Chapter 14: The Potion Business

Watching the listings vanish and messages flood the feed demanding another batch of potions, Serayne let out a quiet sigh. The grin she’d been trying to suppress for the past few minutes finally settled across her face for good.

It wasn't even just about the raw materials - though five hundred units certainly lifted her spirits - but the realization that she had found something she could actually do, rather than constantly comparing herself to people who could roam the forest on two good legs.

She still couldn't walk, and simply crossing from one side of the room to the other took more effort for her than for most arrivals from Asterra. 

But while other foragers were twiddling their thumbs waiting for mana to recharge, she could spend that downtime studying, prepping reagents, or filling test tubes.

I don't need to fell more timber than everyone else. 

I just need to make something they'll gladly trade their wood for.

She glanced at the Contacts tab, where the counter had already blown past a vague "99+," then returned to her storefront without a shred of guilt. Fielding every single request would be an utter waste of time.

Meanwhile, her auto-buy orders had reeled in several more packs of test tubes. She retrieved ten boxes, lined them up within arm's reach, and set back to work portioning the draught - this time with such enthusiasm that even the tedious measuring didn't bother her in the slightest.

By the time she corked the last of the next hundred vials and posted them to her stall, the entire batch was swept clean in minutes. Serayne stared at the transaction receipts, struggling to process just how rapidly her stockpile was multiplying.

One hundred and fifty potions sold brought in a gross total of fifteen hundred units of materials. Even before subtracting overhead, it was a haul she could never have matched by flitting from tree to tree and resting every other branch.

And that was when she slammed headfirst into a problem she hadn't even considered hours earlier: the cauldron still held a substantial amount of brew, and she didn't have a single empty test tube left.

She stared at the bottom of the empty carton, then at the bubbling vessel, and back to the box.

At ten milliliters per dose, even a single liter yielded a hundred servings, and she had plenty left in the pot despite hours of reduction. Without exact measuring tools, she couldn't guess the final vial count, but one hundred and fifty had barely scratched the surface of her yield.

With 9,968 people remaining in the regional channel, even a massive batch wouldn't furnish a single dose per person. Yet her burgeoning enterprise had ground to an abrupt halt simply because she lacked cheap glass tubes.

I stirred this damn pot all night, and now I'm supposed to just sit here and watch money grow cold in the kettle?!

Lacking a better idea, she opened her pending friend requests and skimmed the attached notes, filtering out pitch after pitch for "collaboration" - proposals that almost universally boiled down to her handing over potions while the other party promised to be deeply appreciative.

Only one concise note caught her attention:

[Serava Moonveil: I have a massive stockpile of test tubes. Add me if you're interested.]

Serayne pulled up the profile immediately. The avatar showed a woman with a slender face, gold-rimmed glasses, and tousled silver hair framing fox ears alongside a set of delicate deer antlers.

A Crimson Mark on her right cheek marked her as a futanari. The framing cut off around an unbuttoned collar and a loosened necktie that draped over a generous bust her dress shirt could hardly contain. The crisp cotton strained against her curves so snugly that Serayne couldn't help thinking one middle button was fighting for its life against the pressure.

Beneath the portrait sat a simple bio: Professional Merchant.

At least one person is upfront about why she's here.

She accepted the request, and a reply popped up almost immediately.

[Serava Moonveil: Finally managed to reach you, Boss Veyra. A real pleasure.]

[Serayne Veyra: How many test tubes do you have?]

[Serava Moonveil: Five hundred and thirty pieces. Exactly fifty-three boxes.]

[Serayne Veyra: Price?]

Serayne had no intention of wasting time on pleasantries or inquiring how the woman had amassed such a hoard. At the same time, she checked Serava's storefront and spotted an active buy order: two units of materials for every ten test tubes.

Interestingly, Serava didn't require pristine, boxed packaging; her listing explicitly noted that she accepted used, emptied vials as well. She had noticed an angle that Serayne had completely overlooked in the rush of her maiden sale.

The glass didn't vanish once someone chugged the potion, after all. To anyone not practicing alchemy, an empty vial was just useless clutter they’d gladly flip for a nominal payout.

Look at that. I haven't even finished bottling my first batch, and you're already running a bottle-deposit racket.

A wry smirk tugged at Serayne's lips. Flipping items for profit was hardly arcane wizardry, but spotting the niche and cornering over five hundred vials so fast commanded respect.

[Serava Moonveil: Five units of basic materials per ten pieces.]

[Serayne Veyra: Three per ten. You turn a profit, and I don't have to waste time running buy orders. At five, I'd rather just buy them myself.]

After sending her counter, she canceled her own buy orders on the market and waited, giving the merchant enough time to notice the shift.

She wasn't about to pay whatever exorbitant markup someone demanded just because she needed glass, but since Serava had proven adept at sourcing them, letting her take a cut was far more practical than competing with her for every loose tube.

[Serava Moonveil: Deal.]

[Serayne Veyra: Handle the sourcing from now on. Whenever you gather a batch, send over a trade request. I'll clear them during daily settlement at the latest.]

[Serava Moonveil: Works for me.]

The system allowed pending trades to be staged with expiration windows of twelve, twenty-four, or forty-eight hours, meaning neither woman had to camp by their console simultaneously just to trade messages and pass along inventory. For Serayne, it meant fewer interruptions; for Serava, a guaranteed buyer.

They closed their first deal immediately: one hundred and fifty-nine units of materials for five hundred and thirty test tubes. Serayne retrieved the shipment and returned to the cauldron.

Filling that many vials took far longer than selling them. She posted the potions in batches, pausing periodically to ease her stiff back and massage her aching fingers, while steady chime notifications provided ample incentive to keep pushing through.

It was during the payout collection that she bumped into another inventory constraint: a single stall slot held a maximum stack of 999 identical units, with any overflow spilling into an adjacent slot.

Up to now, ten slots had seemed like a minor annoyance, but with her stockpiles of timber, stone, and vines ballooning rapidly, she saw how easily her entire inventory could become choked.

She still needed slots for bottled potions and incoming shipments. Once she began accumulating additional resource types - like soil, sand, or monster cores - space would become a desperate bottleneck.

Opening the Hearthhold upgrade tab, she checked the criteria against her stores and removed stone from the accepted payment options. She already had the hundred units she needed banked, and taking in hundreds more didn't inch her closer to her goal the way timber or vines did.

Next, she set up a barter listing: ten Clouded Mana Draughts for one E-rank Monster Core, capped at ten transactions. Beside it, she listed two more: five potions for five hundred grams of food, and five potions for half a liter of bottled water, also limited to ten trades each.

Fulfilling them demanded steady bottling and further deliveries from Serava, but now she had a deliberate direction for the remainder of her brew instead of accepting raw materials indiscriminately.

She made no attempt to conceal that she was stockpiling for a Hearthhold upgrade. There was zero reason to justify herself to people who were doing the exact same thing through different means.

Naturally, the Regional Channel had taken a keen interest in her profit margins.

[That Serayne girl must be sitting on a mountain of materials by now.]

[I was tallying the potions sold. It's well over six thousand units.]

[Serayne Veyra, nobody's saying you shouldn't turn a profit, but since business is booming, could you lower your prices? We're all just trying to survive out here. It looks a bit like profiting off people's misery.]

[Tessa Lorne, was it? Taking note. If your whining makes her stop selling, we are going to have a very serious problem.]

[Another self-righteous saint volunteering everyone else's wealth.]

[Can you all shut it? I'm trying to buy potions, not sit through a sermon.]

[What harm is there in knocking off a few units? Treat your customers right and they'll treat you right.]

[She's the only one selling potions here, genius. She doesn't need to beg for customers.]

Serayne read the exchange with an increasingly frosty smirk. Pulling up her stall settings, she blacklisted the loudest voices demanding discounts - the ones mixing their pleas with open entitlement and thinly veiled accusations.

She didn't plan on banning every unhappy customer, but she had zero desire to conduct business with people who led with calling her an exploiter and expected her to politely thank them for the feedback.

If you don't like the price, don't buy. It's not complicated. And if you want to dictate the value of my labor, go spend eight hours over a fucking cauldron first.

She stared at the empty shop description field for a second, then typed out a blunt statement that captured her mood perfectly:

[Buy or beat it.]

Confirming the change, she pulled her hand from the console, drawing far more satisfaction from the unvarnished motto than she probably had any right to.

[Oho, the boss has got an attitude.]

[Did you guys see the shop description?]

[Good. At least we won't have to listen to an hour of discount begging now.]

[What about that core trade? Ten potions - that's a hundred Mana Points for an E-rank core. Isn't that low?]

[Not necessarily. I bagged a horned rabbit today and it dropped an E core.]

[Stop fixating on those damn wolves. E-rank doesn't mean everything has giant fangs and hunts in packs.]

[For real? I'll check around tomorrow then.]

Serayne watched the messages roll past. Alongside the jealousy and snark sat plenty of genuine interest. Most people ultimately just wanted to know if the brew worked, what it cost, and how to get their hands on whatever they needed to pay for it.

Many would have preferred lower prices - just as she preferred paying less for test tubes - but not everyone treated personal preferences as grounds for a public meltdown.

Sector 666 had already earned a gritty reputation anyway. Between earlier scams, threats, and dirty laundry aired in public, no one could mistake this chat for a harmonious commune driven by selfless altruism.

That didn't mean everyone was cut from the same cloth, but a kind gesture could sit right beside a hustle for supplies, and the woman defending Serayne from whiners one second might easily take advantage of an open trade error the next.

Today’s defense didn't make them friends, just as mutual irritation toward complainers was no guarantee they wouldn't scrap over the last available vial tomorrow.

A few minutes on the channel was all it took to see how seamlessly they swung from mutual aid to throat-slitting insults and back again, without the slightest hesitation between the two.