Eik flew to his feet with a sharp gasp. His heart was racing away like a hammer as he frantically scanned the room. It was quiet. It was dry. This was not the lake in that strange world. He was back in his apartment in headquarters.
Allowing himself several deep breaths, he let the smoky white aura flow to the surface and cover his skin. Feeling that control was calming.
With so much in his life being a whirl of total chaos recently, having that to hold on to provided a sense of security that he really needed right now.
Judging by the intensity of the light streaming through the large window next to his bed, the several hours inside the other world hadn’t even amounted to half an hour out here. There was still a bit of time left before he had to meet up with the others. They were going out to eat together as they so often did.
With how much he had improved with the multiversal matter he thought he might be able to squeeze in a few successful alchemical creations before leaving. He retrieved the ingredients from what essentially a refrigeration closet created with magic and went to the table where the cauldron stood waiting.
The mix for the pain killer was routine at this point so he raced through it and began to tentatively insert energy. He recalled the many times he had failed, the ingredients exploding up into his face, but confidence filled his actions now.
In less that half a minute he had a finished product ready to be molded into wax balls for consumption. He had no illusions about the potency of the drug but just the fact that he could create it so easily now felt great. He couldn’t wait to test it out. Could he persuade Heath to stub his toe on purpose?
Pulling out the recipe book from his rucksack of holding, he set it against the backrest of a chair to keep it open. With care he followed each step to mix. He’d been back to replenish his stock at the plant breeder a few times already because he was burning through them when practicing.
Mikla had told him that ingredients would get more and more esoteric and difficult to work with as he advanced, but for now it was rudimentary. Later creations would be able to increase power and senses, or grant temporary buffs or permanent boosts. There was a world to explore and he would climb to the top.
In fact, he had bought ingredients for a third concoction that he hadn’t told Mikla or anybody else about.
He still hadn’t quite managed to convince himself to try for the recipe but whenever he thought of a good reason to refrain, he remembered the people of Earth facing the Gohkamorians, the Forest leadership and Boulder Fist Gary plotting against them, and the countless other unknown threats.
But first up was the second recipe.
Kiq’s Temper: a loyal companion for any avid adventurer, explorer, traveler, or general lover of the great outdoors, it said. The creation process of this particular item was… dangerous, in a way.
To begin with, the mixture itself was unstable and could, if handled incorrectly, react explosively and spew moderately strong acid into the face of the alchemist.
According to the book, it was supposed to function as a strong insect repellent, but even if one managed to keep it from exploding, bungling the multiversal matter influence and overstimulating the ingredients could produce a product that attracted insect rather than repelling them.
The two pages in the recipe book dedicated to Kiq’s Temper also contained some pretty gnarly anecdotes of explorers getting swarmed by bloodsucking arthropods because they’d bought a faulty item from a shitty alchemist. Unskilled and careless production had cost more than a few people their lives.
Eik held his breath as he added the root sap from a plant with acidic properties. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead as the introduction caused the mix to sizzle quietly. Was it supposed to do that?
The chair skittered across the floor and crashed into the bare wall behind him as he flung himself back, covering his face with his hands. With his superhuman hearing he could just barely hear the fizz from where he stood a few paces away.
Within seconds it faded to nothing, leaving him standing there cowering. He cleared his throat and inched closer to the cauldron little by little, peering into it. Nothing was happening. An involuntary sigh escaped him as he sat back down.
He sat back down and held his hands close to the ingredients and let the energy flow into and through them. Unlike the inert matter in the recipe for the pain killing drug, his invasion now was met with mild resistance.
Starting with the pain killer had been a good choice. Before he’d gotten this good at controlling the energy there would have been absolutely no way that he would have been capable of keeping it stable through the opposition.
With caution he pushed his energy in and tried to calm the matter rushing around inside. It pushed back with abandon, knocking away any attempt to calm it down. He wasn’t sure how to handle it. The instructions just said that he had to ease it into serenity in order for it to settle down enough to complete the recipe.
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But more than anything it just felt like slapping a raw cut of steak with a cold prying pan. Completely fruitless. It just kept bouncing his attempts back like a trampoline. Fingers squeezing his trouser leg tightly, he redoubled his efforts and changed his approach from coercion to straight takeover.
If the multiversal matter wasn’t going to be persuaded then it would have to be forced.
Instead of the thin string he had tried to poke at it with thus far, he expanded the cover of his energy and let it envelop the mixture like a net. Anywhere it flared up he would push it back down until he slowly began to feel a reduction in the agitation.
After two and a half minutes it had completely settled down and he felt no activity besides a calm hum that was barely noticeable.
Eik stuck his nose into the cauldron and risked a sniff. It seemed okay. He wrapped it in a cloth and squeezed the juice into a couple of potion bottles and put in stoppers.
Sitting back in the chair he eyed the ingredients for the the third attempt which he had already laid out in advance. Confident Eik from thirty minutes ago had wanted to make sure that future Eik went through with it even if he lost a bit of that confidence.
He flipped through the pages of the recipe book until he was about seventy percent through and rested the spine against the back of the chair again. It probably wasn’t a good idea to try this one yet, but here he was, making another questionable decision. He had to take a few risks to get ahead. It just didn’t feel like there was any way around that.
He read over the page again.
“Potion of Mighty Strength class 1 — Perfect for combat against both man and beast, manual labor, or to impress the girl next door.
Potion of Mighty Strength class 1 is recommended for E-rank for best effect. Suitable for E-rank and above. Significant effect for any person at D-rank or above is not guaranteed.
The imbiber of a class 1 Potion of Mighty Strength will find power rushing through their body like fire. Punches and weapon attacks will hit harder, and skin, bones, and muscles will become more durable against damage. Mobility and other aspects of physical prowess might be indirectly affected by the effect of Potion of Mighty Strength class 1, either negatively or positively depending on factors such as physicality and abilities.
Depending on various circumstances and abilities, the effect of Potion of Mighty Strength class 1 can last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.
The recipe for Potion of Mighty Strength class 1 is recommended for alchemists with at least a couple of years of experience and a skilled instructor to guide them through the process in the beginning.
Potions that buffed base stats had been dismissed as an impossibility on Earth. Nobody had ever found a way to create one, but not for the lack of trying.
If Eik could succeed in creating this Potion of Mighty Strength not only would he be able to kick off the establishment of the most profitable drug business in Forest, he would also be able to make an actual difference in the fight against the monster horde deployed by the Gohkamorians.
A drug that could increase the survivability of low-rankers like that would possibly be the most invaluable “discovery” their post apocalyptic society would have thus far. He could save the lives of many people with something like this.
The ingredient phase was simple. Simpler than any of the other two, but apparently it was easy to mistakenly overstimulate the multiversal matter in the mixture to the point where it acted out dangerously.
He tried the same tactic as he had with Kiq’s Temper. A thin tendril of smoky, white energy slithered out from Eik’s hands and into the suspiciously calm and almost transparent aura surrounding the ingredients. Unlike his white, the aura of the Potion of Mighty Strength class one was a murky purple so dark that it trended toward black toward the core.
He froze when it seemed to shy away from his approach only to rush back up toward him like a skittish animal. After a few seconds he pushed further in, looking for something to hang onto while he worked the energy to his liking.
Again, he really wasn’t sure exactly what he had to do to get this crap to work. So the only thing he could do was wiggle around in there until something gave him a hint. The strangely calm aura didn’t seem to respond much to his attempt to influence it, so he let his energy slowly spread out through the mixture.
Everything seemed to be going surprisingly well until the purple vitality abruptly blazed up the tendril connected to his hand like a flame running along a trail of spilled gasoline. The moment it made contact with his skin, unimaginable agony erupted in the tip of his finger.
At first it stayed there, as if someone had poked him with a white-hot needle. He gripped his hand with the other as his heart rate skyrocketed. Blood rushed into his digits as the cells of his body went into a state of panic.
Eik groaned in pain but it soon turned into a full blown howl of anguish. Pink skin became horribly discolored with purple, almost to the point of looking gangrenous. It traveled slowly, but it was traveling. Within thirty seconds the dark corruption had made its way halfway up his second knuckle, spreading the pain but keeping the intensity at an unbearable level.
Tears pushed free from his eyes. He didn’t know what to do. The foreign rot was invading his system. After another ten seconds he began to regain some presence of mind — enough to attempt to wrestle the corruption down.
But it wasn’t enough. While his control might be… somewhat adequate, or not, who the hell knew, the strength of his energy most certainly wasn’t up to par for this kind of spiritual mumbo jumbo combat.
Even though he put his everything into standing against it, it simply marched forward like he wasn’t even there. When it spread to the rest of his fingers and reached his wrist the throbbing began, running up and down his body like shock waves. It just kept climbing up his arm unrelentingly.
“Shit, shit, shit!” he screamed and fell to his knees, clutching his elbow, hoping that even the smallest bit of pressure might slow it down just a little. Why the hell weren’t his friends coming for him? And why the hell had he taken this stupid ass risk?
What happened when the purple decay reached his organs? His heart? What about his brain? Could it? Frantic thoughts dominated by the dread of death bounced around inside his head as it seeped underneath his hand on the elbow as if it wasn’t there. Why didn’t anything work?
His whole arm was purple at this point and battering the white energy against it did diddly-squat against it.
As it reached his shoulder, consciousness began to drift and he slumped against the leg of the table and then onto the floor. His eyelids grew heavy and the certainty that he was going to die overwhelmed his mind.
Mentally, he reached out for anything that could help and as if answering, a certain, luminescent hue of blue tugged at his mind.