This Text Adventure Game is definitely poisonous
Chapter 155 - 147 Underwater Taxi_1

Chapter 155: Chapter 147 Underwater Taxi_1

Soon, Mu You had summoned four zombie beasts, bringing the count of his little companions to four, and his underwater safety greatly increased.

However, moving underwater also drained his stamina much faster than on land, mainly because he couldn’t use his donkey and had to swim himself. His stamina decreased rapidly, and even after he had a bowl of rice porridge, it was only enough to sustain him for just over an hour before he was drained again.

Mu You was debating whether he should use stamina potions to keep moving when...

A new text box popped up.

[You see an azure seahorse swimming towards you from a distance at an incredibly high speed. When it reaches you, it stops and request to communicate with you.]

[Azure Seahorse: An aquatic magical beast that lives in shallow marine areas. They are docile by nature and prefer to avoid conflicts. They are good at carrying loads underwater, making them excellent underwater mounts. However, as they are not very strong, the more load they carry, the slower they move. Moreover, they are highly intelligent and cannot be tamed forcibly. In short, the Azure Seahorse tends to have its own ideas.]

I’ve actually encountered a seahorse.

Mu You had initially prepared himself for a fight when he saw the phrase ’swimming at high speed’, but it turned out to be a friendly creature.

After spending so much time underwater and scarcely meeting any friendly creatures, Mu You clicked "yes" and started chatting with it.

[You have agreed to its communication request. The Azure Seahorse tells you that it realizes you are a traveler trying to travel underwater. It can offer its services to help you reduce your travel time, but you will need to pay a certain amount of your lifespan as a reward.]

[Would you like to temporarily hire the Azure Seahorse as your mount for the price of 10 years of lifespan per day?]

"So, this is basically an underwater taxi?"

Mu You looks at it with a weird expression.

Who would think that there’d be a magical beast that actively offers itself as a mount? No wonder it’s credited for being highly intelligent. It knows how to eliminate the middleman, and directly pockets the lifespan it earns by selling its labor, which is indeed very smart.

Feeling intrigued by the unexpected encounter, Mu You agreed to its request.

Ten years of lifespan per day is ten times more expensive than the donkey. However, it should also be much faster than the donkey.

More importantly, while traveling underwater, there’s no need to worry about assassins. Now he can continue his non-stop journey again.

[You paid ten years of lifespan and established a temporary contract with the Azure Seahorse. For the next 24 hours, you can ride it to any underwater location you desire.]

After paying with his lifespan, Mu You continued his journey west. Riding the seahorse didn’t consume stamina. There were also four zombie sea beasts acting as his bodyguards nearby, so fighting became less burdensome. The game’s automatic attack mode was enough to deal with most monsters.

However, Mu You still had to keep constant vigilance because of the presence of Self-Destructing Fish, which were quite numerous. Every once in a while, one of them would pop out and explode.

The creature moved too quickly for his zombies beasts to stop them in time. The seahorse itself was fast enough to dodge the Self-Destructing Fish, but not while carrying Mu You. Although, the clever seahorse would immediately throw Mu You off and flee at the sight of one, returning once it had exploded...

With no other choice, Mu You could only pay constant attention and switch to Ghost Mode the moment a Self-Destructing Fish appeared.

While half-automating his gameplay this way, Mu You took the opportunity in reality to review the loot he had won from Sleeping Dragon and Phoenix Chick.

Two backpacks, two pieces of equipment, and two sniper rifles. Zhang Yang never asked for the rifles, so Mu You kept them.

Mu You examined the two pieces of equipment.

[Potent Purification Potion: Upon consumption, removes all negative status effects, including diseases, curses, toxins, parasites, etc., and temporarily grants immunity to negative status effects.]

[Toxic Dagger: A toxic dagger that causes additional poison damage when it hits an enemy, putting them in a poisoned state and gradually reducing their health over time.]

Two common items. The potent purification potion has pretty good effects, removing and granting temporary immunity to negative status effects. Looking through Vivian’s Magic Potion Book, Mu You found that this potion was a third-tier potion, on the same level as the Spirit Summoning Potion. That explains why its effect was so good.

However, the toxic dagger was rather ordinary. He already had poison arrows and could constantly produce poison, so he didn’t lack poison damage.

The dagger was of no use to him. Mu You planned to sell it on Dragon Soar’s website for some points later.

After storing the equipment, Mu You entered his backpack space and started merging the new backpacks. He wasn’t able to expand into new terrain this time, and just got some additional rock surface at the edge of his space.

He didn’t pay it much mind, went to the Magic Fireplace, took out Vivian’s Magic Potion Compendium, and began searching for a low-tier potion to practice.

According to Vivian, among the first-tier magic potions, there are twenty "root" potions that he needs to master, which were listed on the first twenty pages of the book.

Mu You reviewed the properties of all twenty potions, and his eyes quickly landed on one of them.

Exploding Potion: A highly condensed and volatile magic potion. It explodes when thrown and subject to impact, causing a violent physical explosion that inflicts persistent burns on all creatures within its range.

This was a great combat potion. It could be combined with his Mithril Bow to turn his arrows into ’Burst Arrows’.

Ordinary people who manage to dodge the arrow usually wouldn’t expect the explosion that follows. Thus, the potion should be quite effective in actual combat.

The main ingredient of this potion is ’unstable sulfur’, dropped by the Self-Destructing Fish, which he detested. He currently had dozens of them in his game inventory and could potentially get more. The other auxiliary materials were also very common.

This meant he wouldn’t lack materials to mass-produce this potion.

"Vivian, I’ll be practicing this potion today!" Mu You turned to Vivian and said.

After finishing his studies, Vivian’s request was for him to start with low-level potions, progress gradually, and practice a single potion every day until achieving a success rate of more than 99%. Mu You had infinite time, but his energy was finite, and practicing too much at once was not beneficial.

"Explosive Elixirs... okay, give me the pocket watch, I will help control the time."

Vivian glanced at the recipe he pointed at, without expressing approval or disapproval.

"What’s wrong, is there something special about this potion?"

Mu You noticed her slightly odd reaction, handed her the pocket watch, and asked.

"Nothing, it’s quite good."

"Nothing... then why are you hiding so far away?"

Mu You watched as Vivian took the pocket watch and instantly flew hundreds of meters away, his face turning strange.

"Wait, Explosive Elixir... if the potion fails, wouldn’t it directly explode..."

"Yes." Vivian directly admitted: "So even though it’s just a simple first-order potion, its circulation on the continent is very low because of the explosive characteristic when it fails. The cost is too high, so many Magic Potion Masters don’t dare to try it, avoiding this potion like the plague."

"Can... Can I regret it now?" asked Mu You.

"There is nothing to regret. This is an exercise you will inevitably experience. And you have the Time Pocket Watch, so the actual cost for you is zero. Moreover, it could enhance your endurance to pain. It is a useful training: if you can manage it, you won’t be affected by injuries during an attack in the future and warp your movements and spells." Vivian said.

"Okay..."

Mu You took a breather. Indeed, as Vivian said, he had vampire skin and a heart mirror—there was no real danger to him... assuming he could ignore the pain he would feel along the way...

Mu You prepared his mind, arranged the required materials in front of him one by one, and then threw out the Flying Card.

The Fool’s Boundary appeared, and he officially began refining the potion.

Given his current Magic Potion level, a basic potion like this should have above forty percent success rate even for the first-time attempt.

Unfortunately, Mu You was not a saint after all, and his mentality was somewhat impacted by the consequence of failure. These almost imperceptible factors in the precise process of Magic Potion refining eventually resulted in significant errors.

As a result, his initial attempts ended in failure.

Albeit Vivian swiftly helped him revert time after each explosion, the burning sensation from the blast still lingered in his memory.

"Calm down. The more afraid you are, the more likely you are to fail. With your current capabilities, you really shouldn’t be failing this much," Vivian reminded him after he had been blown up more than a dozen times.

"Whew!"

After slapping himself on the cheek, Mu You took a break and instead of continuing immediately, he shut his eyes and emptied his mind.

Only after a moment did he open his eyes and continue.

After adjusting his mentality, the results were indeed much better, and he successfully refined the potion on the first try. A puddle of bubbling, fiery-red potion appeared in the dry pot, of average quality, rated just as plain white.

Mu You didn’t pour the potion out, as his ultimate aim was not the potion itself, but rather the ability to refine it.

Vivian had already helped him revert time, and he started all over again.

Then began Mu You’s journey of cyclical potion refining.

It wasn’t until after 4,103 times of refining that he finally achieved the feat of one hundred successive, error-free refines.

Throughout this, he had been blasted 596 times, with most occurring during the early stages. As he refined his skills, his success rate rose, and the frequency of explosions lowered. Towards the end, explosions almost stopped altogether.

Moreover, through being continuously blasted, Mu You got used to it.

At the end of the practice session, he had indeed developed a strong ability to endure pain, just as Vivian had said.

Now, even if a Self-Destructing Fish exploded in front of him, he wouldn’t even blink. As long as he knew he wouldn’t be in danger in the end, he could face physical pain in the calmest manner possible.

Mu You collected the flying poker card, carefully poured the red potion from the crucible in front of him into a test tube he had prepared earlier.

He then picked up the bottle and examined it.

"[Explosive Potion (Rare Level): High-density Magic Potion, automatically explodes upon impact when thrown, causing 700 points of physical explosive damage within a five-meter range and ignites all creatures within range, causing continuous burns. Can be used in conjunction with weapons that have inlay slots.]"

This potion, with 700 points of area damage, was quite good.

Mu You could now easily make such a level of potion. However, he had not managed to make an epic-level potion even once in over three thousand attempts, indicating the significant difficulty in producing potions of an epic level and above.