Mod*: yes
Morone: Can I really, really use this? Is it truly okay for me to use something like this?
The average person earned no more than 1,000p a month.
The average wage of witches who had blended into human society was naturally even lower than that.
Morone was an unusual case because she had adapted so well by making use of her special skills.
But even for Morone, 100 kg of pepper seemed to be an amount beyond the bounds of common sense.
Head Mod*: (Do you feel my power? meme)
Head Mod*: Use it however you want. Tell me if you need more.
Morone: Ah... I-I really am grateful ㅠㅠ
Morone: (Black cat emote on the verge of tears)
Witch stock was going to the moon.
It was definitely going to Mars.
“Then I should invest first.”
Raise the survival rate of this otherworld and become rich on top of that—wasn't this truly killing two birds with one stone?
Of course, before researching healing potions, I needed to prioritize a safe place.
For that, I needed perception-lowering potions to avoid the monsters' attention...
They required 1,000 insects, 500 ml of oil, beast liver, intestines, lungs, and various other ingredients.
[Your items have been delivered!]
Morone: Eek!
Then I could simply send those potion ingredients, too.
Beast liver, intestines, and lungs?
[2 kg of pork offal] - 11p
“I wonder if she knows about Koreans' love of sundae.”
It wasn't very expensive.
1,000 insects and 500 ml of oil?
[One pack of 200 mealworms] - 5p
[1.5 L of soybean cooking oil] - 6p
They were cheap enough that I didn't even need to think about the price.
Besides, thanks to the Gallery's rising level, just a few troublemaker bans now earned more than enough to buy all that.
Storage was another advantage.
I didn't have to hunt wild animals myself and preserve the contents before they spoiled.
The marketplace delivered everything sealed.
[You performed a good deed. 22p refunded.]
[An additional 11p has been awarded.]
Limit: 22/10,000p
And when I bought something, I got a 1.5-times refund.
I didn't even have to pay taxes!
“Then all I have to do now is wait.”
Morone: No one has ever helped me before...
Morone: Thank you. I understand now why even those humans like you. I will definitely repay your kindness.
Plus a spoonful of a researcher's passion.
Now all that remained was time to devote myself entirely to research.
There was only one thing left for me to do.
[Category/Bunkers]
[Standard Bunker] - 50,000p
[Advanced Bunker] - 100,000p
[Premium Bunker] - 300,000p
.
.
[Nuclear War Apocalypse Bunker] - 10,000,000p
Points held: 315,000p
“Should I move?”
The time had come to buy a premium bunker.
*
“It feels like I'm dreaming.”
The witch Morone's gaze trembled without pause.
She was so happy that she was even afraid this might all be a dream.
[50 cans of tuna]
[50 bottles of 500 ml bottled water]
[Three types of lap blankets]
[100 ml conical flasks, three 50 ml transparent test tubes]
.
.
Objects appeared out of thin air.
That alone was astonishing enough to leave her speechless, but it wasn't everything.
“H-how on earth did you make things like these?”
Tools commonly seen scattered all over an elementary school science lab.
But to Morone, they looked like the concentrated product of unimaginably advanced technology.
-Smack!
“Ow!”
She slapped her cheek with both hands, and it hurt.
No, she had known even before she hit herself.
There were simply too many things beyond the limits of her imagination for this to be a dream.
“...I never thought you'd even give me daily necessities.”
She owed Head Mod her life.
On top of that, Head Mod had preserved her old memories and homeland, which she had been forced to abandon in order to survive.
Even so, she had shamelessly thought to herself that it would be nice if he gave her food, and he had even given her daily necessities.
Morone: Are you really giving me all of this? Really? Why...
Head Mod*: In South Korea, it's a crime not to feed someone when you make them work, yeah.
Head Mod*: You need to eat well for your brain to work well, too.
“...South Korea?”
She didn't really know what that was.
For the first time in hundreds of years since her mother died, Morone could feel warm kindness and affection.
Her hut was now filled entirely with Head Mod's touch.
“I will definitely repay you.”
Every witch had lived while dreaming of an ideal.
Of course, most witches had been broken and corrupted or had given up after the Great War.
Morone had been one of them, but not anymore.
She raised her head, clenched her fist, and thought of the star-filled night sky and the universe beyond it.
“Someday... I'll be able to reach it, right?”
As she imagined the distant future when she would meet Head Mod, a light came on in Morone's hut.
And so time slowly passed.
An hour.
Half a day.
A day, or perhaps a week.
“I finally did it...!”
After devoting herself to research for nearly a month under Head Mod's limitless support, Morone finally succeeded.
Morone's dark-ringed eyes were fixed on the transparent flask in her hand, which held something red.
A healing potion.
The ultimate potion of the witches, now surviving only as a legend: a healing potion.
*
The Gallery was relatively peaceful for a month.
Days of a steady trickle of deaths, murder cases, and monster invasions.
But now it was time for things to change there, too.
[Lesser Healing Potion]
A legendary potion from witch folklore.
It rapidly regenerates injured areas, and if administered immediately as first aid, can even restore a cleanly severed limb.
“How do you make this?”
It was nothing short of the legend of legends.
I had thought it would take much longer, but she had really succeeded in making it.
Morone: Heh, hehe.
Morone: (Image of her weakly smiling while holding a healing potion with a devastated look)
She did look half out of her mind, though.
I promised to give her a bonus soon, then focused on the healing potion.
“It can even restore a severed limb?”
There was a condition that the cut had to be clean, but judging by its performance alone, it made no sense.
Why had we been washing wounds with milk all this time when there were such insanely overpowered alchemists?
“I need to test its performance...”
Since safety came first for me, I had holed up in a bunker, so there was no danger and no chance of getting hurt.
Penny had also gradually become a homebody, so she had no chance of getting hurt either.
But volunteers for the performance test were overflowing in the Gallery as soon as they logged in.
[Title: Ah lol, My Arm]
(Image of a left arm lying on the ground)
There was an arm.
Then there wasn't.
- Fuck, what the hell happened?
- Kelliarton was invaded by monsters recently, remember?
- Bro, you're fine. Swordsmen are stronger with one arm anyway.
ㄴ Author) Thanks, you fucking asshole lol
- Did a monster cut it off?
ㄴ Author) A stray poisoned arrow hit my arm, so I cut it off before the poison spread lol
ㄴ Wow, that mental fortitude is legendary ㄷㄷ;
ㄴ Doesn't it hurt?
ㄴ Author) Want me to do the same to you?
There happened to be a knight with one arm severed.
Not much time had passed, and the cut was clean, so he fit the conditions perfectly.
“I'll show you how to heal it.”
I left a comment without a second thought.
- Head Mod*) Want me to put it back on?
ㄴ Author) Can you do that?
ㄴ Author) No, please do it. Then I'll worship you every day for the rest of my life, please.
ㄴ Head Mod*) No, no; I already shipped it, so try using it.
I immediately sent the potion to the knight in question.
Then five minutes passed.
“Why isn't he replying?”
There was no reply.
- Head Mod*) Bro
- Head Mod*) Bro?
He didn't respond even when I called out to him.
Just as I started wondering if he'd run off with it, something occurred to me.
I reread the instructions.
And at the very bottom, there were two lines of warnings...
- Salt is one of the ingredients. It may cause pain equivalent to sprinkling a large amount of salt on a wound.
- Excessive pain may occur due to the healing speed defying the laws of nature. It may hurt more than Albothyl.
The healing potion came with horrible pain alongside its treatment.