Dazzling White Light And Kou’s Questions

Morning.

In Kou’s dungeon, we had Kou make some Empty Water for us.

When I poured Serâge into it, the light had exploded.

Liricia let out a cry of surprise.

Because of the light, we couldn’t see anything at all, so I called out to her.

“What happened, Liricia?”

“T-that chest… all of the water in that chest—it’s all become All-Healing Elixir!”

“Seriously?! Elixir, as in that? The medicine that cures anything!? …Wait a second. In that case…”

I lifted the hand I had kept in the water and tried wiping my eyes with it.

My vision returned in an instant.

Still dishevelled in her white habit, Liricia was looking at me through her Finger Glasses.

As I walked over to her, I spoke.

“Close your eyes. I’m going to touch you for a moment.”

“Yes!”

She closed her large eyes and tilted her face slightly up. I carefully wiped around her eyes, taking care not to disturb her long, lowered lashes.

Her violet eyes opened wide and grew even rounder.

“I can see! What an incredible effect!”

Liricia stared in shock, looking back and forth between me and the water.

I turned back as well to look at the water in the treasure chest.

“…Isn’t Elixir supposed to be insanely expensive? I’ve never even used it once.”

“Y-yes… It instantly restores life and mana to full and cures abnormal statuses, diseases, and even curses. It is also used as a solvent or catalyst in alchemy, so it is extremely valuable… I’ve heard that a single use can cost a million Gort, or even ten million… In the first place, it’s not something you normally see for sale in shops.”

“I can’t believe my Serâge and Empty Water could create something that powerful…”

I muttered in awe.

We had just made enough Elixir for hundreds of uses.

—At this rate, we had practically reached our goal of getting the rejuvenation medicine on the very first day.

In fact, weren’t we already millionaires?

Just then, Kou flashed in a flustered pattern.

“Waa, waa… There is small misunderstanding, Master.”

“Misunderstanding? Isn’t this Elixir?”

“It is Elixir, but it will not stay Elixir.”

“Try to explain that in a way I can actually follow.”

“Um, you have to drink all of this to get the effect of one Elixir use.”

“What?! That’s way too much!”

“It is forty centimetres tall, fifty centimetres wide, and forty centimetres deep, so that’s eighty thousand cubic centimetres. Eighty litres?”

“My stomach would burst.”

“Master, I believe a human would die.”

“How does someone end up dying from drinking water that’s supposed to bring them back to life? Completely useless!”

At my words, Kou’s spherical body shimmered.

“If you divide it up into smaller portions, life and mana will only be restored halfway, and it will only cure a few minor ailments or curses. It settles at something like a mini-elixir effect.”

“A mini-elixir, huh… Well, that’s still not bad. A single potion costs a thousand Gort, so we could try selling these for around ten thousand. If they don’t sell, we’ll lower the price every day. If they sell like crazy, we can say it was a grand-opening special and raise the price.”

“Yes, Master.”

Liricia nodded.

Kou continued.

“I have been thinking this for a while, but when I use Master’s mana to make items, they all gain holy-element attributes. That treasure chest also has a pointless holy element on it.”

“Oh? Which means the Empty Water that should have had nothing on it already had the holy element attached.”

“That is correct. By the way, the bath and kitchen are holy attributes as well. The bathtub has Holy-Element Attack Lv. 3.”

“Does that… mean anything?”

“No.”

—That was fast.

At Kou’s answer, Liricia nodded, her silver hair swaying.

“I see. Because holy-elemented water had even more holy power added to it, it displayed Elixir-level effects.”

“That is what happened.”

As I listened to this exchange, a thought struck me.

—There might actually be a way to use this.

A way to use it besides just selling it.

“All right then, Kou. Make us some bottles for the mini-elixir. Use materials that are cheap and easy to get.”

“Okay. I will make bottles out of clay.”

Next to the treasure chest filled with water, a huge treasure chest several times larger in height, width, and depth appeared.

Inside were a great many small bottles that could hold about a hundred millilitres each.

There were also some bottles that were oddly large.

“What’s with these big ones?”

“Ta-daa, that is a commercial-use Elixir bottle that holds fifty servings.”

“What kind of commercial use?”

“It feels like those words have driven the value of Elixir down to the absolute limit…”

Liricia sounded a little taken aback.

All I could do was nod in agreement.

“It’s almost like sacrilege against Elixir itself.”

“Buying in bulk is a bargain.”

After that, Liricia and I took the bottle lids off, dipped them into the water, and closed them again.

“Liricia, keep checking the water every so often with your Finger Glasses. I want to know when it stops being full Elixir.”

“Ah, yes! Understood! As expected of you!”

As we worked, I turned to Kou with another question.

“Didn’t you say you had other things you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes, that is the consultation. The second thing is: will we remodel the dungeon?”

“Right, we haven’t changed it in ages. Do you prefer a dungeon that’s wider and has more floors, Kou?”

“There is no problem with how it is now. I am happy to meet you in the corridor, Master. But having the corridor directly connected to the core chamber is dangerously dangerous.”

“Why’s that?”

“Now that we have four cores, dungeons will start attacking us sooner or later. Enemy dungeons can connect to either one floor above the floor with the core, or, if there is only one floor, to the room in front of the core chamber.”

“Hm? There isn’t any room in front of it right now, is there?”

“Then the shop in the Royal Capital or the house in the forest will become the connection point. Monsters will overflow.”

“What?! That’s bad! Okay, make a room for Kou at the back of this hall.”

“Roger.”

At the back of the hall, a room with no door appeared.

Then Kou, who had been beside us, vanished with a pop and reappeared in the back room.

A voice came from a drone.

“This is an unfamiliar ceiling.”

“Well, we just made it! I don’t think it’s all that different from here or there, though.”

The floor, walls, and ceiling were all covered in pure white stone.

The light in the ceiling was a clean, pale blue.

“Should I turn both sides of the hall into smaller rooms?”

“For now, I think we can leave it. We haven’t even decided what kind of dungeon it’ll be.”

“That is my third consultation.”

“Hm? The dungeon, huh… What kind of dungeon do you want to be, Kou?”

“Last time, I failed when I tried to run an animal-type dungeon all by myself, so this time I want to be a hospitality-type dungeon.”

“A hospitality-type dungeon?”

“Yes. I will provide hospitality to Master and your wife, and in exchange you will defeat the other dungeons for me.”

“Well, that fits our wishes too. In fact, that’s what I’d like to ask you to do.”

The forest house Kou had created was so comfortable that I no longer felt any attraction even to a luxury hotel suite.

We could bathe whenever we wanted, and there was a shower.

The bathtub even had some kind of “jet” function that sprayed water against my back, which felt amazing.

The kitchen and rooms also came loaded with wonderful features.

Then Liricia, who had been using her Finger Glasses while scooping up mini-elixirs with one hand, spoke up.

“Kou-chan, do you have anyone or anything that could mind the shop, or any system for that?”

“In that case, I recommend a Doll Dungeon. It can make dolls that look just like humans. If I am Tier Two or higher, their movements and speech will be as good as or better than humans. At Tier Three or higher, I can make specialist staff.”

“I like the sound of that. Are they strong?”

“Dolls are weak. At the same rank, golems are twice as strong. And making dolls requires many types of materials, while golems only need one. Dolls are for hospitality.”

I furrowed my brow and thought it over.

—Having something to watch the shop would be great, but if my subordinate monsters were weak, we wouldn’t be able to go adventuring.

With a troubled look on her face, Liricia asked a question.

“Is there a dungeon type that can make monsters who can become human, or at least pretend to be human?”

“Fairies, phantom beasts, angels. I can also make undead or demons, but they would probably die the instant I made them.”

“Figured… but angels, huh. So there’s that kind of dungeon too.”

I found myself imagining a dungeon full of Liricias.

I couldn’t tell if that would be terrifying or fun.

No, I wanted to love only one Liricia.

As I was thinking that, Liricia’s expression clouded.

“It sounds difficult to make, doesn’t it?”

“To make even one phantom beast or angel, you need one Dungeon Core. I think it would be impossible to run.”

“That’s rough… Hmm, let me think a bit about what kind of dungeon we should make.”

“Okay.”

Just then, Liricia cried out.

“Ah, Master! It just changed!”

“Oh, did it? How about this one?”

I returned the Elixir I had just bottled back into the treasure chest.

Liricia nodded.

“It’s full Elixir again!”

“One commercial bottle and about seventy small bottles… sixty-eight litres. Still impossible.”

“What were you thinking of?”

“If it turned into Elixir at around eighteen litres, then even if it couldn’t be used on humans, I thought it might be useful for livestock or riding dragons.”

“That is still far too much.”

Liricia shook her head regretfully, her silver hair swaying in a soft ripple.

I put one commercial-use bottle and five small bottles into my bag and stood up.

“All right, Kou. Bottle up the rest and store it. We’re going to the Adventurer Guild and the slave merchant.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s go, Liricia.”

“Yes!”

Liricia leapt to take the hand I held out.

Hand in hand, we walked down the passage leading to the Royal Capital.