Effervesce - 1.7

I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a weight on my shoulders after my talk with Maric, but it was the sort of weight that wasn’t going anywhere.

Progress in my class would be slow, and we both knew that. Maric wasn’t expecting miracles within a week. Since nobody was enthusiastic about drinking ingredients that weren’t sourced from my skill, least of all myself, it meant that the amount of potions I could make daily were limited.

First of all, I tried to see what the smallest amount of alchemic base and ingredients were needed in brewing a potion. As I had a single reproducible result that I knew the effect from, I started with one-fourth of my first potion.

Fluffy green mushroom, the yellow not-wheat, and alchemic base. Bring it to a boil and stir until the entire mixture is dissolved and changes color. Simple, easy, and enough to tell me how much I needed for a minimum amount.

One day later, I had my answer.

The green effect from the potion was temporary! Now, having green hair was all kinds of cool, but it would definitely attract attention if I went anywhere, and made me easily identifiable. Not that being a runt with a huge long mess of inky black hair in a city where children were rare wasn’t already identifiable, but my point stands.

My attempts at a potion with one-fourth, one-half, and three-fourths all failed. It was only when I thought about how much my class ability [Create Alchemic Base] worked did I figure it out.

The ability itself creates exactly the same amount of alchemic base every time: one cup. It refreshes every hour, and better yet that even after one day, the alchemic base didn’t disappear.

Maric had told me that temporary creation was far more common at T-0, but that my class was probably more on par with the average T-1 class if everything else was just as strong as my first skill.

So, after boiling at least one cup of alchemic base, any amount of ingredients I throw in eventually turn into a potion. The results of one cup of alchemic base and a fourth of the ingredients for the green hair potion?

A potion that creates a far less vibrant green dye effect and lasts minutes instead of hours. Making four minor potions like this did not equal making one full fledged potion. The problem with making a full power potion though was that potions didn’t work in smaller quantities either.

I couldn’t make a full-strength potion and then split it into four small sips. No, I had to drink the entire cup’s worth of potion for the effect to happen. If I had more ingredients, I would see what a double-strength potion effect was, but I couldn’t just yet.

Although, depending on the effects, creating a large amount of weaker potions could be very good! Or in some cases, maybe a full effect of a potion was actually unwanted? I learned something valuable.

One thing I didn’t test was varying the amounts of different ingredients, mostly because I ran out. If I had put in a fourth of a green mushroom but two whole stalks of that not-wheat, what would’ve happened?

I had no idea, but I wanted to find out.

“And I don’t even know what you do,” I said to the blue-grey goop still sitting in the stone bowl completely untouched. That, I decided, would stay in that bowl as an experiment to see how long my daily ingredients lasted, be they temporary or permanent.

Until I got an analysis skill, that goop would stay there.

“[Create Alchemic Base],” I said with my hand over the top of a stone box that Maric hauled upstairs for me. A cup every hour didn’t sound like much, but we both knew I produced far more than I could use right now, so I was stocking up.

All the while I was kicking my legs waiting the next few seconds for my skill to come off of cooldown.

“It’s going to take a while,” I muttered. Unlike my Initiate class where I used my skills nonstop for days on end, my only skill was on a one day cooldown, and my nice combination skill had a three day cooldown which didn’t even give me progress to my class since it was an outside skill.

I was still hoping for at least one rank up soon.

“Finally!” I giggled in anticipation. “[Daily Ingredient Box]!”

The small one-foot box appeared on my table, unassuming despite the value within. One detail about my skill was that while the ingredients hadn’t disappeared as of yet, the box did after a few minutes. I was hoping that we would be able to harvest the material the boxes were made from, but that was expecting too much.

I threw off the lid and claimed my prizes within.

“Ooh.” This time I got slightly more exotic ingredients, at least in my mind. To start with was a handful of light-blue ground powder, the grains small and hard similar to sand instead of dust. It had a faint scent of… something salty?

The next was ten small silver scales the size of my fingernail, maybe like the kind off of a fish or snake. That was the smallest amount in an ingredient so far, with the last ingredient being another series of grass stalks, although these were dark green with white tips.

I dubbed them blue powder, silver scales, and white-tipped grass. Yes, I know, I was very imaginative, but I also literally knew nothing about them. To start, I moved silver scales and white-tipped grass to the table and then very carefully dumped the blue powder into a spare cup.

Even after two uses of my skill, I foresaw the dire need for more containers. Nobody in the family made them, although maybe Helen could carve some? Her knife was small, and the animal carvings she worked on were smaller than one of my hands.

Buying more was an option, but I still owed Beatrice money for her help. That left waiting until I had something to pay Beatrice back with, asking Jorge for a favor, or stealing it with Helen.

Stone cups or bowls wouldn’t be expensive, we lived in Stonegut and near Stoneheart. It was literally everywhere, but I didn’t want to burden the others. They’d already helped me so much in the last week, and while family helps each other, it wasn’t supposed to be one-sided.

Alright, plan decided. Make something useful to trade to one of my siblings for more stone bowls and cups! Maybe an actual knife or ladle as well for stirring the potion since the stone shiv was really uncomfortable.

Actually, my firecoals wouldn’t last that long either, and I couldn’t keep using the ones meant to cook food. “...Oh frick, do I need money?”

The only route for money was Jorge or Beatrice.

That, or I work up toward selling my potions.

…No, no, nuh uh, not at all, the very thought of selling potions to strangers, giving them to people not my family, made me several different levels of anxious, paranoid, and angry.

So if the potions themselves were off-limits…

My eyes fell to the white-tipped grass. Did the plant shop owner buy as well as sell? Even if he took it for a few pennies, that was literally more than I had ever seen before last week.

I regretfully set the bundle of white-tipped grass to the side, out of the way where I might be tempted to turn it into a potion. Think of the future, me, think of it!

But that left me with only one option for a potion today: light blue powder and silver scales.

“Oh dang, am I going to have to sell every plant I get?” I whispered in horror. Maybe… maybe not all of it? I took a single stalk of white-tipped grass and brought it back to the ‘to use’ pile.

Yes, not all of every plant, just most. Yep, that would do, definitely wouldn’t change my mind on this, not at all.

I went about the usual process of bringing my alchemic base up to boil in my copper pot, once again thanking Maric in my mind as the small stone bowls might’ve cracked by now from the heat.

“To start with, one pinch of blue powder and, hmm, half a silver scale?” The scale was pretty tough to cut even with some force with the stone shiv. “A very small amount for a very weak potion, just to see the potential effects.”

I stirred the pinch of powder and half a scale into the boiling alchemic base with a grin on my face. It wasn’t a fancy setup full of strange, glowing instruments like in my dreams, nor was the process fancy. The easiest and simplest example of alchemy.

That didn’t stop the joy and rush I felt while watching a potion come to life. What would it do, how strong would it be, would it be a failure, what would the failure be like? If each day was like this, a rush of questions and excitement, I would never get bored.

When the mix finally settled, the process was a lot faster since there were so little ingredients used, the alchemic base turned a blue-silver color. So far, that was two for two with the mix turning the color of the ingredients. Just another detail to keep track of in my mind.

I poured the newly made potion into a stone cup and waited for it to cool. Meanwhile, I started up the next batch using two pinches of light blue powder and a single full silver scale. These would be my half and whole examples of whatever this potion was, but the amount used was far less than the green hair potion.

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However, I had far less silver scales, now only eight and a half, and even stacked they weren’t even a quarter of the mushroom’s stem in volume. I had no idea if size, volume, mass or whatever it was called mattered. I only assumed that the amount my skill gave me was measured for what the ingredient was.

Although, if that was true, half a mushroom’s worth that I used for my original green hair potion would be the equivalent of five silver scales.

I was starting really, really small, okay? Not only to ration my ingredients, but because I had too much alchemic base. Might as well use it, right?

With the next potion brewing, I regarded my newest potion in its cup.

“I do hope you aren’t going to drink that,” said Jorge from beside me with a hint of worry.

“Agh!” I nearly dropped the stone shiv I was brewing the potion with and almost fell off my stool! “Don’t scare me like that!”

Jorge chuckled. “Sorry, you were really focusing, huh?”

I grumbled a bit under my breath before saying, “I was thinking.”

“I could tell,” said Jorge as he inspected my setup on the table. “That goo does not look safe to eat, or drink, or cook with. Is that powder and, huh, scales? That’s some vibrant colors, and I hear that bright colors on animals means they’re dangerous, usually poisonous.”

“My skill gave me these, so they should be perfectly fine,” I defended.

“So what do they do?” he asked.

“I’m figuring that out right now,” I said.

“With this?” he asked, pointing at the potion cup.

“That’s the first one. The same as this next one, but a lot weaker,” I explained. “I’m trying to start small so I can get an idea of how strong—”

Jorge grabbed the cup and downed the silver-blue potion in a single go.

“Whoa, hey, don’t drink that!” I yelled. This idiot of a big brother, what does he think he’s doing?

For a moment he looked concerned that I yelled. “But you were going to drink it.”

“Of course I was, but I don’t know what it does yet!” I snatched the empty cup from Jorge. “Don’t drink strange things you don’t know the effects of!”

He looked defiant. “Better me than you, Eva. We don’t need you bedridden again so soon, and I can take a little poisoning.”

Argh, that wasn’t the point. How could I let someone drink a mystery potion without them knowing the consequences? It was obvious that I would be testing my own potions first, risking any of my siblings at all if I had made a failure was unthinkable.

But the damage was done, if there was damage at all. “So? Notice anything different?”

Jorge smacked his lips a couple times. “Honestly, that was the second best tasting drink I have ever had, not at all what I expected when you said you needed weeds and dead rats. Kind of disappointing, actually.”

I said nothing to his sass because he had a point. Jorge had felt guilty that he got me the rats and the fact I nearly killed myself with them. It got me my class, though, so I don’t know what he’s feeling guilty about.

“Kind of itchy, though,” he said before scratching at his arms. His fingernails dug through the layers of dirt on his skin, and we saw the difference underneath. “Oh, that’s weird. Super weird, oh, I can see them growing. Am I dying?”

Despite his words he was smiling smugly, somehow thinking he was in the right to not let me drink it first. I grabbed his arm and peered closer.

“You’re growing small scales.” I had zero expectations for what would happen, but I did expect them to at least follow the color of the potion or ingredients. Instead, Jorge was growing pale scales that blended in on his skin.

I poked them, and they felt softer and had more bend than one of the hard, tough to cut silver scales. Was it due to the portions, or the effect of whatever the light blue powder was?

Over the next minute or two, Jorge’s arms were entirely covered in scales, from hands to shoulders. He poked and prodded them, and even went as far as to try to gently cut himself with a stone shiv.

“Definitely tougher, but not by much?” said Jorge as he made a small cut on his wrist, barely breaking the skin to bleed. “Like wearing a shirt, which is better than nothing. You said this was the weakest?”

I hummed while kicking my legs as I sat on the stool. “If my green hair potion was a good example, then yes, it could end up many times stronger if I used more.”

Jorge blinked. “That’s crazy. I don’t… I mean, I’ve seen some weird skills here and there, but a drink that makes someone grow scales? Even if it’s only for a little while, uh, you said they go away, right?”

“My hair was green for the whole day, and what I know of potions mean they are… fundamentally? Fundamentally temporary,” I said, trying to figure out the right big words to use.

Jorge hesitantly nodded. “I don’t really understand it, and I know you can’t make a ton of these, but this? This here is something that could be incredible armor.”

Hmm, Jorge wasn’t wrong, but were the scales really that strong? It would depend on how the next potion ended up as a full strength example. “Maybe.”

“How long do they last before you need to drink them?” asked Jorge.

“No idea,” I replied. “I think, and I’m guessing, if they’re in a bottle or waterskin, easily days or weeks. In an open cup? No idea.”

And my guess was only based off what I knew of potions in my dreams, and potions never expired in video games. “I want to know, but I don’t want to waste a potion just to find out.”

“That’s true,” agreed Jorge.

As we talked over the next ten or fifteen minutes, the scales slowly receded and eventually vanished from Jorge’s skin. Just in time for the next potion to be ready and poured into a stone cup.

“A minute to fully activate, then gets weaker over the next ten or so minutes? Then, hmm, maybe this one will activate quicker and last up to maybe an hour. That’s my best guess, and I only have one example so this will be important to learn.”

Jorge scratched his head. “You’re really smart, you know that, Eva?”

I blinked. “Wha?”

He ruffled my hair and made me flail at his hand. Gah, why does he always do that? By the time I fixed my hair and focused back on Jorge, he had the second cup of potion in hand. “Really smart, smarter than me at least. You definitely shouldn’t be the one testing these things.”

I wanted to shoot back that they weren’t dangerous, but I knew one hundred percent in my soul that it was a lie. Alchemy was dangerous, even in my dreams it was always a gambling profession, at least in the story and lore.

All the best miracles and worst nightmares came from alchemy.

“And you’re offering?” I spat a little bitter that he might be right. “You’re more important than I am.”

“Nobody is more important than someone else,” denied Jorge. “But if something happens, I think you’ll be better at fixing me than fixing yourself. If you’re going to be doing new tests, wait for me, okay?”

I wanted to hit him in his stomach for making me feel this way, but I slowly nodded. “Only if you take me to Stoneheart to sell some plants I got. I mean, would I be able to sell them?”

Jorge downed the new, full strength silver-blue potion, set the cup down, and inspected the white-tipped grass. He did a small series of tests like bending it, feeling the white tips, smelling and even tasting it with a nibble.

“I bet that guy we visited last week would buy them, but I don’t know how much they would go for. More than zero, at least,” said Jorge before he visibly shivered. “Oh, that is super weird, worse than the last time.”

This time we both could see the scales growing on his skin at a rapid rate, each still pale as his skin, but this time with a sheen of silver-blue that we could barely see. Jorge flipped a stone shiv in his hand before softly cutting at the scales.

“Huh, that cut the skin last time, but these are a lot harder. One second.” He took the blade to the top of his wrist and pressed down slowly. Harder and harder, I could see him controlling his strength, before he let up.

“Yeah, I can’t break these without risking hurting myself,” said Jorge before he touched his face. This new, full strength potion, had scales covering his entire body, much to his annoyance. “You said you could make it stronger?”

Jorge did some stretches and rapid movements that any basic Hunter class should be capable of, even someone as malnourished as us. Yeah, I know Jorge said he didn’t have a Hunter class, but it was something close enough.

Helen was probably more athletic since she was the healthiest of us all, for good reason. The only one who could truly be called a Hunter, though, was probably Tommy.

“Probably, but I don’t know if there will be side-effects if it’s stronger, let alone how ingredient amount to effect ratio scales above what I consider a full strength potion similar to how it scales for weakened potions,” I explained.

“Ah, I didn’t understand all of that, but basically they get weaker easier and it might take a lot more to make it stronger?” Jorge did a few easy flips, back and forward. “But I feel fine, and though moving is a bit stiff, it’s not a real problem. Although the difference between this one and the last one is big.”

While I was ten years old, and learned under the direction of Jorge, I also learned so much from my dreams of the girl of the other world that Jorge was probably right. I wasn’t smarter than him, who loved to learn about skills, their effects, and studied on his own.

I simply had better chances at education, both from him and my dreams.

Jorge stumbled as a tremor ran through the house. This one was more subdued, but that was likely due to the relatively good construction of the building. I held my bowls and cups down so they didn’t accidentally rattle off of the table.

“Those are getting more frequent,” muttered Jorge in distaste. “We’ve had, what, six in the last week?”

I blinked. “Hasn’t it only been two?”

“More happened while you were knocked out sick, Eva. It’s nearly once a day now.”

Oh, that was concerning. We had earthquakes and tremors occasionally, once a month or so, but to have one almost every day? “That’s… do you know anything?”

Jorge shook his head. “I haven’t been into Stoneheart recently, and the people around Stonegut tell me something different each time. Anything from it being a huge beast waking up down below, a plot from the people that live in the light, to the world ending.”

Besides the last one, the other two didn’t sound all that weird.

“You said you wanted to sell those plants?” Jorge cupped his chin as he looked up in thought. “Might be able to learn something while we do.”

“And pay Beatrice back.”

Jorge gave me a wry look. “She’d like that, but you don’t have to. I doubt she ever expected us to.”

That made paying Beatrice back all the more important. Maric said Beatrice was distancing herself from us, but she helped without much complaint. At least, not much complaining for Beatrice.

“Maybe we can get her to come home for a visit,” I said. Jorge gave me a questioning look. “Maric would love to see her.”

Jorge brightened. “That’s a great idea.”

The scales quickly began to vanish from his skin, and it had only been a few minutes. Did that mean in exchange for strength, the duration actually decreased?

“Before that, though, maybe you could make a stronger version of this potion? Just in case.”

He looked a bit sheepish at the request, but that was a perfectly normal thing to ask for. If this potion could effectively give you temporary armor, even if carrying it around could be annoying, we were going into the city. Better to have a method of defense than not.

I don’t know about double strength, but if I increased it to one and a half scales and three pinches of powder, it should be sufficient. That’ll leave me half my scales left and plenty of powder.

“Sure, I’ll make two.”