After folding the paper bird with her fern-like hands, a blue light enveloped the bird, and it began to fly. Siod couldn’t help but exclaim in amazement.

“A magic circle that completes when you fold it?”

“Yes.”

It was probably an idea that no one had thought of before. Siod, who had been interacting with human society for a thousand years, saw something like this for the first time. He was genuinely impressed.

As Lara continued origami, paper birds began to fly around the room.
“Is this used to find lost items?”

“Yes. But you need to assign a code to it before losing it. And since the stored magical power is weak, it can only find things nearby.”

William said, scratching the back of his head. It was a magic that was incomparable to regular tracking magic, extremely crude. The birds flew around the room and all perched in the same place. It was on the book that William was holding.

“Where is the code?”

Siod looked down at the advanced alchemy book William was holding. Upon closer inspection, there were initials carved in the corner, which seemed to be the code. When he unfolded the paper bird to check, it was the same.

“The ink? Did you make it yourself?”

“Yes.”

Infusing magic into the ink itself was one of the ancient alchemy techniques, now widely used even by magicians without recognition of alchemy.

Due to using gemstones that could hold magic well as powder, the downside was the expensive price.

“You probably spent quite a bit of pocket money.”

There’s a strange smell. Siod sniffed the ink bottle while William spoke.

“Oh, that one is made from my blood…”

Siod hesitated and put down the ink bottle.

“It didn’t cost much money.”
“That’s why Grenavier dislikes it.” Siod scratched his forehead. He, too, didn’t particularly like alchemy. The very origin of alchemy was the study of extracting magic from the carcasses of dragons.

However, Siod, who provided his blood for William, felt strangely about seeing William, a dragon hybrid, making good use of his own blood.

“Why does a guy with plenty of money use blood instead of regular gemstone powder?”

“It’s easy to obtain. Gemstone powder is often unavailable even when you need it…”

“Buy a mine, just do it.”

It was a good idea that William had never considered. While William felt a sense of enlightenment and silently rejoiced, Larisa was shocked to discover something she didn’t know.

“This, blood… Blood?”

“Huh? Yeah.”

William had never explained it to Larisa, so her face turned pale. She had been using the ink made from William’s blood without knowing it, scribbling doodles and writing letters.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Willa?”

“I didn’t see a reason to.”

“I messed up. I had no idea and just used it…”

As Larisa began to cry, William was taken aback. Was this something to cry about?

“Lara, it’s okay. It didn’t hurt at all. Remember when I drew blood with a syringe?”

“I was hurt!”

“Oh, right. You were hurt…”

William was at a loss for words. He spoke in a tone that seemed to reproach him, following Siod’s lead.
“If you call this blood, who would buy it? You need to develop something marketable.”

‘I didn’t make it to sell…’

However, William couldn’t refute. He felt oddly validated by Siod’s careful scrutiny of his items. Other wizards had no interest in William’s alchemy. They might have criticized him for stealing research materials while living under someone else’s roof.

Suddenly, William felt a sense of injustice. He had endured insults for picking a few leaves from the terrifying mansion with rare herbs, poisonous plants, and various materials scattered around the imposing estate.

‘Come to think of it, wasn’t Mom’s major cleaning also because of the professor?’

William looked at Siod again with fresh eyes. It was Siod who transformed the formidable demon’s mansion into a noble estate and brought hired workers into the dining hall.

His aristocratic yet curious interest in such shabby items was fascinating, more so than anyone else William knew.

“This one will sell well.”

The lamp that automatically lit up when opened seemed simple to make and likely to have demand. When Siod praised it, William’s ears quietly turned red.

‘I made it for personal use…’

Even though he hadn’t originally made them to sell, Siod’s reception, treating all the stories with Larisa as mere jokes, made William feel strangely uneasy.
The alchemy shop was no longer a mere joke; it began to be considered a genuinely plausible venture. From that day on, William started to dream seriously about opening an alchemy shop.