Chapter 44: Herb Processing Workshop

Melina used old Maria's signature protagonist reconnaissance skill, which consumed no resources and had no side effects, to obtain Louisa's data.

While Louisa was setting up her tent workshop on the courtyard plot, the three of them excused themselves to use the restroom, going downstairs to discuss Louisa's gear setup. By the way, the senior's bathroom had a rather unique layout. Instead of three independent, enclosed stalls in a row, it featured three fixtures with their individual doors all facing inward toward the center of the room. If the stall doors were left open, it looked like three seats arranged around a central table.

After Maria's system consumed a draft paper, it could print out the data.

For confidentiality, all the data was written in Chinese.

Melina felt a sense of familiarity as she read it:

Louisa, Level 4 Explorer.
Equipped Arms: "Devastating Blow," crafted from Level 5 Bone-Crawling Drake materials, classified as a tower shield and heavy hammer. Because of the hammer's pointed tip, it was jokingly called a grave-digger's pickaxe.
Equipped Armor: Ore Beta Amethyst model, classified as heavy armor, with the trait [The thicker you wear, the lower your defense, the higher your damage], belonging to a heavy armor set that completely converts defense into attack power.
Magic Factor Levels:
Turn Defense into Offense Level 3, converts defense into attack, with each level providing an additional conversion ratio.
Hammer Mastery Level 2, when using [Tower Shield and Hammer], [Two-Handed Hammer], [One-Handed Hammer], [Hammer-type weapons, and weapons with a sharpness below 'Blade' tier], the Magic Factor activation level is increased, enhancing physical functions. Each level provides additional enhancements.
Last Stand Level 2, when injured, retaliatory Magic Factor activation triggers, granting devastating attack power enhancement. Each level increases the threshold and attack reinforcement effect.
Bounce Back Level 3, when on the verge of death, grants an overwhelmingly powerful Magic Factor shield. Each level increases the quantity and quality of the Magic Factor shield.
...

From her gear setup, it was easy to see that little lady Louisa's defense essentially relied entirely on the final [Bounce Back]; in all other situations, she ran a standard, high-output, reckless glass-cannon build.

Sonia muttered:
"No matter what kind of dragon or dragon explosion little Lu encounters in the future, she always manages to pump out damage. Turns out this kid has been playing with her life since she was little."
"So is she going to change it?" Old Maria's voice sounded strange.
Out of the three sisters going to the restroom, she was the only one actually picking flowers.
"Change what?"
"Didn't you say that after the spiritual qi revival, you can't have major injuries if you want to ascend to Legend?"
"Being critically injured on the verge of death doesn't count as a major injury," Sonia said. "Mel's kind of injury is what counts as a major injury. Little Lu's setup is clearly a planned碰瓷 (tactical baiting). She's a physician and a master proficient in the Bow-Blade maxim. Her specialty is baiting damage—meaning when she gets injured, it's not a specific body part suffering devastating damage, but rather her entire vitality and Magic Factors being beaten down to the brink of extinction."
"Still, even with careful planning, little Lu still didn't reach Legend in her first playthrough."

No wonder Louisa had always been studying pharmaceutics and Magic Factor healing abilities... Melina asked:
"Then should we form a four-person squad with her? Isn't space starting to get a bit tight?"
"It's fine, someone always has to stay behind to watch the house," Sonia's voice came through. "Both old Maria and I can occasionally have 'family emergencies'. Besides, in the future, I'll be abducting... inviting quite a few people back, and they're all hardcore badasses. We can just form free squads then. Oh, by the way, Mel, help little Lu charge her plot later. I remember her processing workshop needs 3 Fire, 1 Water, 1 Earth, and 1 Wind, right?"
"Can't we ask... Senior Maria to help... Oh fine, I'll do it."
Melina looked extremely reluctant.

A banshee's plot was a standard regular hexagon with 5-meter sides, similar to the land tiles in games like Civilization VI. Each edge of every plot could provide one of the four major elemental ley line forces (Water, Fire, Wind, Earth). The permutations and combinations of these four elements could provide powerful supernatural forces, spatial expansion, and computing power provisioning. One could say that only those capable of utilizing this ley line power were considered powerful banshees.
...

Returning to the courtyard, an open area had already been cleared here.
They were just waiting for Melina to transform this place into a banshee plot.

Melina held a parasol, casually pacing off the five-meter side length. Guided by her own Magic Factor perception, she effortlessly outlined a regular hexagon—neither more nor less.

Immediately afterward, she folded the parasol and dragged its tip along the edges of the hexagon, chanting a prayer in her mouth:

"Beast, Lord of All Things, the powers of reproduction and wildness watch over this place."
"Madman, Lord of Devotion, the powers of savagery and madness watch over this place."
"Morning Star, Lord of Protection, Master of Watchfulness and Enlightenment, please protect my soil from violation."
"Craftswoman, Lord of Forging, Master of Creation and Motherly Love, please safeguard my water from erosion."
"Bow-Blade, Lord of Survival, the great power of survival and growth, this place receives your favor."
"Dancer, Lord of Supplication, the great power of passion and catharsis, this place receives your favor!"

Among the seven maxims, the Crone was not needed for this ritual, because the Crone symbolized wisdom and passing—in short, the symbol of death.

The air suddenly became crisp and clean. The dust on the ground was swept up by a sudden breeze, only to be smoothed flat by an invisible force.
Drifting sand and dust dispersed across the ground like billowing thick fog, yet they parted around Melina's feet, flowing past her sides.

Melina felt the pure air and frowned. The flow of Magic Factors was skewed toward 2 Earth and 2 Fire.

She took a small bottle from her pocket, filled with the heart blood of a shield-scaled dragon hunted today—a small bottle worth 2 gold and 5 silver Leis. She poured the blood along the boundary line symbolizing the Madman.

Sizz—Boom!

Flames erupted out of nowhere, an acrid burning smell emerged, and the elemental flow of this place was successfully modified.

At the same time, this plot was finally certified as a 'Banshee Plot.' At that very instant, all the banshees present could clearly see faint yet distinct transparent silver, orange, and blue lights shimmering along the boundaries of the plot.

A stream of information composed of Magic Factors surfaced in the banshees' field of vision:

[Banshee Plot]
[Blue Magic Plot]
[Attributes: 3 Fire, 1 Water, 1 Wind, 1 Earth]
[This plot possesses 'Encore Effect Level 1']
[Encore Effect: Banshees who are defeated or injured on this plot gain an additional Magic Factor recovery amount equal to 10% * this effect.]

The rarity of a plot's creation was a combination of the plot's original scarcity, the luxury of the materials used, plus the creator's Magic Factors, ritual proficiency, and so on.

"Oh damn, Mel!" Sonia couldn't help shouting first. "Did you roll something good again? You didn't even use any special materials, yet you turned a blank plot into a magic plot? Come here, let big sister see just how high you cranked your parameters!"

Maria made a puzzled [dog head tilt] expression.
Turning a blank plot into a magic plot—the gap in skill level and difficulty was basically comparable to the jump from a random ranked player to a professional team tryout.
It was the kind of tier where even cheating would make it hard to achieve, let alone Mel doing it without cheats...
Hmm...
Old Maria was a bit unsure. Could someone who pulled off this kind of stunt still be considered not cheating?

Louisa's thoughts were much simpler.
She wiped her eyes, saying with gratification and a trace of filial piety:
"Melina tried her absolute best!"

At the same time, all three of them secretly stared at her.
Could this wretch be a transmigrator too?

However, the suspicion didn't last.
Louisa had already walked briskly over to her luggage and retrieved four or five ecoglass bottles.
She opened one of them:
"Restore yourself, my architecture."

The items inside the ecoglass bottle vanished. In their place, right beside the three edges of the plot leaning toward the Fire attribute, a single-sided open sunshade appeared.

Since Louisa didn't have enough funds to set up confidentiality Magic Factors, the attributes of these items were seen crystal clear by the trio watching from the side.

The single-sided open sunshade was also a magical building, possessing a certain spatial expansion fulcrum, rain-proof, dust-proof, and anti-dragon-detection properties. Most importantly: this gadget actually had three [Mechanical Slots], meaning this small sunshade could house three banshee logging machines or quarrying machines.

Banshee machines had a certain size and the concept of void mining, though they operated within an "efficiency range." For example, in the same location, if the local timber factor production efficiency was 50, a standard banshee logging machine could achieve 100% efficiency, producing 50 timber factors and material factors per day. But with two machines, the efficiency would drop to 80% * twice, yielding 80 timber factors and material factors per day. The more machines, the lower the efficiency.

Even with diminishing marginal returns, many banshees were willing to do this anyway—since it was void gathering, the more the merrier!

However, another problem followed: a plot could hold a maximum of four machines and two buildings, conforming to the standard of [Six Elemental Points].
Unless one possessed a building that [increased mechanical slots].

Buildings with mechanical slots were extremely rare and hard to come by; those who managed to get their hands on them needed a stroke of sheer luck.

Melina hadn't expected her good roommate to have such incredible luck to snag a building with +3 slots. What would happen next was entirely predictable.
...

Louisa placed three [Herb Harvesters] inside the sunshade. These machines were about the size of a truck, but when placed into the slots inside the sunshade, they looked at most like wardrobes. These machines devoured massive amounts of Fire element factors to produce herbal factors for any herbs existing within a 2-square-kilometer radius locally.

Then she placed four small herb processors outside. These were rectangular brass machines covering an area of two square meters, used to blend herb factors with Water, Earth, and Wind factors. As long as they had enough straw, they could manufacture the corresponding herbs with a decent success rate.

Finally, Louisa placed the plot's second building: a two-room residential tent, comprising a bedroom and an alchemy room.

With that, this small banshee plot was fully set up.
She had to admit, this was what a normal banshee looked like—able to carry all her important belongings with her.

Senior Sonia didn't have a whole plot's worth of equipment because she was the first banshee in her family—referred to as a wild banshee. The birth of such a banshee was quite wondrous and largely uncontrollable. Most banshees reproduced [within the same clan], and their genes in the initial state were very weak. As long as there were genes from a different race, a banshee egg would instantly turn into an egg of another race.

These banshee belongings were indeed somewhat hard to come by. Unless facing an economic crisis, no banshee would sell them!
Coupled with the fact that the number of banshees was indeed small, and most of their personalities were rather sensitive and aloof, they rarely appeared in the eyes of ordinary people.

This resulted in these treasures of the banshees being just like genuine out-of-print tabletop gaming rulebooks in her past life—rarely possible to hunt down in authentic condition or stock.

Yet, a thought flickered in Melina's mind.
Did she perhaps have another channel to acquire them?

Banshee buildings and banshee machines both belonged to oddities.
Then, what were the odds she could hunt them down in that dream world?

If that were possible, wouldn't she be able to save a massive amount of money?!