Super Righteous Player
Chapter 944 - 2: The Increasingly Swaggering Kaisersa

Chapter 944: Chapter 2: The Increasingly Swaggering Kaisersa

Before Annan was about to leave Noah, he actually made a special trip with his senior, Salvatore, to seek Master Chiron.

According to the intelligence given by Chiron, the "Great Curse: Smoke Mirror" is now most likely within the United Kingdom.

This left Salvatore quite dispirited.

— It was he who told Annan not to go to the United Kingdom, but it was also he who requested Annan to save Chiron. When these two ideas conflicted, Salvatore suddenly felt as if he was being somewhat unreasonable...

This made Salvatore, who had always adhered to the principle of "rationality" and took pride in it, feel somewhat ashamed.

However, Annan didn’t find it strange.

He was full of motherly care for Salvatore... generally manifested as, "Yes, yes, yes, alright, alright, alright, you’re right."

After all, Salvatore was always the one to give up on thinking.

Discussing with Sister Vatore was much more reliable than discussing with Brother Salvatore.

Although Salvatore had always proclaimed himself to be a "rational" person, even from Annan’s first meeting with him, this Tower’s Child had already been so self-assumed.

But after Annan got to know Salvatore better, he realized that Salvatore’s true nature was actually that of a very amenable, somewhat soft-hearted, old nice guy.

Although he occasionally got irritable, that was mostly due to his lack of sleep and weakened spirit.

Besides, Salvatore was so approachable that if someone asked him to "please cure someone’s illness," even if he knew there wasn’t much money to be made and the medicine wasn’t valuable, he would still take time to craft it.

In the Kingdom of Noah, where "health can be bought with money," as long as you pay the church, almost any illness can be cured with medicine.

Compared with simple and effective Divine Arts,

The transformative agents of the Conversion School required a lot more hassle—though a bottle of medicine itself wouldn’t involve many materials, these transformation wizards couldn’t manufacture potions precisely according to demand.

Not even an alchemist could achieve that.

They could only use transformation spells to control the general direction of the potion, followed by fine-tuning to continuously optimize the demand for the transformative agent.

The potions currently sold in stores, used for treating external wounds and healing injuries, the two kinds of ointments for treating bruises and burns, the universal antidote for insect and snake bites, the energy supplement for replenishing energy and replacing sleep, and the stimulant for numbing pain, had all been optimized bit by bit over the past centuries.

These might not be the most effective, but they were the most cost-effective and suitable for the masses.

The specific detailed formulas would only circulate within the Wizard’s Tower.

According to what Salvatore told Annan, the cost price of the [Potent Wound Healing Potion] is actually less than one-tenth more expensive than the [Wound Healing Potion], but its effect is at least fifty percent better. Because the quality of the Wound Healing Potion varies, the effect can even reach more than double that of ordinary potions.

— But the price he sold it for in the shop was three times as expensive.

This was a unified pricing, and Salvatore didn’t even know why.

He even complained to Annan for a long time about it.

However, Annan understood quicker than Salvatore why this was...

The answer was labor cost.

The Potent Wound Healing Potion could even stop bleeding from a severed limb instantly. But in reality, people didn’t need such a potion.

The kind of injuries treated with potions were generally things like being cut by a sword on the arm, bitten by a wild beast on the leg, shot by an arrow in the shoulder, and so on. For such injuries, a regular potion was enough to heal, and if the bone wasn’t injured, maybe even one bottle would be superfluous.

And a more potent medicine was practically unnecessary in normal times. Thus, such potency would be wasted.

There indeed were places that needed Potent Wound Healing Potions, for instance, where there were no priests skilled in healing Divine Arts, but fierce battles did occur—these potions’ instant blood-stopping ability often needed to be used alongside amputation surgery.

During amputation surgeries, if regular healing potions were used, it might lead to difficulty in stopping the bleeding due to insufficient speed.

As a specialized resource, it would still be bought even if the price were several times higher than usual, simply because there could be no inferior substitute.

And the best-selling Wound Healing Potions, like when Salvatore had once helped his mentor synthesize "Black Fire," would be used for student practice.

That meant the potion itself was part of the curriculum. As they taught students how to make transformation agents, a large quantity of potions would be produced—those that met the standard could be sold.

Through this process, students gained the skills and recipes to make more superior concoctions.

But did they really make potent potions?

Not necessarily.

Because the profit from selling potions was really quite minimal—this ’minimal’ is in comparison to other transformation products.

It might take a wizard about fifteen minutes to make a Panacea, and the same amount of time to make a regular Wound Healing Potion. However, a Panacea might sell for more than three silver coins, whereas a Wound Healing Potion was only worth a third of a silver coin.

Though the former might be harder to sell—if I were only to make a small amount, why wouldn’t I choose to create the most lucrative products?

Wizards capable of leaving Heath Tower of Black were guaranteed to be at least of the bronze rank. Those who could "stay and teach" were all grand wizards of silver rank or higher.

Like the potion Salvatore previously made for Annan, which could save one’s life, it could be made with some luck. Such a potion could probably sell for ten or twenty gold coins with no problem.

When Salvatore made potions for others, curing diseases in the process,

The cost he incurred was far greater than simply "giving clients silver coins to go have a priest treat the illness." Without the numerous "uncertain attempts" by the students, the optimized solutions found for such medicine were prohibitively expensive, to the point of being unfeasible for mass production.

In other words, facing a patient who couldn’t cough up five silver coins for hepatitis treatment, Salvatore had to spend about two to three days and roughly twenty silver coins in cursed materials to produce at least two hundred bottles of ambiguous potions.

The final bottle’s cost might nearly reach one silver coin itself, leaving no room for profit, thereby preventing any possibility of widespread use.

The precious time wasted by the senior was even more costly than the materials, worth perhaps ten times as much.

Of course, if Sister Vatore took on the task, probably one attempt would suffice. She excelled at work that required intuition.

But she clearly had no interest in such matters. For Vatore, unless Salvatore asked her, she would only act in matters that affected the life of them both.

Salvatore once worried that his "shadow" might steal his body.

Only now did he realize that his "shadow" was a lazy dog...

She couldn’t be bothered to take over his body.

However, taking away his right to speak, once Vatore became free, happened almost every day.

Every time Annan chatted with Senior Saul, he could see Sister Vatore hitting Salvatore.

It was usually because Saul had said something wrong and ended up getting punched with a look of pitiful confusion, not even understanding what he did wrong.

Initially, Maria thought this person was a bit rude and inarticulate. But by the time they were ready to leave, even Maria looked at Salvatore with the enduring, maternal love one reserves for a son with mental disabilities.

It was only after hearing Salvatore’s account that Annan had his moment of realization.

He wondered why—despite being the only Alchemist in the world and staying in the Royal Capital for several months, the senior had hardly made any money...

The money he earned was even less than what he spent on charity.

Though the senior claimed his actions were "business," and he was "practicing on clients," in Annan’s view, it was undoubtedly charity.

That was so typical of Saul.

But Annan had no intention of dampening the senior’s enthusiasm.

On the contrary, it was better this way.