Chapter 356: Material

Chapter 356: Chapter 356: Material

Without further hesitation, she contacted the seller.

[Seraphina Sinclair]: Is the secretion from the Flowing Wind Fox Tail Gland still available? I’ll trade you a D-level Healing Potion for it.

He replied quickly. "Boss! You need this stuff too, huh?"

His tone was tinged with excitement; he had clearly recognized Seraphina Sinclair’s ID. "A Healing Potion would be great, of course! But... Boss, could we maybe negotiate?"

"I’d rather have some food that can fill my stomach and tastes better. It doesn’t have to be a Healing Potion."

"To be honest with you, my luck has been terrible lately. All I’ve gotten are materials, and I’m about to puke from eating these compressed biscuits. My mouth is so bland I can’t taste a thing."

"This secretion isn’t useful to me anyway, and the smell is really overpowering. There’s no point in me keeping it, so I was hoping to trade it for a decent meal. What do you say...?"

Seraphina Sinclair thought for a moment, her fingertip tapping lightly in the air.

[Seraphina Sinclair]: Deal. Five packs of instant noodles for it. How’s that?

"Really?! Boss, you’re so generous! I mean, my item is D-level, so it’s worth about five packs of instant noodles anyway. But anyone else would have probably tried to haggle for ages. Trading with a boss like you is seriously good for your health!"

He replied almost instantly, his words brimming with excitement. "Just a second, Boss! I’m sending it to you now!"

A trade request popped up instantly. He had already placed the [Flowing Wind Fox Tail Gland Secretion] in the trade window.

Seraphina Sinclair placed the five packs of instant noodles in the window as agreed.

[Trade Successful!]

[You have obtained: Flowing Wind Fox Tail Gland Secretion (D-level) x1]

A palm-sized, rough clay pot appeared in Seraphina Sinclair’s hand.

The mouth of the pot was carefully sealed with some kind of animal hide, but even so, a faint trace of an extremely sharp, musky fox odor mixed with a minty scent still seeped through.

Holding her breath, Seraphina Sinclair opened the Bronze Gate of her small house and stepped out onto the floorboards before carefully peeling back the hide seal.

"Phew..." A much stronger smell rushed out. It wasn’t foul, but it was incredibly sharp and stung her nostrils. It was every bit as pungent as described.

The pot contained a pale cyan liquid. Inside it, extremely fine currents seemed to be slowly swirling, occasionally giving off a faint glimmer of light.

’Wind Attribute Energy... I hope this works.’ She resealed the pot and placed it carefully on a corner of the stone table.

Now came the moment of truth.

She spread out a new sheet of yellow Blank Talisman Paper and twirled the rune pen between her fingertips.

She dipped the tip of the brush deep into the pot. The pale cyan liquid slowly wicked up the bristles, leaving a damp stain on the rune pen’s bamboo shaft.

The pungent, crisp scent grew even stronger, filling the small stone house.

Seraphina Sinclair took a deep breath, casting aside distracting thoughts.

What she sought was an effect of lightness and speed, and this jar of Flowing Wind Fox Tail Gland secretion held the exact energy she needed.

Her task was to use the tip of her brush as a bridge to tame this raw power and brand it onto the rune paper that would serve as its vessel.

The brush descended.

The instant the brush tip touched the rune paper, it didn’t make the usual soft scratching sound. Instead, there was a hiss, like wind whistling through a tiny crack.

The pale cyan ink snaked across the Yellow Paper. It wasn’t solid like normal ink; it had an ethereal, dynamic quality, as if it might lift off the page and scatter at any moment.

Seraphina Sinclair’s wrist was rock-steady, her Spirit focused as she fought to control the rebellious wind channeled through the brush, guiding it along a path she had traced a thousand times before.

Her brushstrokes were fluid and powerful.

The pale cyan lines flowed across the Yellow Paper, like a wisp of living wind sealed within the page.

The soft hissing continued with every stroke, as if it weren’t the sound of a brush on paper, but of fine air currents weaving through the very fibers of the rune paper.

Seraphina Sinclair held her breath, her entire focus concentrated on the infinitesimal movements of the brush tip.

The cloud-like patterns at the head of the rune gradually appeared. Each stroke followed the path of the wind, like the shape of a gust frozen in time.

Next was the core rune itself. The strokes were more complex, and the wind it commanded was far greater.

For the first time, Seraphina Sinclair learned that wind had a physical form.

Fine beads of sweat broke out on her temples. She could feel the shaft of the rune pen growing warm in her hand, and the bristles seemed to be straining under the lash of the Wind Attribute Energy, becoming difficult to control.

The next second, the rune paper on the table suddenly flew up. A corner shot upward as if seized by an invisible hand, trying to wrench itself free from the stone table.

Seraphina’s eyes narrowed. Her left hand shot out like lightning, SLAMMING down on the edge of the rune paper.

A small but incredibly stubborn force pushed back from the paper, resisting her hand.

The paper trembled violently beneath her palm, making a sound like the beating of wings.

Then—

"RRRRIP!"

A series of soft, rapid tearing sounds, like a downpour on broad leaves, erupted. In an instant, the Yellow Paper bearing the unfinished rune was torn to shreds by an invisible force right under Seraphina’s palm.

Paper scraps shot out in all directions like dead leaves in a gale. A few sharp edges grazed the fingers and back of the hand Seraphina was using to hold the paper down, leaving white scratches that quickly welled with beads of blood.

More invisible Wind Blades swept across the tabletop, carving scratches of varying depths into the stone. The clay pot was struck, letting out a sharp DING, but fortunately its walls were thick. It was only marked with a shallow gash and didn’t break.

However, a small piece of the hide sealing the pot’s mouth was sheared off, and the pungent scent of musk and mint exploded into the air.

Seraphina Sinclair had already yanked her hand back and retreated the instant the paper exploded, but a few stray currents still grazed her cheek, severing several strands of her hair.

She ignored the faint sting on her cheek and the cuts on her hand, her eyes fixed on the mess covering the table.

’The rune paper is completely destroyed. A failure.’

’It wasn’t a problem with my brushwork, nor my understanding of the process.’

’The problem is the material itself.’

’The energy contained in this D-level material—the one I traded five packs of noodles for—is just too potent. Once I started drawing the Gale Rune, it released too much power for the Blank Talisman Paper to handle.’

Seraphina Sinclair’s gaze was fixed on the stone table as she pondered a solution.

She suddenly recalled the Lunar Thunder Rune she had gotten from Rex Shaw—a C-level rune.

Seraphina had studied that rune at the time, comparing it to her own work. The difference was the very paper the rune was drawn on!

’That rune paper was clearly a higher grade than my Blank Talisman Paper. If I were to use that kind of paper now, it would probably be able to handle this material’s energy.’

Besides changing the rune paper, the other option was to change the material.

Seraphina Sinclair glanced at the jar of Flowing Wind Fox Tail Gland secretion, which had been breached by the Wind Blade. She couldn’t help but frown, waving a hand in front of her face. The smell was too strong; inhaling too much of it made her nostrils sting.

She took a new piece of leather from her Silver Moon Earrings, re-wrapped the jar, and opened the trade channel again, intending to search for different materials.