Chapter 23: A Lamp with a Deadline

“Hm?”

Serayne paused just before pushing off the floorboards. Among the leftover notifications, Mika Hayren’s message flashed again - one she hadn't read with proper care earlier.

She opened it once more, scanning the assurance of guaranteed safety. Her black ears angled back slowly.

Take care of me?

How generous of you…

Potions were single-use consumables. Someone capable of reliably brewing them on demand would be infinitely more valuable to an organized faction than a one-off shipment - especially as more arrivals in the forest learned to harness their Talents.

Serayne had grasped that from her very first sale. The follow-up messages, subtle pressure tactics, and offers to take over her business only reinforced her conviction that not everyone reaching out intended to stop at buying vials.

That was precisely why she avoided face-to-face meetings and kept her Hearthhold’s coordinates to herself. As long as nobody knew where to look, they had far fewer ways to dictate terms.

It didn't make her invincible, but it gave her leverage she had no intention of surrendering - especially now that she could source herbs and other supplies without setting foot outside.

“Mika Hayren… fine, I'll keep that in mind,” she muttered, closing the chat with a cool, detached expression.

For a second, she debated calling off her night run. Instead, she adjusted her pouch and checked the remaining space inside, concluding that all the more reason existed to stockpile supplies before bunkering down.

***

She returned from her first haul about an hour later, stashed her loot, and vanished back into the canopy - keeping a sharper eye out for stray lanterns or unexplained movement in the dark.

By the time she returned for the third time, the clock was nearing midnight. Serayne finally decided that scouring for more crates yielded diminishing returns compared to getting proper rest.

Knowing someone might target her workshop in theory was one thing; seeing a public offer of "protection" from someone building a syndicate was another entirely. Tonight, putting off her preparations felt impossible.

She had hauled back over thirty crates, significantly bolstering her food and beverage reserves, but when she popped open the final one, she still hadn't pulled a single new blueprint.

Serayne set the empty lid aside, staring at the contents like someone trying hard to remain grateful even though fate clearly hadn't read her wishlist.

Maybe the problem is opening them in batches?

Maybe I should open them one by one and pretend I don't care at all.

One ear twitched in annoyance, but she didn't grumble for long. The gathered stockpile meant she could curb her expeditions and focus on alchemy.

She could always buy blueprints just like herbs, and with demand for her potions soaring, saving up materials for Level 3 no longer felt like a pipe dream.

She didn't know if she could finish assembling everything tomorrow - especially the requisite cores - but standard resources flowed in far faster than manual harvesting ever allowed.

Yet a problem remained that neither expanded storage nor an extra floor could solve: she needed a way to defend herself if someone actually managed to track down her home.

The moonstone dagger had impressive stats, but Serayne wasn't foolish enough to stake her survival on the assumption that she could outfight people who were actively forming hunting parties.

More options meant more study and experimentation, yet brewing a single batch consumed eight full hours - capping both her revenue and the time available for other pursuits.

If I can't stretch the day, maybe I shouldn't limit myself to one pot at a time.

She thought of brewing larger batches, then running parallel workstations, and glanced over at the solitary iron pedestal she couldn't replicate on her own yet.

Before writing off the idea as impossible, she opened her contacts and sent an invite to Kaela Vorn, remembering both her core deliveries and how briskly their lighter trade had gone.

The invite was accepted almost immediately.

[Kaela Vorn: What do you need?]

Serayne raised an eyebrow, glad she didn't have to launch into a long preamble about who she was or why she was messaging at this hour.

[Serayne Veyra: Can you cut wooden tiles and stone slabs? Squares with sides of ten, twenty, thirty, and fifty centimeters, each at least a centimeter thick.]

[Kaela Vorn: Give me a minute. Stepping out for materials.]

Serayne stared at the message for a second, both ears pivoting toward the display as if processing something that defied reason.

Just stepping out?

At this hour?

She had just come back from the woods herself, so she hardly had the right to judge late-night outings. But between gliding cautiously through the canopy and casually stepping out to mine stone in the dead of night, there was a stark difference she recognized all too well.

Perhaps Kaela had a secure quarry right next to her shelter, or perhaps she could handle threats Serayne still preferred to flee from. Before she could dwell on the speculation, a transfer request popped up.

Barely a few minutes had passed.

She retrieved ten wooden and stone pieces of each dimension, inspected the edges and thickness, and ran her fingers in surprise across the face of one stone slab - it was faintly warm to the touch.

She had no idea how Kaela fashioned them so quickly, but every piece matched her specifications, so she sent over one of her reserved Clear Mana Draughts in return.

Both utilized open item transfers without demanding set terms in the trade prompt, saving them from having to construct a formal barter listing from scratch.

[Serayne Veyra: I'll test them first. If they work, I'll need a much larger batch. Interested?]

[Kaela Vorn: Yes. We'll set the price when you order.]

Serayne closed the chat and carried the samples into the workshop, shelving her earlier intention to sleep immediately. The idea had jolted her awake more effectively than another bottle of tea.

She wanted to test whether an alchemical matrix could hold on materials other than iron, and these cut slabs allowed her to run comparative trials without risking her only operational pedestal.

Thanks to her prior practice, etching the familiar array went smoother, though it still demanded deep focus, and she had to pace her trials against her remaining mana pool.

Over the next hour, she traced glyphs, activated them, and monitored the reactions, rapidly understanding why the apprentice pedestal had been forged from solid iron.

Wood couldn't withstand the thermal and mana strain of her matrix at all. Stone fared somewhat better, but only up to a point: after a single cycle of igniting and extinguishing the flame, the slab cracked, occasionally fracturing into several pieces.

Serayne studied the latest fractured sample, tapping her finger against the workbench edge until her ears slowly perked with renewed interest.

Single-use didn't mean useless - especially if the component was cheap and could be stockpiled in advance.

Returning to the console, she sent Kaela a proposal.

[Serayne Veyra: The stone slabs work. I'm offering one Clear Mana Draught for one hundred 10 cm slabs, fifty 20 cm slabs, twenty 30 cm slabs, or ten 50 cm slabs.]

[Serayne Veyra: I need one thousand, five hundred, two hundred, and one hundred respectively. Forty potions total. If the terms work for you, we can settle delivery tomorrow. If not, name your price.]

Rather than waiting by the screen for a reply, she opened the market to browse cookware she had earmarked as potentially useful.

Her cart filled with 1.25-liter enamel mugs, a two-tiered 3.6-liter steamer pot, a twenty-one-liter stockpot, and a heavy-gauge twenty-liter tin bucket.

Enamel mugs made up the bulk of her haul - once all transactions cleared, she had over a hundred of them. For a moment, she sat surrounded by stacks of cookware with the expression of someone who had crossed far past the line of "just a small experiment."

Fine. Worst-case scenario, I can open a mug shop.

Her short tail gave an amused flick under her clothes as she chuckled quietly, setting the vessels aside.

Finally, she pulled out the two blueprints she had acquired earlier.

[Wardrobe Blueprint  -  Single-use]

[Materials: Wood ×100, Sand ×20]

[Function: Clothing Storage]

[Description: A dedicated place for all your outfits so they finally stop cluttering random crates.]

[Standing Lamp Blueprint  -  Rank E, Single-use]

[Materials: Iron Ore ×10, Sand ×10, Gloomflare ×5]

[Function: Illumination]

[Description: Surely no sensible person would carry this through the woods in the dead of night. Right?]

Serayne read the final sentence, glanced over at her current lantern, and bit back the sarcastic retort that immediately came to mind.

She also noted that the wardrobe carried no rank designation. Given her experience with system quirks, however, she refrained from drawing broad conclusions about all domestic furniture - especially when her immediate interest lay with a secondary light source.

She already had the sand, topped off the missing ore through an open market listing, and the glowing mushrooms should still be among the specimens salvaged from Avelra's cellar.

Searching her stock, she found six Gloomflares that hadn't withered, set one aside as a specimen, and allocated the remaining five for construction.

Activating the blueprint went off without a hitch. As the completed lamp materialized before her, Serayne examined it with satisfaction, picturing mornings where she wouldn't have to ferry her single lantern between floors just to see.

She pulled up its appraisal.

[Magic Lamp  -  Rank E]

[Remaining Duration: 10,080 minutes]

[Function: Illumination]

[Description: Surely no sensible person would carry this through the woods in the dead of night. Right?]

The smile dropped from her face before she even finished reading the final line.

“Remaining duration…?”

She leaned closer to the screen, her ears pinning stiffly upright as her eyes locked onto a number she had never anticipated on an ordinary light source.

Ten thousand and eighty minutes translated to one hundred and sixty-eight hours.

Seven days.

Serayne whipped her head around toward the lantern hanging on the wall - the one provided with the Hearthhold.