The recipe for the Light Armor Potion.

He’d even given her the exact measurements. In a way, Ethan had laid his cards on the table with Tori—practically telling her outright that he knew a Potion Maker he was very close to.

This was one of Ethan’s secrets, but Tori wasn’t the sort to be moved by someone trusting her. Still, she could trust Ethan a little more. Just a little.

In her deep meditation, she sensed each of the ingredients. Some of them weren’t even familiar to her. So the Greenlake Crane’s heart was an ingredient too—the Greenlake Crane had said it was part of an adventurer’s job before. Maybe all of Ethan’s ingredients were for a potion to help him advance, and he’d become an adventurer to cover it up…

She was beginning to understand.

She took one of Ethan’s hands. Her will seeped into his body, and she felt the vast reserves of magic and elemental energy he had accumulated—vast, at least, by Tori’s standards.

The ingredients made sense. Their elemental proportions were sound, and this was a typical “play to your strengths” Potion. It would strengthen the light element within Ethan, increasing his affinity for it. It would also grant him a skill imbued with the light element.

As for the magical pattern, it was—

“Is this pattern supposed to represent armor?”

It looked like a shield-shaped crest, square on top and oval on the bottom, with a mass of intricate lines woven through its center. “I don’t really understand. Do I just build the magical pattern like this?”

She was clearly still fully conscious.

Ethan answered her. “That’s right. Basic defensive spells usually use a shield-shaped magical framework, but what matters is the structure inside. The light-element patterns spread outward, but if you use only the basic patterns, you’ll end up with something like a light shield. To make it take the form of armor, you have to adjust the patterns. Filling the framework with humanoid and shield-shaped patterns is an extremely important part of magical framework studies. This framework…”

All right, she wasn’t following anymore. She’d gotten the gist, at least.

It seemed her Möbius Ring shape wasn’t exactly ideal. At least, it didn’t really fit the way this world’s disciplines worked…

But at the time, that was what she’d thought of. She also believed there might be some kind of “fate” behind this magic.

Besides, the Infinite Light Potion was clearly very useful. This magic combined light and darkness. It hadn’t increased her reserves of light element by much, but she absorbed it at a remarkable rate.

Usually, Mages had to set aside time to absorb elements and magic. When they were fighting or doing anything else, their absorption rate was extremely low.

But Tori, at least when it came to absorbing the light element, could absorb and release it at the same time. That was what made it infinite!

Building the magical patterns Ethan needed took a heavy toll on her. This was an Extraordinary-level Potion, after all, and Tori had only just advanced. She’d only dared to make it because of that. The Infinite Light Potion really did work wonders for this, though.

Once she’d finished building the whole thing, she felt completely drained.

That feeling of being able to do anything after her breakthrough had vanished. Her body and mind felt utterly empty, like a rag wrung dry and left in a crumpled heap.

“Here. This is your Potion.”

Tori could barely keep her eyes open. Her gaze landed on Ethan’s bed, and she flopped onto it without another thought.

Ethan stared at her in surprise. She’d said that if she didn’t wake up, he should wake her. She seemed perfectly conscious now, didn’t she?

The many ingredients on the table had somehow turned into a single vial of liquid. The result was downright bizarre.

Ethan stared at the Potion for about ten seconds.

Then he picked it up and downed it in one gulp.

At the same time, he entered a deep meditation.

At dusk, Tori woke up and saw Ethan shining like a lightbulb, radiating light element out into the world. She was wide awake in an instant.

“Are you fucking trying to get yourself killed?!”

The girl sucked in a sharp breath and immediately used the dark magic she wasn’t very good at. Light scattered; darkness absorbed. As she used the dark magic, a realization suddenly came to her.

Darkness was only one way something could appear. She probably wouldn’t be able to define its true meaning in the magical world until she studied at the Magic Academy. But by the definition from the world she came from, something looked “black” because it absorbed light. Things that released light appeared in color.

The colors of light itself were only a matter of human perception. In reality, they were rays or forms of energy at different frequencies—

But that didn’t fit the way magic worked. It was only her rough understanding from the world she’d come from. Still, that didn’t mean it was completely useless.

She absorbed the light scattering from Ethan’s body, then kept transforming it through the Möbius Ring pattern.

But there was a limit to how much she could absorb. Ethan simply had too much magic for her to handle. Still, maybe she could do something that followed the principles of this magical world.

So she started experimenting.

There was plenty of light element around, anyway. If it didn’t work…

Small balls of light appeared in Tori’s hands. Everyone knew you didn’t need to learn a spell to make a ball of light. You just had to gather the light element, and the resulting orb would slowly fade away.

Once its light element and magic ran out, it could no longer shine.

But a Potion Maker could separate the element from the magic.

Think about it. A ball of light glows softly and slowly, and can keep shining for quite a while. But what if you sped that process up? What if a blinding ball of light appeared all at once?

Wouldn’t that be… a flashbang?

She’d already made Potion bombs. If she made a few flashbangs now, would that make her the ace soldier of the magical world? The ace soldier returns! One command, and—

Never mind. She was mixing up her genres.

But that was exactly what she was doing now.

She didn’t know much about the precise structure of magic, and she hadn’t studied it in detail, but she could still cobble something together. That was her specialty. After all, that was how she’d started making Potions in the first place.

But she was trying to keep up appearances, so it took a lot of effort. She discovered that she couldn’t simply take someone else’s magic and use it. She tried to draw Ethan’s magic out of his body and use him as her own power bank, but it wouldn’t work. Magic really did point toward the Demon Realm, and the way it was drawn seemed to differ from person to person. After reacting with the elements, it returned to the Demon Realm—

That was only her theory, though.

Still, there was no denying that light magic was awesome. No matter what else you said about it, it looked incredibly cool. Take Ethan right now: his hair floated upward from the escaping elemental energy, turning pure white. And shouldn’t his whole body be glowing? Why did the light seem to glide along his sharp contours, giving him this sleek, sci-fi kind of handsomeness…? This was a magical world! What was he doing?

When Ethan opened his eyes, he found the girl sitting beside the bed, chin propped on one hand as she stared blankly at him.

Do I have a flower on my face?

He couldn’t quite make sense of it.

Tori sprang up from the bed, looking a little disappointed. “Congratulations, my young master Ethan. You’re an Extraordinary now. I hear you almost never see one in a town like Blackwater Town.”

“Well… there’s only so much you can buy in a town, and usually, it’s hard to keep an Extraordinary under control there.”

Ethan explained, “Mages who reach the Extraordinary level or above have to register. But in practice, registration matters more in theory than it does in reality. People aren’t objects. They move around. At most, it just makes it easier to investigate if something happens.”

“So that’s how it works…”

Tori thought for a moment. “So, young master Ethan, do you still have any money?”

“Hm?”

Tori glared at Ethan. “I used up almost all the money in the shop helping you advance this time. At this rate, our cash flow’s going to dry up, and we might not even be able to afford ingredients.”

“—Things are that tight?”

“What did you think?”

Ethan thought for a moment, then suddenly realized. “Wait, I supplied all the ingredients, didn’t I?”

“You don’t think getting to where I am now in such a short time was free, do you, young master Ethan? This is an investment. Do you know what that means? I can make plenty of different Potions now. As long as we have capital, we’ll earn it back in no time.”

Ethan’s expression turned troubled too. “This is a real problem, but it’s not impossible to deal with. If you mean gold coins, I don’t really have any. But money has a way of finding its way to you when kind people come along.”

“Huh?”

Tori was just about to say something when she saw Ethan’s confident expression. Then she understood. “What if—just what if—the people who attacked you didn’t have any money on them?”

“Huh? Who goes around doing things without bringing money? I didn’t know people in Blackwater Town were that generous,” Ethan said casually. “Besides, there’s the Church too, isn’t there? Whether Mi Luosha acted of her own accord this time or was driven by that monster, she’ll have to pay the price. Don’t you think?”

Ethan smiled.

Tori smiled too.

Their laughter didn’t sound like it came from heroes at all. They sounded like a pair of sly, scheming villains. “Then the money problem is as good as solved!”

“That’s right, Shopkeeper Tori. I hope you’ll use this opportunity to squeeze as much profit as you can out of our shop.”

“That’s no problem at all, young master Ethan. You really are a heaven-blessed genius. I’m so lucky to have a boss like you!”

“Likewise!!”