Thinking quickly, Arya reached up and took down the magic lantern hanging on the wall.
Without hesitation, she placed it onto the small appraisal screen.
Magic Lantern (E)
Remaining Time: 2466 minutes
Effect: Illuminates your path in the dark.
Description:No way, no way. Surely no one would carry this out at night, right?
Two thousand four hundred sixty-six minutes.
That meant it had less than two days of light left.
Arya was certain she wasn't the only one facing this issue. The magic lanterns in other shelters had to be the same. It was just that people were so used to having light that no one stopped to check the remaining time.
Which led to an important realization.
When the seven-day protection period ended, these lanterns would become useless. So what would provide light then?
The answer was obvious: bonfires.
Since no one needed to go outside at night, burning wood indoors would provide enough light. But that required resources.
Someone had once calculated that a person without magical abilities would need to work nonstop for seven days just to gather enough resources for one upgrade — and that didn't even include monster cores.
So once the lantern failed, how much wood would be needed each night?
Ten units? Twenty?
Arya remembered the night she brewed potions. Eight hours of continuous work had consumed more than a hundred units of wood. She hadn't counted the exact number, but she knew it required at least five or six uses of her Gathering Art.
And there was another problem.
Smoke.
Without a stove or chimney, the only way to release the smoke would be to open doors and windows. Even if one only burned wood for an hour or two each night, the indoor air would quickly become unbearable.
And open doors and windows at night?
That was dangerous.
Unless…
You didn't burn wood at all. Or you used torches.
Arya fell silent.
She wasn't feeling sympathy for others. She was calculating something far more interesting.
Was there a business opportunity here?
The materials used to make lanterns included glowing mushrooms, which were also used in alchemy. Potionology mentioned them as an ingredient in glowing potions, though their exact use wasn't clearly stated.
Staring at the lantern now, Arya wondered:
Could the liquid inside actually be a glowing potion?
Should she take one apart and test it?
She looked down at the two lanterns sitting neatly on her desk.
Their remaining times overlapped, so dismantling the one with less time left wouldn't cause any real inconvenience. At worst, she would just have to carry a lantern up and down the stairs at night.
She made up her mind.
"I'll dismantle it."
With nothing to lose, Arya carefully examined the lantern, rotating it slowly until she found a small thumb-sized opening at the top.
Using a toothpick, she pried it open and tilted it gently. A thin stream of glowing liquid slowly flowed onto the appraisal screen.
Glowing Potion (E-)
Description: A potion that is about to lose its glowing effect, with little value left for recycling.
Perfect.
Her guess was correct.
Arya smiled faintly. Another consumable item identified.
She wasn't sure if it would sell well in the future, but it didn't matter. Now that she understood how the lantern worked, she could reproduce it later and profit from it once the "power outage" happened.
It wouldn't be as profitable as magic potions, but it was still a valuable opportunity.
She would think about it later.
Yawning softly, Arya carried the second lantern upstairs.
Reading before bed had become a habit for her.
The next morning, Arya went downstairs and grabbed a slice of bread and a carton of milk. While she was eating, a message popped up on her screen.
Natasha: "Okay."
Just two words — plus a trade application.
Arya shook her head slightly.
You're pretty bold… Is this the confidence of a true combat expert?
Muttering under her breath, she placed the stone slab onto the trade interface and sent over forty potions as payment.
Natasha: "Received."
Arya: "You're online."
Natasha: "Mm."
Arya: "Then I'd like to order some stone rods. I need 20 rods that are one meter long and three centimeters thick, and 100 rods that are thirty centimeters long and one centimeter thick."
Natasha: "Five Magic Potions."
Arya: "No problem."
Ten minutes later, the stone rods arrived.
These would be used as stirring sticks.
The branch Arya had previously used was far from ideal. Since it was plant-based, leaving it in potions too long caused unwanted substances to leach into the liquid, affecting the quality.
So she was forced to stir and remove it constantly, which was annoying and inefficient.
With stone rods, that problem disappeared completely.
Excited to test her new tools, Arya immediately began brewing.
Drawing water.
Cleaning herbs.
Sorting ingredients.
Drying materials.
Everything flowed smoothly.
Because she now had more alchemy stations and containers, Arya wanted to produce a much larger batch than before. That meant preparing significantly more herbs, which took her more than an hour.
While preparing the herbs, she also arranged a hundred stone slabs across the first-floor hall. On each slab, she placed a 1.25-liter enamel mug.
These mugs weren't for magic potions.
They were for something else.
Her secret weapon.
After mixing the magic water, Arya carefully spooned it into different containers, one spoonful at a time.
Then, the brewing began.
During this session, Arya didn't waste a single moment. Whenever she had a brief pause, she picked up a stirring rod and processed more herbs.
She had decided the day before to stop wandering aimlessly.
If she wanted to survive and thrive, she had to earn properly.
That meant standardizing and streamlining her entire business process.
Sorting herbs while brewing was part of that experiment.
Standing still in front of a pot for eight hours doing nothing was unacceptable.
Waste was shameful.
In addition to sorting, she laid the herbs out to dry.
In one hour, she could process nearly ten catties of herbs.
By noon, Arya checked her Magic Desk and saw that several people had gathered herbs that morning and traded them to her.
She accepted everything without hesitation.
When she took them out for inspection, she found that most of them had already been roughly cleaned. They weren't perfect, but they saved her a lot of time.
With the appraisal system monitoring quality, as long as she set minimum requirements, no one could cheat her by sending inferior goods.
Now she understood why the world's will had told her to make full use of the Magic Desk.
It supervised.
It recorded.
It appraised.
It transmitted.
It was extremely efficient.
She also received a new blueprint.
A 500ml measuring cup.
It required only a few dozen units of sand.
Its shape resembled a decanter, but with clear markings along the side, making it much easier for Arya to observe liquid levels while brewing.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, the first batch of potions was finally complete.
After allowing the sediment to settle, Arya used the small screen to appraise the potion brewed in the stainless steel pot.
She leaned in quietly.
Her system was evolving.
Her process was improving.
And her business…
was finally becoming a machine.