A Suspicious Potion

"I'm back and I bought something you might find interesting!" Elizabeth shouts as she enters Astur's house.

Due to… certain events from when Astur was last in town, she's been avoiding going back out, although it's not like she would have done so if the situation was different. This time, however, she made the right choice. Following her explosive escapades at the Town of Dawn a few days ago, Astur quickly found out that night as she was watching TV that the police were still looking for her. But when she saw what the news anchor said next, Astur couldn't help but release a sigh of annoyance, relief, and even a bit of anger. She was naturally annoyed that people were looking for her, but she was greatly relieved to see how incompetent the police force was. Somehow, not only did the police fail to register Elizabeth as a possible accomplice and be on the watch for her, but they also failed to find Astur's identity nor do the officers at the scene remember she looks like, with the only comment they made about her appearance being about her unusual tail and her large breasts.

Walking into the living room, Elizabeth finds Astur asleep on the sofa, "why is she still sleeping even after I woke her up this morning?" Elizabeth thinks as she tries to wake Astur up.

But rather than waking up, Astur just turned over and slapped Elizabeth in the face with her tail. Being caught by surprise, Elizabeth gets knocked down as her forehead collides with Astur's hip.

"Fuck!" Astur shouts as she suddenly sits up, hitting Elizabeth again in the process.

"Huh, what's wrong with your head?" Astur asks, looking at Elizabeth who's been knocked to the floor and rubbing her head.

"It was you who hit me," Elizabeth says, using the nearby table to help her stand.

"Hmm… don't remember, so it didn't happen. Anyway, since your back, did you sell the stuff I made?"

"Yeah, I've already deposited the money into your account."

Over the past few days, following Astur's explosive escapade in the town, Astur did some experiments with the items she bought before she had run away. Using the sword she bought as a base, she made a new item, although it was unusual to say the least. Through alchemy, she combined the cheap sword and a Blast Ball, along with a few other ingredients, resulting in a sword that explodes. Of course, after reading the item description, she made sure not to touch it but riding off her newfound success, Astur, without any indication or warning, stripped Elizabeth who had been watching beside her at the time, using her new clothes as the base in her next experiment. Astur didn't want Elizabeth's clothes to explode like the sword could, so picking up a decorative shield, and taking one of the few rare ingredients in Astur's cabinet, the shell of a Rock Turtle, she mixed them with Elizabeth's new dress for a new synthesis. Although Elizabeth had been upset over Astur taking her dress, she didn't interrupt the synthesis process, having learned from the last time she did so when the end product turned to useless junk, she still wanted to wear that dress after all. After almost eight hours, Astur had finished the synthesis. Elizabeth's dress didn't really change much in terms of appearance, beyond being a bit heavier, but looking at the item description given by the System, Astur found that it reduced damage dealt to the wearer by 10%. With the dress being returned back to Elizabeth, she quickly put her anger aside after Astur explained what the changes to the dress were and was elated to find her dress not only looked nice but granted decent protection as well.

Immediately following her initial two experiments Astur went about creating all sorts of items with various strange effects and gimmicks. And despite how strange they were, Astur still sent Elizabeth to find a place to sell them in the Town of Dawn. Despite not having a permit to do so, Astur had Elizabeth open a stand in the market district in the Town of Dawn saying, 'fake it, till you make it. You'll probably get away with it anyways.' On that day, Elizabeth really had to question if these were truly the people who brought down the Vampire Kingdom of the past, not a single person questioned the opening of a new street stall and she was even more confused as to why someone bought a knife that heals wounds after cutting a body.

"Seriously, I have no idea why so anyone buys the strange items you have," Elizabeth says.

Putting her phone away, Astur says, "830 VD, not bad. Also, I have proper items too and they are all better than their counterparts and with a cheaper price as well. I've also got the feeling that not too many people are actually buying things like my Healing Knife or Bendy Stone, it's probably just a handful of bored people with too much time and money on their hands, lemme guess, the ones who bought them were probably young and said something like, 'if this doesn't work then don't blame me for trashing your shop' or something similar and they had some no-name lackeys that went along with what they said?"

"Not all of them, there was an old guy who bought them, but you are correct, for the most part. Almost everyone who bought them looked to be at most a few years older than me and looked to be rich if their clothing was anything to go by."

"Typical second generations, they didn't actually cause any trouble did they?" Astur asks.

"Other than the initial threats, no, they looked to be having a lot of fun with the Bendy Stones. From the way they acted, you'd think they were a bunch of children. But there was one guy who showed me something interesting and after I closed the shop of the day, he took me to the store he bought it from."

"Oh? Is some young man trying to court you? So what's his name?" Astur asks.

"His name is Taurion Urvostrion, from what I understand he is the second son of Count Urvostrion, the ruling noble of this area. But what do you mean by trying to court me?"

Listening to her, Astur can only let out a deep sigh before saying, "I suppose you're still just a child."

"Even though I've known for a while now, you really are quite rude to say that to my face. I'm already sixteen and a fully-fledged adult, I am even old enough to drink alcohol," Elizabeth says with her hands to her hips while puffing out her nonexistent chest.

"Just saying that already tells me you're still just a child. But anyway, I'm curious what'd you buy? Because you spent my money and it had better be worth it," Astur says, changing to a harsher tone halfway through as she sits down on her chair.

Although she flinched a bit when Astur's tone of voice changed, Elizabeth says, "don't worry, I'm confident that you'll like it."

Sending some energy into the storage ring on her finger, Elizabeth takes out a glass bottle filled with a light blue liquid, presenting on the table in front of Astur.

"Taurion said this was called a strengthening potion. Drinking it can increase your abilities and I've already tested it myself to confirm it works."

"You drank a suspicious liquid before verifying the contents?" Astur asks, picking up the bottle.

"Of course not, using a lie-detecting orb the contents of the potion was shown to be safe and that the potion would work as described."

"Hmm…" Nodding at Elizabeth's explanation, Astur opens the System to look at what it has to say about the potion.

[Basic EXP Potion (Rare)]

[Grant's EXP to level up the Main Class once and grants a small permanent bonus to a random stat. Has diminishing returns when consuming another Basic EXP Potion until bonuses reach zero. May have different effects depending on the user.]

Elizabeth shivers slightly as she sees a creepy smile makes its way onto Astur's face as Astur says, "you were right. This is a good find."

Seeing the look on Astur's face, it was at that moment, Elizabeth knew she shouldn't have shown Astur the potion.