In short, reality isn't a competition of who suffers the most. Even after hearing about the senior's tragic story, you still have to buy what you need.
"Since we've met, I'll keep that matter in mind for now and find someone to look into it for you later."
That's what they say, but in the end, I'm not the one doing the work.
Since Yao spends all her time buried in books, this kind of tedious work can simply be handed over to her. It's just a matter of paying more attention to some information that she wouldn't normally notice; it probably won't take up much of her brain's bandwidth... probably.
"[Liquid Life] and [Liquid Metal] are easy to understand, but what do you need so many magic stone fragments and elemental stones for? Even if you used them all to study elemental conversion, you wouldn't need this much, right?"
After seeing the list of requirements I provided, Rod's usually playful face instantly crumpled into a ball.
"Don't worry about all that, just tell me if it exists or not."
Of course, I couldn't tell him that most of those magic stone fragments were just for snacking. I also took a bag of rice candy out of my pocket and stuffed it into Hikari's hand, then put the little idiot who had started to get restless and want to look around after finishing her food back in her seat.
I'm not worried that Hikari might accidentally knock over some dangerous alchemical materials and get hurt; it's just that some of the materials are quite expensive.
Just like the dragon heart mentioned before. A complete and perfect dragon heart is usually extracted at the last moment before the hunted dragon breathes its last, and placed in a flawless white jade box with multiple tight seals and suppressed by cold jade. Only in this way will the dragon heart taken out maintain its state before death, not only rich in vitality and molten dragon blood, but also free from annoying and difficult-to-remove resentment and curses.
However, it is precisely this method that makes the dragon blood pumped out as hard to touch as scorching lava, and the slightest carelessness can lead to inactivation or fire.
Unless one possesses profound expertise in both alchemy and spellcasting, it is practically impossible to utilize.
"Hikkari knows all this!"
After I quietly told Hikari about a few potential accidents that could happen if I was a little careless in the prop shop, Hikari pouted and crunched her rice candy: "Sister Yao always reminds me several times every time I go into the shop, and I've remembered them all. I'll be extra careful! Mr. Yumi, you don't need to worry about me at all!"
No, I wasn't worried at all.
I turned my head and looked at Rhodes, who was frowning and counting on his fingers, and teased him, "You can't even gather all these things? Of course, it's not a big deal if you can't. I can just make another trip to the Wan Jin Merchant Guild to ask."
“Don’t worry, I’m keeping track.” Rod frowned. “The reason I opened this prop shop in the first place was because it had the reputation of ‘you can find anything here.’ With your little bit of stuff, I can gather at least seven or eight sets in no time.”
"Then what are you still calculating?"
A barely perceptible hint of embarrassment flashed across Rhodes' face: "I forgot which corner of the warehouse I put the [liquid metal] in."
He paused, then added: "When those people who called themselves a sect came to collect tribute—I really hate that word—they also asked me for a batch of supplies, saying they needed them. At the time, I was in a hurry, and I happened to be organizing the warehouse. I made a mess of it, so I took the opportunity to hide some of it in the garbage dump. Otherwise, they would have stripped me bare, leaving me with nothing."
"Yes, it happens to contain the [liquid metal] you need, as well as a small amount of crystal fragments and powder left over from the processing of magic stones."
I was speechless.
But he was forced to do this out of necessity, and I suppose he often did this kind of thing, so I didn't feel comfortable saying anything.
"Anyway, just collect them all. Try to get the best elemental stones possible. That's all I need," I said.
“That sounds like a really unsettling demand,” Rhodes quipped. “You haven’t been led by some people in the academy to research some kind of super-duper explosion or super-duper huge fireball, have you? Take my advice, it’s all a scam. It’s pointless except for burning through the budget and getting a bunch of gunpowder-smelling ashes.”
"How could anyone fall for something that sounds so unreliable just from its name... Uh, it seems there really are." I had just finished speaking when I thought about it again and remembered those classmates who had been dragged to do chores by the research department's little princess. For a moment, I became uncertain again, "Does the alchemy school also have students like this?"
Rhodes shrugged, rummaged under the counter for a while, pulled out a notebook with its cover hanging halfway, and scribbled a few notes in it: "Yes, it's almost become an annual tradition of the college. You didn't listen carefully to the lecture before the third-year thesis proposal, did you? Did you skip class again? I remember the tutors repeated it three times, strongly stating that we should not delve into research topics that might lead to related results."
"As a result, when we graduated that year, the people next door who were doing element reconstruction still blew up two demonstration test sites—by the way, our result was that we blew up a small workshop. I heard that the unlucky guy was so nervous that his hand trembled and he accidentally added the wrong ingredients, which directly caused the excess concentrated nitroglycerin to not react completely, and it mixed with the newly added thermonuclear water, creating the most beautiful sparks on the field that day."
"...That sounds pretty cool." I gave a compliment that wasn't entirely sincere.
"It's really cool. If you have the chance, you can go to the college's archives and take a look. I remember that the complete backup of that experiment is in 'A Collection of Warnings on Stupid Experiments,' No. 138. It also includes the archive of the second half that we re-examined another day."
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