The next day.
I woke up early at four in the morning and immediately made my way to the training ground.
As always, Jonah, Shanny, and Trudy had already begun their training once I arrived.
While observing my comrades, I began my physical exercises.
Unlike before where I trained all morning, I limited my session to only two hours before I returned to the lodging and changed into my magic dress.
As stated earlier, I intended to begin preparing the ingredients for the health potions today.
Because of that, after having a simple post-exercise breakfast, I made my way to the storage.
Using telekinesis, I made the sacks of Dara flowers and barrels of Padang water afloat and brought them to the magic hall with me.
Right around then that master arrived.
[Jonah, Cody, Earl, Rina, Bale! Come to the square!]
The fairy's sound resounded throughout the lobby.
I looked out the window to the square and saw the fairy distributing wooden baskets to the summoned party.
Master was sending another gathering group to the weekday dungeon.
Strangely, I could had sworn the fairy gave them pickaxes to bring as well. I wondered why.
I decided to ignore that sight for now and continued on with my activity.
After storing the Dara flowers and Padang water safely to a corner of the magic hall where the alchemy tools were placed, I sat at the research table in the center of the room and began my research for the day.
Considering it would take a while to prepare the potion ingredients, I wanted to cross research out of my to-do list for the day since it only needed an hour to complete.
[Shanny, Tarran, Gary, Aldrich, Peter! Come to the square!]
Once I completed my research, I heard the fairy summoning another party.
Given the time, Jonah's gathering party must had returned.
I ignored my urge to see what his party had brought back and walked to the alchemy lab by the corner of the magic hall.
Currently I needed to extract the essence of the Dara flowers so they could later be brewed to make health potions.
Acquiring Dara extract was a meticulous and tedious task, which was why I completed the research first before doing this.
First I needed to mince all the flowers into tiny pieces. The smaller the better.
Then I had to grind the sliced flowers until they were turned into wet mush.
After that I needed to filter the mush until I acquired their essence juice, which could take several hours.
Then I needed to filter the juice even further through specific filtration method.
The degree of clarity within the liquid will determine the quality of the health potion, from basic to advanced.
The more I filtered the juice to aim for greater purity, the lesser of the liquid I would acquire.
Which was why 500 Dara flowers could make 20 basic health potion but only five intermediate health potion.
There were other factors determining the quality of the potion, such as mixture ratio with the other ingredients and brewing method, but the quality of the flower essence's clarity was the biggest factor of all.
For the next hour I spent my time cutting up the hundreds of Dara flowers and grinding them using the tools in the alchemy lab.
Once I dropped the flower mush into the filtration net to start the filtration process, I heard a great commotion outside.
Since it would take a while to get the essence juice, I decided to find out what the commotion was about.
As I stepped outside, I noticed a crowd was gathering at the storage.
Jonah joined me from the training ground as I made my way there.
"Shanny's party has returned from gathering."
Jonah said.
"I also saw you went to the Weekday Dungeon. Did you find anything new in the meadow?"
"We actually did not go to the plateau."
"You didn't? Did you go to the floor trial instead?"
"No. We still went to a Weekday Dungeon. It's just that we went to this cavern called Isralta Mine."
So there was another kind of Weekday Dungeon.
The words on the mirror did say it was an 'ever-changing feast.'
"So what did you find there?"
"There were iron ores. Lots of them in there."
"Gerrits would like that. He kept complaining of running out of ores."
Jonah's face suddenly turned uneasy.
"What's the matter?"
"Well, we didn't bring back a lot of ores with us."
"Why? Something stopping you?"
"Not really. I could've helped gathering the ores but I was busy dealing with the serpent monsters."
"Your job is indeed to ward off monsters in the Weekday Dungeon. It's the others who are meant to gather the materials."
"Well, about that--"
Before Jonah could continue his sentence, we arrived at the storage which was surrounded by a huge crowd.
Apparently they were marveling at what Shanny's party just gathered during their trip.
A display of game meats, such as boar and deer.
On top of that, a known delicacy that would turn the mouths in the lobby drooled, chicken.
"Well, well, well. You seem to have hunted down quite a prize in the Weekday Dungeon."
I told Shanny who was standing by the storage's door alongside Trudy.
"I know, right? We'll be eating good for a while."
Trudy remarked.
"Did you get all this from the cave?"
Jonah asked Shanny, doubtful he would miss such big prize in the dungeon.
She immediately frowned.
"The cave? No. We didn't go there."
"Did you go to the plateau again, then?"
"Not that place either. I believe the mission window named it the 'Kendert Forest.'"
Jonah and I raised our eyebrows upon the mention of the name.
"Kendert Forest?"
"Yes. It's a huge forest with lots of trees and animals. Very different from that huge field we went last."
Shanny said.
Interesting.
So far we had learned of three Weekday Dungeons.
Sinmiel Plateau, Isralta Mine, and Kendert Forest.
Each place had their own types of materials available.
I wondered why master only sent us to the Sinmiel Plateau yesterday and not the others. Perhaps there was a condition to the availability of these dungeons.
"Well, now we know the places we could get materials from. It was nice of you to catch all of these meats, Shanny."
I told her.
The former maid immediately shook her head.
"Oh, I wasn't the one who hunted down these animals."
"You were not?"
Shanny looked into the storage and called out.
"Hey, kid! Come out here!"
A short dark-skinned figure, barely taller than my hip, wearing a wooly cap walked out of the storage.
"Tarran?"
I spoke up upon the sight of the boy.
"Good morning, Miss Serafina!"
He greeted with a slight tilt of his cap.
I noticed a bow and a quiver of arrows strapped on his back.
"You know how to use a bow, Tarran?"
I asked.
"Miss Cecily taught me a little a while back. After we went to the Weekday Dungeon yesterday and saw the wolves Miss Trudy hunted, I figured that I could use what I learned from Miss Cecily to hunt food as well."
"Oh you guys should've seen him. He hit those animals right in the eye. I'm telling you, he's gifted with the bow."
Shanny told us.
Her compliment caused a little blush on the boy's face.
"Haha, I'm not that good. I was just—Oh, I almost forgot!"
Suddenly the boy's eyebrows raised up as if he had remembered something.
He quickly rushed into the storage and came back with a sack.
"Miss Serafina, since you asked me to collect Dara flowers yesterday, I figured you wanted these as well. The herbalist I used to work for back home also sent me to collect these along with the flowers."
I took the sack from him and examined its content.
Around a dozen of yellow mushroom with red dots was inside. Something that I was very well familiar with.
"These are Tawa Mushrooms! I need these for the health potions! Wonderful work, Tarran!"
"I'm sorry I couldn't get more. They were actually plentiful in the forest. But I was too busy with butchering the animals and the time limit was almost up."
"It's okay. We can send the others to get more."
I told him.
"Well, um--"
Suddenly, Tarran's face turned uneasy just like Jonah earlier.
As if there was something he would like to point out.
"There's no use depending on the others, Serafina."
Shanny spoke up instead.
Her face had turned sour with discontent.
She looked to the joyful crowd around the storage and stared at them with disgusted gaze.
"They're useless."