The prisoner took the potion greedily enough and drank the does he was given deeply. He seemed to enjoy the high, too and was out in seconds with a faint smile on his lips. It wasn’t until the following day that Lucas found out the man died.

“Dead?” he asked when Hisenburgle revealed the news in a tone that was so bland he might have been talking about the weather. “How?”

“He went berserk, according to the guards,” the gnome answered with a shrug, “Tried to kill the other two men in his cell and then beat himself bloody against the bars until men with swords put him down.”

“Tried to kill his cellmates, or tried to eat them?” Lucas asked, remembering the side effect he’d seen on the vampire blood. “Because it sounds like—”

“I know what it sounds like, and that’s a well-known side effect of that ingredient, which is why it’s used so rarely in reputable potions, but it had to be tried,” Heisenburgle answered, cutting Lucas off. “Suffice to say, the corpse was not reactive to sunlight but will be burned instead of buried, just in case.”

Lucas regarded the man like an alien as they got started with their business. He’d alternated between prideful and unfeeling over the entirety for the short time that Lucas had known him, but this was a new low. The gnome had just killed someone and…

No, we killed someone, he corrected himself. I was standing there the whole time, and I didn’t exactly try to stop it. He had, actually. He’d told Heisenburgle not to do it, but he could certainly have done more. He would have done more if it had been someone he cared about. Just a junkie on death row? Well, he didn’t exactly get worked up about that sort of thing. The miserable bastard had died doing what he loved, and that was that.

Lucas did stop going down into the basement to see the results after that, though. In the week that followed, they mixed another 87 varieties of Blue, but most of the time, it was anything but blue. In that time, he saw more black and gray potions than he could count, along with a number of greens and purples. There was even a red one that caught fire, and Lucas had to toss it outside in the snowy courtyard before it burst into flames.

Some of the toxic mixtures had hilarious side effects. A few caused paranoia, and others caused excessive flatulence. Loss of taste was another common note to read on the pop-ups, along with temporary blindness; one even said it would cause hair loss. However, most of them just used words that were synonyms for dead. Poisonous. Toxic. Corrupted. Extremely hazardous. Maybe Hura’gh could survive one or two of those, but a human? Good fucking luck.

The longer they tried it Heisenburgle’s way, the worse it got. In the end, only 6 of the potions were tested on live subjects. Two died, 2 were crippled, and two seemed to be fine. That was cold comfort for Lucas, and it was only when Heisenburgle had tried adding all of his favorite poisons to the mix that he finally said, “Okay, Mister Blue, you seem to think you know better. What should we do next?”

“I say we start with the easy stuff. Distillation. Concentration and a dash of perfectionism,” he said, noting that even if this was the first time that Heisenburgle was willing to listen, it was hardly the first time that Lucas had shared these ideas with the gnome. “We do enough of the easy shit, and maybe we won’t have to do any of the hard shit.”

Heiseburgle grumbled about that, but he didn’t argue too much, and together, the two of them started making small batches with slightly different ratios of the various ingredients and recording the results. Up until now, Lucas had always just mixed everything in equal parts. Usually, that resulted in something with a euphoria of 8 that could be boiled down to a 12. Now he was getting euphoria 9 Blue without trying, and after carefully adjusting the proportions with a number of experiments, they were able to get that to 10 without any additional ingredients.

That was done mostly by reducing the amount of goblin bile by half and increasing the witch grass blossoms by a similar proportion. It turned out it wasn't just poison he needed to get this reaction; it was very specific poison.

That was good news. Not good enough to get them where they wanted to go, of course, but good enough on its own to justify this little side quest he was stuck on. Assuming the Prince didn’t decide to off Lucas when he was done with him, they’d be able to dilute the product going forward by 20%, and no one would be the wiser.

It wasn’t good enough to send him home, though. Even Heisenburgle knew that. So they started boiling things down to see what kinds of gains could be made that way. That caused its own problems, though. Normally, Lucas would just open a window, but here they were shooting for purities above what he would normally be looking for, so they had to stop after a certain point and build a primitive fume hood to allow the vapors to disperse outside.

“I hadn’t considered such an arrangement before,” Heisenburgle said, admiring the finished product as he gave Lucas his first and only complement to date, “But this is excellent work. I will have it implemented in both of my other laboratories as well.”

“You’re welcome,” Lucas said with a smile. It was only fitting that he help the little gray-haired bastard in some way. After all, despite his unhelpful attitude, Heisenburgle had been a great help to Lucas whether he knew it or not. He’d managed to level up his strange system, he was learning a lot about alchemy both theoretically and practically, and he was going to make a whole lot more money doing the same thing as he always did when he finally went back home.

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Eventually, after several weeks of tedious work, they finally pushed the refinements as far as they could go. At this point, the Blue was so pure that it scintillated with little flecks of light long after the aqua-colored swirls had faded into the royal blue background of the potion. Somehow, he doubted this was good enough, though. Heisenburgle didn’t seem to think so either.

Brew of Mana Intoxication (pure, concentrated) (10 doses): Euphoria 15, poison 2, mana regeneration decreased by 250% for 1 hour.

“This will be enough to show the Prince we’ve made progress, at least,” the gnome grumbled as he eyed the small flask of fluid skeptically. “Maybe it will be enough to get in Skylara’s good graces again.”

Lucas tried and failed to remember where he’d heard that name, so instead, he said, “It's better. That shit is twice the strength of anything she got from me before now.”

“Oh? Twice? How would you quantify that exactly?” Heisenburgle asked, looking at Lucas curiously. “The color? The smell? What makes you think that…”

“It's the clarity,” Lucas lied smoothly. The real answer was that she’d probably gotten a taste of euphoria 8 stuff that he sold to the nobles, and this was 15, which made it pretty close to double, but he couldn’t say that. Instead, he answered. “I think that the clearer and the cleaner we get the ratios, the more transparent it becomes.”

“To what end?” Heisenburgle asked.

“Dunno,” Lucas answered with a shrug. “We’ll find out when we get to the end of the road.”

The next few days, they worked on other things. Heisenburgle returned to his work on capturing starlight on moonless nights, and after a few botched attempts, he accepted Lucas’s advice about the need for more mirrors and lenses. “You’re getting close, man,” Lucas explained. “You just need like… more light in one spot, you know? Surface area. And then you have to cover it up before sunrise or moonrise or whatever else.”

“All good ideas,” the gnome agreed.

Beyond that, Lucas didn’t spend much time with him. Instead, he studied in the lower lab, making different potions that he had “learned” according to the little blue boxes that kept popping up from time to time.

These were not the way he would have made a potion to get the same effects, of course. All of them had a bit too much poison for his tastes, but there were definitely some novel effects that he’d never seen before. Potion of Satiation. Lesser Potion of Armor. Potion of Greater Regeneration. Right now, he didn’t care what he was making, though, as long as he was making it perfectly according to the recipe. He had a feeling like that was going to lead somewhere.

Sadly, when he made his first Potion of Greater Sleeplessness, nothing happened. Nothing should happen of course. Until now, he had no reason to believe that anything should happen, but what he’d learned so far was that it was possible that something could happen, even if he didn’t know what.

So, he kept going. He followed the instructions to the letter, even when they were dumb, and made another half a dozen potions. Elixir or Water Breathing. Potion of greater claws. Glitter dust.

Somewhere along the way, he found a book on makeup, and while he didn’t make any of that just now, he set it aside so he could learn what actually went into lipstick and rouge later. For now, he was focused on something more important. He could feel it.

Lucas spent the next few days making potion after potion, certain that he was getting somewhere. Nothing happened for a long time, though, until suddenly it did. He had just finished making a potion of night sight when he felt a tingle pass through him. After that, the messages came in quick succession.

Congratulations! You have made your 10th perfect lesser potion! Bonus experience has been awarded!

Congratulations: You have achieved Alchemist Level 1! You can examine your character sheet to see what advantages that confers you!

“Bonus experience? What is this, a video game? What in the world do I need a character sheet for?” Lucas asked, confused. His confusion didn’t last for very long, though. Suddenly, just like that, as he said those words, a larger blue box popped up with all sorts of information.

Name: Lucas Sharpe Class: Alchemist Level: 1

Strength: 11 Agility: 13 Appearance…

Lucas was still in the midst of understanding these new interface options when he heard a knock on the door to the lab. That disrupted his concentration, sending the whole thing top to the floor in twinkles of light before he could really take it all in. Instead, he sighed loudly.

“Come in,” Lucas yelled. Heisenburgle waddled in after that with a long look on his face. Something was definitely up.

“What’s wrong, man?” Lucas asked with a smirk. “Break another mirror? You know that’s seven years of bad luck.”

When Heisenburgle didn’t snap back and instead stared at Lucas with tight lips, he continued, “Ohh, I get it. The Prince got back to us. The shit’s no good, right? He wants us to boost it more?”

“No, it’s much worse than that,” he said, looking pale. “Skylara, she wants to meet you.”

A chill went through Lucas then. A dragon wanted to meet him. This is not what he’d signed up for.