I, the wizard, the foolish Buddha.

Chapter 28 Femme Fatale
When Roland woke up, he found himself lying on the floor of the "little cabin." He realized that he should be lying in the cabin in his mentor's wallet.

A thick fog hung outside the window of the cabin, obscuring the distant view. The voices of the mentor, the baron, and the others talking echoed in the air.

Roland listened to the noise outside for a moment and realized that the team had gone deep into the ruins.

"It seems like I only slept for two hours... The mentors didn't choose to camp at the entrance of the ruins, but jumped into the entrance (dry well) and entered the ruins."

Roland listened again and found that Instructor Leonard and several other crazy guys were all placed in a strange object in another space by the instructor.

They had taken some potions before and would wake up one after another in a few hours.

Roland had a strange look on his face. "So, the instructor didn't mean to harm anyone by having us take the Juice of Bitterness... Why didn't she tell me if I needed to drink the medicine? Instead of putting on that stern face and trying to scare me?"

At this moment, Teacher Catherine's voice suddenly came from outside, cold and gloomy: "Now that you're awake, stop pretending to be asleep. Deal with the herbs outside the house. In twenty hours, I want to see one hundred bottles of 'Femme Fatale'."

Femme Fatale is a potion specifically for wizard apprentices. It not only aids meditation and quickly restores magic power during battle, but also calms the mind, enhances mental strength, and clears away mental pollution.

There might be many abyss monsters in the ruins, so Catherine asked Roland to refine this potion to provide logistical support for the team.

Roland found the recipe for the Femme Fatale on the alchemy table and thought to himself, "I've heard of this famous potion. It has many benefits, but it's very difficult to make."

These potions were extremely difficult to brew, and the ingredients were precious, so they were very expensive and had a low cost-performance ratio. However, the one in Roland's hand was an improved formula.

The new recipe uses three very cheap ingredients, replacing the three most expensive and rare main ingredients in the old recipe. The new potion is less effective, but the cost and difficulty of refining are greatly reduced. Just boil it in a large witch stew pot!

No wonder Catherine just asked Roland to make a hundred bottles of this potion. This kind of potion can be brewed in a large pot.

"My Potions skills are pretty good, but I haven't made any potions yet." Roland looked at his teacher's alchemy table and thought to himself, "I'd better practice with my teacher's cauldron first. It's safer that way."

Catherine seemed to be using her mind to sense the situation inside the wallet. After noticing Roland fiddling with her alchemy tools, she said, "Don't use my alchemy table to make those disgusting things! Use that broken iron pot in the house!"

The new version of the Femme Fatale is indeed a bit disgusting. Its auxiliary materials are normal, but its three main materials are as follows: the testicles of a scorpion goat, the venom of a sharp-edged snake, and the body fluids of a young pure-blooded witch (apprentice).

The first two things are fine, but the last one, body fluid, urine is also considered a body fluid.

Catherine had purchased a lot of these things in the wizard market before. There were several large barrels of golden witch body fluids near the alchemy table.

Pure-blooded wizards were all aristocrats, the upper class. Normally, they wouldn't sell such things, but Catherine must have forced some of her female apprentices to buy them.

Roland found all the ingredients, the cauldron, and one hundred small 5ml crystal bottles in the cabin.

The potion bottle is only slightly larger than a thumb. Judging from the amount of ingredients, even if the brewed potion needs to be extracted and purified, it is not a problem to put it in hundreds of such small bottles.

Roland secretly calculated the cost and found that the material cost of the revised Femme Fatale was almost negligible.

The Tailed Scorpion Sheep and the Blade Snake are monsters that can be found in the secular world and can be purchased from adventurers with silver coins.

Witches' body fluids are also very cheap - bath water and urine are not worth much.

But the magic potion that is refined can be sold for magic stones!
Roland thought to himself, "This is a no-brainer. If I sell it to the wizard market at the academy, I'll definitely make a killing. If I can get back alive, this femme fatale will undoubtedly be a cash cow."
After thinking for a moment, he sighed again: "Let's not think too much about it for now. Let's get back alive first. After I make the potion, I'll keep a few for myself to use in the future."

Roland sorted the various materials into categories and prepared to make the potion.

"It's better not to use a large pot for refining. If it fails, the entire pot of materials will be wasted. It's better to try a few times with smaller containers first."
Roland went to the kitchen and found a small iron pot.

"This small iron pot is much smaller than the big one. But it can still extract and purify seven or eight bottles of potion after refining it once. If I use it, I can complete the task in a dozen times."
The difficulty of refining the revised Femme Fatale was now almost the same as that of refining the most basic potion. However, for a novice like Roland who only had the theory of potions but no practical experience, it was still a daunting task.

He failed sixteen times in a row. Seeing that only half of the materials were left, Roland's face became very heavy.

Magical items and potions are life-saving tools for wizards. Roland had originally planned to brew more, keeping a few bottles for his own use. But now, he had wasted all the materials and not even managed to brew a single potion. This put Roland under immense pressure. He thought to himself, "I thought potion alchemy was too simple."

Potions alchemy is indeed a very profound subject. Many potion alchemists often only focus on one or two formulas in their entire lives. And it takes them a lifetime of research to achieve a sufficiently high success rate.

The cost of becoming a qualified potion alchemist is enormous.

Therefore, rare items such as the 'Crucible of Bitter Sleep' that can increase the success rate of potion refining are extremely valuable.

The potion was still brewing in the small iron pot. Roland flipped through the "Alaye Notebook" and saw that his [Apprentice-level Potions. Entry (41/100)] had become [Apprentice-level Potions. Elementary (0/1000)].

These dozen or so failures did give Roland some new insights into the crafting of the femme fatale, but they were only small insights.

According to the notes, if he didn't have rare-level alchemical equipment, then before his alchemy skills reached the wizard level, even if he thoroughly studied the formula of the femme fatale, his success rate would not exceed 10%.

Roland thought to himself, "No wonder the ingredients for many potions are so cheap, but the finished potions are so expensive."

Roland couldn't help but think of the 'Crucible of Bitter Sleep' that Wallace and the others had talked about.

Rubbing his tired eyes, Roland started to brew the 17th pot of potion. This time, he actually succeeded.

Roland was extremely excited. He extracted and purified the potion in the small pot, packaged it into 8 bottles, and then continued to work.

But from then on, until the materials ran out, he was unable to make any qualified potions.

After counting, he found that he had brewed a total of thirty small potions, but only succeeded once.

The success rate was only about 3%, which made Roland very confused.

Roland listened to the noise outside and found that the instructor's breathing was very steady. He was sure that she had rested.

Looking at the eight bottles of potion in front of him and listening to the steady breathing coming from the sky outside the house, Roland's expression changed for a long time and he embezzled two bottles.

He diluted the remaining 6 bottles of potion with water and repacked them into 8 bottles. Then he put them into the potion box.

A total of 8 bottles were refined, and this guy embezzled 2 bottles. If the mentor found out about this, Roland would definitely not end up well.

But if Roland didn't have the life-saving potion, it wouldn't be as simple as whether he would get any good results.

After doing all this, Roland was almost exhausted, so he fell on the bed and fell asleep.

After an unknown amount of time, Roland was woken up by a mosquito bite.

When Wallet was catching blood moths in the fern forest, he brought in a lot of mosquitoes.

Roland had been concentrating on brewing the potion and hadn't noticed the mosquito. Now, upon waking up, he found large lumps all over his body.

After scratching his body, Roland suddenly discovered that there seemed to be a huge 'pillow' behind him.

Looking back cautiously, Roland discovered that the person sleeping next to him was none other than the ancient elf beauty 'Miss Anna'.

After observing for a while, Roland breathed a sigh of relief: "The instructor seems to have cast a sleeping spell on Anna."

At this moment, Anna gritted her teeth and mumbled twice in her sleep, hugging Roland in her arms.

Roland was almost suffocated by her huge chest. It took him a long time to break free from her arms before he fainted.

(End of this chapter)