Excerpt from Lessons in Combat Alchemy
Overcharging potions is rarely done due to the significant complexities and requirements. While most people are not aware of the fact that you can overcharge a potion, it is possible but not usually advisable unless you are facing a potentially fatal situation or there is the need for something utterly unpredictable to survive.
Overcharging potions generally requires two things: one, that you know the essence and ingredients that went into the potion. And two, that your essences match those within the potion. Otherwise, you would need an absurd amount of luck for the process to work.
You effectively add your own essences into the existing potion, which is why the process is potentially so dangerous. There is a high probability of causing death to yourself rather than to any potential enemy. However, the essence does work to enhance the potion if you have the exact essence types needed to enhance the potion and achieve overcharging.
If you make an error in essence type or quantities, the potion may have unintended and usually explosive side effects. Therefore it is advisable not to use this method during combat unless you have no other options available to you.
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A flare of electricity from Jake’s left told him that Silt had reacted to her father’s words. But he didn’t immediately notice anything that would be a threat in the room.
“Someone’s been here,” Lirien said softly, stepping down from the platform and into the room. He walked across the room to an area of the wall that seemed otherwise nondescript. He uttered a short spell and a slender door opened slightly with a click that seemed to reverberate around the room for a second.
Drak used his light to illuminate the space as Lirien opened the door. But what they saw clearly wasn’t what Lirien expected. A dead body was slumped just inside the door.
“Isn’t that one of the merchants?” Drak asked Jake quietly.
“His name is Marcus Philip,” Arctorian said. “His company is one of the largest trading companies in the city. Why is one of the city’s top merchants dead in your study, sir?” he added, turning to Lirien, his hand raise slightly as if ready to use his essence.
“Point that spell somewhere else,” Lirien snapped. “If I was hiding a body, I would hardly lead you straight to it. I’m not an idiot.”
As they spoke, Drak approached the body. “Hey guys, this guy has a massive cut on his back, not sure what caused that.”
Silt pushed past her father and the military commander, who were still giving each other heavy stares. She bent down beside the body. “Let me see.” She studied the corpse for a moment. “If you two care to stop bickering, I think I know what happened here.”
“Oh, what’s that?” Lirien asked, some degree of scorn in his voice.
“Someone used a skinwalker spell of some sort. That cut is basically the entrance and exit strategy,” Silt said.
“Are you confident in this assessment?” Arctorian asked.
“Yes, I am confident,” Silt replied, meeting his stare.
“This isn’t the time to be vague,” he warned.
She shrugged. “But it is the time to quick and unnecessary questions waste time.”
He seemed ready to continue demanding answers but Lirien spoke first. “The better question is, what is he doing in here? How did he know this door was even here?”
Drak half raised his hand. “I might be able to help here,” he said.
“How so?” Lirien demanded.
“I know a tracking spell that could help,” he said.
“When did you learn that?” Jake asked, unable to hide that he was surprised by this.
“It isn’t really a difficult spell and after the issues in the tunnels, I thought I’d learn a spell that could help if we found ourselves in a similar situation,” Drak said with a shrug.
“How useful will it be in this situation?” Lirien asked.
“It should show us what Mr Philip was doing in here, lingering traces of his presence and anything else he came into contact with. It isn’t anything too complicated but it could help,” Drak replied.
“Very well, what are you waiting for? Put it into action,” Lirien replied, waving his hand around the room.
Drak gave one of his beaming smiles that was utterly wasted on the elf. He conjured a small ball of light that had a soft gold and grey glow to it. Around it, there was a slight distortion around it. He raised it higher above his palm, and the area around the merchant’s body became illuminated. Dull footprints appeared beside the body and as the glow expanded around the room, the footprints appeared around the room.
From the trail that appeared, it seemed that the merchant had been unsteady on his feet before falling into his final resting place. The gait was uneven and footsteps were at random intervals. As well as the footprints, marks appeared on furniture where things had been moved. The impression was a surprising one - things were moved into their current position as if the merchant had gone through a room in disarray and put things back into order.
Following the trail around the room, Lirien crossed to one bookshelf where there was a cluster of marks from fingerprints. He lifted out a book, flicked through it and discarded it.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“What was wrong with that?” Silt asked, frowning at her father.
“It’s fake,” Lirien replied.
“And what was the original?” she continued.
“Just a journal, not relevant right now,” he said, waving one hand dismissively.
Silt frowned further but left the topic for the moment. “So what now?”
“I don’t feel that anything has changed, we simply have some more information. We still need to find the ingredient for the potion and see what is causing this. Then the part this plays in things should start to become clearer,” Arctorian said.
Lirien returned to the body and flicked his wrist. In a somewhat macabre move, the metal jewellery on the body allowed him to lift the corpse without touching it. He moved the body to the other side of the room. “Alchemist, can you do something about the blood?”
“Don’t we need to conserve our essence? The killer might be in there,” Jake queried.
Lirien gave a sneer for a moment but nodded. “Very well.”
He gestured to Arctorian, who took the lead with Drak behind him with his light. Lirien followed, then Jake and Silt brought up the rear. There was a set of steps just inside the entrance and they followed them down.
The room they found themselves in was similar to the kind of vault typically seen in a bank. There was a large metal vault door with a circular handle to turn to open it. Lirien flicked his wrist and the wheel spun before the door itself opened smoothly.
While it looked like a bank vault, it was clearly not designed to hold gold. This was more for items, materials and other items that generally wouldn’t be seen in a bank. But the hole in the ground in the centre of the room was clearly not what Lirien expected to see. It was also obvious that the strange shadow tendril that came through the hole and stretched across the room wasn’t something that was meant to be present either.
Jake only saw the tendrils for a second before Arctorian gestured. The air distorted in front of his hand in the direction of the tendrils as he used wind essence. Quickly following this, a pulse of ash appeared and formed into ash spikes that launched toward one of the tendrils that had started to move in their direction.
The tendril was knocked back somewhat but a fainter shadow version still struck ou towards them. Jake felt Silt doing something and abruptly fell to the ground as she created ice on the floor and caused them to lose their footing. Which allowed the tendril to pass over their heads without touching any of them.
Lirien responded as well, metal rings appearing from beneath his robes and hovering in front of him for a second. Huge shock waves started to form and he pushed both the waves and the rings at the tendrils. But the tendrils seemed to be relatively unaffected by the attacks.
Silt also threw fire at the tendrils but likewise, it pushed the tendrils back but didn’t destroy them.
Jake pushed to his feet as Arctorian sent another blast of air toward the tendrils. He backed up a little, and turned to see Drak retreating a little towards the stairs.
“Drak!” he hissed.
“What?” the Dragonkin said with a slightly guilty look.
“Can you overcharge this?” Jake said, holding up the last remaining light potion.
“What?” Drak said again.
“Shove your light essence into it!” Jake snapped. He held it up and Drak focused his attention on it.
The light levels abruptly increased by a substantial amount. But the trouble was, the tendrils then decided this made Drak the main threat in the door and all started to try to move towards him.
Jake formed a spell to grab the liquid inside the potion and pushed it with all of his force toward the thickest part of the tendril. The effect with instantaneous, with both the shadow version and the more substantial tendrils smoking and reacting as if they had been doused with acid.
It recoiled towards the hole in the floor. Silt slammed both her palms into the ground and a thick wall of ice covered the hole as the tendrils vanished beneath them.
For a second, there was a shocked silence. Jake turned to Silt and realised she was starting to overheat again due to her essence use. He rushed over to her and drew water from the air to douse her. The air in the room instantly became drier, but he kept doing it until she started to show signs of cooling a little.
A huge impact could be felt and the ice shuddered as the tendrils impacted it from underneath, trying to return to the room.
“We need to get out of here,” Lirien stated, staring at the ice-covered hole.
Jake helped Silt to her feet and followed Lirien and Drak up the stairs with Arctorian at the rear. They reached the study and Lirien pushed the door shut.
“What now?” Drak asked, his eyes a little wide. “Because I don’t think there’s going to be an easy potion we can just throw at that thing. You guys tried everything you had and it just kept coming at us…”
Lirien sighed and clicked his fingers. Abruptly, Drak’s mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. His eyes got wider and he seemed to be shouting but no one could hear anything.
“We can continue that conversation later,” Lirien said dismissively.
“Do you have another source of the ingredient?” Jake asked.
“No,” Lirien said. “But it was stored in something strong enough that could survive a drop down into the lower floor. The problem would be that it would involve going close to those tendrils to get down to the lower level. And so far, none of our attacks seem to have had much impact on them.”
“I think we should return to the main room and plan how to handle this. I imagine that the MENU operative would have some suggestions on how to best handle the situation,” Arctorian said.
Lirien looked somewhat irritated by this, but it was clearly the best option. “Then we should retrace our steps immediately.”
Lirien gestured to the platform they had used to reach the room and everyone stepped onto it. He made another gesture and it returned them to the lower floor. As they walked back to the main room, Jake noted that the darkness didn’t seem as thick as earlier and there were few signs of the shadow creatures. On the other hand, Silt was still too hot and leaned on him as they reached the stairs.
The main room was quieter and calmer than before. The light essence user who had been maintaining the light dome was resting and another had taken up the job, but it seemed easier to push the darkness back here as well.
“Has anything happened during our absence?” Arctorian asked.
“No, nothing has happened since you left, although we are missing another one of the guests,” Flair replied. “Did you find the ingredient we need?”
Lirien gestured and a sound bubble appeared, enveloping Flair with the returning group. “We ran into a minor issue,” he said. He then explained the encounter with the tendrils and what they had tried in order to remove them. He also mentioned the deceased merchant and what they had observed of his strange actions in the study before his death.
“I thought you said these creatures we were potentially dealing with were small,” Drak said to her, having regained his voice. “Those tendrils were wider than a man and nothing seemed to have any power to hurt them.”
“I never said anything about size,” Flair replied flatly. “But that does sound like a Shade Catcher.”
“That was the least likely option if I remember correctly?” Jake said, frowning.
“That may be the case, but from what you have described, I’m almost certain it is a Shade Catcher and that means we have very serious problems,” she answered.
“So we know what it is and we don’t need the ingredient after all,” Drak said with false enthusiasm.
“Yes, but the problem is we have no idea how to deal with it now that we know what it is,” Flair replied grimly. “I have no idea what to do next.”