Max didn’t waste another moment contemplating what he needed to do. He sprinted back into the thick of the forest, feverishly scanning for the remaining ingredients he needed.
The final mooncap toadstool was the easiest to find; he already knew what that looked like, and the forest was full of the little blue things. Locating a cluster of them on the bark of a fallen tree trunk, he plucked the whole bunch and added them to what he already had in his inventory, increasing his total mooncap stash to 7.
-1 HP
Max knew locating a chokra root would not be so easy. He hadn’t come across any plant called a chokra before arriving at the camp, so he had nothing to go on. He would have to focus on anything new he spotted and wait for the text to identify them.
Doing so revealed a host of new species, including emberbloom, sunfire dandelion, ghostwood sapling, gloomspore, and red rustfern, then finally he found something called chokra. It was an orange plant with broad, jagged-edged leaves, and had a thick stem that Max grabbed a hold of. With a tug, he yanked the whole thing out of the ground and stuck it into a free slot in his inventory.
As he raced back to the camp, he noticed he had lost another 3 HP while he had been searching. He tried to suppress the panic that was getting more difficult to ignore as every 30 seconds ticked by.
Reaching the campsite once again, Max checked the discarded canteens for water. One of them was empty, but another two were half full. He poured a small measure from one of them into the alembic, and wasted no time in plucking all the ingredients from his inventory. He threw the majority of them into a small mortar and pestle that was sitting on the camp’s only desk, then he separated the chokra root from its stem and leaves, and added that to the mix.
-1 HP
Like a lunatic, he began pounding away at the flowers, herbs, and root, bits flying everywhere, and after losing another 4 HP, he finally had a coarse paste.
He tipped the paste into the alembic, and gave it a quick shake to combine it with the water, then glanced at the campers’ old fire. He had to get it going again.
The first thing he did was gather a bunch of dry leaves from the outskirts of the camp and bundle them up where the fire used to be, then he located a load of firewood that the campers had seemingly gathered some time ago and had stored in one corner of the camp. He transported several of the logs close to the firepit, and then lastly, he took the flint and the knife he had spotted in the trunks he had searched earlier, and began hacking at the flint wildly over the dry leaves. It took a few sparks to catch, but when it did, the kindling whooshed into a bright ball of flame.
-1 HP
Carefully, Max blew on it to make it glow even more, and when it was a substantial fireball, he began placing some of the smaller sticks of firewood on top in a pyramid shape.
As the fire ate into the wood and began growing, Max added larger, thicker logs to the pile until he had a full campfire roaring away in front of him.
Now he needed to safely get the alembic suspended above it.
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Mercifully, the campers already had the right gear for doing so, as they had clearly been brewing potions themselves; tucked away under the desk was a metal tripod with a hook at its peak.
-1 HP
Max grabbed the tripod and placed it above the fire, then he hung the alembic from the hook.
Now he just needed a bottle for the distilled vapours to drip into and store the antidote. For a brief moment, he considered using the empty water canteen, but he guessed the material was probably flammable, and there seemed to be a holder for a cup or a bottle on one arm of the tripod, so he instead rummaged through more of the various storage containers strewn around the campsite until he found a couple of empty circular glass bottles designed for potion brewing.
-1 HP
He picked up one of the bottles and placed it in the holder, which was positioned directly under the spout of the alembic.
Now he just had to wait. But time was not on his side.
-1 HP
He was at 7 HP, and he had been so busy rushing around to retrieve and prepare everything that he hadn’t realised how ill he was beginning to feel. Waves of nausea were washing over him, and the wound was incredibly hot and irritated.
Trying to ignore the sensations, Max watched and willed the process to move as quickly as possible as the now boiling liquid mixture in the bulbous base of the alembic sent vapours swirling up into the neck.
It didn’t take long before the first droplet landed in the empty bottle, and as it did so, a piece of text appeared above the contraption:
Brewing… 1%
Max glanced up at his health level. He had lost another 2 HP, and was now on just 5 in total.
He was sweating. It felt like the infection was really starting to take hold of him now. He was visibly shaking, and his entire vision seemed to be gaining a red tint.
Brewing… 27%
The distillation process seemed to be happening faster in this world than the laws of chemistry and physics would have allowed in his previous one, but Max realised that may still not be enough. He had worked as quickly as he could have to get the ingredients, get the fire going, and set up everything for the process, but had it all been futile?
-1 HP
“Come on,” Max urged it.
Maybe he had never stood a chance against the infection. Maybe he had wasted his last moments of existence rushing around in desperation when he could have spent it breathing in the fresh air and taking in the natural beauty of the forest.
Brewing… 34%
Everything was now crimson red, and the sound of his pounding heartbeat was deafening in his ears.
-1 HP
Max dared to look at his forearm.
The edges of the wound seemed to be spreading outwards at an alarming rate, devouring the healthy tissue, and he could see the stringworm inside, wriggling about, feasting on him.
“Evil little fuckers,” Max cursed.
Brewing… 47%
Max’s vision was no longer just tinted with red, it was also beginning to distort. Everything had the kind of wavy warp he was used to seeing above tarmac in blistering heat. He could see the distilled liquid slowly filling up the potion bottle, but it was almost as if the glass was wobbling around it, making it difficult to accurately make out how full the bottle was.
-1 HP
Pus oozed from the now gaping, festering wound, dribbling down his skin and dripping onto the dusty surface of the campsite ground, releasing an incredibly noxious odour that made Max’s already churning stomach lurch even further.
Brewing… 97%
Max was desperately fighting not to lose consciousness now. He was also fighting for his sanity. He was beginning to see flashes of faces in the fire; the faces of his coworkers cackling with laughter at his suffering.
“What’s wrong, Max?” the face of his supervisor Brian said with a smirk. “Not pretending to be under the weather again are we? I think you and I are due a little chat in the office about the amount of paid sick leave you’ve already had this year.”
-1 HP
This was it. He had just 1 HP left. This was where his journey in this life, maybe every life, was going to end.
Brewing… 100%
He could barely hear it through the incessant pumping of his blood, but there was a distant notification sound of bubbling liquid accompanied by a pleasant jingle. It was followed by a burst of new text that Max could just about read through his distorted vision:
Potion Brewed!
Parasillin
+2 Alchemy Orbs
With an unsteady hand, Max snatched the bottle from the tripod holder, lifted it to his dry lips, and gulped.
Gulped for his life.