Starting with the sentries on the frontier

Chapter 113 The Red-billed Crow Messenger

Without a second thought, Zag replied, "I'll take them all."

Ecovacs was delighted: "What a generous guest! I'll pack it up for you right away!"

"Are you crazy!?" Snowball stared blankly, flapping its wings and flying right up to Zag's nose, loudly demanding, "Weren't you saving up to study at the Golden Palace!? And now you're just wasting money like this!? Spending so much money on this junk!? I bet this is absolutely a pile of junk! Absolutely!"

"Oh, right, this is the first werewolf hair we agreed on last time. You can check the goods," Zag said, handing two baskets covered with old burlap to Fox, who was looking at Ecovacs with a dark face. "I've specifically removed the concealment magic, so this time it's all genuine first werewolf hair, without any treatment."

"Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness!"

Kovacs grinned, took a basket in each hand, and pulled out a fist-sized dark green crystal ball from the stall, rolling it among Helford's fur in the basket.

The crystal ball immediately emitted a faint fluorescent light, and then gradually became more transparent from its dark green color. However, its transparency looked very murky, unlike the transparency of real crystal or glass.

"It's definitely genuine, but the quality is a bit worse than I expected. The magic fluctuations are very murky—they must be quite low. But judging from the color changes, it's definitely the fur of the original werewolf—okay, I'll stick to the previous price. I, Fox, never go back on my word!"

Fox patted his chest and said.

Zag quickly sold Helford's fur and grabbed a bunch of books. He had no intention of lingering in the black market. He only went back to the tavern to talk about borrowing the enchanting table before hurrying off to the guild headquarters with the books in his arms.

"【The Blessing of the Sea God】?"

Today, Liam is at the association's headquarters. He doesn't know much about alchemy, but he still tells Zag with certainty, "I've never heard of this alchemical recipe at the Golden Palace, or at least it shouldn't be common knowledge."

"I'll take it to Ms. Rowan tomorrow!"

Regarding alchemy, Ms. Rowan is clearly more trustworthy than Liam.

"No need for that trouble, I'll write to her and ask right away."

As Liam spoke, he hastily wrote a letter, then grabbed the staff on the table and mumbled a vague incantation.

Then, to Zag's astonishment, a "crack" suddenly appeared in the air, and a translucent red-billed raven emerged from it, nimbly hopping onto Liam's table, precisely picking up the letter with its beak, before quickly disappearing back into the crack.

"This—it—abba aba—"

Zha Ge was having trouble speaking fluently.

Liam replied, "This is a messenger. Once you truly begin to learn magic and come into contact with spells, you will eventually learn how to contract your own messenger and how to summon one."

After hearing Liam's words, Zag paused for a moment, finally regaining his composure, and asked, "What was that crack just now?"

Liam replied, "That's a Red-billed Raven that lives in Oblivion. I just recited a spell to summon a messenger from Oblivion, so it can carry the message and deliver it to me quickly. Even if it gets to Holland, it won't take more than a few hours, so it's quite convenient. You can contract one in the future too."

"Sounds a bit like the principle behind the Golem Post Office?"

Liam nodded: "Yes, the same principle applies. The difference is that the Golem Post Office has a higher success rate for delivering mail, while the messenger under a personal contract might occasionally die due to accidents if it's too weak, but if it's too strong, it's easy to encounter even more powerful beings during the delivery, thus delaying the mission—"

"Of course, more importantly, powerful magical creatures will not be willing to become messengers driven by you, and the balance in this is very difficult to maintain."

"Therefore, many people with higher spirituality will wait until they are stronger, at least after breaking through to the level of a novice mage, before seeking a suitable contract messenger."

Zag recalled the red-billed raven that had just been hopping around and couldn't help but ask, "It seems your messenger isn't very strong. What if something goes wrong?"

"This involves some techniques—for example, I don't actually contract with a single red-billed raven, but with a whole colony of red-billed ravens. And unless something extremely happens, the entire colony of red-billed ravens won't be in trouble, so if the red-billed raven that delivers the message for me gets into trouble, the other red-billed ravens in their colony will notify me, so I can resend the message as soon as possible."

"However, this is rare. Usually, even in annihilation, not many powerful magical creatures will pay attention to small flying things in the sky."

I learned something —

Zag suddenly realized.

That's quite a skill. If you contract with all the "fairies" as messengers, wouldn't you always have different cats delivering messages for you?

Unfortunately, fairies don't live in Annihilation, and judging from Snowball's personality, other fairies probably wouldn't be willing to be messengers for human contracts either.

Red-billed jays seemed quite nice, but he remembered that Snowball seemed to dislike corvids. If it found out that it had contracted a corvid as a messenger, it might throw a tantrum and run away from home a second time—it was better not to provoke it over such a trivial matter.

While Zag was lost in thought, he didn't neglect his serious conversation with Liam and brought up the clue he had just discovered.

"In fact, I compared the recipes for 'Blessing of the Sea God' and 'Blessing of the Sea God.' I had seen the latter on the black market last time, but I was in a hurry to follow that alchemist and didn't have time to buy it. However, I remembered the recipe. In short, the two are very similar, and both are relatively rare alchemical potions that require a ritual to be truly completed."

Liam continued nodding: "Indeed, in alchemy, very few alchemical potions require a ritual to be made; it's usually a practice of plundering potions."

Lady Rowan had specifically stated that plundering potions weren't considered part of alchemy, so Zag didn't really know much about them. He'd never heard of anything like what Liam had mentioned before, and was quite curious: "Aren't plundering potions supposed to steal abilities from demons or holy spirits? Then why is a ritual necessary? Aren't you afraid of getting into trouble during the ritual?"

Liam replied somewhat apologetically, "I'm sorry, I don't know much about this either. I don't know the specific reasons, but I do know that only through a ritual can one truly seize the power of those demons."

[Ritual Alchemy Potions]: Just like in enchanting, where enchanting is divided into ritual enchanting and rune enchanting, in alchemy, in addition to normal alchemy potions, there are also "ritual alchemy potions".

However, it is worth mentioning that, unlike enchanting, alchemy, regardless of the school of alchemy, does not use the difference in the making of these two alchemical potions as a basis for classifying alchemical potions themselves.