God's Blood was one of the main ingredients he was missing. The rest was much easier to get his hands on, but this thing, well, it was a rarity.

Allocating all his attention to potion-making for the next few hours, Gerald created twelve Mana Elixirs when he finally ran out of the next main ingredient.

The Demon Mushroom!

This thing was also quite difficult to get, but luckily it was quite potent, so not much of it was required. Still, now he used it all up and had no easy way to get more.

He also couldn't just go and request it from Arthur. Not to mention he was currently supposed to be offended, but it would be suspicious to request more of what his 'master' needed.

"Whatever, I'll think about it later. There is no rush, after all. But first, I need to give some attention to these beauties!" He gazed at the bottles of bright-blue Mana Elixir with deep longing.

He ordered the maid to prepare a big tub for his bath and went to prepare while she was getting it ready.

He remembered to take the poison of the Broodmother for this exact occasion. If he had to simply overwhelm the nanites, any poison should do the trick.

After his tub of water was ready, he closed himself in the bathroom and plunged his hand in the cold water, heating it up with Fire magic.

Then, he emptied half the bottle of poison in the tub, before jumping in himself.

There was a slight tingling sensation on his skin at first that slowly increased in potency. Soon he was feeling like he was getting bitten by hundreds of ants all over his body.

He cast a healing spell on himself to counteract the damage and drank a sip of Mana Elixir. Then he simply closed his eyes and focused his attention on the changes.

Minute after minute, his capacity for Mana slowly increased. Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!

And then it continued to increase further, hour after hour. He gathered a few cheap pieces of Ether Crystals for this exact moment and chewed on a few of them from time to time.

Like this, a day quietly passed. And then another, and another…

Apart from taking a break to eat and sleep, Gerald spent the entirety of his days in the tub. It was so unusual that the people around him started to already get worried.

But he didn't pay them any attention or explained what he was doing, so they could just blindly speculate.

"Is he alright?" Qiona was the first to pose this question out loud. She finished the tasks Gerald had given her and was ready to learn more. Too bad for her, her teacher decided to keep bathing constantly.

"You were with him the longest, is this something he usually does?" Unable to come up with an answer by herself, Xilia turned to Sera for help.

But even Sera just shrugged her shoulders and stated, "I don't know… But I don't think is something to be worried about, he often does some weird and unexplainable things."

"Uaaaah!" Gerald stretched his body in satisfaction. In short five days, he increased his Mana stores by almost 300 MP!

By using the Broodmother's poison, the absorption efficiency of Mana Elixirs increased further. Although it was not the theoretical max of 30MP per potion, it still went up by 25 MP!

Now Gerald was brimming with energy with 395 MP at his disposal!

"Hahaha! This feeling of power, it's amazing! I love it!" Gerald laughed madly for a few minutes to get the pent-up excitement out of his system.

Unfortunately, the regeneration rate stayed roughly the same, further confirming his hypothesis.

He would have to hunt and kill strong beings if he wanted to increase that part of his ability.

"I can be invincible against those of around the same strength rank for forty minutes! I can fly for more than six minutes! I can cover the sky with Stone Bolts or create a sea of fire!"

A big grin was plastered across his face as he thought of all the new possibilities that now opened before him.

There was just one thing that somewhat ruined his mood. The bump on his chest grew bigger during the last few days and it appeared it was not stopping.

But having no clue what it was, Gerald decided to ignore it for the time being. Maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. Without a definite answer as to what it was, it was impossible to speculate how to deal with it.

Gerald made a rough calculation for his flight and came up with twenty kilometers if he exhausted all his Mana to fly unassisted.

However, if he used the gliding method, he could travel for about eighty kilometers on a single takeoff. Although many variables were not taken into account, such as wind speed and direction, and the upwind or downwind draft…the rough estimate should still hold.

Now he became even less distance-constrained as he could visit the borders of Myrtana in a single day.

It was already a few days since he last visited the Auction house and Arthur was probably already nervously waiting for the Potions of Focus, so Gerald decided to send his butler to bring him a batch of ten.

Meanwhile, he extracted the essence of God's Blood and stored it in an airtight bottle so it wouldn't go bad. The rest of the plant was obviously discarded.

Gerald then paid a visit to Qiona and officially made her in charge of producing the Healing Potions. Her older sister would then be in charge of delivering them to the merchant every week since she had nothing better to do anyway.

He gave Qiona a few words of advice before once again leaving the capital and traveling south.

After disappearing under the cover of dense forest, he unfurled the extra leather pieces on his wingsuit and took flight.

He didn't fly too high, as the air got thinner the higher you went while it also became increasingly cold. And he hated cold.

Other than that, it was quite peaceful up there. Clear skies, beautiful scenery, no loud noise, no dangerous beasts...

Skreee~

Or maybe not.

An ear-piercing scream alerted Gerald to the presence of danger. A giant eagle was flying below him, completely unaware of a human in the skies.

Focusing his attention on the bird, Gerald recognized it immediately. It was an advanced form of a common Eagle, the extremely dangerous Shadow Eagle.

It was known for its swift, silent, and deadly attacks.

But it usually attacked at dusk when its prey came out in the cover of darkness. In other words, it shouldn't be active at this time of day. Unless it needed extra food or maybe it was just patrolling its territory.

It wasn't too big of an animal. The wingspan was about five meters and it weighed close to one hundred kilograms.

Gerald opened his Magic Eyes and saw Mana flowing through the eagle and working to give it a speed boost.

A grown-up Shadow Eagle was recorded to be at a rank of Iron-6, but that was only for the attack. Its hollow bones made its defense much weaker than most beasts of similar rank.

The main advantage it had was its flight and the extremely sharp talons that could slice through flesh and bone. Its grip was strong enough to crush stone, so crushing skulls wasn't considered anything special.