Synthesis-type adventurers

Chapter 18 Leaf House

Half an hour later, outside Rust Harbor City.

The rain intensified here, and the air was filled with a strange odor, a mixture of rotting plants and trace amounts of magical radiation.

It was almost completely dark, with only the occasional flashes of will-o'-the-wisps in the distance and the glowstone in Rhodes' hand providing faint illumination.

Rod trudged through the soft peat soil, his feet sinking deep into the mud, each step accompanied by a nauseating sucking sound from the mud.

He was searching for a flower, a plant that bloomed with an incongruous beauty in this polluted world, yet was exceptionally deadly.

[Analysis of Vision] In this area of ​​chaotic magic, Rhode was disturbed, and countless chaotic and ominous messages jumped in his field of vision, making him feel dizzy.

"Where is it..." Rhodes muttered to himself, enduring the exhaustion of his mental energy, and expanded the search area. "It should be around here."

Finally, at the base of a dead giant mangrove tree, a strange purple hue entered his field of vision.

It was a flower the size of a washbasin, with thick, juicy petals that spread out in a spiral shape, resembling a wide-open mouth.

There are no stamens or pistils at the center of the flower; instead, there is only a bottomless black hole that is slowly emitting a subtle, invisible fluctuation.

[Demon-Attracting Flower (Mature Stage)]

[Status: Hungry]

[Entry:]

[Powerful Magic Attractor (Blue, Excellent)]: Actively attracts free magical elements from the surrounding area and stores them at its root. It is extremely alluring to magically sensitive creatures.

[Digestive Acid (White Common)]: A strong acid secreted within the flower sac, capable of digesting small monsters.

"Ha, finally found it."

Rhodes did not approach rashly.

Although this thing is a plant without any intelligence, its predatory instinct is extremely ferocious. If an ordinary person were to be caught in its petals, they would either die or be severely injured.

Rhodes stood at a safe distance of about five meters—which was also the limit for stripping away the entry from a distance—and slowly raised his right hand, making a grasping motion in the air.

Although it consumes more mental energy than physical stripping, it is a prudent choice at present.

Rhodes held his breath and focused his mental energy into an invisible hand that pierced through the rain and locked onto the core concept of the Demon-Attracting Flower.

"Strip him away." Rhodes gritted his teeth and hissed.

This time the resistance was greater than ever before; it was the instinctive resistance of a living organism when it is threatened.

The Demon-Attracting Flower seemed to sense the danger; its petals trembled visibly, emitting a hissing cry, and the surrounding magical elements began to surge violently.

"Come here...!"

Rhodes' eyes shone with intense blue light, veins bulged on his forehead, and it felt as if a red-hot steel needle was stirring in his mind.

"puff!"

With a soft thud, a ball of pale blue light was forcibly pulled out of the flower's core.

Without the support of the [Powerful Mana Summoning] core attribute, the once enchanting and enormous Mana Summoning Flower withered instantly.

The thick petals quickly withered and turned black, slumped against the tree roots, and lost all vitality. Meanwhile, a ball of eerie blue light appeared in Rhodes' hand.

"cough……"

Rod clutched his throbbing forehead, swayed, and nearly fell into the mud.

My mental energy is almost depleted, but it's worth it.

"The disguise is done, and the bait is ready." He looked down at the ball of light in his hand, a grin spreading across his face. "Victor, I'll nail your coffin lid shut right away."

Rhodes carefully stored the precious entry into his consciousness space, then dragged his weary body and disappeared into the vast night.

"The old man is right. Sometimes, a combination of junk can indeed be as good as real mithril, even more effective than gold." A soft laugh came from the darkness, quickly swallowed by the wind.

The rain continued to fall, washing away Rod's footprints and covering up all traces of evil.

Only the withered Demon-Attracting Flower remained, rotting in the mud, leaving behind a faint trace of countless deaths on this land of ruins.

-----------------

Two days later.

The underground black market of Rusty Harbor, Chiba-ya.

This unassuming shop is a well-known information exchange and appraisal center in Rust Harbor's black market. Despite its small size, it has intricate connections with the Thieves Guild.

Here, as long as you can afford the price, you can buy anything, whether it's the authenticity of underground treasures or the private information of the powerful.

The expensive ambergris and the sour smell of old parchment stuck in my throat, barely suppressing the musty and urine stench that had been emanating from the underground pipe network for years.

The shop is cramped, with its four walls filled with a dazzling array of antiques, calligraphy and paintings, and bizarrely shaped alchemical devices.

Each item was meticulously polished, reflecting a lustrous sheen under the warm yellow glow of the whale oil lamp, as if it were waiting to be sold.

Rod folded up the dripping black umbrella and inserted it into the copper bucket behind the door.

He made a point of changing into a clean linen robe, but his standard leather boots, covered in black mud, still left embarrassing stains on the mahogany floor.

Behind the counter, a petite figure buried herself in a thick ledger, her fluffy silver-white fox tail swaying rhythmically from side to side with the clatter of the abacus beads.

She is the owner of this shop, Chiba, a half-fox.

In this black market where strength speaks volumes, no one dares to harbor ill intentions because of her delicate appearance—because beneath the shrewd proprietress's disguise lies a true assassin walking on the edge of a knife.

Chiba looked up when he heard the brass bell on the lintel ring.

It was an excessively refined face, with smooth silver hair and slightly narrowed amber pupils, revealing a businessman's innate shrewdness and cunning. The gold earrings on his ears swayed gently with his movements, reflecting tiny golden glints.

"Welcome to Chiba-ya." Chiba's voice was cloyingly sweet, with a deliberately practiced saccharine quality. "Buying information, or shipping goods? Let me make it clear first, we don't accept anything of dubious origin..."

Her gaze fell on the long cloth bag that Rod had placed on the counter, and her voice trailed off.

Rhodes quickly untied the coarse linen cloth that wrapped the sword blank. The cloth slipped off, and a corner of cold light cut through the dim air, instantly adding a chilling light source to the dimly lit shop.

An unsharpened longsword pressed against the rough fibers of linen.

The sword's blade was a sickly, bone-white color, with a layer of viscous, deep, mercury-like light flowing across its surface.

The halo is not inanimate; it moves constantly with the intensity of the surrounding light, refracting a dazzling rainbow, as if the living mithril imprisoned in steel is breathing.

The quill slipped from Chiba's fingers, leaving a blot of ink on the ledger.

Her habitually squinted eyes widened to their limit, her pupils slightly contracting with excitement.

As one of the top appraisers in Rusty Harbor, she had seen countless burial objects, but this thing before her...

"Mithril... Mithril?!"

Chiba's body was almost pressed against the counter, his hands trembling as he tried to touch the sword, but he hovered in mid-air as if afraid of desecrating a sacred object.

"No, it's not just mithril."

She quickly pulled a specially made single-lens magnifying glass from the leather pouch at her waist and placed it over her right eye, pressing her entire face almost against the cold spine of the sword.

"This outrageous purity... this natural texture stretched out with such ductility... this is undoubtedly deep silver! A deep vein that could only have been unearthed from the ancient elven ruins buried thousands of years ago!"

Chiba suddenly looked up, and the look in her eyes as she looked at Rhodes completely changed.

The disdain that once looked down on the rich has vanished, replaced by an undisguised greed when faced with enormous wealth, but more so by an instinctive vigilance.

"Where did you get this...?" Chiba lowered his voice. "Modern techniques could never recreate this color... This is an antique, a genuine artifact!"