However, no matter how much he complained inwardly, he was now asking for a favor, so he could only ignore that title.
Thus, he forced a smile and had a pleasant conversation with the Brandybuck family head.
During their conversation, Rory Brandybuck was very shocked and admired when he learned that Luke had been to the Barrow-downs, fought with the wights, and even gained spoils of war, making his attitude towards Luke even more respectful.
After some discussion, Luke finally stated his purpose, presenting a list of materials and entrusting the Brandybuck family to help collect them, using the jewels he obtained from the wights as payment.
Rory Brandybuck readily agreed without even looking at the materials list.
But when he saw clearly what was on the list, he suspected he had misread it, blinked, and looked closely at the contents again, becoming utterly dumbfounded.
It wasn't that the items on the list were particularly precious, but rather that the materials were highly unusual.
Rory looked at the list, which, in addition to normal herbs like mugwort, lavender, daffodil roots, daisy roots, and fig peels, surprisingly contained bizarre things like caterpillars, slugs, leech juice, beetle eyes, rat spleens and tails, and snake skin and fangs.
"Uh, Luke, Wizard, are you sure you gave me the right list? These things..." Rory asked with some difficulty.
"Are they hard to find?" Luke asked, puzzled, "I know these things are not easy to find, so I don't insist on collecting all of them. I'd be very satisfied if I could just get some of them."
"No, although these things are hard to find, if Luke, Wizard, you need them, we will certainly do our best to help you collect them," Rory shook his head, only hesitantly asking, "It's just, what do you need these things for? Of course, this is just my curiosity. If it's a secret, please don't tell me."
Luke did not hide it and explained, "There's nothing that can't be said. I want to make some Potions, so these things are the materials needed for Potions."
"Potion?" Rory was stunned, looking at the items on the list, still finding it hard to believe that these strange things could be used to make Potions.
He knew that Luke had made a Potion called Essence of Dittany and had given some to Drogo. Not long ago, when his daughter Dora was on a date with Drogo in the wild, she accidentally scratched herself with a tree branch, and Drogo used a drop of that Potion to treat it.
At that time, Rory personally witnessed the magic of that Potion; almost in the blink of an eye, it healed the scratch as if it had never happened. He was greatly shocked by this and became even more determined to facilitate the marriage between his daughter and Drogo.
But he never expected that such a miraculous Potion would be made from these strange things; it completely shattered his worldview.
No matter what he thought, Rory was still willing to do his best to help Luke with this favor.
He was also quite curious about what kind of Potion these things would eventually make?
Luke was also very grateful for this, making a mental note of the favor, but he refused Rory's offer to help for free. He now had a pile of jewels and was not short on money.
After bidding farewell to Rory and leaving Brandy Hall, Luke went to the blacksmith's shop and commissioned the blacksmith to create a crucible based on his drawings, using silver, which has strong magic conductivity, as the material.
Afterward, Luke returned to Drogo's house, then took out a small section of tree heart, which was a piece Tom had cut off earlier, perfectly sized for making a magic wand.
Luke pulled out a dagger and carefully carved the tree heart.
The tree heart, which was originally as hard as iron, was now like wax under the dagger, easily cut without any effort.
Although Luke had been prepared, he was still very happy, and at the same time, he had long admired the craftsmanship of the Dúnedain. Such a dagger was truly a divine weapon, and he had four of them at once!
Luke was already very skilled at carving wands, carefully shaping the tree heart little by little.
A week passed in a flash, and Luke's tree heart wand had already taken shape. The hole for the wand core did not require much skill, so he specifically asked a Hobbit craftsman to drill it to the appropriate depth with a diamond drill bit.
Once everything was ready, Luke unhesitatingly broke his first magic wand and pulled out the core from inside.
Then, he carefully placed the core into the tree heart wand, using the tree sap collected from the old willow a few days earlier as an adhesive, pouring it into the small hole to fuse the core and the wand into one.
After a careful polishing, on the night of the full moon, Luke held the wand under the moonlight, waving it according to specific movements, continuously injecting magic power into the wand, and chanting incessantly: "Runix-Inscri-Berry, Spiritus-Orare-Resonantia..."
As the lengthy incantation continued, the moonlight seemed to materialize, gathering into a silver mist, continuously flowing into the magic wand.
The silent wand seemed to be endowed with life, with magic fluctuations emanating from it, like the sound of a continuously beating heart.
Luke held the wand, which was tightly connected to his arm, as if it were an extension of his arm. The magic power within him flowed unimpeded, gushing out through the wand.
With a bang, countless golden musical notes sprayed from the tip of the wand. The notes were like dancing musical spirits, playing joyful music.
The music played by the golden notes spread out from Luke as the center, carried by the wind, echoing throughout the entire Buckleberry, making everyone who heard it incredibly joyful, their faces unconsciously beaming with smiles.
Luke was also elated at this moment, partly due to the infection of the music magic, and partly due to the surprise brought by the tree heart wand.
The tree heart wand truly lived up to its name, being made from the heart of the old willow, the strongest and oldest tree in the Old Forest, combined with a core made from the hair of Goldberry, the River Daughter, and the beard of Tom Bombadil.
The combination of the two strongest wand materials endowed the tree heart wand with mysterious and powerful magic. Not only was it very compatible with Luke, but it also greatly enhanced the power of spells, allowing Luke to cast magic more powerful than his own inherent magic.
Using the same magic power and casting the same spell, the power unleashed by the tree heart wand was several times stronger than that of the previous willow wood wand.
For example, the music magic just cast, if used with the previous willow wood wand, would at most affect an area of a few dozen meters. But now, cast with the tree heart wand, it affected the entire Buckleberry; the difference was like heaven and earth.
Luke happily stroked the wand in his hand. With this wand, his strength could multiply several times over.
Afterward, he was like someone who had received the newest toy, constantly trying various spells with the wand to make it more compatible with himself.
Only after familiarizing himself with the new wand did Luke finally turn his attention to the collection of Potion materials.