A Brilliant New Idea

Returning to the present, Kretea and Ystur finish explaining the events of the past week to Elizabeth.

"Alright, I mostly understand what happened. But shouldn't all that money be locked up in the ring Astur couldn't pry open? And why did she leave it in the middle of the room, just what does she expect me to do with it!?" Elizabeth asks.

"Strictly speaking, this is only a small fraction of the money that was obtained during our trip. Most of it should still be held by Astur. If all of it was here then the room would be filled with cash," Kretea says.

"What about the matter with the locked ring?"

"After we left the city, Mom drove into the uninhabited wastelands and used explosives to destroy the ring. And when we returned home, she put a bunch of it in a trash bin, walked away for a minute and came back acting surprised over finding money in the trash, dumped it into a wheelbarrow and then finally came here," Ystur explains.

"I can't believe she went out of her way to throw money away like that so she can pick it up for a joke… wait, that's totally something she would do," Elizabeth sighs and turns her attention to the wheelbarrows full of cash, "For now, let's send this to the Finance Department and have them deal with it."

As Elizabeth calls the people from the Finance Department to make use of the sudden increase in funds, Astur runs back into the office, looking a bit off with unfocused and dazed eyes.

"Kretea, come with me, quickly! I need to borrow your luck again!"

"What's going on?" Kretea asks.

"When I was going back to the island, the monkeys came over and told me they cultivated a new mushroom."

Without any more explanations, Elizabeth, Kretea, and Ystur instantly knew what was going on.

"After eating it I got an amazing idea, but I need your luck," Astur grabs Kretea's arm and drags her away to the workshop.

Curious, Ystur follows them, as well as Elizabeth who's going to make sure nothing gets blown up. Elizabeth, Kretea, and Ystur attempt to find out what Astur's great idea is, but the three of them aren't able to make sense of anything she's saying. Astur is going on about, quantum mechanics, folding spacetime, as well as a bunch of other scientific terms that the three of them don't understand.

In Astur's workshop, the first thing Astur does is swap out the cauldron for a larger one. Preparing various ingredients, Elizabeth recognises some of them as being used in the creation of the spatial rings created by Astur and the bags that expand the space within that she and Ystur use. Although Elizabeth is a layman when it comes to this matter, thinking back to Astur's scattered explanations and the ingredients she's using, Elizabeth quickly figures out that Astur is probably making a new space-related item.

The fire beneath the cauldron is lit as Astur pours in several alchemical solutions mixing in her ingredients and using all her synthesis related skills, stirring the cauldron while waiting for everything to dissolve.

After a few hours, nearly all the preparation has been completed as Astur moves on to the final few steps.

Looking around the room, Astur notices that Elizabeth has returned to work and Ystur is taking a nap while leaning over the coffee table in the workshop, leaving Kretea as the only one available.

"I need to borrow your luck now, come here," Astur beckons.

As Kretea approaches, Astur hugs her as she eats one of the newly cultivated psychedelic mushrooms. Looking at her status, Astur smiles as she confirms that borrowing the luck of others is a very useful thing to do.

"Good, good, everything is proceeding as planned. It's time for the final ingredient. Kretea, I need you to bring over the health potions in the closet over there," Astur points to a closet in the corner of the room, "When I say so, dump them into the cauldron."

"Are you sure I should be participating in the synthesis?" Kretea asks.

Stepping up the ladder to the top of the large cauldron, Astur says, "You don't need to worry, after I put in the final ingredient, the conversion will begin and the synthesis won't be too affected by anything else, at most the final product might have some extra healing properties."

A moment later, Kretea returns to the cauldron and finds Astur's clothes scattered on the floor, looking up she sees that Astur has stripped down to her birthday suit and isn't carrying anything.

"... What are you doing?" Kretea asks.

"Putting the final ingredient into the mix," Astur says as she moves over the top of the cauldron and slides down to the bottom of it.

The final ingredient for this project is Astur herself. As she expected, diving into the cauldron filled with a boiling mixture and is draining her HP rapidly. Although the passive Health Regeneration is slightly stalling the loss of HP, the impact isn't significant. Just before the synthesis enters the final stage, Astur activates her best skill as an Alchemist, Nigredo. With the activation of Nigredo, the previously brightly coloured mixture turns pitch black as all the impurities within the ingredients are expelled.

"Put… Health… in…"

Although it is difficult to hear Astur, who is completely surrounded by the mixture in the cauldron, Kretea can still make out the meaning of her words as she moves up the later and dumps several Health Potions into the cauldron.

This helps keep Astur's health up as she begins to stimulate her Divine Power over space. The currently active ability that Astur can use while under the influence of the mushroom is her ability to manipulate space. Astur's goal is to turn herself into a walking vault. Her recent escapades over the past week made her realise the weakness of items like the storage rings, they are very easy to take. Thus intends to turn herself into an impenetrable vault, where nothing can get stolen.

On the outside, Kretea has woken Ystur up to help her get the rest of the Health Potions. Although the potions have been helping, Kreta can still feel Astur's lifeforce dropping significantly, and she can't keep up with Astur's health loss on her own. Even with the help of Ystur, the two of them can't keep up with the rate at which Astur is losing HP and call Elizabeth back over to help. By the time Elizabeth arrives, Astur is down to around 8% of her HP, and while the three of them can't really bring Astur's health back up, at least they reached a rate where they can keep it from going down further.

This routine of pouring health potions into the cauldron went on for several hours. Over this time, Astur has been continuously expanding and condensing space. Additionally, Astur's resources such as Mystic Force, Qi, Mana, and stamina were continuously consumed by the synthesis process. And just as her reserves go down to below 100 on each and after a total time of 36 hours, the synthesis comes to an end as the mixture dissolves into Astur's body while impurities are continuously expelled and at the same time, she blacks out.