There were some fizzy millet grains floating in the bottle. Also, the liquid was yellow.
ăIt looks similar to an energy drink.ă
Certainly, drinking energy drinks would help with fatigue, but⊠could it be?
ăLetâs see, it tastes a bit spicy and sweet⊠what was it?ă
Gulp, gulp.
After drinking it all at once, I looked at my status. My HP went from 4 to 5.
ăEh? I only recovered 1 HP from this?ă
Or so I thought, as it rose up to 6 HP.
After a bit, it went up to 7. I was healing 1 HP per 20 seconds, roughly.
The effects were a bit different than I had thought. I had assumed that my HP would recover as soon as I drank the potion.
As I stared at my status to see if there were other effects, the now-empty potion dispersed into light particles.
A faint smell wafted through the air as it disappeared.
ăAh! I remember now! I havenât drank anything that had the spice flavor in it for a while, so I completely forgot what it was. The potion tasted like ginger ale.ă
Back when my husband and I were dating, he took me to a restaurant that served alcohol. Since I couldnât drink liquor, I ordered some ginger ale. Except, they served me some actual ginger ale made from freshly ground ginger.
âŠGeez!
I didnât like this. Even though my husband probably lost his feelings for me long ago and told me he wanted a divorce, I still end up thinking about him a lot. There was nothing I could do about it though. I had spent ten years mostly at home, and so I didnât have any opportunities to meet new people and make better memories. I only met with my job-hunting friends once or twice a year, at most.
Those ten years of mine were filled with memories of my husband⊠and that detestable womanâs two adorable children.
ăAh! Thatâs right!ă
I left the hut with a potion in hand.
ăEveryone, prepare one potion each! Weâll use it as an ingredient for the party!ă
I couldâve used my own, but the children, who were senior adventurers compared to me, would never agree to it.
ăEh? Youâre going to use the potions in the food?ă
Bryce-kun looked shocked.
ăHm? Is it bad if we do?ă
ăNo, Iâve never heard of people mixing it for cooking, butâŠă
ăCould it be that the potion becomes poisonous if itâs mixed with other things? Or it might cause something crazy to happen, like explode?ă
ăIsnât it fine?ă
Kurtz-kun replied with no worry.
ăWhen people try to get young children to drink a potion, they usually mix it with milk or hot water, and nothing happens. ă
He explained. Bryce-kun nodded.
ăYeah, thatâs true. While Iâve never heard of anyone using the potions for cooking, Iâve heard of them diluting it so that young children could drink it. Well, beginner potions arenât very effective to begin with, so there should be no issues using it for cooking.ă
Beginner potions were not effective?
I thought about the color, which resembled energy drinks.
Certainly, just juice with carbonic acid wouldnât be as effective. Maybe the higher grade potions were more effective like Orona**n C or Yunke**. Though, I wasnât sure if those were considered high grade energy drinks either.
ăCan they be turned into something yummy like the losing potions? Kirika is excited.ă
Kirika-chan went to grab a potion from her room. Kurtz-kun and Bryce-kun did the same.
ăAh, Bryce-kun, this is your farewell party, so you donât need to bring one. Right, Kirika-chan, Kurtz-kun? Think of it as a present from us.ă
It was just a simple potion, but here it was treated like the earnings of oneâs hard work. It was a priceless bottle for these children.
ăMhm, thatâs right. I want to give them to you as a present, Bryce-oniichan!ă
ăMe too. Yuuri-nechan, tell me if you need more!ă
Everybody smiled.
ăThank youâŠă
Bryce-kun looked like he was about to cry. He must be happy enough to cry tears of joy.
ăAlright, let me start cooking!ă
Since the children had been smoking the meat outside of the hut, the hut now smelled like a smokery. The smell was strong.
That made me realize that the fire magic stones did not produce any smoke. They used firewood to smoke the meat, it seemed.
While bread wouldâve been fine for the meal, I already used up a lot of potions, so I cooked rice instead.
That reminded me, they had a ton of rice (or as they called it, the bad wheat) in the food storage, but they didnât seem to have any wheat. If we had wheat flour, there would be so much more dishes we could make. We could even make udon noodles.
Now then, I couldnât afford to make any mistakes or Iâd be wasting a ton of ingredients, so first I poured some of the potion, sake, and soy sauce into a small bowl.
I let it boil, then tasted it to see if the flavor was okay. It tasted good!
Even though I didnât have sugar nor real ginger, I could just use ginger ale without any problems! Ginger ale was made from sugar and ginger, after all.