Golden Experience

Of course the recipe for the Philosopher’s Stone wouldn’t be in the list. Perhaps it didn’t even exist in this game. But considering homunculi and alchemy did exist, it was hard to believe that would be the case. Rare’s mental logic was most likely flowing in the most convenient direction based on her observations, but since this was supposed to be a fun game, she wouldn’t mind even if her findings were subpar. Believing in her own optimism, she decided to just try her best.

The recipes she thought were worth investigating were the ones that required a lot of materials, and the ones that were the only ones in their subcategories. Rare would mark these as “provisional Philosopher’s Stones” and work on crafting them.

She still needed to find six more ingredients for these recipes. Right now, the ones she had unlocked and could see were mercury, sulfur, iron, monster heart, and potent acid. The last ingredient she had no information on. The fact that “potent acid” had been unlocked meant that Rare had encountered it somewhere. Since the acids she had seen mostly came from the engineer ants, whatever they produced should work. It shouldn’t be an issue if their levels were too high, so she would pick some engineer ants for “Experimental Use Only” and dump a bunch of XP into them to improve their acid as much as possible. If this recipe turned out not to produce a Philosopher’s Stone, they would suddenly just lose their old jobs, but given their new status as high-spec units, they should be able to find some place else to shine.

Mercury and sulfur could be gathered from the ore vein. After mining sulfide minerals, they could be [Refined] to obtain sulfur. Mercury was just found normally within the ore vein; they came out of the walls from digging tunnels. Of course, they also produced a small amount of cinnabar: mercury sulfide. She probably couldn’t just use cinnabar, though, even though it was made of both mercury and sulfur; if it was necessary for them to be combined through the magical means of [Alchemy], not a regular process like sulfidation, then there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Speaking of cinnabar, old documents actually called the mineral itself the Philosopher’s Stone. After learning the [Alchemy] skill, Rare had spent some time while logged out researching real-world reference material about alchemy in the VR library. Cinnabar was famous in ancient China as an ingredient in the miracle medicine known as the “divine elixir.” That being said, it was still mercury sulfide in the end, just a toxic substance.

What if the mercury and sulfur listed were meant to make the cinnabar form of the Philosopher’s Stone? In that case, why did she need the other materials?

Whatever case, the mercury and sulfur would probably be used to create cinnabar, so she should consider the purpose of the other ingredients.

First, she was interested in why a comparatively common material was in the list: iron. It must be there to preserve the mercury. Mercury can form alloys with lots of metals, but she had the impression that it couldn’t do so with iron. Or was there another reason for iron’s presence?

If there were some other reason, then perhaps she could deduce that reason from the last material.

Assuming that cinnabar is the physical form of Philosopher’s Stone, then it was time to think about how the other materials would be needed in its mystical creation.

Speaking of other things aside from cinnabar that were known to be called Philosopher’s Stones, another item of note was “yellow prussiate of potash.”

Yellow prussiate of potash was potassium ferrocyanide, but if she remembered correctly, in the Middle Ages they made it with livestock intestines and other organic matter high in nitrogen, along with iron and potassium carbonate—

“Ah, so that’s what the iron is for.”

That meant the monster hearts were a substitute for livestock intestines. Which further followed that the substitute for potassium carbonate must be the final unknown ingredient. Either some kind of suitable magical substance, or something that contained potassium carbonate. If purity was irrelevant, the simplest way to get potassium carbonate was to soak plant ashes in water. However, this brought to mind what Rare did during the event. Although her firepower back then had been too high, so the trees went past the ash stage and simply evaporated, that didn’t mean that no ashes were formed at all. She was right next to that stream that had been turned to steam, so it wouldn’t have been impossible for a small amount of potassium carbonate to have been created at that time. However, the ingredient name was still locked for her. Therefore, what she probably needed wasn’t specifically potassium carbonate, but a magical equivalent.

“A suitable… land-based plant, turned into ashes… then, somehow magically empowered…”

If what Rare needed was, for example, [Ashes of the World Tree], then she’d have no choice but to give up in despair. Even if such a thing actually existed, she didn’t know where to find a World Tree. Nothing of the sort was written on the map she had received from the admins. Plus, iron, sulfur, and mercury were all simple substances that required no extra consideration, but “monster hearts” and “potent acid” were both exceedingly vague. When she had been making living mail, the materials she used simply determined the resulting rank and type of finished product; it was the reaction generated by those materials that caused the change.

Keeping that in mind, as long as she fulfilled the broad criteria of “magical plant ash,” she had a feeling that the recipe would succeed. Although she had no idea what item name she would unlock for that ingredient.

“For the time being, I should look into different types of magical wood.”

The trees that grew in the Great Liebe Forest were not normal plants at all. There were ones that grew unnaturally fast, and ones that were harder than iron. They already used the wood from these trees to produce charcoal, but the fact that the ingredient in the recipe was still locked meant that they weren’t magical enough. Not that she had a lot of conviction in that conclusion.

If she couldn’t get her hands on this item in the great forest, then the only other option was to look outside the forest. Most of the materials that could be bought in town came from either the prairie or this forest, and she didn’t think the farms within its walls were raising any magical crops.

“So my only option is to wait to hear back from Marion, huh…”

With the map now in their hands, there was less of a need to blindly explore the area around the great forest. Due to that, she had ordered Marion and Ginka to go out and survey the monster territory closest to the forest. From their periodic check-ins, it seemed their journey was proceeding smoothly, and she could use [Coordinate Awareness] to track them on the map and make sure they were headed in the right direction. At their current pace, they should reach the monster territory soon.

Since this territory was a forest type, it had a similar climate and environment, so if possible Rare really wanted to take control of it. It was also possible that it had a different ecosystem than the great forest; if it had the same ecosystem, then she wanted to try mixing in the monsters they were raising in farms here. She couldn’t say if it was possible to conquer it without seeing it for herself, but once Marion got there, she could travel to her coordinates with [Summon Caster], then [Summon] the adamantite series as their subjugation force.

If that forest had a different ecosystem than the Great Liebe Forest, then it would be ideal if different kinds of magical trees grew there as well. While Rare waited for Marion’s next report, she could kill time by setting loose her overpowered boss on unsuspecting victims.

Indeed; she had completely forgotten about her plan to increase the visiting players’ levels.

^[1]: The romanized chapter title, 炭酸マジカリウム, is “tansan majikariumu.” 炭酸カリウム is “potassium carbonate.” European readers might recognize potassium better as “kalium.” So “majikariumu” = “magikalium” = “magical kalium.” Since I use Americanized English, being that I am American, I moved the portmanteau over to “carbonate” to get “Potassium MagiCarbonate” :P