"That was tense as heck…" Theo muttered to himself after the girl finally scrambled from her corner and hurriedly left his room, thankfully leaving no puddle of fear-induced piss for him to clean.
This was, by no means, a pleasant experience for either of them.
For the girl, because she was at the wrong end of Theo's wrath, and for Theo… because he had no interest in getting angry over someone as insignificant as her.
She wasn't even a character in his new life, merely an episode that he would soon forget about, only to recall when reminiscing about some weird memories while getting drunk at a bar with some friends he would potentially make in the future.
Still, he had no other choice but to turn her into an example. He had no other choice but to be harsh with her to the point of actually overdoing it. And most of all…
'Fuck, I'm hungry.'
Gritting his teeth as his body screamed for more nourishment, Theo scoured his room for anything that could sate this primal desire of his. Regretfully, no matter how hard he looked, with every second wasted on this search, his hunger only grew stronger. And in the end, he had no other choice but to go through his herbs, employ the hive to select the cheapest materials out of the ones fitting the "edible" and "harmless" bill before stuffing his face with them all the way until his stomach finally stopped ringing an alarm.
'Damn it…' Sliding down to the floor of his room before lying flat on it, Theo sighed, his breath uncannily minty and refreshing after all the herbs he snacked on. 'No matter what, I need to get my hands on some money, and I need to do it fast. Faster than whatever dividends I will be able to get from that new lamp design I've given to Frank.'
Even though Theo's means were near infinite, with the slight tingle coming from around his stomach—a sign of his nanite-producing organ churning out new elements for the hive—Theo found it increasingly difficult to focus.
"In the end, I'm going to default to the easiest way, aren't I?" he muttered to himself as he slowly gathered himself up from the floor before standing up and then, in spite of the late hour, walking straight to the alchemy stand.
After the recent… event, the way Theo looked towards the vial with the liquid happiness changed a little. Yet, no matter what made that arrogant girl so wary of it, ultimately, it was still just a half-product.
By all means, it was a concentrated narcotic, a substance already heavily regulated in this world, even if the interference of Theo's nanites made it vastly different, less dangerous than its original composition. And for all the faults and problems that came with using something like this…
For the recipe Theo cooked in his mind, a single drop of this distilled happiness was still necessary, especially with how Theo couldn't really afford to flaunt his nanites.
With determination filling his head and his ass firmly seated at the alchemy stand, Theo ignored his exhaustion and readily got back to work.
Contrary to the process of getting the distilled happiness, however, the other half-product he needed was a lot easier to obtain. All he had to do to get his hands on it was gather a mix of specific herbs before throwing them all into a mortar, grinding them down with a pestle into a paste, adding several scoops of the most expensive part of all—pure sugar—before diluting the thick paste with water until it grew thin enough for every last particle of what used to be the paste to leave the mortar as Theo poured it all down into one big flask.
"That's the base done," he muttered to himself as he gritted his teeth while reaching out with his finger to the flask's top. Then, Theo used up all the nanites his body managed to produce, bringing himself all the way back to the edge of the risky level, only to watch as the gray drop of nanite-infused sweat dripped down the pad of his finger and dropped into the slightly discolored liquid in the flask.
'Now, for the difficult part,' Theo thought as he put the big flask over the small fire before searching through the accessible tools for a small pipette.
It was a simple tool consisting of a flask half as wide as Theo's pinky with a squeezable rubber bulb at its rear end and painted markings on the pipe's length.
Using this device, Theo squeezed the rubber part to exile the air from it before unsealing the nanite-enhanced liquid luck and slowly relaxing the rubber end of the pipette to suck in just a few drops of the concentrated drug.
'That's too much,' Theo judged after carefully observing the liquid now stuck inside the simple device, quickly dripping half of its content back into the main flask before sealing it back and then carefully moving his pipette back to where the herbal mixture was starting to come to a boil.
"Just a little longer…"
Theo waited until the bubbles formed all over the surface of the liquid within the big flask to pour the tiny amount of the distilled luck into the flask before hastily putting the pipette aside and then topping the bottle off with nothing else but simple, formerly boiled water.
Theo only stopped when the liquid within the flask reached the level beyond which boiling it would put the whole alchemy stand at the risk of a chaotic spillage before turning the heat even further down, to the level that would struggle to actually bring the now almost perfectly full flask to a boil.
"And now, we wait," standing up, Theo muttered before stepping away from the stand and directing his steps to the bed.
By slowly boiling over the rest of the night, the heat within the mixture would provide the nanites inside of it with the additional energy they needed to process all the ingredients together into the final product Theo actually desired—a simple drink with a moderate amount of alcohol in it.
That was it.
This drink, despite containing a drop of the liquid happiness, had no further effects on the consumers, even if they were extremely lightweight when it came to drinking.
After all, the main purpose of Theo's nanites, outside of accelerating the fermentation and then the distillation process, lay in decomposing the complex structures of the narcotic substance within the liquid luck before using it to reinforce the taste of the drink to truly cheat-like levels!
'All that's left now is to get a good night of sleep,' Theo thought, already smiling at the prospect of the fun he was surely going to have tomorrow, 'and then find someone addicted to drinking enough to pay a royal ransom for that bottle!'