Chapter 21 Selling Ten Times

Nina made another cage on the spot, this time more tightly woven, and laid a few leaves at the bottom, and placed the eggs on top. Hedda stepped forward and took the first cage, dumping the dizzy demon bird in as well.

"Although they don't need to incubate the eggs, they still check on the incubation site regularly and turn the eggs over to ensure that the magic power is evenly absorbed. Putting it together with the children makes it less likely to rebel," Heda explained.

Barney and Nina nodded, but Edith stroked the cage containing the sick bird with her hand, her eyes filled with thought.

"No." She frowned and said, "This cage can't hold the demon-eating bird."

"A cage constructed of magic will definitely lose its original function after being eaten. The cage provided to us by the academy seems to be specially made and cannot be replaced for the time being."

"We don't have to worry about that, right?" Barney tilted his head. "Since we caught its babies here, it's unlikely that one of the birds will run away."

"Your memory is truly amazing." Heda rolled her eyes. "Just now I told you that the egg will hatch in about a day, and you won't be able to stop it when it flies away."

After saying that, she turned her head and looked in Edith's direction: "What should we do?"

Edith lowered her head and thought quickly about alternatives.

"...Well, I can give you our group."

A sudden voice came from behind, and several people were startled. When they turned around, they found Lin Qi's figure.

"Damn it, why is it you!" Barney yelled, "The isolated boy who was abandoned by his own study partner!"

He witnessed with his own eyes Thompson directing two reading companions at once.

Lynch: "...Thank you, I don't really like this title."

He looked away from Barney's face, and turned to Edith, but he dropped his eyes after just one glance. "My study partner left me alone." He said pitifully, "I can't complete the task by myself anyway, so I can give you the cage."

Barney slapped his head and said, "That's right, your group took two people away, but you didn't take the bird with you."

Lin Qi nodded: "To be precise, the demon-eating bird was taken away by my tutor, but because the cage was blown up, he didn't take it away. Now it is in my hands."

He spread out his hands, and several pieces of wood that were broken but clearly repairable appeared in his palms. When Edith said she was short of cages before testing the magic circle, he immediately rushed back to the far camp to get the things, but he didn't expect to find that she had solved the problem when he returned.

Now he finally got the chance to give a gift.

Edith looked at the splinter of wood, raised her eyes, and raised her eyebrows: "What are the conditions?"

Lin Qi was about to answer "No conditions", but his words changed after he said it, "...The condition is that you take me with you, and I will go first when we encounter danger. Try to give me more opportunities to perform."

Barney: “?”

I've never seen such a strange request.

"I want to try to improve my score through performance." Lynch explained hurriedly, his tongue a little tied.

"Okay, thank you." Edith finally relaxed and took the thing handed to her. She cut it into suitable sizes and nailed it around the original cage. "It should be enough to hold on until the end of the exam."

Everyone, including Lynch, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Should we just find a place to hide and wait until the exam is over?" Nina asked quietly, "Just wait here?"

"No." Edith shook her head. "We still have a long way to go to the 'submission' location. We'd better figure out the route to the central waterfall in advance."

"Besides, I have performed better so far, so your scores may not be good. We need to use the remaining time to improve our impression points: for example, surviving in the dense forest, fighting against the beasts, snatching from other candidates, and also - curing the sick demon-eating bird."

......

The fourth night.

"call out!"

Lynch suddenly jumped up from the bushes where he was hiding, and without hesitation, stabbed the rabbit that had just poked its head out of the hole. The gray animal kicked its legs and died on the spot.

"Oh yeah! Finally some meat to eat!" Barney, who was not far away, cheered a little, "I have no taste in my mouth after eating the bread in the supply bag every day."

"It's good to have bread to eat." Hedda glanced at him. "If Edith hadn't used the Finding Charm to find so many scattered packages, you would be talking on an empty stomach now."

Barney chuckled and said, "I've said enough words of thanks in the past two days."

He turned around and couldn't stop praising Lin Qi, who was holding the rabbit by its ears: "Your swordsmanship is amazing! You dealt with all the wild beasts we encountered these two days. There are really not many people willing to spend so much time practicing swordsmanship nowadays."

Lin Qi had never received such straightforward praise before. He was at a loss for what to do and stood there holding the rabbit: "It's not that I'm good...it's that the teacher taught me better."

After he finished speaking, he looked in Edith's direction, and saw her back again, and he couldn't help but lower his eyes.

"It seems that your father is very good at choosing teachers." Barney praised, "Then please ask Brother Lonely, who is very good at using a sword, to use the sword to deal with the rabbit, peel the skin, and shave the internal organs, and we will eat early."

Lynch: “…”

After four days together, he still found it difficult to get used to Barney's extremely outgoing personality.

He looked up in the direction of Edith again. She was concentrating on processing the medicinal materials she had collected in the past two days. Nina was helping her on the side, preparing to make the antidote tonight. She had no time to pay attention to the situation here.

He pursed his lips and lowered his head to concentrate on the things in his hands.

"What is this?" Nina picked up a human-shaped grass on Edith's left hand. It had a human-like face, round eyes, a mouth that opened and closed, and a slightly heaving belly. It didn't look like an ordinary herb. "It's so cute! I really want to pinch its little face."

"Clark grass is the only magical herb here." Edith glanced at it and said, "I suggest you don't hold it in your hand for more than 30 seconds."

Nina's hands trembled, and she quickly threw the thing back to the ground: "I don't think I've seen this kind of thing in the common herbal medicine collection."

"That's normal. On the one hand, it's really uncommon. On the other hand, its use value is not high. No one would know it specifically except for students who specialize in herbal medicine." Edith subconsciously brought herself into the Pharmacy Association. For a moment, she seemed to see Shelly beside her, and saw him holding a notebook and carefully recording every word she said.

She was stunned for a moment, then shook her head in amusement. This worry-free student had read all the herbal books in the library without much effort, and she had not taught him too much knowledge in theory.

This regret can be made up now.

"Clark grass itself is toxic, but the concentration of the extracted poison is too low, and the smell and taste are strong, so it is not convenient to use in various fields." Edith grabbed the root of the grass and lifted it up. The Clark grass grumbled twice and then became quiet. "Clark grass has no eyesight and relies on smell to avoid danger. This thing that looks like an eye is actually its olfactory organ. When it is lifted upside down, the channel inside the olfactory organ will automatically close, creating a state of suspended animation."

Nina's expression suddenly became subtle: "So these two black balls can be considered... nostrils?"

Edith shrugged. "That's understandable."

Nina confessed that she just felt that the other person was cute.

Edith continued, "Its medicinal value is also very low. Although it can relieve food poisoning to a certain extent, it is toxic in itself. After curing the original symptoms, it will cause new symptoms... It takes too much energy to remove the toxicity. In comparison, the healing spell is more cost-effective."

"An antidote that contains poison." Nina was shocked, but her long-established cautious character still made her ask as gently as possible, "So does it have any special effects? Why do we add it to our potion ingredients?"

Edith shook her finger. "It's very edible."

Nina: “?”

Edith: "The way to use Clark's grass to detoxify food is to swallow it whole. It will then eat the toxic food residues in the body while it is still alive. It will then use its powerful digestive ability to digest them and excrete them from the body, thus relieving the pain."

She paused for a second delicately: "Of course, the suffering before and after is also an inevitable part of the experience."

Edith looked at Nina's face with a refreshed worldview, coughed, and quickly continued: "So, the poisonous herbs can be eliminated by letting Clark Grass eat them, and the magical properties of the grass allow its toxins to be directly decomposed by the Magic Bird, leaving no problems;

Its powerful digestive function can also filter out many useless ingredients in the herbs, speeding up our medicine making process. Otherwise, under normal circumstances, this pot of medicine would take at least three days to boil.”

"But now, we stuff all the herbs into its stomach, wait half an hour, and throw the whole Clark grass directly into the pot for refining. It will take shape overnight."

Nina once again marveled at the wonder of all things. She imitated Edith and lovingly fed the processed herbs into Clark Grass's mouth one by one. As soon as the creature came into contact with the food, it immediately swallowed it in big mouthfuls, making gurgling sounds in its mouth.

"So, this thing is not completely useless, why is it not often used?"

Edith said solemnly, "I find it strange, too."

"Isn't the medicine after being digested by this grass excrement? Everyone has seen it. Why don't those nobles want to drink it?"

Nina: “…”

So it makes sense that it is not often used.

After the two of them finished filling the pot with herbs, the Clark grass bulged out like a roasted chicken on Christmas Day and lay comfortably on the ground. Edith calculated the time, cleaned the crucible during this time, and took the opportunity to "preach" to Nina:

"Since you are good at healing, you probably have a talent for potions, too. Why don't you try to develop in that direction after entering the academy?"

Developing pharmacy and introducing talents to pharmacy are the necessary responsibilities of the chief researcher!

Nina was stunned for a moment, as if she didn't expect her to ask this: "Pharmacy, me?"

"Although I have a knight father, the tax revenue from his fiefdom is totally unable to cover the purchase of medicinal materials. My family will not support me to learn alchemy."

Edith was also stunned for a moment: "Doesn't Beunis College provide the herbs needed for class?"

"Yes, but only two sets are provided symbolically." Nina sighed and held her face with both hands. "It's said that one set is for trial and error, and the other is for the finished product. But how can anyone make a successful medicinal material after failing once? You have to buy the extra test materials yourself. The Tulip Market next to the college sells all kinds of materials and finished products, and it mainly serves students."

She shook her head. "Being Barney's tutor can save me a lot of money on tuition. There's no reason for the host family to pay for such high material costs for me."

Edith was silent for a moment.

Although her family in her previous life was poor, they were merchants in the capital and had some money. In addition, she was very talented and could buy basic medicinal materials in one go, so she didn't have to suffer too much when buying materials. Later, her status gradually rose, and she also accepted an apprentice with superb magical talent. When they encountered expensive medicinal materials, they chose to sneak into the forest to dig them themselves, without spending a single gold coin.

But considering the difficulty of digging herbs for her, those materials were not worth such a high price at all - it was only because the forests that produced the materials were controlled by the nobles, who controlled the output, that the market price was so high.

What prevents civilian students from moving forward is not only the monopoly of knowledge, but also the monopoly of materials...

Edith narrowed her eyes.

It seems that after entering school, I need to set up a stall in the tulip market.

Well, just sell the materials stolen from the forests monopolized by the nobles, as well as the finished potions and magic arrays that I made myself.

The former is sold to poor students with proof at one-tenth of the market price;

The latter was sold to wealthy nobles desperate for medicine, earning ten times the price.