The Second Life of Adam Cosmos

Ding!

[You have created a Health Potion (Poor Quality).]

[You have created a Health Potion (Poor Quality).]

[You have created a Health Potion (Poor Quality).]

"What am I doing wrong?" pondered Hao Jun. "I followed the recipe exactly as it was described in the book."

While the rest of the Hao Wei personnel are performing their daily duties, Hao Jun is studying every writing about alchemy that he can get his hands on.

For the past several days, Hao Jun had been busy crafting the basic health potion in the Forgotten Temple. He carefully studied the recipe before trying it out. But so far, his results have been either mediocre or poor qualities.

While there are other alchemists in the guild that he could turn to for help, as both head of the Hao Family and the owner of the Hao Wei Guild, he is far too prideful to ask a youngster to teach him alchemy. Instead, he chose the old-fashioned method of trial and error.

[You have created a Health Potion (Poor Quality).]

[You have created a Health Potion (Poor Quality).]

'There must be something that I am missing.'

He sent word to the Hao Wei guards outside his room to take him to a grinding session so he could level up some more. He is currently level 20 and thinks a few more levels in his intelligence would help him gain a breakthrough in potion-making.

As for his granddaughter, Ling complied with his wishes and restarted a new account to become an alchemist.

Doing so would mean that her original account would be permanently deleted and this is different from simply dying in-game. If a player decides to restart with a new account, the respawn time is much longer. Instead of 3 in-game days, it would instead be a full month in-game.

Nevertheless, Ling was persuaded to do so by Hao Jun when he explained that while the rest of her siblings were making accomplishments as combat specialists, she could take the opportunity to excel as a crafter along with him. In the process, Ling would be able to have something in common with him that her other siblings don't.

This argument is more than enough to make Ling willingly start over.

Everyone in the family has been doing everything they can to get closer to Hao Jun, yet here is a special opportunity offered to her where she will have more time with her grandfather.

While the explanation Hao Jun gave his granddaughter is correct and logical, the simpler truth is that he just wants to spend some quality time with his granddaughter. Of the Hao siblings, he saw so much of him in Ling and this made him want to guide her.

He originally did not intend to get tangled up in a youngster's pretend play at war, but when he saw Hao Ling's defeat and the guild's complete defeat, he felt compelled to take over directly to ensure that the Hao Wei Guild does not devolve into a children's club that blindly obsess over revenge and other petty profit-less ventures. So he gave strict instructions to all Hao Wei personnel to not engage the mysterious player, nicknamed White Mask, and to offer him membership instead.

On the subject of offering membership, he suddenly had an idea.

Before going out to grind, he decided to send out a message to someone.

***

[You have created an Antidote Potion (Average Quality). You have gained 40,000 Essence.]

[You have created an Invisibility Potion (Average Quality). You have gained 40,000 Essence.]

[You have created a Haste Potion (Average Quality). You have gained 50,000 Essence.]

[You have created a Cleansing Potion (Superb Quality). You have gained 50000 Essence.]

[Alchemy proficiency has increased.]

Since these are already known recipes, he did not get credit as its inventor. Of course, "known" is a subjective term. The recipe for these potions can not be easily acquired by just about anyone.

Unfortunately, the outcome of the potions was only of average grade as Adam did not have enough quantity of the raw ingredients to use- he had to add substitute ingredients to increase its quantity so he could have more yield. These types of potions are for his personal use as he does not intend to distribute potions like invisibility and haste to players who may or may not cross blades against him.

Despite the average grade of the potions, he still gained quite a bit of Essence for successfully crafting advanced-level potions. The Essence given out by the system is dependent on the quality, quantity, and grade of the concoction- among other factors. The more common it is, the lower the Essence reward is. Conversely, the more complex the potion, the higher the Essence given out. This is why the Essence Adam gained is still fairly considerable despite it being only an average grade.

Typically, the highest possible Essence given is only during the first creation; succeeding production of the same product would yield a gradually depreciating Essence count. This is so that players would always strive to keep on creating a huge variety of potions.

This rule of thumb applies to most crafting classes.

At this point, Antidote, Invisibility, and Haste Potions are very rare consumable items that players can acquire in extremely limited quantities. Either they can buy it from the fortress at extremely high costs or they can use the contribution points they acquired and use it to claim these potions as a reward. Luckily for Adam, he has a semi-stable means of producing these potions for himself.

Meanwhile, the basic potions he sold a few days ago were sold out at a significant profit.

He then used the money he earned to buy more materials. As the days passed, more ingredients became available. Adam took advantage of buying the rare ingredients before their use became widely known and secured whatever ingredients he could to secure a hefty supply of ingredients.

He then created hundreds of health, stamina, and mana potions. Since he is now an Adept Alchemist, the quality of the basic potions has increased by one-tier.

[You have created a Health Potion (Superb Quality). You have gained 20000 Essence.]

[You have created a Stamina Potion (Superb Quality). You have gained 25000 Essence.]

[You have created a Mana Potion (Superb Quality). You have gained 28000 Essence.]

These potions are far more than what most players have in total in their respective health, stamina, and mana pools. But there is no doubt that guilds and various parties would fight over these types of potions as they could serve as excellent support during tough raids.

Health Potion (Superb Quality)

Description: A mixture that restores a decent portion of one’s health. Users can drink up to 3 flasks of this potion before any side effects start to manifest.

Details: Restores 150 HP

Cooldown: 1 Hour

Stamina Potion (Superb Quality)

Description: A mixture that restores a decent portion of one’s stamina and relieves fatigue by a moderate amount. Users can drink up to 3 flasks of this potion before any side effects start to manifest.

Cooldown: 1 Hour

Mana Potion (Superb Quality)

Description: A mixture that restores a decent portion of one’s mana. Users can drink up to 3 flasks of this potion before any side effects start to manifest.

Details: Restores 150 MP

Cooldown: 1 Hour

A limit of 3 flasks every 1 hour is a very good outcome- especially when one considers that nearly all of the potions made by players have an embarrassingly low limit of one flask per hour while the ones purchased from the Fortress typically have two flasks per hour limit.

As for the 150 HP restoration, it is above and beyond what other health potions can restore right now.

At this current stage of the player's average skill level, most clerics can heal about 100 to 120 HP per cast, while Alchemists are only beginning to craft potions that can reach that much healing effectiveness- the top alchemists are currently capable of making potions that restore 70-80 HP.

But right now, the focus of many potion makers is to minimize the cooldown of their potions so they can be taken frequently by players. Or at least, this is what those with Alchemy teachers would encourage them to work on.

Meanwhile, Adam is back once again at the auction house. He prepared his usual auction-by-batch for the potions he created.

Additionally, he also decided to sell a single Necromancy Class Tome to test the waters; at this point, the Hanjun Guild and various independent teams and players have expressed interest in becoming a necromancer. Now, all that remains is to ignite that interest by selling it publicly.

He then checked the scheduled auctions for any Voynich Pages but there was still nothing put up for sale. So instead, he turned his attention to other items- in particular, ores.

Now that he has completed the quest to make 10,000 bricks, he is about to do the one for chopping 10,000 wood. As Vetius specified certain cuts and measurements, there is simply no going around it- he will have to do it one by one.

But as for the 10,000 ore, he can somewhat mitigate the laborious nature of the quest by simply buying it bit by bit until he reaches the necessary quota.

Unfortunately for Adam, even with his budget, he can only buy a few hundred as there are not many ores available for sale to begin with. Besides, there are other parties also buying the ores so he can't possibly buy them all as he is bound to be outbid or simply be beaten to the punch of buying something due to the sheer number of players shopping.

Still, he was content enough to be able to secure what he could and made a note to regularly visit the auction house from now on.

He was about to join an auction to bid on something when he noticed a rather interesting message. In truth, the message is mostly similar to the other messages he has received so far about teaming up with their guild so Adam can craft a potion for them exclusively.

But this message stood out among others due to the person who claims to have sent it: Hao Jun.

Adam knows this man very well. It was his Alchemy mentor in his first life.

Strict, firm, and a tough teacher. Hao Jun is known for expecting nothing but the best when it comes to his class profession.

The story of Hao Jun, or the Saint Alchemist is widely known. He is a successful businessman who was in a coma for 2 years to receive treatment. During this time, he lived out these 2 years in Pangea where he eventually made a name for himself as the widely recognized world's best Alchemist player.

Later on, during the apocalypse, he became one of humanity's greatest assets and many countries reached out to China in hopes of having their alchemists be trained by Hao Jun.

As for Adam, Hao Jun accepted him as an apprentice in Pangea when he found out that he was the son of the doctor who was treating him. It was initially a way for Hao Jun to show his gratitude to the good doctor by taking in his son, but it soon turned out that Adam had a knack for potion-making and he immediately became one of his top students.

This continued in the real world where Adam received some renown of his own as being one of the few individuals that Hao Jun personally named as reaching his standards.

But then, during the last few years of the apocalypse, Hao Jun withdrew every asset he had to focus on reclaiming the lost territories of China. After that, there wasn't any news about the Saint Alchemist anymore and China stopped accepting foreign students to be trained as alchemists. There were many rumors about what happened to Hao Jun, but nearly every single one of them was highly sensational that Adam simply dismissed all of them.

And now, in this life, the future Saint Alchemist has reached out to Adam asking him for advice on how to make potions.

The message was fairly short.

Hao Jun introduced himself and assured Adam that he would accept his terms- provided they were within reason. Then there is the usual monetary offer as well as a promise of support on any endeavor that Adam would ask of him. There is a clear statement that the support Hao Jun would offer will depend on what Adam is willing to provide in return.

Essentially, Hao Jun proposes a fair exchange of values.

Finally, the message mentioned that he wished to speak to discuss this in person in the Chamber of Sacrifice in the Forgotten Temple. He then provides a secret phrase that he can tell the Hao Wei guards so they know who he is and not attack him.

"Oh, this should be good," said Adam. "I look forward to our meeting."

From what Adam knows of Hao Jun, he is not one to backstab someone unless he is provoked so he decides to trust the message.

By now, Hao Jun would have known what happened to the Hao Wei team that Adam encountered and killed. It is unlikely that they would associate the potion maker with the man they call White Mask. But even in the unlikely event that they did, he knew that Hao Jun was too much of a businessman to worry about a minor fight like that.

And so, Adam sent back a response that all he asks for right now is anonymity and that they are to meet privately within two days.

After all, Hao Jun- and by extent, Hao Wei Guild had no idea that he had been in the Forgotten Temple all along.

With that concluded, Adam closed his inbox and prepared to join the auction for something that he wanted to acquire.

The item that caught his attention is a tome for the Rune Tracer class.

It is a class available for Creation and Arcane Paradigm players. It gives the player the ability to "write" magic either on the ground as some kind of trap, or on items to enchant and enhance it in some ways.

This is why it is known as the Calligraphy of Magic both by players and natives of Pangea.

Just like casting magic, a player can choose to invest his skill points to have the ability to cast certain rune encryptions. But what makes Rune Tracing unique is that one can manually do the encryption- but doing so is more complex and time-consuming than just using an activated skill.

For an analogy, it's the difference between solving an algebra equation with a computer and solving it the old-fashioned way by writing on a piece of paper.

Furthermore, to do it manually, one would require at least ten times more mana. Fortunately for Adam, his mana pool is very high.

In Adam's first life, he chose to invest his skill points in certain rune tracings so he could cast them on the ground as triggered traps. But in this life, he intends to do it manually and save his points instead.

Plus, Rune Tracing has a good synergy with blacksmithing as many encryptions can be engraved in items- like weapons and armor. This alone is sufficient reason for him to pick the class again. Since this would be his fourth class, and would therefore mean that the Essence needed to level up would increase than normal. But Adam didn't mind as the benefit of Rune Tracing is far more than the extra cost to level up.

The items for sale went by pretty fast. Since many players are busy doing quests for the Fortress, there are many items of interest that players would want to acquire for themselves so the bidding has gotten more intense than before.

As for Adam, he only has his sight on the class tome- the rest are of no interest to him whatsoever.

Finally, it was the turn of the Rune Tracing class tome.

“The next item for sale is a class tome called Rune Tracing. It allows the user to create encryption with various magical effects. Perfect for either setting magical traps or adding special effects to equipment. This class tome is a unique reward for completing a certain quest at the Fortress. Bidding starts at $4000!”

There was a moment of silence.

The amount of $4000 is a bit too much for a class tome at this point- most other tomes would be sold at $2000-3000 at the highest. And that is for popular class tomes. This is because most classes known to players are just the normal ones. The exorbitant price of class tome would happen later down the line when the unique and special classes became known to the public- like the Necromancy Class.

Rune Tracing, however, does not have such a following. From its description, it is meant to be a support-type class for either mages or crafters so it doesn't have such an alluring charm like a Necromancy tome.

It is clear that the player who got the class tome for a reward just wants to get rid of it and gain a good amount of money.

And so, it is understandable that nobody has made a bid. Not in the auction room, not the ones attending anonymously.

Then, Adam took the initiative and made a small bid.

“$5500!”

Predictably, Adam’s bid caused a reaction in others to try and win the item up for sale.

$5600!

$5700!

$5800!

Others joined in on the fray and the price gradually reached $7000.

But Adam didn't mind it at all. While Rune Tracing is an unpopular class due to its situational use in combat, he can maximize its utility thanks to his experience with it and combine its effects with the items he will create with blacksmithing.

With this in mind, Adam decided to strike with a bid that was high enough to deter those still mildly interested but not to the point of overspending.

“$9000!”

Silence. $9000 for a seemingly underwhelming class is too much for the rest of the buyers. Nobody challenged Adam anymore.

“Going once, going twice… and… sold!"

"Congratulations to our buyer!”

Ding!

[Mercury Auction House: Rune Tracing class tome has been added to your item list. It will be available to you when you return to Pangea. $9000 has been deducted from your account.]

With the class tome in his possession, he had no further business in the auction house for now.

He left and returned to the workshop. He still has a lot to do.