Overlord: Start from the Goblin Lair.

Chapter 115: Rat in the Flask
Hendrix was unwilling to invest in advance, and Ron naturally was unwilling to make promises for nothing. After all, this was just a verbal test, and the real deal still had to fall on Driver.

"Red, powder, crystals..." Driver passed through one shadow after another in the strange city. Occasionally, when there was no one around, he would stop and take out the city map to confirm his location and the target he was looking for.

Ron was willing to entrust him with such an important matter, so he certainly could not disappoint the leader's expectations.

Thinking of Ron's admiration and the half-elf's shock, Driver couldn't help but smile foolishly.

"This is it." According to the markings on Hendequeiros' map, Driver quickly found Fernando's workshop.

It was an inconspicuous spice shop with a workshop on the second floor.

Different from those spice workshops, the workshops are usually very small in scale. Only some alchemists and alchemy apprentices can enter and exit. Even the owners are often blocked outside by these people to prevent the tragedy of amateurs guiding experts.

It is extremely difficult for ordinary people to sneak into such a place. No matter whether they are sneaking or disguising themselves, they will be easily detected.

But Driver naturally has his own way.

"Don't these idiots have a break?" Squatting on the treetop outside, the goblin waited for an hour or two, but still saw that the lights were brightly on inside. Those alchemists had no intention of going off work.

"There are six of us on the second floor, and the attic is full of alchemical raw materials... Maybe we can ask Dabai and the others to help."

The goblin disappeared from the spot, and the skylight in the attic, which was too small for a medium-sized creature to enter or exit, was quietly pried open and closed. Soon, a trap door leading to the attic was carefully scratched with a dagger to create a gap just big enough for a mouse to get in.

"This is too pungent!" Driver grabbed two handfuls of soil used for growing plants in the attic and stuffed them into his nose, muttering in dissatisfaction. He really couldn't understand why these guys who claimed to be a "civilized race" wanted to make perfume. Wouldn't their brains become dull because of smelling this stuff too much?

A group of local rats from Rose City were summoned by the ranger. Driver selected the smallest and most agile gray-skinned one and performed the beast perception ritual on it.

This spell allows him to touch a willing beast and switch his vision and hearing to the senses of the recipient beast for one hour. While perceiving the surroundings through the beast's senses, Driver will also gain the creature's own special senses, except that he will become deaf and blind.

The alchemists below were so absorbed in their experiments that no one would notice a little mouse that fell from the attic—and even if they had noticed it, they would definitely not waste their precious spells on the mouse.

"Who has any spells prepared?" a gray-haired alchemist shouted, "Damn it! If I can't absorb the elements, the cold air will destroy my intermediate product!"

"It's unstable in the air. I can't wait until tomorrow. I have to proceed with the next step immediately!"

"Master Mino, you should have said this in the morning," a middle-aged alchemist sitting next to him said helplessly, "Look outside, it's already dark, who has any spells left?"

"I have one more. It seems that I can only talk about my experiment tomorrow." A young halfling raised his hand. He was the youngest among them, so naturally he was the only one who could do such a selfless thing. "But seriously, Mr. Mino, you don't have to be so anxious, right?"

"Yes, your business war trick has sent all their alchemists back home to rest!" The others laughed. "You actually thought of adding the cursed bottle to the alchemical experiment!"

"It's impossible to find someone like Jill!" "We can't slack off!" The man called Master Mino frowned, "This morning, Hendricks seemed to have invited a bunch of adventurers to solve this problem. Although they haven't come out yet, we can't take the risk. We still have to overcome the difficulties as soon as possible!"

"Yes, we will have everything we want in terms of bonuses and honors. Especially you, Professor Mino. If the new perfume sells well enough in the market, you will be able to hold your head up high in Elden College, right?"

"I dare not say that," Mino snorted, "The dwarf dean is already suffering from depigmentation. I don't expect him to react to anything new."

"Come on, I need to prepare the ritual - the sooner it's done, the sooner we can relax."

At this moment, they were completely unaware that in the attic, a goblin who was now deaf and blind took out a gem from his pocket.

This is Hendrix's magic collection. It can be used to record sounds within a certain range around it. It is really the best helper to preserve evidence.

The alchemists below had no idea that their chat had already been recorded word for word.

At this moment, Driver focused his attention on the gray-skinned mouse below.

"It would be best if we could have the real thing that Ron mentioned..." While the halfling was casting a spell for Master Mino, the mouse quietly jumped onto his laboratory table. Through the mouse's vision, he quickly found what he wanted to see: the instrument and the material in the test tube.

As for the red powder, Driver did see it, but it was right on Mino's laboratory table, where there were so many people and it was really inconvenient.

Driver didn't trust the look of mice, so it was better to get closer to look at it, or even smell it. If he made a mistake, how could he hold his head up in front of Ivy?

But how to get rid of these people?
An idea so bold that it was almost crazy emerged in the goblin's head, but he never considered the consequences.

The mouse's keen nose moved to the mouth of a bottle of solution that looked and smelled pungent.

"Hua La——" "A-choo——"

At the moment the mouse fell into the flask, the goblin in the attic also sneezed loudly!

"Who's up there?!" The sneeze quickly caused a chain reaction: the halfling's spell failed, the fierce cold air immediately destroyed Master Mino's intermediate product, and a layer of frost immediately formed on his beard, eyebrows and hair.

The alchemists no longer cared about these things. They hurriedly lowered the ladders and rushed to the attic like a swarm of bees. They turned on the lights and tried to find any suspicious traces.

However, just before they opened the trapdoor, a curtain of shadow and silence radiated out, blocking all of their means of detection and leaping downstairs. After the figure had stolen something with a clear purpose, it swaggered out of the door and escaped.

Until the alchemists looked back, they did not notice that on Master Mino's messy laboratory table due to a failed spell, a conical bottle filled with red powder crystals and a flask with a mouse swimming in it had disappeared silently, as if they had never been there.

(End of this chapter)