Lucas spent the next few days learning the ins and outs of his system. Whenever he wasn’t mixing potions and searching through reagents with Heisenburgle, he researched this strange topic. Every afternoon, he would haunt the libraries, looking through books for so much as a mention, and every morning after he finished in the lab, he would lay awake in bed, paging through the interface as he looked for some sort of answer.
He found a few things. He figured out that almost anything could be zoomed in on, just by focusing on it hard enough. He found a list skill list that seemed to focus almost exclusively on alchemical skills, but there were a few weapon skills in there, too, for no reason in particular.
No matter how much he learned, though, he couldn’t quite bring himself to spend the points on anything. He knew he should, of course, but it wasn’t like he needed anything just now, and he couldn’t help but feel like he might need them for something later. Hell, for all he knew, some new menu might pop up at random with a list of superpowers for three points.
One of the main reasons he couldn’t make himself use the things, though, was that he had no idea how to get more.
Well, that wasn't exactly right. If he leveled up, he'd get more, but there wasn't a really easy way to do that, exactly. There was very little information on leveling up so far. He had no idea how to generate experience points, not reliably, anyway. He could make it go up sometimes when he did alchemical stuff, but it was erratic. He needed something that was more of a sure thing, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get that by going out and killing goblins and giant spiders, even if they’d let him out of the compound.
None of that was the most frustrating part, though. He could accept that it would give him a few experience points for properly pulverizing this herb but not that one and that he’d get a little pop-up letting him know he’d received a bonus for reading this tome, but not that one. What he couldn’t accept was that every time he made Blue or any other off-brand potion of his own design, he received a condescending error message. It just sucked the joy right out of brewing shit now that a second Heisenburgle had set up shop in his head, and the two of them were taking turns telling Lucas just how much he sucked.
I’m sorry. This isn’t a proper recipe. +10 exp.
You tried hard, but this effort was wasted. +10 exp.
Maybe you should check your formula again. +10 exp.
Each time, the potion he made was undoubtedly correct, but each time, his system let him know he was a failure anyway. Oh, if he used one of the recipes in Heisenburgle’s books, it would reward him with a pat on the head and a bump of experience, but if he did something himself, even something that worked out, the system told him what a naughty boy he was.
“Damnit,” he grumbled under his breath as he made another batch of Blue only to get another too bad, so sad pop-up. “It says mana intoxication right there!”
“Mana intoxication?” Heisenburgle asked. “Where?”
“Oh, um, in the book I was reading earlier,” Lucas lied quickly as he realized he’d gotten aggravated enough to speak in a tone where the gnome could hear him.
“What is it, anyway,” Lucas asked as the gnome eyed him suspiciously. “Mana intoxication, I mean.”
He held his breath as Heisenburgle regarded him coolly; the gnome could obviously sense that something wasn’t adding up. However, the one thing he couldn’t resist was explaining a concept in his smug and superior way. Suspicion warred with pride for a moment before the gnome finally said. “It's a dangerous condition that mages can suffer from for a variety of reasons. Most often, it happens if they drink too many mana potions or similar elixirs.”
“Oh?” Lucas asked, pretending to be more interested in the wizened gnome caps than he was in the gnome that was standing next to him. “And what’s so dangerous about it? Heartburn? Indigestion? Should they call their doctor if it lasts longer than four hours?”
“What? No!” Heisenburgle scowled. “If you are exposed to too much magic, your essence inverts, and it starts to burn away instead of regenerate.”
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“Sounds painful,” Lucas said, wondering how any of that tied in with the high euphoria value of his most popular potion.
“It’s quite the opposite, actually,” Heisenburgle answered smugly. “In the same way that someone dying of hypothermia in a blizzard suddenly feels so hot that they remove their cloak. The mage is burning his soul too hot, and while they kill themselves, I’m told it feels quite pleasant.”
“I mean…” Lucas said. “I guess I’m glad I can’t use any magic.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Heisenburgle answered with a wave of his hand. “Everyone can do magic with some practice. It's not as if It's anywhere near as complex as alchemy, after all. Anyway, a few hours of rest, and they’re just fine. Mana intoxication is a problem, but it’s rarely a life-threatening one.”
Lucas wasn’t sure how he felt about that information. It finally put a missing piece into his puzzle, but that missing piece informed him that Blue was even more evil than he thought it was. Up until now, he’d thought that he was just making some bullshit potion that happened to also get you high. Now he found out he was making something that burned your mana to actually make you high. It was a revelation that somehow made him feel even more slimy.
As they tried a series of new formulas that ultimately ended in failure, Lucas wished, not for the first time, that he’d never stumbled across the recipe. He didn’t know what he’d be doing with his life, of course, but he doubted it would be worse than what he was doing now.
Once they were done, just before sunrise, Lucas went back to his room and hit the books once more. This time, he added another term to his list of things to keep an eye out for: mana intoxication.
A couple of hours later, just before he planned to go to bed, he was scared half out of his skin by a knock on the window. For a moment, he thought it was an assassin or that the Whisperers had tracked him down again. Instead, it was just a little bird. He almost shooed it away until he saw a little message tied to its leg. That's when he realized it was from Danaria.
He hastily opened the window, and the thing came in. It was a wild songbird, but even so, it acted like a tame bird as it hopped up onto his hand. When he felt how cold the bird was, he felt bad for it, but as he stroked it, he realized how much colder the person sending it here must be, and he looked out the window at the walls and the snowy woods beyond them. Somewhere, she was out there, and she’d been waiting for god knew how long to make sure he got this. It made him feel more than a little bad.
“I’m sorry this is taking so long,” he whispered to the tiny creature before taking the message. “I’d speed it up if I could; maybe we should stop with the notes for a while. With the weather, we—”
The bird squealed angrily at him, but it made no move to fly out the window. That told him that it wasn’t that the little thing had broken free of Danaria’s grip and that, instead, she was making it clear that she had no intentions of abandoning him. That was cute in its own way, and he smiled.
“Alright. But only once a week then, until it warms up,” he said finally, stroking the bird. “I don’t want you getting sick, alright?”
At this, the bird chirped more sweetly, and it lingered for another minute or two before it flew out the window. It was only when it was gone that Lucas wondered if he should have stroked the bird’s feathers. After all, if Danaira could see through its eyes and hear through its ears, then she could probably feel through its skin, which meant that he’d been stroking her hair and… well, that didn’t bear too much thinking about. He’d try to be more circumspect on her next visit.
The note was a tiny little ribbon-wrapped cylinder that had been tied to the bird’s leg, and Lucas wondered if that was how he should send messages from now on. He’d tried to make the paper big enough that the thing could grab it in its beak, but maybe that was a wrong move. Danrira’s message was just big enough for one line of text, which was written in a single long sentence in a flowing, feminine hand.
‘Come home soon, Lucas. Adin is up to something, and Kar’gandin says we’re running low on you-know-what. And I miss you. Danaraia.’
Lucas sighed and rolled his eyes as he read the names she’d listed, but he was smiling, too. If this was a tapped cell line, she would have just gotten all of them thrown away for a long time. That wasn’t really a danger just now, but it was a reminder that she didn’t really have a criminal bone in her body.
“What in the hell is his problem now,” Lucas grumbled. The last thing he needed was Adin fucking shit up while he was stuck in here. “No, the better question is, how am I going to get out of here on parole to handle it.”
Parole. He lay back in bed and chuckled at that. If Blackgate was a prison, then it was the nicest prison he’d probably ever be in. It was certainly nicer than the Prince’s dungeon and the county lock-up, where he’d spent a few weeks on and off over the years.
“So it’s not a prison, then,” he told himself. “And if it’s not a prison, then that means I don’t have to stay.”
He wasn’t so sure about that, of course, but the logic certainly followed. The guards wouldn’t let him out with Heisenburgle’s say so, of course, but if that’s all it took, well, then he was sure he could find a way to sweet talk the gnome. After all, he was pretty sure that despite the Alchemist’s trepidation, he would be willing to do anything to make that magical elven potion. It was some sort of holy grail to the man, and Lucas could see the way his eyes sparkled every time he mentioned it.