Chapter 49: Potion Great Success

After being glanced at with deep meaning by Sykes, the octopus, which had been quietly curled up in the narrow neck of the crystal bottle, flinched its tentacles in fright and once again curled itself into a ball.

But it had forgotten that it was just stuck in the bottle’s neck.
After curling into a ball, it fell to the bottom of the bottle with a ‘thump’, and even bounced off the cup wall several times with quite good elasticity.

Sykes was in a great mood.
He turned around and began to process the other materials.

Among these three items, only the shed skin of the octopus found by Yan Shuangwen was what Sykes had originally wanted.

It was said that when an octopus that had gained sentience encountered danger, it could choose to shed something from its body on the spot, as capital for its future regeneration.

Sometimes it was a tentacle, sometimes a tooth, and sometimes some internal organ.
But Sykes hadn’t expected this octopus lord to be so honest, directly shedding a whole skin.

No wonder the juvenile form was so small—Sykes lifted the pinkish-white skin with one hand and shook it vigorously—after shedding so much, it was already very difficult to maintain such a large size.

“You only need one tentacle to resurrect. Hasn’t anyone in the octopus clan ever taught you?” Sykes asked casually.
“How can you not even know this bit of common sense?”

Of course, no one answered him.
Sykes also didn’t expect the little octopus to suddenly open its mouth and chat with him.
He quickly immersed himself in the repeated potion experiments again.

Originally, according to the merman’s plan, he was going to detoxify the octopus lord with a certain curse-clearing potion he had concocted in the past.
But after seeing the two extra materials sent by Hua Yibing and Old Li, Sykes directly changed his mind.

The stone Hua Yibing had found was a bone-dissolving stone with a very rich dark attribute, commonly found in places where corpses and bones were piled up and where dark elements were abundant.
Even by the standards of dark mages, this bone-dissolving stone was of excellent quality.

Hua Yibing’s luck was the kind that even Sykes would shake his head at.
It wasn’t that good, but when it was bad, there were often unexpected gains.

Perhaps it was just like the skill he was suited for—daily bad luck, one second of good luck?

And Old Li was clearly the type with extremely good luck.
No wonder he could achieve success in so many fields in the human world.

When Sykes had included him in the list of the first batch of closed beta players, he had roughly understood his past—a champion career that had been smooth sailing all the way, winning awards left and right.
After being framed and injured, he was forced to retire, but he quickly shone again in the field of games.
He had experienced countless storms along the way, but in the end, they all made him rise to a higher level.

This time, Old Li must have experienced some accident.
Sykes understood this when he saw the blood-red flower.

The aura from the outer sea, plus the powerful evidence of this red-topped flower, he must have encountered a mature, powerful red-topped snake.

Sykes had an extremely deep impression of the red-topped snake race.
Its whole life benefited from the red-topped flower, and its whole life also suffered because of the red-topped flower.

This flower grew symbiotically on the red patch on the red-topped snake’s forehead.
It grew because of its magic power, and when it withered, it would feed back even richer and purer magic power.
This also made most red-topped snakes very powerful, and their juvenile stage ended extremely quickly.
And as a symbiotic flower, if other races coveted the flower’s effects, they had to coax the snake’s main body first—only a flower willingly given by a red-topped snake could maintain its undefeated state.
Otherwise, it would wither and rot the moment it left the snake’s body.

But in contrast, the mark on the snake’s head would always be in a state of unbearable heat.
Over time, it would seriously affect the red-topped snake’s mind.
The cause of death for most red-topped snakes was not some enemy or natural disaster, but self-mutilation and death caused by loss of sanity.

The red-topped flower was one of the best fusion agents, and the bone-dissolving stone was an excellent choice for stabilizing materials.
These two things, along with the octopus’s shed skin, were placed in front of Sykes at the same time, as if to blatantly hint to him—

Stop using your foolish old work.
The time for a breakthrough is right in front of you, right now!

Would Sykes agree?

Looking at the light almost burning in this merman’s eyes, one could understand just how fervent his heart was right now.

He carefully took out an empty bottle from the deepest part of the storage box and, with a hint of expectation, placed it on the far right of the three materials, lining them up.

The siren’s curse would now be more thoroughly broken by him.
If he could succeed this time, then the siren’s most proud curse ability would be nothing more than a small joke in front of the merman.

The empty bottle was filled with the otherworldly energy that Sykes had collected from the players since the server of Sea Realm opened.

This was a magical energy with infinite possibilities, just like the players, and was not bound by any rules!

Sykes held back his inner excitement.
His fingers steadily ground the bone-dissolving stone into powder, and then added to the broth containing red flowers.

Next was the octopus’s cursed shed skin, which was thrown into the pot by the merman with a ‘plop’.
It melted as soon as it entered the pot, completely dissolving.

Finally…

The merman held his breath, carefully tilted the bottle’s mouth, controlled his strength, and poured the final potion towards the material.

With a ‘hiss’,

dark red flames shot up into the sky, illuminating the merman’s exquisite and handsome face in flashes, giving it a somewhat sinister and strange beauty.

Sykes turned his head and looked at the bottled octopus, which was trying hard to reduce its presence.
He showed a faint smile.
Behind him, the ominous dark red flames became the merman’s current background.

The octopus: “!!!”

Don’t come over here!! QoQ

It was a success.

Next door was the medicated bath for the octopus, and the merman had just added a new potion to it.
Then he stood in a daze in the place separated from the other by a wall.

Sykes still had no way to get out.

Under the combined action of the strongest fusion agent and the strongest stabilizer, the otherworldly energy, which was incompatible with everything, actually became docile and reacted with the drugs of this world, becoming a more powerful new type of potion that had even broken through the limits of potions.

Its significance was not just in the small satisfaction of allowing the merfolk clan to hold their heads high in front of the siren clan—no, actually, this point was also very important, Sykes added—but in that it opened a new chapter in the history of potions, meaning a brand new branch, a brand new formula, a brand new efficacy, which would change the entire world’s understanding and cognition of pharmacology!

This was no exaggeration.

In fact, at the moment when many great inventions were just born, their creators might have been as calm as if they had eaten dinner today and slept at night, because they could not understand what kind of changes their inventions would bring to the world.

But Sykes was different.

With years of knowledge and experience, he could fully foresee the changes this new type of school would bring to the world—although the premise was to let the outside world know about the existence of otherworldly energy.

But he was also lucky enough.
The merman had a long enough life and strong enough strength to see and achieve such a day.

Just as Sykes was lost in thought, he suddenly heard a loud ‘clang’ from next door, followed by the sound of shattering utensils.

“What happened?” The merman quickly pushed open the door, only to come face to face with the octopus lord’s eyes.

However, it seemed inappropriate to use the quantifier “只” to describe the other party now.

The octopus, due to the potion, had now been freed from the curse’s shackles.
Perhaps because of the unstable energy, it had chosen to transform into a human form.

The humanoid octopus had a tall and sturdy figure.
One leg was in the posture of stepping out of the bathtub, and the other leg was half-kneeling on the edge of the bathtub.

He was wearing nothing on his entire body.
The deep red medicinal water flowed down the grooves between his abdominal muscles, finally converging into a red line of medicinal liquid, and then dissipating into this stretch of water.

He seemed to have knocked over a large pile of bottles and jars next to him when he got out of the bathtub.
The huge force made them completely damaged into a pile of fragments before they could even see their master one last time.

Right now, the other party’s whole person was extremely stiff, his muscles obviously tensed up.
His chiseled, cold face was full of difficulty and panic, which was extremely inconsistent with the cool-guy temperament that his appearance exuded.

Sykes took a deep breath, threw a piece of clothing to the octopus lord, then bent down to pick up the glorious sacrificed potion bottles.

Just now, because he was too excited about the success of the experiment, he had forgotten to put them away after adding the potion to the octopus.
But fortunately, the important materials were all placed by him in the laboratory.
Otherwise, he would probably be teaching the players how to make a clear-stewed octopus dish in a live broadcast right now.

Seemingly sensing the merman’s not-so-wonderful mood right now, the octopus lord, who had just turned into a human form, silently squatted down after changing his clothes and helped him pick up the fragments on the ground.

He was a big, tall man, yet at this moment, he was squatting down aggrievedly, picking up the fine residue on the ground bit by bit.
At first glance, it even gave the illusion that Sykes was bullying an honest person.

Sykes: “…”
He silently pushed the other to the side.
‘Don’t be a hindrance here.’

After being pushed away, the octopus lord was a little dazed.
He blinked his eyes uneasily, his lips creeped out a few times but nothing came out.
Although his size was very big, his whole person looked unexpectedly pitiful.

It wasn’t until Sykes had finished cleaning up and was about to leave that he finally managed to squeeze out a sentence, “Xavier. I will compensate you.”

“Your name is Xavier?”

Sykes held his pile of potion residue, swam to his disposal box, and threw it all in.
As soon as he turned around, he found that the octopus was following him step by step.
This turn almost made him bump into that guy.

The octopus lord named Xavier nodded.

“Compensation is not necessary. Why don’t you tell me how you got into trouble with those sirens?”
Sykes crossed his hands, sat in his chair, and looked at the other with burning eyes.

Xavier was so looked at by this gaze that he trembled extremely subtly, then slowly moved his gaze away.
After turning his face to a very impolite angle, he finally began to organize his words with relief.

Looking at it this way, this octopus was completely a “my-way-or-the-highway” type, arrogant to the extreme.
His appearance mutually enhanced it, reaching the point of 1+1 being greater than two.
In short, he was very unapproachable.

But adding his previous reactions…

Sykes thought to himself, ‘This octopus doesn’t have some kind of social phobia, does he?’