Chapter 26: 26
Appearing in Cario City, Draco first headed for the local Tradeskill Association headquarters . This was the place where he could utilize the best crafting stations and rooms for his purposes .
Even the stuff at the cave he was at before wouldn't be as good . This was due to the quality of materials that were present in such a location . Of course, the quality of what you could use depended on the money you had on hand .
Draco entered the biggest Tradeskill Association branch with his Battle Maniac title equipped .
Inside, he noticed that the furnishings were not as lavish as the Merchant's association, but higher than the Lands Commission . Here, Draco was received by an aide who was, surprisingly, a male .
"Hello my Lord, do you need any help?"
His voice was reasonably respectful, but not as awed or subservient as other servers who were faced with his title in other organizations . This fact surprised Draco, but meant little to him after thinking about it .
Maybe because it was a combat oriented title? After all, Tradeskill crafters had no need to be subservient to a 'muscle head' as they tended to put it . Thinking along those lines, Draco shifted to his Inventor title .
"I would like to rent your best alchemy room for a full day . "
Draco requested with a loose smile . However, his simple request made the aide pale suddenly .
This fact surprised Draco . Was there something going on today that made accessing those rooms a problem?
"M-My Lord… that w-would b-be… my p-pleasure…"
His voice was shaky and showed that he was thrown into the pits of fear . Draco literally felt the gaze of the aide before him shift to one of total obeisance .
Paying no mind to the theatrics, Draco let the aide handle the procedures . What frustrated Draco was that everyone else they approached to handle the processing also reacted the same way, wasting his precious time .
When Draco made his opinion known, it was as if he had slapped a nest of bees as everyone fell over themselves to get him nice of comfy . Majority of the subsequent process were skipped over when he had shifted his title over .
Draco guessed that his Inventor title was most likely the cause, rather than his wish to spend money . Normally, renting the best alchemy room would come to 300 gold per hour, which was an abhorrent amount .
Then again, what right did poor people have to request for the best services in a service oriented establishment? Clearly, this pricing was meant to filter out a large majority of people, leaving only the true masters .
However, as a side effect of his title, all fees were waived .
This was a pleasant surprise to him . Not counting his recent windfall of over 50,000 gold, just the remainder of the 3,000 he had would be enough for a few hours of intense work .
Another benefit that came with the crafting room was delivery services of materials . Sort of like room service . You placed a request for materials and paid a reasonably lower cost for them to have them delivered to your crafting room .
Naturally, the quality of your room decided which tier of materials you could access as well as which ones would be free due to your patronage .
At the highest room, everything minus legendary materials were available for Draco to use and abuse as long as he had money . Epic materials were up for sale, meaning that Draco could craft epic and legendary equipment or potions as long as he had the funds .
Which was his plan .
After being led to his crafting room on the top floor of the large establishment, Draco was admitted into a room that seemed like a whole new world .
Before him was an endless expanse of plains with fresh low-cut grass and bright, warm sunlight dripping from the beautifully blue sky . It was at a perfect room temperature that made one feel like they were wrapped in a warm blanket during a slightly cold night .
Draco wasn't too surprised by this, after all, he had crafted his mana sword in a similar room . There was no visible workstation in this picturesque world and a beautiful female aide walked up to him to offer an explanation on how to use the room .
Draco waved her away saying that he knew what to do, much to the aide's regret . She was damn tired of standing like a statue while serving old geezers with her 'respectable' pay . Seeing such a handsome young guy who was immensely successful and promising, she felt her heart beating faster .
However, the moment she tried to score some brownie points, she was brushed off . She sighed internally and cursed fate for making fun of her like this .
Draco waved his hand while willing a cauldron and a worktable to appear before him . Immediately, the ambient energy in the room surged into the shapes of a common looking cauldron and a simplistic table with an alchemy set on top of it .
This was how one operated this room . Unlike typical rooms where physical equipment was used, one used the energy of a whole world here to coalesce their tools .
Another fact was that alchemy required worldly energy to create better potions or poisons . Same went for Blacksmithing and/or Enchanting . When using common rooms, one would have to share the basic worldly energy that permeated the Boundless continent with every other living being .
It was the difference between having a 4 . 5G router with 32 people connected and a 4G router with only one person on it . While the ambient worldly energy in the room wasn't able to match the real world, it was still a thousand times more potent than using the dregs of the energy in the Boundless world!
Worldly energy was not useful at the lower levels . That was why Draco was unbothered when making his sets out in the wild . Draco knew that if his Dragon Soul had the chance to imbue the same set equipment in this small world, they'd probably come out as Semi-Legendary!
That was the same tier as his old Mana Sword, which had been hailed as the most powerful player made weapon out of all the creations that 7 billion players could make .
Since his old abode was nuked and he was now under the scrutiny of all the hidden powers, Draco decided not to hold back and astound them again . Well, that was only a remote reason . The real reason was so he could get another hefty reward from the system .
50,000 gold coins was no joke at this stage of the game . That was 500 platinum ah! Hellscape had at most 5,000 platinum as liquid funds and 100,000 platinum over all .
While that couldn't measure up with a flimsy 500 platinum, the difference was that one belonged to a guild that functioned like a company while the other belonged to an individual . Those who understood how the world worked would understand this statement .
If he could reach 1,000 platinum, Draco could buy out more lands and opportunities to expand into other kingdoms and empires, something he rarely did in his past life .
It all depended on his performance now . While destroying Zaine's outpost would gift him immense rewards, that was for a whole other purpose that he had already pre-planned .
Draco pulled out three epic ingredients directly: Hydra Egg, Flood Dragon's blood and a reverse scale of a Two-winged Noble Wyrm . These ingredients were naturally related to his namesake once again .
Draco was naturally hoping to luck out and have the Dragon Soul imbibe the potion he planned to make due to its relation to it . Still, he wasn't too hopeful of that as he could see that the fellow was quite exhausted after the previous effort .
Still, there was a lot of mayhem he could cause with these three ingredients as the main . Naturally a potion couldn't be made with such small materials . He had to add a bit more of facilitate a fusion between these items .
The process of alchemy was similar to blacksmithing, in that there were three stages with the same three terminologies; preparation, action and completion .
The preparation stage here referred to the grinding, mixing and filtration of the ingredients . This focused on prepping your stuff to be properly concocted inside the cauldron . To get the best out of the ingredients before the event, a good alchemical set was needed .
The action stage was simply chucking in everything at timed intervals and stirring the pot carefully in a set pattern . Here, anything could go wrong, whether mistiming of ingredient addition, bad mixing capabilities, presence of impurities or not enough control over worldly energy .
The completion stage wasn't a pop up menu this time, but an actual action that one needed to manually perform . This was extraction . One might think 'nonsense, why must collecting the potion or poison require a new stage? Is it not simply grabbing the cauldron and pouring its contents into a basin?'
The answer would be no . Unfortunately, the collection stage was a bit complex . One needed to utilize worldly energy to coax out the finished potion into whatever container you planned to house it .
The quality level of the potion depended on how well you could handle the completion stage . For example, Draco could use these epic ingredients and go full Harry Potter during the first two stages, but if he messed up the last stage, the best he'd get would be a rare potion, instead of an epic or higher .
Similarly, Draco could use uncommon ingredients and end up with a rare potion depending on how well he handled the final stage . Hence, alchemical ingredients never depreciated in price, but rather appreciated . Because there would only be more Alchemists appearing and getting better at their craft, but resources were finite . Since every alchemy ingredient would be useful to even a grandmaster, naturally the prices would reflect as such .
It was easier to nurture a Tradeskill player in Blacksmithing or Engineering rather than Alchemy .
Draco began the preparation stage by filtering all his ingredients over and over again . Naturally, the quality of filtration boiled down to his level in Alchemy . With his amateur rank, he could barely cleanse the basic ingredients, much less the Epic ones . Hence, he had to do it over and over again and progress slowly with it .
Naturally, his alchemy level rose slowly every time he performed this act . However, this hardly affected his level as Draco was now level 14 . Even though he had received 5000% experience due to the Dragorugio Semi-Epic set design, he had put it on hold .
Honestly speaking, there was no such option in Boundless to 'postpone' rewards . However, Draco had long guessed that with his acts since launch of this game, the AI would be paying extreme attention to him . After all, it wasn't monotonous machine, but an entity with extreme intelligence and the ability to grow .
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