Elias looked down at the art book in his hand, which could only be described as a young man's secret stash.
The illustrations of ladies inside were drawn with wild, unrestrained lines, heavily polluting his eyes.
Jack stood to the side, his face completely flushed as he clutched the hem of his shirt in a death grip.
The young man from Landon wished he could headbutt the solid stone wall right then and there to carve out a new lighthouse.
“Brother, don't look. A classmate in Landon forced that on me,” Jack mumbled, his voice as quiet as a mosquito's buzz.
“I only reluctantly stuffed it at the bottom of my suitcase so I wouldn't let his good intentions go to waste.”
“Keep spinning it,” Elias said without even looking up, smoothly flipping another page. “Keep going.”
“...”
Jack fell completely silent, his clear eyes filled with utter despair.
Elias expressionlessly tossed the smutty book back onto the pile of clutter on the floor.
To him, this thing couldn't even compare to the air inside his Gluttonous Stomach.
He reached out and began rummaging through a stack of heavy, old books.
He kept searching until the moon outside climbed to the top of the white lighthouse.
Only then did Elias slap the dust off his hands, standing up with three books cradled contentedly in his arms.
Jack watched from the side, his eyes filled with the resentment of a child who had just been robbed of his New Year's allowance.
The books Elias had selected were in excellent condition.
One was The Velen Supernatural Encyclopedia. Its cover was made of some rough, mutated leather that actually felt slightly warm to the touch.
Another was Introduction to Mysticism. Just from the title, it was obvious that this was a book meant to teach common knowledge to beginners who had just entered the field.
But the most important book—the one that made Elias's eyes light up the most—was titled Recipes of the Kingdom of Velen.
The edges of this book's pages were completely stained dark with grease.
Just looking at its appearance and the flamboyant table of contents, Elias could tell even with his eyes closed that this was written by a seasoned, high-status epicure in the Kingdom of Velen.
As for that nonsense book, Forbidden Fruit: A Lady's Private Manuscript?
Sorry, he didn't have the slightest interest in it.
For someone like him who had been chewing on hard beef jerky on a deserted island for a month, to the point where his stomach had begun reverting to that of a ruminant, being able to slightly satisfy his appetite on this godforsaken island was far better than any baseless, pink fantasies in his head.
Food was the first necessity of the people.
Even transcendents had to eat.
“Those books... I risked being hacked to death by the Mist Veil Society to bring them out of my house,” Jack muttered, his voice dripping with grievance.
“Now they are the public property of the lighthouse,” Elias replied, walking up the stairs without looking back.
“Of course, this is also a wise decision you made after careful consideration of your right to reputation.”
Just a few minutes ago, Elias had highly skillfully taught this young man from Landon a lesson.
“You wouldn't want the aristocratic circles of Landon to find out that the bastard son of the Sorenstein family is surviving on this kind of specialty literature on a deserted island, would you?” Elias had looked at him with a smile.
Thus, to stay here peacefully and avoid the crazed cultists outside, Jack was forced to sign a series of humiliating black-labor agreements that would make any passerby weep.
The terms were simple.
First, Jack had to be responsible for patrolling the mechanical transmission structure of the white lighthouse.
Second, he had to row that dilapidated little boat out to sea to inspect the alchemy buoys.
Third, and most crucially, he had to catch a few fresh, edible, non-tentacled fish for Elias every day.
In exchange, Elias only returned the standard revolver issued by the company to him.
At the very least, it gave him some minimal physical defense.
As for Jack's ancestral antique flintlock pistol?
Heh.
It was currently lying quietly inside Elias's Gluttonous Stomach.
That antique now served as the sturdiest “trust assurance mechanism” between the two of them.
To put it bluntly, it was a hostage—or rather, a gun-stage.
Jack had stood by the wooden table, staring at the standard revolver, his hands shaking like a leaf.
Although he was entirely unwilling, he had no choice but to bow to reality when living under someone else's roof.
Compared to the life he lived outside, acting as a laborer here for an eccentric, suspected Scale Three transcendent at least guaranteed that he wouldn't have to return to his past life on the run.
Elias returned upstairs alone.
Although he had only stayed in the basement briefly, he had already observed many unusual details.
The space in that basement was much larger than he had imagined from the surface.
In the dark corners of those rubble walls, there were faint, black openings leading further down.
Cold wind blew out from within.
According to Jack, the faint sound of waves crashing could be heard from below.
Those openings likely led directly into the sea.
The structure beneath this lighthouse was clearly not designed for storing flour.
Elias narrowed his eyes, making up his mind.
He planned to find some time to go down and thoroughly investigate that strange basement.
Perhaps it had something to do with the seal of Moon Bay.
Sitting at his desk, Elias lit a kerosene lamp.
He took a deep breath, picked up a notebook, and began writing from memory.
The tip of his pen made a rustling sound against the rough paper.
Relying on the residual memories in his mind, he wrote down the completely different Scale One spirit vision potion recipe he had just seen in Ryan's log:
“Half a mace of mist-pattern moth wing powder.”
“One piece of sea mirage membrane.”
“Three drops of dream lotus dew.”
“A pinch of glow-amber powder.”
“Three ounces of spirit-element wine.”
After writing the last word, Elias rubbed his wrist.
He was deeply grateful for Ryan's indirect help.
Of course, he was also grateful to Ophelia.
Helping her this time had truly been the right choice.
He recalled that old Crowley and Malcolm had left in a hurry earlier.
Before being sent onto the small boat, Ophelia had cried until her eyes were red and swollen, but she still specifically begged him and Jack to help lay Ryan to rest properly.
She didn't want her younger brother to continue being an unclaimed, aged specimen in that dark cellar.
“As a thank you, it seems I need to quickly arrange the grave-digging tomorrow,” Elias murmured to himself, looking at the recipe in his notebook.
Sweating and putting in some physical labor was a fair way to repay the favor Ryan had left him.
The main reason he took the trouble to write down the recipe was due to a crucial characteristic of potions in mysticism: the principle of second-time invalidity for identical ingredient ratios.
Simply put, once you have consumed a spirit vision potion of a specific formula, your spirit automatically develops a permanent tolerance to that exact ratio.
In other words, drinking the same one again is useless.
This also meant that transcendents could not use old formulas to make new potions and use them as cheap spirit restoration potions.
Otherwise, he would only need to remake his previous spirit vision potion formula.
Why go through all this trouble?
Thinking of this, Elias hesitated slightly.
Back at Lily of the Valley Convent, the black knight he had met in his dying, absurd dream had suggested that he drink another bottle of spirit vision potion.
Even now, he wasn't sure what use that would actually have.
Drinking overlapping Tier One potions made no practical sense.
Fortunately, this wouldn't cause any issues for him.
Moreover, the independent transcendents of this world had always had a very clear understanding of this.
If they collected low-Scale potion recipes with completely different ingredients, they would use them as highly potent spirit restoration potions.
As long as the ingredient ratios were different, downing one when near death or depleted of spirituality would force a recovery of their state and even save them from pollution.
To be honest, regarding a proper Scale Three promotion, he was a bit hesitant to perform another audience without offerings like last time.
Those three white doors and the arms on the other side... If he wasn't as lucky next time, he might just lose his life.
On the contrary, drinking another safe Tier One spirit vision potion seemed to be the least risky option at the moment.
He ripped the page with the recipe off the notebook with a tear.
Then, returning to his bedside under the dim light of the kerosene lamp, he pulled out another recipe.
That was the Scale Three recipe he had swiped from Mester's Treatment Room back in Hope County.
He examined it closely.
The ingredients for the Scale Three recipe were as follows:
One reflection pearl of a mirror-shadow gray clam.
Half a mace of moon-howler beast throat bone powder.
A claw fragment from a purified outer realm.
Three tear crystals from the left eye of a silver-glow raven.
A pinch of moon-silver powder flaked off an old teleportation array.
Seven shards of full-moon moonlight stone.
Three drops of dream ash from someone who hasn't woken up for three nights.
Three ounces of pure water.
Looking at this long list of items, Elias felt a headache coming on.
What on earth were these ingredients?
Some of them sounded incredibly expensive!
If he calculated his current assets... It was fine not to calculate, but once he did, his heart grew even colder.
The savings he had left, fully counted, amounted to a measly sum of less than five hundred gold crowns.
This included the two hundred gold crowns left over from his antics in Hope County, plus the three hundred gold crowns he had swindled from that sucker Marcus a few days ago, minus his luxurious meals at the Coast Hotel in Hastings Port and the expenses for the steam public carriage...
This small amount of money seemed incredibly pathetic in the face of so many supernatural materials that easily cost hundreds of gold crowns per gram.
Mysticism, to put it bluntly, was a high-end pay-to-win game for the rich.
As a keeper on a deserted island earning a meager salary from the company, the Soren coins in his pocket couldn't even make a clinking sound.
He needed to make some money!
Rate on N.U.
