There wasn't much I could do with the girl comfortably perched upon my bed, not when the bed itself took the most of the room in the room.
But that didn't mean I was willing to just sit around and do nothing!
'Well, let's see,' I thought, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to ignore the girl as I sat down and rested my back against the bed's edge before taking a look into the one, huge bag that we've brought from Clarie's shop.
This was one of the three reasons why she came to my place today… Or should I say things as they are, tonight?
If the first reason Claire had to pay my place a visit was the finished device, the second her willingness to help me out with my cultivation, then the third was just as pragmatic as the last two - it was her wish to see me craft something.
'In a certain sense, the second and the third reason combine with each other nicely, don't they?' I thought, trying to be as silent as I pulled out the array of different materials and small boxes the girl picked out from her shelves and stuffed them into the bag before we left.
And to say that the insides of this bag were chaotic would be a gross understatement.
Spricur stones, tens of different crystals, each with a small label attached by means of a simple cord wrapped around the crystal, artifacts small and wide… And this was just the easy part.
At the bottom of the bag, or should I say - from the bottom to roughly half of its height - the entire bag was occupied with boxes.
"A set of a young alchemist, a set of a fledgling blacksmith, a set of a newbie enchanter, a set of a beginner runesmith…" I read out the names written in big, fancy letters atop the cover of each of the boxes.
Each of them, a play-fun set of basic tools and reagents needed for the absolute greenhorns of the discipline to play around and find out if diving deeper into the job was something for them. And quite obviously, each of those sets had something to do with crafting.
'Should I just go through them one by one?' I thought to myself as I stared at the array of the total of eight different boxes.
This question was nowhere as simple as it would be to anyone else. Sure, those boxes ranged in price from a few to fewteen thousand, with the formation-making set topping the chart at an astounding cost of a whooping forty thousand Esces a piece. Still, after discussing it with Claire, she claimed she would be okay shouldering those costs…
As long as the finished device I've talked about would be to her satisfaction.
'I mean, she could hardly make the point of disliking it seeing how rushed she was to make use of its effects,' I thought, taking a quick glance over my shoulder at the girl meditating just a few inches behind.
Surely, it was a sight to behold.
Sitting cross-legged on my bed, she didn't seem to mind the world around her at all, too focused on whatever was happening inside of her to pay any mind to the outside. Still, with her eyes closed, I was now free to adore her small, perfectly proportional face, her narrow shoulders, the nice curvature of her chest, slim stomach that to the despair of most of the girls around the world didn't seem to bulge even as she sat down the way she did…
'Fuck, no, that's not what we are here for!'
As nice as it was to just stare at this beauty from up close, immerse myself in the peaceful sound of her breathing, watch how her breasts danced up and down to the rhythm of her steady breathing pattern… It was all but a distraction, a lure designed to draw my attention away from my ultimate goal.
'Now that I think about it, what am I even going to do once I become a cultivator?' I suddenly thought to myself, as I turned my eyes away from the girl and brought them back over the boxes I arrayed on what little room there was on my floor. 'After so many years, I can hardly remember what made me wish to be a cultivator so much. And now that's an actual possibility…'
I pressed my lips into a thin line while lowering my gaze down to the floor, and then even deeper, down to my feet.
This mental impasse lasted only for a moment, a really short one at that. After all, it was hard for someone as poor as me to give a crap about some sort of a higher reason when staring at close to a hundred thousand spiritual coins worth of crafting materials!
'For starters, if this crafting gig works out, it's definitely gonna bring me more money than some dead-end part-time ever could!' I thought, gritting my teeth and forcing my hand to reach out for the first of the boxes in the line, breaking myself out of the endless loop of self-doubt in the only way I knew how - by taking action.
Disregarding the value of the box itself, I tore it open, only to instantly switch to a caring mode as I carefully extracted every last piece hidden within the box before organizing them at my feet.
The majority of the box's volume was occupied by a white, ceramic pot, roughly capable of holding around a liter of liquid of volume. Below it, at the very bottom of the box, there was a simple recipe book… Or, to be more precise, a recipe leaflet. And finally, what was likely the most expensive part of the set, was a small box with an inbuilt divider that neatly organized twenty different kinds of herbs, vials, and solids.
'Let's see,' I thought, reaching for the leaflet… Only to scoff as I nearly threw it aside. 'Useless piece of shit…' I thought, gritting my teeth at the very thought of whoever it was that came up with the list of recipes on it.
It wasn't like there was anything wrong with the recipes themselves… But how there was absolutely nothing beyond them included!
No lesson, no lecture, not even some basic truths about alchemy!
All I could do with it was stuff various ingredients together at various ratios, mix them in either cold or hot water, and then enjoy some of the most basic of basic results!
Most of the recipes only ever ended with a further half-product that was of little to no value in its own right. And on the entire leaflet, there was a sum total of a whopping three recipes actually designed to output something of an actual worth!
"Well, there's hardly any use complaining, is there?" I muttered to myself as I took a deep breath and… And took one more sneak peek over my shoulder to confirm that Claire was still deep in the world of her inner reality.
As strange as it might be, it felt… embarrassing to dabble in a completely new field with the girl potentially watching!
And so, I took a deep breath again before gritting my teeth, picking up the recipe leaflet again, and focusing on the very first recipe.
"Two drops of nascent water(7), one leaf of Uru herb(3), three pinches of purified salt(1), combine in cold water, stir while heating up with two cubes of chemical heater(20)."
The instructions were simple, with numbers on the recipe corresponding to the numbers engraved directly onto the divider inside of the reagent box. And with that said, I reached out and grabbed the vial, and poured exactly two drops of its content into the ceramic vase.