Chapter 41:

Alice skimmed through her code. There were tens of thousands of lines in the AI, but the space-finding program she had made was relatively simple. This was the first time she had looked at it since the whole debacle, and she struggled to see where it had gone wrong.

There really wasn't anything apparent, so she was hesitant to change it at all. However, she still made a few quick changes, removing some of the safeguards she'd put in to avoid getting caught. She made both versions available instead of overwriting the original, just in case the safeguards were the vulnerability the AI had exploited. But she was pretty certain it was a combination of the two programs that had caused the apocalypse.

All her testing with her learning program showed it was a significantly better learning algorithm than the others she had studied. It was revolutionary even, but not this revolutionary. Besides, she had always trained it offline, so it had never gotten out of control. She pulled up a simple text editor and whipped together a script in a few minutes before pulling a thumb drive from her bag and plugging it in. She leaned back as she waited for the files to transfer.

Titus had just about finished the beer in the to-go cup he had been carrying with him since the bar. As he watched what she was doing, he didn't seem to have much comprehension of her actions, but he was curious about the thumb drive.

"What's that?" he asked as she unplugged it and set it on the table before pulling out a second one and repeating the process.

"It's the program. You should be able to plug it into anything on the server, and it's basically a virus. It'll spread itself and the updated program with the parameters I designed as we traveled," Alice said, handing one to him. "In case I'm not able to make it all the way."

Titus grimaced. "How long will it take? How long do we need to leave the drive in, at least?"

Alice raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, you should leave the drive in for as long as you can, but you could probably move it after a few seconds. It's not that much to transfer. But as for how long it takes to ramp up... Well, the current thing took a couple of hours before it hit the tipping point, and it started to jump beyond the boundaries I had set for it. Once it started doing that, it was almost instant. I removed a lot of the safeguards in the space-finding program, but I don't know how much that will help. I think it should take only a couple of minutes."

"You removed the safeguards?" Titus said. "That doesn't sound very... safe."

Alice wasn't sure if he was trying to make a joke or was honestly concerned about the danger. She tapped the thumb drive against the edge of the table.

"This is the computer science equivalent of a thermonuclear device," she said.

"And you took the safeguards off?" Titus clarified, incredulity on his face.

Alice sighed, rubbing her forehead, trying to figure out a good analogy. "If this is a nuke," she said, holding up the thumb drive, "we already launched one a couple of days ago. We're basically firing a nuke at a nuke that's already launched. We threw safety out the window days ago."

"Fair enough," Titus said with a snort as he slipped the thumb drive into his inventory.

***

Right at the appointed time, the NPC lady came and led Alice away. Titus watched as his newest companion followed her into the back room. His class didn't start for another fifteen minutes, and he drummed his fingers on the table, nervous about what was happening.

It wasn't so much taking a class, but seeing Alice out of his sight was weird. Over the last few days, they had been inseparable. The only time he hadn't had his eyes on her was when she was just around the corner in a tent or going to the bathroom. But, well, he had spent a decent amount of time working as a bodyguard and knew this was probably the most dangerous she had been at any given point. Even when they were in fights, she was probably safer than this. But he had to trust the System would play by its own rules. It was the only way they had a change.

This was a System-run shop, sort of, and it could probably smite them at any point. Still, this would be a lot more dangerous if there were other players around.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

If other people were in the Guild Hall, he might have insisted on them both learning enchanting and alchemy. But as it was, he probably wouldn't make a very good enchanter. He looked at the brochure and just didn't click with it.

In an effort to distract himself, Titus pulled up his inventory and smiled at all the things he had been picking up. Luckily, he had thought about grabbing the keg of beer he liked from the place they had just left, but he didn't pour himself another glass yet. There hadn't been enough space to store cups as well. He was starting to get near his limit, but luckily a keg only took up one slot. If he picked up glasses for the beer, each glass would take up a slot, and he only had forty slots.

He looked at the items hovering in front of him in a neat grid. Examining some of the monster corpses, he noticed he didn't have to take out the entire thing all at once. For example, he could remove just the eye of one of the velociraptors or one of the antennae of the ants they had picked up as they fled.

It was certainly convenient that if you stored a corpse, you could pull out just bits of it. It only took up one slot, too, which was nice. And it seemed that alchemy might be why that was the case.

The rest of the stuff... Well, he tossed out some bits of garbage they had picked up. For example, his backpack was no longer useful. He still kept a small day bag available, but he would need to get rid of some of the other stuff to make more space. He had two changes of clothes with him and Alice. He resisted looking at the details listed in Alice's clothes. There was just too much information about any piece.

Sometimes, the information was useful. He could see that the enchantment on his pilum was only an F-grade enchantment, even though the item was marketed for E grades. The shovel-spear was actually classified as a spear. He had spent enough time sharpening it that the blade was quite worn down, which was rather extreme as simply sharpening the edge of a shovel shouldn't have done that much damage. But if he checked it, its durability rating was quite low.

Titus wasn't exactly sure how this was calculated, but he knew he would probably need a different main weapon. The pilum was nice, but it was really useful only for throwing. He could stab with it, but it just wasn't what the thing was for. His ax and knives—his many, many knives—were in decent shape, though. Still, once they had taken care of these lessons, he'd probably go back to the shop and see if they could get better weapons. Alice maybe would need a wand of some sort.

They had plenty of food and water and a few other improvised weapons. Some clubs he had picked up would have to go as well. There was no need for a nightstick when he could just carry more swords or something.

Titus blinked to close the inventory as the NPC lady came back to his table.

"The upcoming lesson is starting, sir."

Titus nodded and stood up, pulling the empty travel cup he was using to drink his beer back into his inventory, and followed her through the back room. They went past one door that was closed before going into a room. Titus hoped that Alice was in that room, as he could see flickering lights of some sort of screen under the door.

In the room in front of him, there were six placements of what looked like lab counters, and on each one of those was a cauldron. Facing them across the room was a giant flat screen with an elderly-looking man with pointed ears and red eyes blinking every couple of seconds. As she left, the NPC lady closed the door, and Titus picked one of the center cauldrons to stand in front of.

"Is this on?" The man said.

Titus nodded. "Yes, I can hear you."

"I said, is this on?"

"Yes. It's on," a voice came from the speakers, and Titus realized he was watching a recording. It was simply a training video. "Welcome to Intro to Alchemy," the recording said and launched into the spiel.

Titus followed along with no problem. Whenever it came to the point where he needed to pick up ingredients, the drawers underneath the lab desk were clearly labeled with what parts. The first step was soaking parts in water. This was done quickly, sometimes for their current potion, but many times, depending on the parts, it would need to be soaked for much longer. Titus piled in the ingredients after they were done soaking for a few minutes. He heated up the cauldron and mashed the ingredients together, heating just under boiling.

After that, they separated out using other pieces of equipment. Then they started boiling the remaining liquid and adding in some other ingredients. After the concoction cooled down, it was transferred to a separate tank where some crushed mana was added. The recording said that sometimes this would take days or weeks, but the fermentation vat provided by the school sped that up.

Titus held down the fast-forward button and watched as the liquid changed color. Now, it would sit. Sometimes, a batch of potions like this could be stored in bulk for some time. Sometimes, it needed to be packaged. Titus picked out several vials from the drawer and slowly, from the tank, filled each one until he had six vials of shimmering blue liquid in front of him. Titus frowned at the lesser, inferior quality of mana potions he had made but still slipped them into his inventory. Luckily, they stacked up to ten and didn't take up too much space. He would tell Alice about them and see how much they restored.

Congratulations on your brewing success. Alchemy has now been added to your profession’s tab.

Titus left the desk, thinking the steps were oddly familiar. It was almost like he was making beer.