Lukas jumped, and his eyes snapped back open. His gaze locked onto the cauldron as he tried to prevent a disaster. The liquid in the cauldron sloshed around, and Lukas did what he could to prevent any from spilling out. Miraculously, not a single drop landed on him, though a few did land on the table.
Setting down the cauldron before anything else could happen to it, Lukas turned his gaze to the goddess and glowered.
“Could you not do that while I’m holding a pot full of necrotic poison?”, he asked, annoyed at the goddess’s antics.
“Of course, but I did anyway,” the goddess spoke with a grin.
Lukas could only shake his head, knowing full well that trying to argue with her would be pointless and only serve to amuse her more. Instead, he just bottled up the poison before stowing it away, grumbling, “Goddess of alchemy my ass, goddess of childish mischief sounds more like it.”
“Oh, now don’t be like that!” she teased, sitting in the stool across from him, “Aren’t you glad to see your favorite person in the whole wide world?”
“You’re the only person I’ve met in this world,” Lukas shot back, but saying the words out loud made him realize something. When was the last time he had seen or even spoken to someone before the goddess?
Frowning, Lukas thought back. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in this world so far, having lost track of the passing days while in this cave. Even so, he felt like a month wasn’t too far off. But what about before then? It would’ve been months, probably the last time he went into town for supplies, or maybe when the last time he’d helped out one of his neighbors. Either way, Lukas had been alone and hadn’t spoken a word to another person in months, his first interaction with another person being with an actual goddess.
“Exactly!” The goddess said cheerily, pulling Lukas from his thoughts, “That puts me at the top of the list with no competition.”
“Until I meet someone else, then you go straight to the bottom.”
The goddess shook her head in faux disappointment, “So disrespectful and ungrateful. I’ll have you know I’m everyone’s favorite person.”
“Is that why you hide away here in a cave?”
“Naturally, if I went out people would be showering me with love and praise. So much so that other gods would get jealous and it’d be a whole thing.”
Lukas just shook his head, thinking that the goddess’s ridiculousness had been bad last time, turns out she could do worse, “Anyway, what are you here for exactly? I’d say I doubt it was just to get me to spill necrotic poison all over myself, but I’m not sure at this point.”
“Come on, still with that? It would’ve only rotted a bit of your flesh, and you would’ve healed. No harm done.” Lukas gave her a flat look, but she either didn’t care or couldn’t see it behind the mask. “As for why I’m here, it’s related to the poison you just made.”
“What about it?”
“Remember the conversation we had about how your class is combat oriented and needs to be progressed through fighting as much as crafting?”
Lukas nodded, “Yeah. I also remember the description of the class saying something about using the things I make in combat rather than just selling them. I assume you’re going to tell me to use poisons and stuff while fighting?”
The goddess waved her hand dismissively, as if it were the silliest question she’d ever heard, “Of course you need to use them in combat. Who wouldn’t use some good poisons and potions in a fight? But that’s the thing, any dunce can pour a bottle of poison on a weapon. The reason I’m here is to introduce you to why a combat alchemist is different from an alchemist who uses their products in a fight. Have you ever looked in the cabinets behind me?”
Lukas shot said cabinets a look before shaking his head, “No, I just assumed that they have more empty bottles, and since the ones behind me are closer I never bothered. Also, what’s up with the cabinets? I’ve made hundreds of potions at this point and I haven’t even cleaned out one. Do they make new bottles or something?”
“The cabinets are spatially expanded,” the goddess explained, “each one is able to hold well over a thousand bottles. They also have a simple enchantment to move what’s inside closer to the front, that way you don’t have to climb in to get the bottles in the back. Anyway, the cabinets behind me contain a special kind of bottle.”
With a wave of her hand, one of the cabinets behind the goddess opened and a bottle flew out and into her hand. The bottle was different compared to what Lukas was used to. It was spherical and looked like a ball, with a basic inscription carefully etched into the glass.
“These are used when making a potion or poison you plan on throwing. They’re shaped like a ball to make them easier to throw. The inscription is a simple one that will ensure the bottle breaks on contact, you just infuse a tiny amount of mana to activate it then throw it, like this.”
The goddess demonstrated by touching her finger to the inscription, the moment she did it began glowing faintly with a blue light. She held the empty bottle less than an inch above the table before dropping it. The moment the bottle contacted the table it exploded into pieces so fine they might as well have been dust or sand.
With another wave of her hand, the glittering pieces of glass disappeared, “The breaking of the bottle is dependent on how much mana you put into the inscription. The more you put in the cleaner the break like I just showed. I imagine putting in less mana and letting the resulting broken shards of glass create a wound for poison to enter will be helpful. It’ll take some practice to get it right though.”
“That’s great! But why haven’t I seen anything about those in any of the books I’ve read?”
“Because these bottles are used by combat alchemists, and the knowledge of them died out with the combat alchemists. Which means you wouldn’t have heard of the next thing either.”
The goddess proceeded to pull a small leather pouch from her waist, setting it on the table between the two of them. Looking in the pouch, Lukas saw what looked like a fine talcum-like powder the color of sand. Taking the chance to, Lukas identified the contents:
Caydum Powder
“A non-magical powder?” Lukas asked, slightly confused.
“Yes,” she frowned, “How did you know it has no inherent magic? Can you feel it?”
Lukas shook his head, “No, my senses aren’t that good yet. My identification skill gives a rarity to magical items. The powder doesn’t have a rarity so I assumed it was non-magical.”
“Interesting,” the goddess nodded for a moment, “Anyway, this is caydum powder. It comes from the caydum root, a fairly uncommon herb that grows all over the world. To get the powder you turn it into a paste, boil it in distilled water to get rid of any impurities, then wait for the water to boil off until you’re left with a dry soft powder.”
“So what does it do?”
“You add a pinch of the powder to the distilled water before it boils, then you make a potion or poison like normal. The process will be a bit different as the caydum powder will have a slight effect on the energies in a concoction. The end result is a concoction that will turn into a gas once thrown. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but you don’t have the understanding to grasp it yet.”
“Clouds of necrotic poison sound pretty cool,” Lukas said, grinning.
“I’m glad you agree. There are some downsides, which is why you’ll want to have some potions and poisons that won’t turn into gasses when thrown.”
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“What kind of downsides?”
“Well, say you throw a health potion at your feet. You’re not going to take in all the healing because some of it will disperse or be carried away by the wind. But when you or an ally are in need it’s a good thing to use in a pinch. And what if you throw a bottle of poison at something? Obviously not all the poison is going to be useful, so having some throwables that are still liquid is good. There are ways to alleviate those problems, but you’re far from being able to use any of those methods.”
“It sounds like it'd be better if I didn’t use any potion or poison in a gaseous form then,” Lukas frowned.
The goddess shrugged, “It depends on the situation, I’m sure you’ll use both in the future. And like I said, there are ways to ameliorate those problems once you get to a certain level of power.”
Lukas nodded, “Hey, now that I’ve got you here, do you think you could identify some flowers for me? I didn’t see anything about them in the books that I’ve read and they’re definitely interesting ones.”
“Sure, I don’t see why not, I’d be interested in seeing some of the stuff you picked up in the forest. But you’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s in the library. Most of the books in the library cover what a competent alchemist should know by the end of copper rank.”
Taking in her words, Lukas reached into his inventory and pulled out a deadly looking flower. It looked a little disheveled after his fight with the pine brute, but the life’s bane was still as nasty as ever. The moment he pulled it out, Lukas could feel the familiar sting of necrotic poison on his skin.
The second the goddess laid her eyes on the flower, her eyebrows went up, “life’s bane? It’s an incredibly rare flower, even more so at copper rank.”
“Wait, items have ranks too?”
“Of course. All the herbs in the garden are at copper rank, but there are higher ranked versions of pretty much all of them. When you go up a rank to iron you’ll have to start using iron ranked materials if you want your potions to do anything for you. That life’s bane is something special though. It’s more valuable in copper rank than iron or even bronze ranked versions just because of how infrequently copper ranked ones appear.”
“So should I sell it? If it’s as valuable as you say I should be able to get some good coin to buy things like armor.”
“Definitely hold on to it. You won’t be able to do anything with it now, being so inexperienced, but in the future you could use it to make an incredibly strong poison. Not just a necrotic poison either, the poison that can be made with the life’s bane has a lot of poisonous properties. You might even be able to kill something at iron rank if you make it right.”
“Wow, definitely keep it then.”
The goddess nodded, “Keep it. What else do you have?”
Stowing the life’s bane, Lukas pulled out the amor Lily, being sure to hold it well away from himself. He wasn’t sure if his mask would find the effects negative or not and didn’t want to find out.
“An amor lily,” the goddess said with a bit of amusement, “Do you know what that does?”
Lukas shifted a bit uncomfortably, “Uh, yeah. I kind of made the mistake of smelling the thing, not a fan of the effects.”
The goddess laughed and wore a teasing smile, “Do tell how that went.”
Lukas coughed, his cheeks burning slightly, “Well, I mean I smelled the flower, and then… It affected me. I kind of ended up going on a rampage through the forest so that I didn’t… you know.”
“How boring,” the goddess tutted.
“What? You wanted me to… in the middle of the forest?”
“Absolutely. Because then you would’ve realized that giving in to the urges only makes effects worse, not better.”
“You’re kidding,” he deadpanned.
“Nope. In fact it’s the reason why the flower is the most popular ingredient for love potions and aphrodisiacs.”
“Aphrodisiacs?”
“Oh yeah,” she said with a devilish smile, “You know, a little something to make a good night even better. In all seriousness though, it’s a thing that you’ll have to keep an eye out for in the future.”
Lukas frowned, “Why’s that?”
“It’s very likely that someone will try to get you to smell one of these or ingest some kind of potion related to it in order to make you go into a baby making frenzy. Typically those who get affected by the Amor Lily just attack the nearest person, unable to control themselves.”
“So I’ll need to keep an eye out for these things in the future?”
“Yup. Once people know that you aren’t going to accept their offers they’ll start using underhanded tactics.”
Lukas groaned, “God, at this point I don’t think I even want to find civilization. I’ll just wander through the woods alone forever, just so I don’t have to deal with all that crap.”
“It won’t be that bad!” she laughed, “You just gotta stay on your toes. Anyway, we’ve covered what I wanted to talk to you about, so I’ll let you get back to it and see you in a few days.”
“A few days?”
“Yup.”
“What for?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” the goddess grinned slyly before disappearing.
Lukas sighed, “You can kind of be a pain to deal with, you know that?” he yelled out to the empty room. He felt a faint sense of amusement descended before dispersing.
Shaking his head, Lukas grabbed the pouch of caydum powder and put it and the amor lily away in his inventory. He assumed it was spatially expanded like the cabinets, because there wasn’t a lot of powder in the sack at first glance. Even if it wasn’t he’d just ask the goddess about it once he ran out.
For now, he’d focus on his normal poisons. Lukas had just finished making his first successful necrotic poison before the goddess appeared, and he needed to solidify that knowledge before he forgot it and was forced to endure more failures.
Without hesitation, Lukas jumped right back into making poison. He had a few hiccups as he got back in the zone, hiccups meaning having a failed concoction blow up, covering him in flesh-rotting goo, and then swearing a lot while trying to get it off. Thankfully though, he got back into the swing of things and quickly found himself able to make the poison reliably without causing himself pain.
Most of the poison was put in regular bottles, Lukas wanting to stock up on those first, but he did fill up some of the throwable bottles as well. He was tempted to try adding some of the Caydum Powder, but without any idea of how exactly it affected the crafting he held off. He would rather do the experimenting on something that wouldn’t cause him horrible pain if he messed something up.
For the next couple of hours, Lukas built up a fair stock of poison before taking a shower. He hoped that if he ignored the scent long enough he could eventually become nose blind, but he had been wrong. The smell of rotting corpses really did not want to be pushed aside and just kept assaulting him each passing second.
Once he showered, Lukas didn’t jump right back into potion making. Instead he wanted to meditate. He’d crossed into level 14 a while ago and could feel himself pushing level 15. He hoped that one good meditation session would be enough to push him over the line. And sure enough it was.
Sitting on the soft bed, wearing fresh clean clothes, Lukas’ gains came together and coalesced, getting him into level fifteen.
Level gained: [Combat Alchemist] has reached level 15 - Stat points allocated.
Feeling the slight swell of power that came from the added stats, Lukas opened his eyes and smiled triumphantly. Now that he’d finally done it, he opened his status screen to see just how far he’d come.
Lukas Hellstrand
Race: Human (Outworlder [unique]) - Level 7
Class 1 - Combat Alchemist - Level 15
Class 2 - N/A
Health Points: 640/640
Stamina: 339/340
Mana: 583/640
Stats
Vitality: 64
Endurance: 34
Intelligence: 51
Wisdom: 64
Agility: 34
Perception: 33
Toughness: 51
Strength: 37
Willpower: 37
Free Points: 25
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).
Amazing growth across the board, and thanks to his titles he had stats that someone his level probably shouldn’t have. It wasn’t like he was going to complain, it just made him stronger and got him closer to his goal of reaching the top. Lukas did find it kind of sad that he’d gained enough free points that he was closing in on his perception stat, his lowest one. That just left the question of how to distribute those free points.
He had enough mana these days to be getting on with, not needing to take as many breaks, so he didn’t feel like he needed to put anything in wisdom. His endurance was definitely falling behind though, even if he hadn’t noticed due to the lack of physical exertion. Then there were the other stats that he didn’t get points for in his class.
Thinking about it, Lukas decided to put the points in those. There were five stats to split between and 25 free points to go around, so he just tossed 5 free points into each. The moment he allocated the free points, he felt the swell of power that meant increased stats and smiled as he checked his stats once more.
Stats
Vitality: 64
Endurance: 40
Intelligence: 51
Wisdom: 64
Agility: 40
Perception: 39
Toughness: 51
Strength: 43
Willpower: 43
Free Points: 0
The numbers might seem impressive now, but Lukas knew there were heights to reach that would make them look miniscule, and he would push himself all the way. ?
