Chapter 81: Dragon Blood’s Oath

Leus steadied himself against the workbench and slowly straightened up. He shook out his sweat-soaked hair and instinctively reached for the alchemical spectacles perched on his nose, only to grasp at empty air. Only then did he realize the glasses that had accompanied him for more than ten years had fallen to the floor at some point.

Just as he lowered his head to retrieve them, he suddenly froze.

Everything in his vision was crystal clear.

“Hm?” Leus let out a startled sound.

Because of years spent hunched over dim oil lamps in poor conditions, his eyesight had long deteriorated badly. Without his glasses, he normally could not distinguish man from beast beyond three meters.

But now, not only could he clearly make out every detail on Nolan’s face several meters away, he could even read the labels on the smallest potion bottles lining the distant shelves.

“My eyes…” He blinked in disbelief, yet his vision remained perfectly sharp. “It’s not just my eyes.” Leus suddenly clenched his fists. His arms tightened with a strength he had never felt before.

At this moment, he felt as though he could punch a bull to death with his bare hands.

“My lord, I can feel endless power surging out of my body!” he shouted excitedly at Nolan, his voice so loud it echoed through the entire laboratory.

Nolan was equally astonished. He could clearly sense that the vitality radiating from Leus had undergone a complete transformation in that instant.

Before this, Leus had merely been a frail scholar whose constitution was even weaker than the average person’s. But now, his entire body emanated a sharp, powerful aura. It was as though a sickly bookworm had, within minutes, acquired the physique of a warrior tempered through years of training.

“Come here, Master Leus. Punch this.” Nolan pointed toward a mithril target in the corner, one used specifically to test weapon power.

“Alright!”

Without hesitation, Leus strode over to the target. After taking a deep breath, he assumed an awkward boxing stance and threw out a punch with all his strength. Bang! A dull impact rang out. Unfamiliar with proper technique, the alchemy master nearly twisted his wrist from the recoil.

But the target’s reaction was even more dramatic. The mithril target, sturdy enough to withstand a full-force strike from a Silver-rank warrior, shook violently.

And right in the center of it was a shallow dent.

Leus stared blankly at his reddened fist and swollen wrist before looking back at the imprint on the target, utterly dumbfounded.

Nolan inhaled sharply.

Good heavens.

That was a mithril target! Even someone like Little Donnie, a high Bronze-rank warrior, could barely achieve that level of damage barehanded.

Purely in terms of raw power, Leus was now already comparable to him.

Nolan immediately pulled up the system panel and found Chief Alchemist Leus under 【Territory Management】.

【Leus: Chief Alchemist】

【Power Tier: Bronze (Peak)】

Just as he thought.

The issue had not been the potion’s effectiveness, but Leus’ inability to fully utilize his newfound strength. An ordinary human had gone from physically helpless to peak Bronze rank in a single leap.

This effect…

It was at least twice as powerful as the Fervor’s Strength potion Nolan remembered from the game.

Although Fervor’s Strength permanently enhanced NPCs as well, its effect was only equivalent to raising them by half a power rank. Even the most compatible ordinary person would at best be elevated to mid-Bronze rank.

If a Bronze-rank warrior drank it, merely brushing the threshold of Silver rank would already be considered excellent.

But this crimson potion had allowed Leus to cross an entire major realm in one step.

And there still had not been enough testing. Who knew what other effects it might possess?

“My lord… your blood…” Leus finally snapped out of his shock. Looking at Nolan, his eyes burned with excitement. The intensity of his gaze made Nolan’s scalp prickle. “The concentration of dragon blood in your veins is simply unheard of! Um… once the war settles down, would it be possible for you to—”

“Stop right there. I’m not the important part here.” Nolan coughed dryly, forcibly interrupting the man’s academic enthusiasm.

Still, Leus’ words reminded him of something. Judging by these effects, the true value of his Dragonkin trait was likely far greater than he had imagined.

This was not a simple stat enhancement.

This was genuine bloodline transformation.

“So in other words…” Nolan dragged the conversation back on track.

“In other words, the potion is a complete success!” Leus nodded heavily, excitement practically overflowing from his face. “And its effects far exceed our original expectations! This is no longer the ‘Fervor’s Strength’ you described. It’s an entirely new and far more powerful potion!”

He raised the crystal bottle that still retained the warmth of the potion within it, his eyes gleaming with the unique pride of a creator.

“It was born from your dragon blood and marks the beginning of our vow to save this nation. I say we call it… Dragon’s Blood Oath.”

“Dragon’s Blood Oath…” Nolan repeated the name under his breath before nodding with satisfaction. “I’m terrible at naming things. Simple and imposing, I like it. We’ll go with that.”

“Of course…” Leus suddenly seemed to remember something, and his expression turned awkward. “Although the potion was a success, there is one problem. The only problem, and also the biggest.”

“There’s still a problem?”

Leus rubbed his hands together sheepishly as he looked at Nolan. “We may… need you to donate a little more blood.”

Thank goodness. For a second there, Nolan thought they were going to dissect him. “What’s a little blood?” He slapped his chest confidently. “If it gives us even one more chance of victory in the coming war, then forget blood. Even if you needed my bone marrow, I wouldn’t hesitate! For Coldsteel City! For our shared future! We’re all in!”

“That absolutely won’t do. If you collapse, and we lose the man holding everything together, then we’re finished,” Leus replied jokingly, buoyed by his excellent mood.

Over the next two days, Nolan practically moved into the alchemy workshop. Together with Leus and a group of apprentices worked into a frenzy, he launched into mass production of the potion.

The workshop remained brightly lit twenty-four hours a day. Everyone inside behaved like madmen possessed.

And Nolan became the “core power source” of the entire operation.

Almost every hour, Leus would respectfully “invite” him aside, cut open his wrist, and drain another bag of blood.

Two hundred milliliters…

Five hundred…

Eight hundred…

By the end, Nolan himself had lost track of how much blood he had given. He only knew that over the course of two days, the total had absolutely exceeded two thousand five hundred milliliters. For any normal person, that amount would have caused immediate shock, if not death. Only Nolan’s Silver-rank physique and the terrifying regenerative ability granted by his Dragonkin bloodline allowed him to barely endure it.

Even so, the massive blood loss exacted a severe toll.

His HP bar itself did not drop much and remained safely above half, but the health values shown by the system were not perfectly equivalent to the actual volume of blood in his body. The side effects of losing so much blood in such a short time were very real. His face turned pale. His vision swam. His limbs weakened. Nausea constantly churned in his stomach.

By the time the final batch of Dragon’s Blood Oath potions was completed, Nolan was so weak he could barely remain standing.

Thanks to Leus’ genius-level formulations and his relentless optimization of every ingredient, the blood Nolan had contributed ultimately produced seven hundred and eighty-three doses of Dragon’s Blood Oath.

That was not the workshop’s production limit. It was Nolan’s physical limit.

“My lord! Look! Look at what we accomplished!” Leus rushed over excitedly with a crate full of crimson potions, proudly presenting their achievement.

Looking at the crate filled with Dragon’s Blood Oath, Nolan managed to squeeze out a weak smile on his pale face.

“Well… done…”

Before he could finish speaking, darkness suddenly overtook his vision. His body swayed once before collapsing backward.

“My lord!”

“Nolan!”

Two anxious cries rang out at the same time.

Anna and Vivi, who had hurried over to help since hearing the news the day before, caught Nolan from either side just in time before he hit the ground.

“Quick! Get my lord back to his room and let him rest!” Leus panicked as well. If he truly squeezed the lord dry, he would become a sinner for all eternity.

And so, supported by Anna and Vivi on either side, Nolan staggered unsteadily out of the alchemy workshop.