When he'd first crossed into this world, he'd discovered something critically important.
Yeah, he'd become the villain boss, Damien Thornevale—
but he'd still kept the player's system interface.
Including the inventory.
Those thirty bags of materials just now hadn't gone into any "storage ring" at all. He'd simply dragged them straight into the system's inventory slots.
Vaelric had watched the whole thing from start to finish.
And even it hadn't been able to figure out what, exactly, had happened.
The crow stayed quiet for a few seconds, then finally couldn't hold it in.
"How did you… do that just now?"
Its voice dropped low, like it was testing the waters around something it didn't quite dare name.
Damien didn't answer.
He just kept walking.
In his vision, the system interface floated there in silence.
The inventory now held thirty different materials.
At the same time, another panel slowly surfaced.
—The crafting list.
A chain of familiar recipes unfolded across the screen.
Potions. Scrolls. Magic devices. Temporary gear. Alchemical bombs… all the most practical early-game items, lined up in neat rows.
Damien's eyes moved over them, unhurried.
That was what the materials were for.
In the game's setting, every class had its own crafting book. Different jobs could make different items, from basic potions to high-tier magic equipment—there were even hidden formulas only veteran players knew existed.
And Damien—
as an old player who'd maxed every class—
had these recipes memorized cold.
…
After returning to the estate, Damien didn't linger in the main hall. He cut straight down the corridor, then followed a narrow flight of stone steps into the basement.
When he pushed open the heavy wooden door, it let out a low creak. Damp air rolled out at him, carrying a faint mildew smell—like this place hadn't been seriously used in a long time.
Dim oil lamps hung along the walls, their wavering light washing over the room. In the corners sat piles of dust-coated alchemy tools and empty bottles. On the worktable, dried stains of old potion residue still clung in patches.
It looked like a forgotten laboratory.
Damien stood in the doorway for a moment, scanning. Once he was sure no one had been coming down here regularly, he stepped inside.
He rummaged through shelves crammed with junk, picked out a few relatively clean glass bottles, wiped them down with a cloth, then lined them up neatly on the table.
As he moved, the basement air stirred. A faint pulse of magic began gathering at his fingertips—tiny arcs flickering in the air like static jumping off skin.
Vaelric hopped off Damien's shoulder onto the edge of the worktable. Its single eye locked onto the neat row of bottles, feathers drawing tight—clearly on guard for whatever came next.
In a low voice it asked, "What are you planning to do?"
It sounded like probing. And underneath that, a thread of unease—like some instinct was warning it that this "ordinary" human was about to do something deeply not normal.
Damien didn't answer. Calmly, he raised a hand and pulled out the materials he'd just bought from the system inventory.
The lizard drakefolk tail scales caught the lamplight with a dark green sheen. The phoenix feather drifted lightly in the air. The beetle shell looked hard as a chunk of deep red ore.
He laid them out on the table one by one. Then he slowly brought his hands together, mana starting to run along his fingertips.
The air abruptly grew hot.
Not the heat of an ordinary flame, but the kind of energy distortion you got when mana moved at high speed.
Blue-white light danced at Damien's fingertips, flickering like tiny bolts of lightning. His hands moved with an absurdly practiced rhythm—rubbing, crushing, blending—while mana, like an invisible set of tools, controlled every detail with surgical precision.
The glass bottles trembled faintly on the tabletop. A light scent spread through the room, half herbal and half metallic.
Vaelric's feathers exploded outward.
"Are you insane?" It sprang back, voice sharpening. "Is this gunpowder or alchemy?!"
In its long memory, alchemy had never worked like this.
Any half-competent alchemist knew potion-making required complex apparatus, steady flames, precise temperature control, and a strict sequence of steps. But Damien was doing all of it with his bare hands and raw mana. To Vaelric, it looked less like brewing and more like manufacturing an explosion in a basement.
Damien ignored the squawk.
If anything, he sped up.
Mana compressed tighter and tighter at his fingertips. Under that pressure, the materials melted, broke down, then fused again—fast.
The temperature spiked for an instant. Then a blinding flash erupted off the tabletop, bleaching the basement walls white.
When the light faded, the scene on the table had completely changed.
The bottles that had been empty a moment ago were now filled with a deep red liquid. Under the lamplight it gleamed with a soft luster, and along the glass you could even see faint rings of mana ripples moving slowly, like breathing.
Vaelric went quiet.
It stared at the bottles for a long time, the look in its single eye turning complicated.
"You made… a Healing Potion?" it asked softly.
Damien nodded. The corner of his mouth lifted, so slight it was almost not there.
The system panel unfolded in his vision.
[Lesser Healing Potion]
Effect: Restores 300 HP.
Looking at that familiar item description, Damien finally let himself look genuinely satisfied.
For someone who'd played to max level, a basic potion like this was as easy as breathing. And now it proved something else, too—
the system's rules still worked in this world.
Vaelric hopped down from the table.
It reached out with a claw, popped the cork on one bottle, and tipped its head back to take a swallow without hesitation.
The red liquid slid down its beak and throat. A gentle life-force pulse spread through the air for a brief moment, and even the basement's chill seemed to soften.
"Taste's… fine." It smacked its beak, a flicker of blue light passing through its single eye. "You really made this yourself?"
"Of course," Damien said evenly.
Like he was stating something too ordinary to be worth discussing.
Vaelric, on the other hand, sank into thought.
It lowered its gaze to the perfectly aligned row of Healing Potions. Confusion surfaced in its eye, harder and harder to hide.
The color was even. The mana was stable. Even the rhythm of the energy fluctuations was unnervingly perfect. The quality was close to the low-tier healing effect of church miracles.
And this had been made by a human. By hand.
"Does he have some kind of divinity hidden inside him…?" Vaelric muttered.
Its eye tightened slightly, as if it wanted to pierce Damien's skin and look straight into whatever was buried in his soul.
But the probing only lasted a heartbeat before it abandoned the idea.
Whatever secrets this kid had, the contract was already signed.
In a way… it had struck gold.
A human who could make potions like this barehanded—mortal or not—was absolutely worth investing in.
"Ever think about selling some?" Vaelric suddenly asked, testing him. "Healing Potions at this quality could go for a fortune. One bottle, easy."
Damien didn't even pause to consider it.
He shook his head. "These are for me," he said. "I'm not short on money."
Vaelric lifted its wings in a shrug and didn't push.
And in the very next second, Damien's hands lit up blue again.
Fresh mana gathered in the air, the energy cycling around his fingertips like flowing water.
He pulled out another batch of materials. Mana immediately went to work—breaking them down, fusing, compressing—while the magical presence in the air grew thicker and thicker.
This time, the liquid forming in the bottles was a deep, saturated blue.
Vaelric stood at the table's edge, watching Damien condense mana into potion after potion. The expression in its eye grew more and more tangled.
"Making mana potions by hand…" it murmured. "Even the masters in the Royal Alchemist Association need a full suite of equipment for that."
It turned its head and stared straight at Damien.
"So how the hell are you doing it?"