Chapter 354 - 354 - Swindled, the Rotten Crook!

The disruptive Leon returned to the workshop, where a faint burnt smell still hung in the air.

He stood in the doorway, staring at the scene before him: the room thrown into chaos by the explosion, vessels toppled every which way, the whole place looking like a wreck a hurricane had passed through, and the lone bottle of mysterious liquid left on the workbench, black yet shimmering with a riot of colors. His eyes went blank as he stood frozen for a long while.

He stood still for a good moment before slowly walking into the workshop. First he roughly tidied up the workbench, switched on the ventilation, and waited for the acrid smell in the air to thin out a bit. Only then did he return to his desk, pick up that Wild Mixture formula again, and read it through carefully, word by word.

"Hah..."

He sighed faintly and sank into the chair as if all his support had been pulled out from under him, going completely limp.

"This Pharmacology stuff... why does it feel like it's a whole tier harder than Tailoring Craft?"

He reached up and scrubbed hard at his already bird's-nest hair, his voice heavy with self-doubt.

"Am I just imagining it?"

"Both disciplines are clearly tied so closely to Mystery..."

"Don't tell me my talent for Pharmacology really is worse than my talent for Tailoring Craft?"

"No way, absolutely not!"

"Even if my Pharmacology talent really is mediocre, after studying this long with [Scholar's Heart] backing me up, there should be visible progress by now..."

"But right now... why do I keep getting this feeling like I'm running in place?"

Leon murmured, his gaze vacant, his tone steeped in confusion and frustration.

He grabbed the thermos cup off the desk, manners forgotten, and gulped down several big mouthfuls straight from the lid. The cold tea ran down his throat, and only then did that knot of irritation in his chest ease back a little.

Closing his eyes, Leon began to retrace the day's experiment, step by step.

Was his reasoning off? Or had he slipped up in the execution? Or maybe... had he overlooked some crucial detail?

"No, the entire process strictly followed the technique laid out in the formula." He gently stroked the ancient sheet of parchment in his hands, fingertips tapping unconsciously on his knee. "The problem shouldn't be on my end."

"Could it be that my spirit-force control wasn't fine enough, making the output unstable during the blending?"

The instant the thought surfaced, he shook his head at himself.

"Kid, that's not funny..."

So then...

"Don't tell me the problem is with... the materials themselves?"

He muttered under his breath, his brow knitting tighter and tighter.

He suddenly slapped his forehead.

"What good is sitting here guessing blindly. Just run a check and it'll be clear."

Before he'd even finished the thought, he was already on his feet and back at the workbench. As he slipped on the Gale-Force Reading Glasses, he snatched up the parchment recording the experiment, his eyes sweeping across the writing and diagrams like a scanner.

"Hm?"

In less than a quarter hour, as he went over the records line by line, item by item, a set of anomalous figures gradually emerged.

"Why is the reaction index so low? The catalyst I used should've been Lv.3 Royal Honey..."

"Hold on..."

Leon furrowed his brow, grabbed the quill on impulse, dipped it full of ink, and started rapidly working through the calculations on a blank sheet of parchment.

Before long, the desktop was strewn with a messy spread of pages covered in formulas, symbols, and deduction work.

He set the quill down on the desk and swept the loose hair off his forehead.

"I knew it!"

He clenched the crucial data record in his hand, his voice carrying obvious anger.

"Damn it! This batch of material doesn't meet the spec at all!"

"Son of a bitch, what I ordered was Royal Honey from a Lv.3 Killer Bee queen, not this Lv.2 ordinary honey that's only good for flavoring drinks!"

"Damn it!"

...

As everyone knew...

In the Dungeon, even the drops and materials produced by the same kind of monster could differ wildly in quality.

For example:

Take the same 『Minotaur Horn』. The horn dropped by a Lv.2 elite monster and the horn dropped by a Lv.2 Strengthened Species, or even a Lv.3 individual lurking on the deeper floors, were basically two entirely different things.

By the same token, the Killer Bees that appeared in the Great Tree Labyrinth were monsters with a potential ability of Lv.2, yet the honey they produced still came in varying grades, from ordinary worker honey to the rare Royal Honey, with a vast gap in potency.

Clearly, among the materials Leon had purchased this time, someone had pulled a heartless bait-and-switch, secretly swapping the Lv.3 Killer Bee Royal Honey he'd specifically ordered for ordinary Lv.2 honey.

The gap between Lv.2 and Lv.3 might be a single level, both belonging to the 『Second Tier』, but the price difference between the two could run as high as seven figures, into the millions of Valis.

In the case of the Lv.3 [Royal Honey] Leon had ordered, a mere 100-milliliter jar went for as much as 2 million Valis on the market. An equal amount of ordinary Lv.2 honey cost only around 50,000.

Now that he'd found the root of the problem, but had no qualifying Royal Honey on hand, the experiment naturally had to be shelved for the time being.

On top of that, with the complaints from the ladies of the house, Leon had no choice but to resign himself and put a stop to his research.

"Lucky thing there's that 'year-end gathering' the Guild invited us to tomorrow."

As he cleared up the wrecked workbench, he mulled it over privately.

"Hermes Familia should be on the guest list too. I'll ask Perseus, Asfi, whether she's got any in stock. And if even she's out, I'll ask around the other Familias."

At that thought, his long-knitted brow finally loosened a touch, and he let out a long breath.

Finding the problem meant being able to go solve it.

The real problem would've been not knowing where the fault lay. If that had been the case, progress on the Wild Mixture would've been stuck for a good while.

For Leon, every day the research was delayed, every day the mixture's launch slipped, meant another day before that cold hard cash flowed into the vault.

What's more, all those expensive materials burned up during the experiments were genuine R&D funds!

The moment he thought of it, he could practically hear his coin purse weeping.

To say it didn't sting would be a lie.

"Tsk, and here I am struggling this badly even with a complete formula, technique, and guidance..."

He shook his head, a self-mocking edge to his bitter smile.

"I really can't imagine just how strong those geniuses are, the ones who can create a brand-new elixir off a single flash of inspiration."

At that thought, a few names destined to shine in Orario's apothecary world someday surfaced in his mind on their own.

"Asfi Al Andromeda, Airmid Teasanare, Naaza Erisuis..."

Just murmuring these names quietly stirred up a wave of heartfelt admiration.

"Wait..."

"Development Ability..."

"Compounding, Mystery..."

...

...

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