Chapter 49: Gurgle Gurgle

Chapter 49: Gulp, Gulp

The target little witches all sat down at the dining table. Moran first poured each of them a glass of freshly made breadfruit juice.

She wanted them to taste if it was different from before.

Lilith, who was in dire need of mana recovery, went: "Gulp, gulp... the taste is about the same... gulp, gulp... the mana recovery effect is also about the same."

"Exactly, it's identical! If you use the Automatic Juicer card, this whole pitcher can be made from just five medium-sized breadfruits!" Moran said.

Previously, when juicing manually, it took five large breadfruits or six medium-sized ones to produce a pitcher of juice with the right acidity.

"The card is more efficient?" Sylph asked.

This was a good thing! It meant they wouldn't have to pick breadfruit quite so frequently. A single breadfruit was quite heavy, and bringing them back to the dormitory wasn't easy.

"Mhm!" Moran nodded. "The juicer can extract ninety-nine percent of the juice from the breadfruit. Plus, I discovered that the leftover pulp can be used directly to make fruit cakes or even incorporated into cooking. When heated, it just makes a soft 'pop' sound; you don't even need to press down hard on the lid. The things you make with it have the same strong satiety as breadfruit cake."

Moran also manifested the automatic juicer in both its physical and card states to show them.

{Automatic Juicer}

[Version: Card Storage & Charging Edition (2 Mana Capacity)]

[Function: Can manifest an automatic juicer to separate juice from pulp. After use, it can be returned to the card to recharge. It can also be stored within the card when not in use. The card can store a maximum of 2 Mana or other energy equivalent to 2 Mana.]

"Alright! Enough! Tell me! How much?" Lilith was already tempted.

Moran cleared her throat. "The version I have here is the deluxe version. The price is 2.5 Mana as a one-time payment."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Lilith caught the discrepancy. "Didn't you say it was an ultra-low price of 0.05 Mana?"

"It starts at 0.05 Mana!" Moran said. "The manual hand-crank version, which requires no charging and cannot be returned to the card after being taken out, is only 0.05 Mana."

Lilith: "..."

Dammit! This is definitely the junior's trap!

"Moran! What versions are there? What are the specific differences and prices?" Vasida asked curiously.

Moran pulled out a piece of parchment; everything was listed there

"1. Manual Hand-Crank Juicer (1) Basic Version: 0.05 Mana (one-time payment); (2) Card Storage Version: 0.55 Mana (one-time payment).

2. Automatic Juicer (1) Direct Charge, No Storage Version: 0.75 Mana (one-time payment); (2) Direct Charge, 1 Mana Storage Version: 1.25 Mana (one-time payment); (3) Card Storage & Charging, No Storage Version: 1.5 Mana (one-time payment); (4) Card Storage & Charging, 1 Mana Storage Version: 2 Mana (one-time payment).

For the above, for every 1 Mana increase in storage capacity, the price increases by 0.5 Mana. The maximum storage capacity is 5 Mana."

The pricing was simple; just like the {Character Cards}, the price was five times the production cost.

"Give me the Card Storage & Charging, 5 Mana Storage version." Vasida waved her small hand and chose the most expensive one.

She had plenty of mana; replenishing it was just a matter of picking a few breadfruits, so she didn't mind spending it. Besides, even the most expensive one only cost 4 Mana, which was mere pocket change to her.

"Coming right up!" Moran quickly wrote the contract using her Golden Pen Technique.

The production and delivery of the card were completed in one smooth motion.

Sylph also made her decision quickly: "I want the Card Storage & Charging, 2 Mana Storage version!"

"Got it!" Moran already had this one ready, so she handed it over directly, earning another 2.5 Mana.

Now, only Senior Lilith had yet to decide.

"Make it cheaper, or I won't buy it. Once I master the method of juicing breadfruit, I can just use cooking magic to replace this. I won't need it."

To Lilith, not bargaining for things was worse than being killed—especially when buying from a profiteering junior. Based on her knowledge of Moran, this item had at least a five-fold mana profit margin!

After being scavenged this morning and attending classes all day, even a Lord's household would run out of surplus!

"Don't say that, Senior! The energy consumption of the juicer is very low! 1 Mana can juice dozens of times! Plus, it has the storage function; you can store unused mana in it and use it for a long time. Isn't that more economical than using ready-made mana with cooking magic every single time? Besides, Senior, you're still a ways off from mastering breadfruit juicing! The time saved in the meantime is mana! Juicing efficiently early on means having breadfruit juice available at any time to recover mana!"

After explaining the logic, seeing that Lilith still wouldn't budge, Moran added

"It's not that I don't want to sell it cheaper, but designing and producing cards consumes mana! Not even counting the production cost, just designing these cards cost me 27 Mana! Selling these to you barely even covers my costs."

She wasn't exaggerating; every time she adjusted a card design, it consumed 1 Mana. Although she made this juicer mostly for her own convenience, every little bit of profit helped!

These words truly struck a chord in Lilith's heart. Developing talent-manifesting items really required massive amounts of mana. Otherwise, how could she be so stingy? It was because she simply didn't have enough mana!

If her Bloodthirsty Needle could be like Moran's Book of Cards—where she could share the knowledge without it being summarized into a spell—she would sell it even more, more, *more* expensively than her junior!

Thinking this way, she relented: "Fine, fine! I'll take the 1 Mana Storage version, the one that costs 2 Mana total!"

"You got it!" Moran signed another contract with her senior.

Knowing that this card was still in a loss-making state for her junior, Lilith even offered some comfort

"The Headmistress won't let you sell this card to witches below the fourth year. Technically, you can only sell these to seniors in the fourth or fifth year. Although most fourth and fifth-year seniors aren't in the core area most of the time and are hard to run into, you'll eventually recover your costs if you take it slow."

"Why wouldn't the Headmistress let Moran sell the Automatic Juicer card? Juicing breadfruit isn't a mandatory skill, is it? And juice isn't something one *must* drink," Vasida wondered.

Her stomach was too capable of eating, which made her most interested in cooking magic. While transcribing books in the library today, she had briefly flipped through *Learning Cooking Magic from Scratch* from the required reading list.

The results left her deeply disappointed. To put it simply, the book only taught little witches how to fill their bellies, not how to become great chefs. Clearly, the academy didn't want to train them all to be all-around chefs; they just wanted them to know how to use cooking magic to make food.

(End of Chapter)