Three Bottles of Potion
[Name: Healing Pearl]
[Type: Treasure]
[Quality: Precious]
[Description: Soak the pearl in 1L of water for 12 hours to grant the water healing properties, speeding up wound recovery.]
Lucas Hall's eyes lit up!
This was a real treasure!
It seemed that the treasure chest clam was a rare item, capable of yielding such rare items!
Noticing the late hour, Lucas decided to pack up the fishing net and end the day.
The fishing net had caught two items.
[Name: One-Armed Crab]
[Type: Food]
[Description: The crab has always favored using its right hand, with the right claw accounting for half of its body weight! It is non-toxic and edible, with plenty of meat in the claw.]
The other ugly item decreased sanity points.
[Strange Starfish, Sanity -3]
This starfish, at first glance, looked like a human hand with five fingers of varying lengths, and it crawled on the ground like a spider...
"Quite peculiar, it really looks strange!"
Lucas stomped it to death, picked it up, and after checking its details, suddenly felt it wasn't so ugly after all.
[Name: Palm Star]
[Type: Food]
[Description: A starfish twisted by Abyssal corruption. Slightly poisonous, increases agility by +1 for a short time but decreases sanity by 20 for one minute.]
This was similar to the head octopus; eating it could improve attributes, and it might be used to make a potion.
Thinking of this, Lucas hurried with the bizarre fish to the ship's laboratory.
"Seraphina, check these out."
Inside the laboratory, Seraphina was still dissecting the Devil Shark.
Two shiny, fist-sized eyeballs were removed and soaking in a glass jar, emitting a faint red glow.
She noticed Lucas and the odd fish in his hands, along with a large pearl.
"Did you catch all these?"
"Yep!"
Suddenly, Seraphina had an idea.
She glanced at the fish and then at the Devil Shark's eyeballs, and a thought formed in her mind.
"Two... no, three! In three days, I'll have some samples for you!" Seraphina said excitedly.
"Not in a hurry, it's already night. Go get some rest and we'll talk tomorrow!"
Seraphina hesitated for two seconds but obediently went back to her room.
Her room was next to the captain's quarters, so if there was any noise during the night, they could notify each other easily.
Lucas took the crystal ball and walked toward the captain's quarters.
The crystal ball had a vibration alert feature.
When a player's ship appeared in the nearby sea, the crystal ball would vibrate to alert them.
Placing it by his pillow allowed him to foresee danger in advance.
Otherwise, if other players surrounded them at night, he wouldn't even know!
After setting everything up, Lucas removed his coat, drank a bottle of coconut juice, and lay on the ship.
He habitually checked the chat channel before sleeping, mainly looking at the prices of winter clothing and seeing if anyone was selling fire-starting tools.
As he browsed, he fell asleep, his brow furrowed as he began having a nightmare.
Late in the night, there was movement next to the captain's quarters, and Seraphina's door opened again.
A sneaky figure dashed out, heading toward the ship's stern, the target being the laboratory.
Seraphina planned to work overtime on her potion research…
Three days passed with no major events.
Lucas continued fishing as usual, collected the nets in the evening, and occasionally practiced with his gun.
He didn't like using the grappling hook, although it was a steady catch, it wasn't as fun as fishing.
He gave all the fish he caught to Seraphina to evaluate if they were useful.
With plenty of food now, the perishable items needed to be eaten first, so there was no need to eat the strange fish raw.
During this time, the catches were average, except for the strange fish. The other resources included 28 pieces of wood, 25 pieces of cloth, 650 seashell coins, and 9L of fresh water.
He noticed that fishing nets and regular fishing yielded different results.
The nets caught more shrimp, crabs, and shellfish.
He also caught two resource chests during this time.
The wooden resource chest gave 20 pieces of wood, 20 pieces of cloth, which was better than nothing.
The bronze resource chest was much better, giving 100 pieces of wood, 100 pieces of cloth, and 20 pieces of steel.
In terms of fish, he caught two new species.
[Name: Eyeball Octopus]
[Type: Food]
[Description: An octopus corrupted by the Abyss, with eyeballs at the tips of its tentacles. Slightly poisonous, eating it increases perception by +1 for a short time, lasting 1 minute.]
[Name: Abdominal Muscle Lobster]
[Type: Food]
[Description: A large lobster corrupted by the Abyss, with six abdominal muscles. Slightly poisonous, eating it increases strength by +1 for a short time, lasting 1 minute.]
Together with the head octopus and palm star, these corresponded to all four attributes except sanity.
He gave all these special fish to Seraphina.
In the evening, Lucas, who had caught no fish for a while, began checking the chat messages.
As expected, with time, the price of down jackets continued to drop, as more people learned how to make them.
The current market price was only 105 pieces of cloth for one jacket.
It seemed the production cost was around 100 pieces of cloth, so the price had likely reached its lowest point.
He checked his current resource totals.
Wood: 841, Cloth: 560, Stone: 408, Seashell Coins: 5700, Fresh Water: 208, Steel: 77, Crystal: 51, Sulfur: 40.
It seemed like a lot, but buying winter clothing would cost over 400 pieces of cloth.
And to upgrade the ship to level 3, he would need a lot of resources...
It was going to be a long road!
If he used seashell coins to buy winter clothing, the price would be around 600 coins, but players preferred trading with cloth because the exchange rate for seashell coins was unstable.
Currently, the exchange rate for basic resources and seashell coins was about 5:1, meaning 5 seashell coins equaled 1 unit of basic resources, but in practice, the exchange rate was slightly higher.
Advanced resources were more expensive, around 25 seashell coins for 1 unit of advanced resources.
In any case, Lucas looked wealthy, but in reality, he was poor and couldn't afford to waste resources.
The fire-starting tools, though, were still a mystery as to how much they would cost!
As usual, he sent a rumor in the world channel: "High price for fire-starting tools, cheap winter clothing for private messages!"
Just after sending the message, Lucas noticed a private message from Seraphina, sent a few minutes ago.
Seraphina: "The potions are ready as you requested, placed on the experiment table. You can come pick them up.
There are three in total.
The red one boosts attributes but might have slight side effects.
The colorless one restores energy, give it a try.
The pink one heals injuries..."
Lucas read the message and immediately rushed into the witch's laboratory.
After such a large investment, there were finally results!
In the laboratory, Seraphina was resting her head on the desk.
On the table was a pile of instruments, including a microscope, a test tube rack with test tubes, a flask, and even an alcohol lamp.
"This thing can't light up, can it?"
Lucas picked up the alcohol lamp and found it surprisingly light. Looking closely, it was actually empty...
[Laboratory Instrument, will disappear if taken out of the lab, needs fuel.]
Lucas: "..."
He really didn't know what Seraphina had bought this for!
Didn't she know it was empty when she bought it?
He put the alcohol lamp down, his eyes drawn to the three bottles of potion on the desk, each a different color.
Although they were all labeled as unknown potions, Lucas had experience—once he drank them, he would know the exact effects and details...