(Brendan POV)
When I came out from the hidden archives with the note in hand, my senior sisters were quick to surround me, appearing from various corners of the archive.
I guess they must have decided to help themselves to reading the books here while waiting for me.
Cai Hong was the first to reach me and sniffed in my direction, "Muuu? Where Papa?"
"Master is still downstairs, Cai Hong," I told her.
"Brendan, how is Master? And how is the search for recovering His memories?" Lian Li asked, her eyes boring uncomfortably into me.
"Ah… Umm… Master is fine of course, He… Err… Master was looking for more ways to teach us while He was down there…"
The girls seemed quite taken aback by what I said.
"Ara? Was Master not trying to restore His memories?" Manami asked.
I shook my head, "Master said He could do that anytime and doing this for us first was much more important."
"Master… Truly is too selfless…" Diao Chan sighed while shaking her head. "This Diao Chan would gladly trade my own memories to restore Master's! Heh… Hehehe… Then I can get to experience all the fun times all over again as though it was the first time~~"
All of us ignored the masochistic Witch's mumblings.
I took out the note that I had found from my pocket, "However, I did find something that might help unexpectedly."
Unfurling the note, I raised it up so that the girls could read its contents.
Kiyomi frowned, "How did you find something like this? This seems too convenient for it to be a coincidence. Not to mention that title sounds like what a prankster might write."
I nodded, "Master thinks so too but I thought it would be worth our time to at least look into it."
Lian Li scowled, "You're suggesting that we ask that insufferable woman aren't you? There is no way that bitch would help us willingly."
Manami sighed, "Especially when we stopped her from trying to go to where Master was forcefully. I think she really doesn't like us anymore. Not that I regret hindering her at all."
"Umm… Should I… Go talk to her then?" I suggested a little hesitantly, instantly regretting it the moment the words left my lips.
Eris grinned at me, "My, my. Isn't brother Brendan our MVP today? Since you've so graciously volunteered, we wouldn't mind at all you know?"
I sighed, I knew it would come to this so I can't say I wasn't expecting it. I did bear witness to my senior sisters and the woman clawing at each other's throats before this after all.
"Alright, I'll go find her. Where is she?"
My senior sisters stepped aside to show the tall woman seated a distance away at one of the reading tables, barely visible behind a flock of guards that surrounded her and obviously eyeing us.
I made a short prayer to Master before walking towards her with the note in hand, the guards predictably stopping me before I reached her.
"Who dares brazenly approach her Majesty?" The guard demanded, her sword drawn and placed at my neck.
"I bear a message from my Master to her Majesty. He would like to seek her counsel in this document He has found."
The Matriarch looked up from her book and raised an eyebrow at me, her eyes catching sight of the note I was raising in the air.
"Let him through."
The guard obeyed and I presented the note to her.
"Master and I had found this inside the Hidden Archives. It provided instructions on how to reclaim Master's lost memories and miss Rina suggested we let you see it," I explained.
She glanced through the note quickly and a scowl formed on her face.
"You found this in the Hidden Archives?"
I nodded, "It was stuck between the pages of an alchemy instruction book. Master suspects that someone might have planted it there knowing that we were interested in such a thing."
"... A vial of water from the Fairy Lake, a fruit of the Eternal Heaven Tree, three drops of blood from a ten thousand year old Life Spring Phoenix, a tear from the Dragon King Asphart and a spoonful of pure liquified Origin energy… Putting aside the last one on the list that I've never heard of before, the others are not something anyone can even dream of obtaining."
"I believe my senior sisters would not find that to be a problem, they just need someone to point them in the right direction."
She narrowed her eyes at me dangerously, clearly unhappy at the thought that my senior sisters would be the one procuring the ingredients for Master.
She leaned slightly to the side and eyed my senior sisters who were standing at their original locations, all of them also staring back at her.
"Tsk… If this was not for husband's sake… Fine."
She snapped her fingers and several tables began to rearrange themselves in front of her, forming a large enough surface for her to place a giant map of what I can only assume to be the Spiritual Plane on top of it.
I recognised that the capital city was right in the centre of it, looking rather small compared to the rest of the map.
She gestured to my senior sisters, allowing them to join us at the table to inspect the map.
"If I didn't know that you got this from the hidden archives, I would have thought this was someone's poor attempt at a prank," She admitted, summoning a stick that she used to point towards one part of the map. "That's the Fairy Lake. Or where ancient records had suggested it to be and no one has ever found it. If you believe the ancient texts that no one knows the source of, it would be somewhere within the Forest of The Lost, infamous for misleading visitors to wander its groves for eternity until their deaths."
She moved her stick to the opposite end of the map, "That tree marker you see here is the Eternal Heaven Tree. Getting there is not the hard part but the tree only bears fruit once every thousand years and the elves guarding it do not give the fruits up to anyone that asks so easily."
The woman shifted her stick away from the map, "For the next one… No one has seen a Life Spring Phoenix in the past millennia. They were thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago, so I don't know where you might even find a feather of it, let alone three drops of blood belonging to one that is ten thousand years old."
Her stick was placed back on the map with a soft clack, landing on the area north of the city where a huge mountain range was drawn.
"Dragon King Asphart… Is a dragon that has obtained godhood. He is literally a god. A god that cares not a single bit for humans and you wish to procure a tear from him? You have a better chance finding the Life Spring Phoenix than getting this."
She took a step back from the table and crossed her arms, "And then there's the task of finding an alchemist who can take all of these never seen before ingredients and brew a potion with it that no one else has done before. If you were looking for an impossible task, you are looking at one right now."
I looked up to see my sisters looking back at me, all of them not at all shaken by the daunting task that we had received.
We were all thinking of the same thing.
For our Master, there was nothing that was impossible, we just had to do it.
By hook or by crook, Master will have His potion, even if we had to flip over the entire world to find it.
