It’s a dangerous business, going out your door.
You never know where your feet will take you once you cross the threshold.
Bilbo Baggins.
A major expert on the subject of journeys.
Sephiroth
Traveling light was not something I had any desire to do.
Hell, after losing the lion’s share of my abilities, I had noticed a downright manic tendency to minimize risk.
And how that tendency was supposed to coexist with my body’s need for adrenaline…
Can you imagine a calculation or a blueprint that could make your nerves scream and your heart beat faster?
No, not one finished an hour before the deadline when half the work hasn’t even been done, but in ordinary life?
Neither could I.
That was why I was constantly drawn toward feats of daring, while at the same time trying to prepare for them as thoroughly as possible.
My planned move to Magnolia was no exception.
I already had enough money for a house of my own.
Not a mansion, perhaps, but still.
So that part shouldn’t cause any problems.
The question was how best to get there.
By train?
By lacrima-powered monorail?
On foot?
With a caravan?
Hmm.
Walking from Onibas to Magnolia would take only a couple of days.
By train, an hour or two.
But from Hargeon, the port city where Natsu and Lucy would soon be making their entrance, it would be roughly two weeks on foot or a day by train.
Add another couple of days for the whole mess itself.
Three days in the worst case.
I didn’t think those two would walk all the way there, although if the anime hadn’t exaggerated the Fire Dragon Slayer’s “love” of transportation…
No.
Better to assume the worst.
All right, why did I even need to get involved with the pink-haired guy and the blonde?
Although I certainly wouldn’t mind getting involved with her, heh.
It was simple.
Lucy had managed to join the guild without any real problems, questions, or interviews.
She had simply run off with Natsu.
So why couldn’t I use the same opportunity to slip in alongside them?
Intercepting them at the port probably wouldn’t work.
I could easily miss them.
In Magnolia, however, our paths were much more likely to cross.
The important thing was not to miss the right moment.
That meant I had three days to prepare.
Let’s get started.
The first thing I did was stop by the blacksmith and order a box of ordinary throwing knives.
Actually, I simply bought them.
The man had plenty of low-quality junk like that lying around.
Their value as weapons was questionable, but they were perfect for practicing how to “shoot” unpleasant little objects out of my Pocket at high speed.
I could also gradually start summoning several things simultaneously.
In other words, I’d find a use for them.
My next stop was the pharmacy, where I stocked up on several kinds of herbs and extracts made from animal organs.
Thank you, mysterious mentor, for forcing me to study chemistry.
There were no ready-made reagents or synthetic chemicals here, let alone proper catalysts.
Well, they certainly existed somewhere, but a laboratory and the ingredients to stock it would cost more than I could afford, even after strangling the Toad.
Still, what I had was enough to prepare some basic medicines and poultices.
They would be relatively weak, but they would exist.
At worst, I could use them to treat possible allies who had been implanted with my symbiote and then blame everything on a “miraculous elixir that happened to be created by accident and may never be reproducible.” Considering how reckless the local mages were, that explanation was more than believable.
I doubted many people in this world recorded their research.
And those who did might actually understand what they had written.
All right, that was taken care of.
What next?
Next came a food shop, where I stocked up on travel rations: dried meat, crackers, and some herbal infusion vaguely resembling mint tea that was sold in flasks.
The person who had invented Requip really was a genius.
The amount of useful stuff you could carry around in a Spatial Pocket was simply ridiculous.
Food also spoiled much more slowly inside it than in the normal world.
A piece of raw meat remained fresh even after four days.
After that it finally began to rot, but still, not bad.
In short, I stocked enough food for a month and enough for an entire platoon.
In other words, I nearly filled an entire cart.
What?
It was both useful and good training.
I spent almost four hundred thousand jewels on everything, which resulted in an act of asphyxiation at the hands of an amphibian.
Yeah…
I’d become rather stingy.
Why?
I hadn’t been like this before.
Another psychological trauma from losing my abilities?
Could be.
Once again, I lacked the knowledge to be certain.
I’d figure it out later.
For now, back to my rented house and get to work!
Oh, hell.
I still needed to buy tools.
I had to make the rounds of several shops for the fascinating quest of assembling an alchemist’s laboratory out of whatever materials were available.
I found a condenser at the blacksmith’s.
What it had been doing there, I had no idea.
Various bottles and glassware came from a glassblower, while the burner came from a little shop selling household goods.
Damn, if only I could get my hands on a refrigerator and a centrifuge.
But what wasn’t available wasn’t available.
Well, there was a refrigerator, but it was powered by lacrima, cost a fortune, and definitely wouldn’t fit in my Spatial Pocket.
And I certainly wasn’t going to carry around a monstrosity measuring one and a half meters by half a meter by half a meter.
After several hours of assembling something that could generously be called a chemical laboratory, I began my little ritual.
And what do you know?
With the symbiote acting as a rather impressive addition to the laboratory, getting penicillin from mold wasn’t particularly difficult.
I hadn’t found anything comparable in the pharmacies, and considering that epidemics happened here too, that meant there were neither effective antivirals nor antibiotics.
There would be now.
At least for some people.
The locals also didn’t know drinks stronger than twenty percent alcohol.
In other words, fortified wine was the strongest thing they had.
And that was despite the fact that they knew about distillation.
They simply used it for various alchemical purposes and potions.
Nobody had thought to put ordinary mash into a still.
No, I wasn’t planning to get anyone drunk.
Well, maybe Cana, but only with good intentions, and don’t start telling me where the road paved with those leads.
Alcohol would be useful for disinfecting wounds.
Treating sepsis and gangrene was a tedious business, and the stuff could also help warm you up in the mountains.
I had to remember the sacred art of moonshine production and filtering.
The resulting liquid contained roughly sixty to seventy percent alcohol and burned quite nicely.
Excellent.
All that remained was to mix a couple of ointments, and that should be enough.
Actually, no.
While I still had the time and opportunity, I might as well make a couple of liters of herbal tincture.
It could come in handy, and I could let connoisseurs have a taste.
I wonder if they have “the horrible drink of the northern barbarians” here?
I’d have to ask Gray sometime.
If I remembered correctly, he was from that region.
(The horrible drink of the northern barbarians is something that passes from world to world, eternal and indestructible.
Any D&D player encounters it at least once during their gaming career.
It’s a law of the universe.
Author’s note.)
Now everything was definitely ready.
All that remained was to shove my belongings into the Spatial Pocket.
Oh, looks like I overdid it.
There really were a lot of bottles and vials.
Where was I supposed to put all of these?
Fine.
If necessary, I could sell them to the shops in Magnolia.
Although, no.
Better yet, I could use these potions to become friends with Porlyusica.
She’s an experienced mage, so she must know a great deal, and she had often treated the idiots in the current guild roster.
That meant she could probably tell me plenty about magical injuries and their effects.
And if she had a library too…
All right, don’t count your dragon’s scales before you’ve killed it.
First I needed to join the guild.
After that, we’d see.
The last few vials were shoved into the Pocket by sheer force of will.
I had run out of space.
The sensation was indescribable.
Try pulling out one of your own teeth while simultaneously stabbing yourself in the stomach.
Maybe then you’ll understand the full spectrum of sensations involved.
Damn.
I couldn’t increase my Pocket’s capacity like normal people, spending months and years expanding it grain by grain.
I didn’t have that much time or patience.
I had to torture my own body instead.
An ordinary person would have died already, or at least passed out from the pain.
But I was somewhat more durable than that, so I gritted my teeth, praised magic and the universe in general with every word I could think of, and kept stuffing vials into the Pocket.