“Jesus Christ!” Lukas exclaimed, startled by the sudden appearance of the goddess.
Across from him, the goddess smiled with amusement, mirth twinkling in her eyes. Through his still-blurry vision, Lukas could see that she was dressed much more casually this time around, wearing simple linen clothes like he wore. Her hair was also loose, but neither her clothes nor her untied hair took away from her unbelievable beauty.
“I hardly believe that’s a proper way to greet your patron goddess,” she teased.
Hand over his racing heart, Lukas said, “What do you mean ‘patron’? I thought you said you wanted to be my benefactor? I hope you don’t want me to worship you or proselytize for you, because while I’m grateful for what you’ve given me, it’s going to be a hard sell.” He rubbed his still-slightly-irritated eyes. “And what are you even doing here? We talked, like, yesterday.”
The goddess shook her head in faux disappointment. “Listen to the way you speak to me. Such heresy! Such blasphemy! Many would have you killed for talking to me in such a way.” She smiled mischievously, dropping the act. “But no, I don’t want you worshiping or preaching for me. Some gods don’t really need faith, and I’m one of them. Speaking of before, I’ll have you know we last spoke three days ago, and the reason I’m here now is because you’ve come across something important.”
“Come acro—wait, did you say three days?” Lukas asked, shocked by the words. Lukas knew he could sometimes lose himself in something, having done so with puzzles and books multiple times in the past, but three days was something else. He thought he’d only been at it for twelve hours, but he guessed he’d lost himself chasing after levels.
“Oh yes, you’ve been a busy little bee, getting a lot done. And you’ve been doing quite well.”
“Thanks, I guess? So what is it I came across? Also, why are you being so casual?”
The goddess waved a hand dismissively. “I just wanted to make a good first impression. Guess I didn’t, based on your complete lack of reverence. So there’s no point in being all formal if you’re going to talk to a goddess like any other person. As for what you’ve come across—what would you have done if I hadn’t shown up?”
“Uhh…”
Lukas had to think for a moment; he’d been so thrown off by the goddess’s appearance that he’d forgotten himself. Then he remembered the pain in his eyes, the cauldron before him still full of mana potion, and the notifications he had waiting for him. Looking over the notifications, he perked up.
“I reached level five and gained an ability!”
“You did indeed,” the goddess smiled. “The first ability usually comes very early on, the second one quite a bit later. The rest are spread apart fairly evenly after that.”
“Do they always hurt like that? And how many abilities can I get?” Lukas asked, rubbing an eye as though it still hurt.
“They can be painful,” the goddess nodded. “Usually the first is the worst, the rest getting more bearable the more you gain. As for how many you get? The number is twenty—ten per class. I am curious, though; you’re able to read a description of your racial abilities, right?”
“That’s right. You want to know if I have a description for the ability I just got?”
“I do. I believe I know what ability you just gained, and I’d be interested in comparing what’s known about it and what your description says.”
“Seen the ability before?”
“There are some abilities that are fairly common, popping up enough that they’ve been cataloged. If I’m right, then the ability you just gained is usually given to the dunces of the alchemy world, but for you it should be extremely useful. Go ahead and read the description for me.”
Pulling up the notification once more, Lukas read the notification out loud.
“I like the flavor text and that it tells you the resource cost. The fact that it tells you exactly what the ability does is just another reason to play the whole outworlder thing close.”
“Right,” Lukas murmured morosely, not excited about being seen as a tool or resource.
“Enough of that, though,” the goddess said. “I’m here to talk about abilities. As I was saying before, this will be a useful skill for you, being new to mana and energy control. It’ll allow you to better see and feel both, the slight time distortion helping to slow the crafting process and make it easier.”
“It sounds like I just got an ability that I’ll grow out of fairly quickly,” Lukas frowned. “Seems like a waste of an ability slot to me.”
“It might seem like that, but I can assure you it’ll be fine. The ability affects the eyes, making it a perception-based ability, one not limited to alchemy. I imagine you’ll be interested in learning other fields of magic like rituals and such, and that ability will help you understand energy flow. Besides, with skill upgrades, that ability will gain new effects while strengthening old ones.”
“You can upgrade abilities?”
“Sure can. As you become more powerful, your abilities advance with you through use. In fact, you can’t progress without all twenty of your abilities being advanced as much as possible.”
“So there are requirements to progress? But progress to what?” Lukas asked.
The goddess put her chin in hand and thought for a moment. “Hmm, I guess it’s basic enough information for me to share. It would draw some attention if you didn’t know anything about the ranks.”
“Ranks?”
“So many questions,” the goddess smiled playfully, “but yes, ranks. Power levels are often broken down into ranks, though some societies call them tiers, grades, classes, stages, and the list goes on. Anyway, there are certain requirements that need to be met in order to progress to the next rank, acting as a bottleneck and filter for those who don’t have what it takes. The first threshold is to have all your abilities maxed out; after that, each rank adds a requirement onto the previous ones. And you, my little outworlder, are at the very bottom, not even considered copper yet. Not until you have four abilities, that is.”
“Copper? As in copper mana coins?”
The goddess raised a curious brow. “You know about mana coins?”
For the first time, Lukas pulled out a copper mana coin, and he took a moment to look it over. It was a smooth coin that looked to be made of pure polished copper with fiendishly complex runes engraved on both sides.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“It’s one of these things, right?” Lukas asked. “At least that’s what my identify calls it.”
Reaching across the table, the goddess took the coin from Lukas’ hand. As she did so, one of her fingers brushed his. It was warm and sent a strange tingling sensation up his arm, like he’d just been zapped by one of those joke pens. Lukas assumed it was due to the massive power gap between him and the goddess.
Lukas rubbed at his finger as the goddess looked at the coin she’d taken. “How did you get this?” she asked.
“I have a looting ability. Remember?”
The goddess gave him a flat look. “Of course your looting ability gives you money. At this point I don’t know if you’re lucky or unlucky to have gotten racial abilities that good.”
Lukas shrugged, not wanting to dwell on him being an outworlder or the implications. “Not like I can do anything about it. But that thing is used as currency?”
The goddess just shook her head before moving on. “Yes, the copper mana coins are used as a currency. Higher-ranked coins too sometimes, but it’s mostly the copper ones. I’m going to assume you don’t know what these are, so I’ll explain. Mana coins are just condensed mana or magical energy of a certain quality. Copper is the lowest quality, making it the cheapest and most accessible coin. They’re usually made, but are often obtained from harvesting rituals used on monsters or beasts.”
“If they’re made from condensed magic, or mana, or whatever, does that mean they can be used for magical purposes?”
“They can,” the goddess smiled. “They’re often used as materials in crafts or anything requiring mana, like rituals, arrays, formations—all that stuff. But we’ve gotten side tracked; we were talking about ranks. Since we just talked about mana coins, I guess I could say that each rank provides a qualitative difference in power. Imagine you’re a bucket, and as you grow more powerful, dirty water is added to that bucket, and once the bucket is filled, the water becomes fresh, clean water.”
“That’s not a very good analogy,” Lukas pointed out.
“Well I’m not the goddess of analogies,” she said testily.
“Can’t believe I’m only asking this now, but what exactly are you the goddess of? Also, is there a god of analogies?”
“I’m just the goddess of a subcategory of alchemy, hence the lack of faith and all that. And honestly, I have no idea if there’s a god of analogy—there are a lot of gods out there. Moving on, before you ask any more questions,” she said, getting an eye roll from Lukas, “let’s move onto potions, which are important now that you’ve got that nifty new ability.”
“What about potions?”
“That’s a question!” the goddess said, pointing at Lukas.
“It’s related to the topic. Just talk.”
The goddess gave him an impish grin before turning a bit more serious. “It’s time for you to move on to making other potions. And I know what you’re gonna say: that your mana potions still aren’t good enough and that you need better mana control before trying something else. Well, you’re not gonna become a proper alchemist by trying to perfect one type of potion. Besides, you’re not going to improve in the next week as much as you have in the previous one; there is such a thing called diminishing returns.”
“Okay, I will, but I want to make some more mana potions with this new ability to see how much it helps with the crafting process.”
“That’s fine. I just don’t want you to get bogged down aiming for perfection that you’ll never reach. You’ll learn more by mixing up what you’re working on, and in a week or so you’ll come back to mana potions and see that you’ve improved without even having worked on them.”
Lukas nodded as the goddess stood. “I’ll let you get back to it then,” she said. “It’ll probably be a while before we talk again, assuming nothing wild happens.”
“You say that as if something is going to happen,” Lukas accused.
The goddess gave him a mischievous grin. “See ya around.”
And just like that, she was gone, and like before, she left Lukas with a lot to think about. Pushing all that to the side for the moment, he focused on other things. First, he bottled up the potion that had now been sitting for well over ten minutes, getting three vials with each giving 59 mana. Putting the potions in his inventory, he moved on to something he’d been itching to do since the goddess appeared.
Opening his status screen, Lukas quickly threw in his free points, dropping two points in vitality and 3 into wisdom, before checking out the changes:
Lukas Hellstrand
Race: Human (Outworlder [unique]) – Level 2
Class 1 – Combat Alchemist – Level 5
Class 2 – N/A
Health Points: 460/460
Stamina: 275/280
Mana: 343/460
Stats
Vitality: 46
Endurance: 28
Intelligence: 33
Wisdom: 46
Agility: 30
Perception: 26
Toughness: 33
Strength: 31
Willpower: 31
Free Points: 0
Titles:
Prodigious Dimensional Traveler, Unkillable, True Heart of a Warrior, Indomitable Worm.
Abilities:
Combat Alchemist Abilities: (Amber Eye of the Alchemist [lvl – 0]).
Race abilities: (Dimensional Traveler), (Tribute of the Fallen), (Steel gut), (Tongue of the Multiverse), (Stranger in a Strange Land).
His stats had increased, sure, but what really caught Lukas’ eye was the new line for abilities in his Combat Alchemist class. Not only that, but the level of the ability was shown alongside it. He remembered what the goddess had said about abilities needing to be maxed out before being able to move on to the next rank, and while Lukas didn’t know how that translated to levels, he sure as hell was going to find out.
Now that he was alone, Lukas noticed there was something strange when he thought about his newfound ability. For some reason, he had knowledge about the ability and a deep understanding of how to use it. The information had just been dropped into his mind, and he found it weirdly unnerving. It was like the knowledge had been locked behind a door, one that had now been opened upon receiving the new ability.
Lukas had no idea where the information came from, but all he could do was add to the list of questions he had for the goddess. He’d gotten a few answers this time around—mainly those regarding mana coins—but he was still left with more questions than anything. Taking out the paper with his questions, he added a few more and crossed out even less.
With nothing else to do, Lukas began preparing to make some more mana potions, eager to try out his new ability. After grabbing his mask from the table and putting it on, he got to work. In less than five minutes, he had the cauldron clean and his ingredients ground down, ready to be added into the already boiling water. He knew the process well, and as Lukas added in the vine and flower, he placed his hands over the runes to take control of the crafting process.
For the very first time, Lukas activated his new ability and felt a strange power and energy around his eyes. The effect was so new and novel that Lukas almost forgot his concoction, but he managed to pull himself back before it destabilized. Focusing on the cauldron before him, Lukas couldn’t help but marvel at what he saw.
Lukas remembered when he’d first created the regenerative water that was little more than a tea. Once he added the flower paste to the boiling water, he’d seen strange swirls and wisps in the liquid—he saw them in every concoction—but whenever he tried to focus on any of it, it vanished like floaters in the eye. Now, that was different, and the weird swirls were laid bare before him, their strange movements slowed slightly as though caught in amber.
Lukas quickly realized he was seeing the magical energies of the ingredients mixing and interacting with one another. More accurately, he was seeing the energy of the flower attack the energy of the vine, trying to break away. It was like looking at a battlefield, two sides fighting for supremacy, except one side would always win—unless someone intervened. Suddenly, there was a third energy, one that invaded from the sides of the cauldron, surrounding the other two. It swept over the other energies and began taking control of the battle, aiding the energy of the vine to pull out the properties of the flower.
The effect of the ability on Lukas’ concocting was immediate, his control of the energies within the cauldron was stronger than ever before. It was the difference between making your way through your bedroom in complete darkness and doing it with the light on. That was basically how things had gone before, with Lukas only really able to feel the energy within the cauldron, but now he could see it and affect it more efficiently and effectively.
Lukas felt like the craft took longer than usual, but he knew that was just because of the slight warp in his personal time due to the ability. He wasn’t going to complain, as the results spoke for themselves. In his first craft with the ability, he managed to fill four potion bottles, each mana potion providing 63 mana.
Smiling to himself, Lukas now had newfound confidence in attempting new types of potions.
