by K R Dimmick
“Plus, I’d really rather it wasn’t common knowledge that I’m scared of heights,” he blushed faintly.
“Your secret is safe with me,” I smiled, trying to reassure him I wouldn’t tell.
“Come here. We need to get you raised to Journeyman in Alchemy,” Aliz said, looking up from the journal, all business as usual. “I’m getting closer to decoding this, but you have twenty levels to go before you can help me work out how we can raise ourselves to Master rank.”
I walked over to her and she put her hand on my head.
Congratulations! You have become a Journeyman of the craft: Alchemy.
Brew potions to increase your skill level.
You can learn all Fine or lower level recipes.
She handed over three more recipe books.
You have received the recipe: Fine Healing Potion - Journeyman.
You have received the recipe: Fine Mana Potion - Journeyman.
You have received the recipe: Fine Stamina Potion - Journeyman.
I knew the drill, and quickly consumed all three books.
“Surely there are other recipes?” I asked. “I mean, I appreciate knowing these three, but there must be more potions in the world than HP, SP and MP potions. Aren’t there?”
Aliz started laughing.
“Of course there are, why do you think I’m desperately trying to decode this journal? I can tell you right now that it’s not because I thought it would be a fun pastime,” she frowned at me. “I simply don’t have the magic skill that allows me to create recipe books. I can tell you what ingredients I use for various other potions and you can try those out. I can explain the properties of different ingredients and you can experiment and see what you make, or you can somehow be lucky enough to get a recipe book as a drop. It’s rare, but it has been known to happen. If I were you, though, I wouldn’t rely on getting a recipe you want that way.”
Good point.
“Could you give me some ideas for what potions you can make? At least that way I would have an idea of what to ask you about?”
“That sounds like a good place to start with, I suppose. Pull up a chair,” Aliz indicated a small tree stump near where she was sitting. “I can only tell you what a Journeyman Alchemist can make, obviously. We’ll find out together what my mother wrote in this journal for Master and Grandmaster Alchemists. Equally, there are probably other potions you can make at Journeyman rank that I haven’t discovered the recipes for, so don’t let what I can make limit you, okay?”
I nodded. This was hopefully going to be exciting. I loved puzzles and this was turning out to be one big puzzle. I grinned.
“I don’t know what you’re grinning about, this is serious stuff,” Aliz glared at me. “I’ve nearly killed myself numerous times while experimenting. It’s why I have a kiln in my house, so at least I don’t burn down the town. So, you’d better take this seriously. You seem different to most travelers I’ve met, otherwise, I wouldn’t have raised you to Journeyman. Tell me I haven’t made a mistake.”
“No, you haven’t. I just love puzzles, so I’m looking forward to experimenting. Plus, if I do kill myself, as long as no one else gets hurt, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Hmmph. I guess you do have a point there. In that case, you need to reach level 40 in Alchemy as fast as you can, so you can be the one experimenting with becoming a Master Alchemist.”
I couldn’t help myself. Despite the glare from Aliz, I had the biggest grin on my face I’d ever had.
“Sounds like a great plan,” I said. “So, what potions can you make that I can’t yet?”
“I suggest you write them down,” she said, handing me a piece of paper and some kind of writing stylus that looked like a lump of rock.
I put the paper on the table next to me and looked up to show her I was ready.
“The biggest ones I’ve found at this rank come in two variations. The first is a debuff bomb. You get Fire Bombs, Frost Bombs, Poison Bombs and so on. Think about all the different types of magic there are, and you should be able to make a temporary bomb that harnesses its power for a single use. I’ve not discovered all of them by any means, but I’m certain they exist. The second type is the potion to counteract it. So, you have your Fire Resistance potion, Frost Resistance potion, Poison Resistance potion and so on. Again, I’ve discovered some, but not all of these.”
I wrote all these down as fast as I could.
“There is also a general Magic Resistance potion I’ve found that will counteract all magical effects for a specific time, as well as a Magic Amplification potion. Obviously, not many people can use that. In fact, Jace from Milgate is the only magic user I know besides you.”
“We have magic users here among the elves,” piped up Arik. “There aren’t many of them, as it seems to be a fairly rare gift for an elf child to be born with, but they do exist.”
Aliz and I must have looked very surprised because Arik carried on explaining.
“Do you remember King Faelyn saying Andrew had corrupted some of the elves while he was here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, one of the things he did was make a small group of them see magic as evil. Unfortunately, they kept their ideas quiet, until one night, when they successfully murdered every single magic user in El Sanctum. They were all killed in the fight that followed, but the damage was already done. What they didn’t know was that we had one Arcane mage left. He had unexpectedly snuck out during the night to have a romantic time with a hunter who’d taken his fancy earlier that evening. So thankfully, he was spared. He now teaches any elf child that shows even a hint of magical ability. However, he can only unlock Arcane Magic.”
Well that explained why I hadn’t seen many magic users around.
“So why don’t you travel to Milgate and get Jace to unlock other branches of magic?” I asked.
“Have you not noticed that elves and humans don’t spend time together?” Arik looked at me sideways. “Since that incident, we’ve trusted humans less and less. They don’t like us, and we, in turn, do our best to avoid them.”
I guess it didn’t matter what world you were in, people didn’t like people who were different from them. I sighed.
“Well, that’s enough of that, you have work to do,” Aliz said, staring at me. “One more thing, though. While you’re experimenting, you need to be very careful with the bomb potions because if you drop one, you essentially put the debuff on yourself.”
She paused to make sure I’d really taken that point to heart.
“I’ve not managed to find any kind of potion for physical attacks yet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” she finally carried on. “I just came too close to death with my last experiment to make another attempt at finding the recipe.”
She looked at me defiantly, like she was challenging me to suggest she’d failed.
“That’s okay, once I’ve solved this riddle and gotten whatever this mark is, I’ll be free to experiment, and then we’ll both be able make them.”
A look of surprise briefly crossed her face before she resumed looking like she didn’t need anyone for any reason.
“I’m also going to make sure I get the branch of magic unlocked that lets me create recipe books and spell books, because that sounds amazing,” I grinned again.
“There’s one other thing you have to consider when using these potions,” she said. “If you drink it, it obviously only affects you. However, if you throw it so it explodes on the ground, it affects everyone within the radius of the potion. That doesn’t just mean allies, it means everyone and everything. So, if you throw a Frost Bomb, you’d better tell the members of your party to get out of the way, or they’ll be affected as well.”
That made sense, since friendly fire was just as damaging as whatever your opponent was throwing at you. It would seem that, when you were out of combat, NPCs and other players couldn’t hurt you by simply bumping into you, for example. However, when you were in co
mbat with something, even a member of your own team could kill you.
“So, can they Dodge the bomb, then?” I asked, “Or does the effect stay around in the area, so they get debuffed after their Dodge?”
“It depends on the bomb. Those that are single use, like Fear, Mesmerize or Confusion, your allies, or opponents, can Dodge. However, when it comes to those that have a damage over time (DOT) effect, like Poison or Fire, for instance, they need to get out of the radius of effect to avoid getting hit with it,” Aliz explained. “Another type of potion that I suspect exists, but I haven’t yet discovered, is one that makes people resistant to various buffs or depletes them. Things like a Stamina Drain that actively depletes your opponent’s stamina, or a Stamina Resistance Bomb that would make your opponent’s SP potions less effective for a time.”
This sounded like I’d picked the perfect craft for me. I’d be able to equip my team with bombs that effectively made them into magic users. Since no one else in this area so far was a magic user, that would put my allies and I ahead of anyone who tried to cross us. Namely, the Dragon Hunters. This was a huge bonus in my opinion.
“So, what do you want to start with?” Aliz asked.
“Well, since I’m thinking a Fire Bomb in a forest isn’t the smartest idea, how about a Frost Bomb?”
Aliz gave me recipes for all the different bombs and resistance potions she knew and pointed me toward the elven Herbalism Grandmaster. I’d been hoping to also unlock Journeyman Herbalism and get credit for the processing I was going to have to do. Then Aliz pointed out my lack of time, suggesting I simply get the correctly processed ingredients from his stores, instead. Sadly, I could see she was right. I’d just have to unlock that later, once I had time on my side.
Once I was in a little fire-resistant hut that the elves used for Alchemy, I looked at the recipes for the Fine Healing potion, Fine Mana potion and Fine Stamina potion. They were pretty much the same at each rank, just needing slightly different quantities of each of the ingredients. However, tinctures apparently got upgraded to clear tinctures at the Journeyman rank in Herbalism. I was still getting 10% progression for each successful potion, and supposedly, that would continue until I reached level 25. After that, it would drop to 5% again until I reached level 30, then 2% until I reached level 35. The final five levels could only be achieved by discovering new potions, although Aliz thought I’d get 5% progress for making the first ten of each new potion I discovered. That, unfortunately, meant I had to keep all my notes on possible potions safe until I became a level 35 Alchemist. I calculated I had 400 potions to make to get me there. Time to grind.
I knew my inventory could stack 250 of the same item in a single slot, so I didn’t really have to worry about how many of each type I made. I’d seen a limited supply of HP and SP potions in the Herbalist’s room already, so I figured I’d just make more of those, since I wasn’t a high enough level to use any of these potions yet. I settled on just 50 of the MP potions, since there was only the one magic user around, 175 HP potions and 175 SP potions. An exhausting hour and a half later, I hit level 35 in Alchemy and put the finished potions into my inventory to take over to the Herbalist’s room.
Now it was time to have some fun.
35
Bombs Away
I unfolded the parchment with the scribbled recipes on it. After looking through all of them, I decided the Frost Bomb was probably the safest one to try out first.
Frost Bomb:
1 bottle of water
10 drops of Acacia Sap
20 finely crushed Snowberries
1 drop of Sky Mushroom clear tincture
Combine the ingredients over Warm heat until potion thickens.
Decant into a bottle and plunge into ice. Leave to set for 5 minutes.
I rummaged through the Herbalist’s store and found all the ingredients I needed. I stacked all the new fine level potions I’d just created on the shelves so I had room to carry everything.
Grabbing an Alchemy flask, I poured a small bottle of water into it. Next, I carefully added ten drops of the sticky, viscous Acacia sap. Each drop sank to the bottom of the flask like a pebble. I unwrapped the first leaf packet of finely crushed snowberries and started trying to add them to the flask. They were so finely ground up and light it was like trying to control the direction you were moving dust in. I sighed. Unfortunately, that set a few grains of the crushed dust floating away on the breeze. I got about half of the packet into the flask. I had no idea what effect that would have, but I had a few more goes to try and get it right, then I had to work out how to measure out half of a crushed snowberry, whatever they were.
Finally, I discovered that if I poked a tiny hole in the leaf and held it over the flask, the majority of the contents went into it. After that, all I had to do was open the leaf out flat and scrape the rest of the dust-like substance into the flask. I grabbed the final leaf packet of the finely crushed snowberries and tied it in half with a thread I pulled from the seam of my top. It seemed to work, and I’d hopefully gotten the right amount in.
I picked up the Sky Mushroom clear tincture and opened it up. To my horror, the contents started to float upward out of the bottle. I jammed the lid back on as fast as I could. How on earth was I going to measure out one drop of this stuff?
Inspiration struck. I took one of the empty leaves that had been the packaging for the snowberries, went outside and picked up a pebble from the floor. Opening the lid, I placed the leaf over the hole and put the pebble on top of it. That took care of the bottle’s content. Next, I opened up another leaf and held it in the air above the tincture dropper. I squeezed, and a single drop of the liquid came out of the end and started rising upward. I positioned the leaf over the direction it was going, and it hit the center of the leaf. Moving over to my Alchemy flask, I scraped the drop into the flask and quickly shoved the lid on tight.
Picking up the tongs, I toggled the torch to warm heat and held the Alchemy flask over the end of it. I kept swirling the liquid around, so hopefully I’d spot when it started to thicken. Sure enough, all of a sudden, the liquid become thicker and turned a pale blue in color. I grabbed a potion bottle, decanted the thick, goopy contents into it and put the stopper in. I then shoved the bottle into the bucket of ice I’d put below the table. Once again, the helpful timer popped up and counted down the five minutes I had to wait. It was odd that Aliz hadn’t told me it would turn pale blue, but that was probably a good color for a Frost Bomb.
While I was waiting, I read over the notes I’d written about how the potion worked. All I had to do was throw it at my opponent’s feet and everything within a radius of 100 would get an initial debuff of being chilled for five seconds. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell me what effect being chilled actually had on someone. After the initial burst, since this was one of the bombs that had a damage over time component, the same area would give anyone still in it a further 3 sets of chilled damage, each pulse lasting three seconds. I had no idea how far apart those extra pulses of damage would come, whether people could see the outline of the area that was being affected, or what the effect was, but I figured I’d just try it out and I’d soon know.
The timer finally reached zero and I pulled the potion bottle out of the ice.
Success! You have created: A Potion
Try it out to see what effect is has.
It was completely solid and pale blue, almost like looking at a piece of an iceberg. I didn’t know why the potion wasn’t named, but I guessed it was probably because Aliz hadn’t been able to give me a proper recipe book, so I was literally discovering a new potion as far as my Alchemy skills were concerned, even though I’d had a recipe written down that I could follow.
Well, nothing for it but to see what effect it had, I guess.
A quick glance at my Alchemy level revealed that the discovery had granted me an entire level, which was awesome.
I walked out of the hut in search of a secluded area, just in case this didn’t go as
planned. I crossed out of El Sanctum to find a tiny glade with a dirt floor where the undergrowth had completely disappeared. It looked a little like something had been blown up there recently, but since there was no one around, I decided this looked like a good place to test potions.
Standing in the middle of the clearing, I threw the potion bottle hard at my feet. The bottle shattered, but thankfully, instead of showering me with broken glass, the pieces of the bottle simply vanished in a puff of smoke as if I’d drunk the potion. Suddenly, instead of the frost I’d been expecting, I was completely encased in a block of ice. I had no idea how large the block was, as I couldn’t see very far through the pale blue ice in front of my face. I tried moving my fingers, but they were frozen solid. I tried blinking, but again, nothing happened. I attempted to take a deep breath and found that I couldn’t do that, either. So, I took the only option available to me and started panicking.
Thankfully, my body’s need to breathe seemed to have been put on hold by the freeze as well, so I calmed down slightly as I realized I wasn’t about to die. I was simply stuck in a block of ice for an unknown length of time.
Outside of the ice, I could hear something moving around. It was low to the ground, but that was all I could tell before it disappeared again. I thought Summon Pet, but since my fingers couldn’t move, it had no effect. Why hadn’t I partied up with someone before I’d done this? I beat myself up for being an idiot.
Unexpectedly, someone burst into laughter. The sound was too muffled to tell who it was, but at least I wasn’t alone. Although, if it wasn’t someone I knew, that might not be a good thing. I started to worry again.
Without warning, the entire block of ice melted in one go. I collapsed to the floor, completely soaked, shivering with cold. I looked up to see Mikael holding onto a tree for support and on the verge of wetting himself because he was laughing so hard.