End of the Magic Era
chapter-20

After Solon left, Lin Yun did not return to his room. Instead, he washed his face with cold water and then picked up the two scrolls before heading to the place where he had overworked himself for a whole night, the alchemy laboratory.

Solon's arrival wasn't strange at all. The value of the Spectrum Potion was something that even a new mage like Raymond knew, let alone the Sage Tower that held three High Mages. What truly baffled Lin Yun was the two scrolls that Solon had brought...

A few alchemy formulas were written on the two scrolls, and they were relatively uncommon. They would be worth several thousand gold on the market. This was definitely a very good congratulatory gift.

But to Lin Yun, these few alchemy formulas weren't important. The key part was the two scrolls themselves.

When he first accepted the two scrolls, Lin Yun actually didn't take them seriously and was only being polite. His mind was filled with too many perfected formulas from the end of the magic era, so how could he still care about other alchemy formulas of this period?

But after taking a few glances at them, Lin Yun suddenly found out that the letters on the scrolls seemed a bit too bright.

After taking a careful look, he realized that these two scrolls had actually been written with Dragon Blood Ink.

"This is just too shameful!" Lin Yun lamented.

'Too extravagant, too wasteful…'

The best use for Dragon Blood Ink was for alchemy arrays because the blood of dragons had astonishing amounts of mana within. Not only was this mana very easy to control, but it could even be brought to its full potential with only a few runes. If an alchemy array used Dragon Blood Ink, then the mana source used to power it could be reduced by a few grades because the power of the Dragon Blood could support most of the array's operations. The mana source would only take an auxiliary role.

But here, that Dragon Blood Ink had been used to write a few mere alchemy formulas.

'Do you need to use precious Dragon Blood to write an alchemy formula?'

"I wonder which bastard wasted so much…" Lin Yun kept swearing while carrying the two scrolls toward the alchemy laboratory. He was unaware that in the distant Cloud Tower, an old mage sneezed.

Afterwards, Lin Yun started getting busy.

The always stingy and economical Lin Yun was surprisingly extravagant this time. All kinds of magic items came out, and many bottles of reagents were set up. Lin Yun spent a whole ten hours, working from the afternoon into the night, not taking any breaks.

This was how important the Dragon Blood Ink was to Lin Yun.

Mafa Merlin's body was far inferior to that of the average mage, after all. If not for Lin Yun's arrival, with Mafa's talents, he might have never become a mage in his lifetime.

These kinds of inherent bodily flaws were unsolvable in this era. The only one that could fix it right now was the one coming from the end times, Lin Yun. But the methods were very troublesome, including special meditation or customized potions.

Because the meditation would take too much time, Lin Yun unhesitantly chose the latter option.

The name of this potion was Mana Baptism. At the peak of Noscent's magic civilization, nearly every newborn kid would receive a Mana Baptism. This Mana Baptism would not only enable them to gather their first bits of mana, but it would also greatly increase their constitution. Thus, in that era, nearly everyone would be gifted. Everyone would stand at the same starting line and there was no longer any requirement of a minimum amount of innate talent. What would decide their future would be their efforts and their luck.

Afterwards, along with Noscent's mana exhaustion, fewer newborns were able to enjoy a Mana Baptism. After the most powerful mages were buried in the sand, no more of those precious potions appeared in Noscent.

Because there were no longer any mages that were able to slay a dragon.

Dragon Blood was the most important component of Mana Baptism. Without Dragon Blood, Mana Baptism would only become a common potion and wouldn't be able to bring forth the mana gathering effect, let alone further increasing one's constitution.

Even though he had returned to this era that was so rich in resources, Lin Yun still couldn't avoid the headache of having to obtain some Dragon Blood. It was truly too uncommon. Let alone a fledgling mage, even some High Mages might not be able to see a drop of Dragon Blood during their lifetime.

They were an existence far above High Mages. Extremely tyrannical physical power combined with magical abilities inherited through their bloodlines let the dragons stand proudly at the top of Noscent's food chain. From ancient times till the current day, there had been no more than three people that could slay a dragon. Each of them could be considered genuine legendary figures!

When Lin Yun had included this in the list of things for Raymond to get, it was with a "just in case" attitude. He wasn't actually expecting to hear any news of it on that side.

He had been prepared to struggle for a long time to obtain some.

If it came to it, he would first operate the Flashing Gold chamber of commerce and build it up, before relying on financial resources. If a hundred thousand gold wasn't enough, then he would use a million. He would even use all of his family fortune to get a drop of Dragon Blood.

At that time, Lin Yun couldn't have thought that someone would just drop by and gift him a drop of Dragon Blood.

Naturally, it was too early to say that this was actually a drop of Dragon Blood.

It was at best a few alchemy formulas written with Dragon Blood Ink...

But it was already enough for Lin Yun.

These formulas were written with Dragon Blood Ink, which obviously contained Dragon Blood. What Lin Yun needed to do now was to reconstitute the Dragon Blood Ink from the alchemy formulas and then extract the true Dragon Blood from the Dragon Blood Ink.

It sounded very simple on paper, but carrying it out was an extremely complicated process.

First of all, there were no fewer than 37 formulas for making Dragon Blood Ink. Even if Lin Yun already knew all the current 37 formulas, he couldn't find out in a short time which one had been used for the ink on the two scrolls.

The only way was to do some testing.

This was a large project. The importance of Dragon Blood Ink lays in using the power of the Dragon Blood to amplify the might of the arrays, to the point that it could even replace the mana source. To some extent, each drop of Dragon Blood Ink was like a miniature alchemy formula. Thus, the formula of Dragon Blood Ink was famous for being complicated.

During those ten hours, Lin Yun compounded almost a hundred bottles of all kinds of reagents. He then used those reagents to various types of testing, all the way until it was the afternoon of the next day. After a whole 24 hours had passed, he had only eliminated two of the 37 formulas for sure.

By that point, Lin Yun was no longer able to keep going.

Analyzing the Dragon Blood Ink's formulas wasn't something that could be completely solved with just the reagents. It relied more on the alchemist himself, while the reagents were only the materials.

Analyzing the formulas would consume a great amount of energy and mana. Ordinarily, it would take a group of a few alchemists, sometimes even a dozen, working together to carry out something on the level of the Dragon Blood Ink analysis that Lin Yun was doing. If word of his feat spread out, it might frighten many people.

After eliminating two of the formulas, Lin Yun decided not to continue. Otherwise, he might collapse before managing to extract the drop of Dragon Blood.

He washed his face with cold water and then told the old butler that unless he gave his authorization, no one was allowed to enter the Gilded Rose's alchemy laboratory. After doing that, Lin Yun returned to his room to sleep for twenty hours straight.

For some time, Lin Yun stayed in the alchemy laboratory day and night, analyzing the formulas, eventually eliminating twenty kinds. If nothing unexpected happened, Lin Yun would be able to completely determine what formula was used in at most half a month.

And at the same time, the business of the Gilded Rose also gradually improved. It was the richest district of Thousand Sails City, after all, and the golden signboard of the Flashing Gold chamber of commerce was very good for drawing attention. Even if a fool was in charge of the place, the business wouldn't be too bad, and Lin Yun was no fool.

The potions crafted by Lin Yun had already run out of stock a week ago, and the magic armors and magic weapons had been bought up at very high prices in the first two days. Now, most of the items arranged on the shelves of the Gilded Rose were various kinds of alchemy products that the old butler had people import from outside. The price wasn't nearly as high, but they were practical.

From this, it could be seen that the alchemy business was indeed a business that required daily work. Besides all the things that Lin Yun had personally crafted on the first day, the rest was stuff that the Gilded Rose acquired wholesale at a low price and was selling with some markup. They could easily make a profit of over ten thousand gold in under a month.

The old butler was even thinking about hiring some alchemists at a high price once the business was back on track the next month. At that time, he would contact the old mercenary groups to get a steady supply of magic materials. His goal of restoring the Gilded Rose to its former splendor was almost in reach.

Half a month soon passed. After Lin Yun finally found out which formula had been used, he didn't immediately leave the alchemy laboratory. He busied himself inside for two more days before pushing the door open to leave, feeling completely exhausted.