Ch.19A Swordsman Doesn’t Need to Insist on Using a Sword

After leaving the church, I headed to the Swordsman Guild.

I needed to raise my adventurer rank, but there was another reason too.

“Please lend me some money.”

“I was worried when I heard you met an Apostle, but now you show up with a mythril plate on your face?”

“I need to urgently raise my adventurer rank to B-rank.”

Kaiden squinted at me suspiciously, but I ignored his gaze and continued.

“I’ll also take that gift you promised me before.”

“Even a bandit in desperate times wouldn’t make demands like this…”

Kaiden once again criticized me for being worse than a bandit.

However, the shamelessness of the Succubus instinct within me seemed extraordinary.

“I’ve met bandits who demanded my body, so who knows what’s out there in this wide world.”

“Fine… you win.”

Faced with my brazen attitude—not just having thick skin but practically stamping others with it—he finally surrendered.

The conversation proceeded with him agreeing to my requests.

In truth, I had already fulfilled the qualifications for both the adventurer rank and the gift, and Kaiden knew this, so there wasn’t really an issue.

He was simply reluctant because he wasn’t satisfied with me trying to collect rewards without taking the tests.

As for borrowing money…

‘A disciple can borrow money from their master, right? It’s not like I’m not going to pay it back.’

That’s how it is.

Having obtained everything I immediately needed, I prepared to leave the guild with Elena seeing me off.

Just then, remembering one more request, I briefly turned back.

“Ah, this is a rather personal favor…”

* * *

What should one do when they have money?

The answer is very simple.

Go shopping.

“Please bring me all the items listed on this paper. They don’t need to be high quality, just between C and B-grade products.”

I was visiting various herb shops and magic item stores throughout the city to purchase what I needed.

“Here. These herbs have some damage, so please give me a discount.”

Though none were particularly rare items, I needed to visit multiple places to carefully select products that weren’t too expensive or of poor quality.

“This herb looks like D-grade at best. Please remove it.”

After a full day of avoiding places that overcharged, rejecting shops that tampered with their products, and visiting every herb shop in the city…

“This seems more like B-grade than A-grade.”

I finally managed to purchase the amount of materials I needed.

“I was worried my budget wouldn’t be enough… I’m glad I got everything I needed.”

“I never thought you could buy this much with that money. You deserve the title ‘God of Haggling’.”

Lilly looked over the pile of herbs I had gathered and made this comment.

I shrugged in response.

“If I couldn’t do at least this much, the name Succubus would weep, wouldn’t it?”

Considering that charm stats affect haggling in games, it would actually be stranger if I couldn’t do it well.

Lilly seemed to partially accept my explanation.

“True, Succubi are incredibly good at that sort of thing. Succubi are.”

There seemed to be some other meaning behind her words.

When I gave her a questioning look, Lilly changed the subject by shifting her gaze to the potion crafting kit among the herbs.

“Are you planning to make potions yourself?”

“Yes, the recipe I want to make doesn’t exist on the market, and alchemy increases mental and intelligence stats.”

I didn’t need to worry about charm stats as they would increase naturally.

Physical stats were also on track now that I had acquired the necessary traits.

All that remained were intelligence and mental stats.

While they weren’t my main stats and required less attention, they still shouldn’t be neglected.

And potion crafting was one of the best ways to increase intelligence and mental stats.

While giving Lilly this brief explanation, I prepared to make potions.

I organized the herbs by type and set up the crafting kit according to the instructions.

As I was finishing preparations, Lilly sat on my shoulder as usual.

“So it’s all for growth. Is there anything I can help with?”

“I’m not doing anything difficult, so it’s fine.”

I carefully picked Lilly up and placed her on a table at a distance.

Because Lilly was terrible at cooking.

She roughly prepared ingredients, used high heat for everything, and threw all ingredients in at once since “they all end up in your mouth anyway.”

Some might wonder why cooking suddenly came up when we’re talking about potion crafting.

After all, potion crafting and cooking are clearly different domains.

But while high-level potion crafting might be different, at lower levels, it wasn’t much different from cooking.

How to prepare the herbs.

How to control the heat.

The order in which to add ingredients.

You just follow the instructions like following a recipe book when cooking.

For simple potions, even a child could make them if they knew the basic methods.

And Lilly couldn’t do that.

The problem was that she didn’t use her head and just threw ingredients into potions like she was cooking.

‘When cooking with Lilly, it was automatic failure, and with potion making, she had negative modifiers.’

She was smart but didn’t use her intelligence.

“What’s with that look you’re giving me all of a sudden?”

“It’s nothing…”

That was clearly a lie!

I ignored Lilly’s voice from behind and returned to my seat to focus on potion crafting.

“First, let’s get a feel for it.”

Even if potion crafting was similar to cooking, that only applied to lower-grade items.

And most of what I needed to make weren’t low-grade.

‘I’ll start with simple ones to get a feel for it, then move on to the difficult ones.’

The plan was perfect.

And all plans are always perfect.

Until they fail miserably.

BOOM-!

The kit I was carefully heating with herbs inside exploded.

It wasn’t a huge explosion, but it was powerful enough to destroy the ingredients and the kit.

“Cough! Cough! Did I use too much mana…?”

The acrid smoke irritating my respiratory system was an added bonus.

After clearing away all the smoke, I pushed aside the destroyed kit and set up a new one.

Since I hadn’t expected to succeed on the first try, I had bought five kits.

The location was also prepared accordingly.

I was working in a private room I had rented from the guild.

“Four more to go…”

Surely I wouldn’t fail to make this level of potion after five attempts?

After taking a deep breath, I chanted a victory spell and focused on potion crafting again.

“I’ll win.”

* * *

I’ll skip the embarrassing process and get straight to the conclusion.

I lost.

It was a parade of explosions.

It wasn’t even close—it just didn’t work.

The simple ones weren’t a problem, but I couldn’t get a feel for the more difficult ones that required mana control.

Of course, I hadn’t completely lost yet.

“Why isn’t this working…”

After destroying four crafting kits, I was reviewing what went wrong before using the last one.

But reviewing wasn’t going to help much.

I hadn’t gotten a feel for anything from the start.

“I’ll just try again…”

If I failed again, I’d have to get more kits.

With that thought, I lit the fire again.

Proper heat control.

Clean ingredient preparation.

Correct sequence.

No matter how many times I repeated it, there were no problems up to this point.

The problem always occurred at the next step: mana infusion.

“Huff…”

I took a deep breath and was about to infuse mana when…

SMACK-!

Lilly, who had approached without me noticing, hit the back of my head and stopped me.

“You can’t move mana like that. Are you trying to kill the ingredients? Are you fighting with them?”

Then she began to infuse mana into the kit instead of me.

“Really, you can’t function without me! Leave the mana control to me and focus on the rest.”

“Understood.”

It was definitely an unexpected situation.

Since the potion I was making was by no means ordinary, it would normally have been a serious problem.

But while Lilly might not know cooking, she was several levels above me when it came to mana control, and Lilly was definitely my trustworthy friend, so it was fine.

That’s how the potion that had been failing repeatedly was finally created.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

“Yeah, I worked hard! You said you were fine on your own, but you couldn’t even get started properly. I was dying of frustration just watching you.”

Lilly said this while sitting on my head.

It seemed like she was making me into a chair as punishment.

“Was my mana control really that bad? I thought I was moving the power and direction well.”

“You were good with those two, but your mana was filled with intent to destroy and cut—how could that possibly work?”

Hearing Lilly’s words, I was reminded once again of my talent.

[Sword]

Because of this trait, my mana naturally flowed aggressively.

“I’ll leave the rest of the potions to you then.”

“Fine, fine. Since you don’t have time to learn properly right now, I’ll help you.”

After confirming Lilly was ready, I started making the next potion by adding herbs.

“By the way, what kind of potion are you making? Something like concentration enhancement or physical ability boost?”

“Huh? No? It’s a bomb.”

I wonder why she imagined that kind of potion.

Swordsmen can use bombs too, after all.