The group decided to head into the healing hall after breakfast. They figured it'd be a chance to help out and to ask the others how they handled Floor Three.

There weren't any adventurers there in the early morning. Most folks didn't stay overnight in the dungeon. Those that do know what they are doing enough that they aren't being hauled out.

Most of the goblins sat and read. A few of the older ones that Trillia recognized were teaching the newly spawned goblins how to read. Evidently, it wasn't something Red River could pop them out with the knowledge of.

Gobbinz sat at a table across from Tim. The two were looking down at a square piece of wood with a pattern of squares on top. Trillia wandered over and sat next to the table, looking down at it. "What's this?"

Gobbinz glanced over at her briefly before turning his attention back to the game. "Father says it's a game called Chess. Apparently, he used to watch Queen Alliyah and her husband play it. Its purpose is to help us think about things beyond what's immediately in front of us."

Trillia nodded as she watched the two move pieces back and forth. Gobbinz took the time to explain the game to her, and as she watched them play, she could see the use. You had to focus on every piece as an individual but also as a collective.

The goblins weren't permitted to give a lot of tips or hints anymore concerning the dungeon. Red River wanted the adventurers to discuss things with one another instead.

An hour or so passed, and still no adventurers, the group began to get restless. Trillia kept staring at the game. Gobbinz grinned at Tim, moved a piece, and said checkmate. Tim threw his hands up with a grumble, and the two began to reset the board.

Trillia glanced over at her companions. "I think...I have an idea."

The group looked at her oddly. Trillia stood and walked over to where they had been chatting with a couple of the healing goblins. "We're trying to think of a solution to fight the sharks or make ourselves better in the water, right?"

Nods all around.

"Why don't I make a different type of potion? One that, instead of giving us gills or the ability to breathe underwater, takes it away." The group looked at her as if she had grown a second head. The goblins stared at her in a different light, though. No doubt Red River was saying something to them about her idea or perhaps musing out loud. The dungeon did that a lot, apparently, according to Gobbinz.

Speaking of. The Dungeon's Chief Diplomat walked over with a chuckle. "Father says that's an absolutely absurd idea, and he'd love to see it in action. He has no idea if it will work, and if it does, how it will affect the sharks."

Trillia nodded and stood. "You guys stay here to gather more information! I'm going to go try to brew that potion!" With that, she darted off out of the dungeon. With a word to Arlyss, she was standing in his lab. The portal closed behind her.

"I thought it was a clever idea, personally. Not something I would have thought to do." Arlyss motioned to a crystalline alchemy lab. Most of the ingredients she needed were in her bags. She walked over to the table and got started.

"I'll need something to test it on. That's going to be difficult."

Arlyss chuckled and stood next to her, looking down at her journal with all her notes. "I can just open a portal to the ocean, and you can grab a fish or three. It's not a problem. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Trillia shook her head as she began crushing an herb. Her left arm had wrapped around the mortar while her right pushed the pestle into the herbs with a little twist to grind them. "Just letting me use this lab and getting me some fish to test it on will be plenty of help."

Arlyss gave her a nod and continued to watch.

One hour gave way to six. Trillia flopped down on a nearby chair and let out a long sigh. Three dozen failed attempts, one of which caused the water to be sucked into the flask when the contents of the flask were exposed to water, then explode outward in red ice. She kept that recipe in her journal as well.

She finally had one that took a fish's ability to breathe underwater. When it was pulled up into the air, it was fine, but when it was pushed underwater, it slowly began to suffocate. The effects were easily dispelled and only lasted an hour. But an hour without the ability to breathe should be plenty.

Alryss had been going through some of her failed experiments, testing each in various ways. She wrote down every step of their creation process just in case any one of them had been correct. Arlyss was running them through a series of tests to see if they had any other uses.

One such test produced results he approved of. Setting the flask and its recipe on the table in front of her. "This changes the internal structure of a biological creature into iron."

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She looked up at him in confusion. "In other words. It will turn your insides into iron. It's very brief, maybe fifteen seconds. Most creatures will die in that time or be in extremely bad condition when the effects end. It might be worth noting down, just in case you ever need to kill something in a gruesome fashion."

Trillia grabbed the flask and recipe and stared at it. "How did I produce this? It has almost identical ingredients to everything else. Just when I think I have a handle on alchemy, I produce this absolute failure of a potion."

Arlyss sat next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't feel bad. You're trying to create an entirely new potion. Or a potion that you've never seen before, at least, from scratch without any notes. Besides, this wasn't a failure. It's a brutally effective potion you can use to harm an enemy. That ice one also has some very dangerous applications. Just toss that into a shark's mouth, and when it bites down, it's dead."

Trillia gave him a little nod before she stretched and yawned. "Thank you for letting me use the lab. I should get back. It's been hours, and they are probably worried." She wrote down the iron stomach recipe, stood, and gave him a hug. He was happy to open a portal for her to return and promised if he found any other interesting results from her failed experiments, that he would let her know.

As she stepped out, she was surprised to see that it led to the tent that she and Amelia shared. The group was there having lunch. Perfect timing, as far as she was concerned.

The group all turned to her with expectant looks on their faces. "So?" Amelia prompted.

"I made a potion that removes gills. It should work on the sharks. I made a set of six. I also accidentally created a potion that pulls in water and explodes in ice. That should also be effective against them. I made six of those as well. But I'm completely out of alchemy ingredients. I'll need to move slowly next time we delve so that I can gather supplies. I may also need to make a run out of town. If you all want to help, that would be most excellent."

The group nodded. Trillia then motioned to them as she hugged a bowl to herself and began shoveling soup into her mouth. Amelia wore a little grin. "Well. No ideas that were quite as absurd as taking away their ability to breathe. But we did get some information. Apparently, the sharks we are facing are different than their not-dungeon counterparts. These ones have pretty bad eyesight and rely heavily on scent. I guess the real thing has good eyesight. Anyway, what most people do is catch a bunch of smaller prey fish and grind them up. Whenever they see a shark, they dump a bag of what they call chum into the water."

Trillia tilted her head in confusion. Layla spoke up. "Basically, the more blood that's in the water that isn't ours, the better. The Dungeon won't confirm it, but a lot of delvers think that in addition to water mana, the sharks can also manipulate blood in some way. So they use our open wounds to track us in the clouds of blood that we can't see through."

Trillia nodded at that. "In other words, if we bring in other types of blood, it will set up decoys. This way, we can focus on killing the sharks instead of defense."

"We were going to have lunch, and if you were back, go ahead and delve again today. If you weren't, we figured we'd still delve anyway and see how we did without our primary source of damage. It's something else we wanted to discuss with you." As Malor stopped speaking, he lifted his bowl to his lips and took a big drink of broth.

Frederick continued for him. "We want to test everyone in different roles. We discussed it with Gobbinz, and he discussed it with Red River and the Hybrids. It will let them test different weapon loadouts against us when we are also testing things. We just sort of went in assuming that Layla and I would be the front line and everyone else would fall into line. We want to test other party formations and see how things feel."

Trillia nodded at that. Swallowing her soup before responding. "That sounds like a good idea. Maybe we can find something that works better. If not, we know the current formation can at least get us to Floor Three. Let's see how our newfound plans do against the sharks first. If we don't do significantly better, we can always try new formations."

The group all agreed and prepared to go down for another delve.

Trillia pulled up her notifications over the past couple of weeks. Mostly curious to see how her [Alchemist] levels were doing.

Species: [Mortal]; [Orc] Level 75 -> Level 83

Subspecies: [Mana-Infused Orc-Adolescent:Runt] Level 70 -> Level 74

Class: [Alchemist] Level 7 -> Level 14

[Alchemist]

Active Skills:

Splash Potion (In Use)

Split Potion (In Use)

Hybrid Potion (In Use)

Repurpose Ingredients

Passive Skills:

Alchemical Encyclopedia (Mastery)

Eye For Ingredients (In Use)

Rapid Brew

Stabilize Concoction

She frowned a bit that [Mana Sage] hadn't leveled at all. The only things that gave it any experience were the hybrids and the sharks. Neither of which gave the class much push towards a new level. She wondered why it was so hampered all of a sudden.

Taking a deep breath, she dove into the other skills that she had been mostly ignoring during her testing.

Repurpose Ingredients:

This skill allows an Alchemist to shift most ingredients in a number of steps equal to the level of this skill. In easy-to-understand terms, most ingredients have a polar opposite. An herb that grants fire resistance can be converted into an herb that grants cold resistance if its structure is altered by 27 steps. This skill has a maximum level of 20.

Trillia read that skill a couple of times. She didn't bother activating it right now. It was a skill she'd have to ask Marg about.

Rapid Brew:

This skill makes the alchemical process happen faster (5% per level of this skill). If your mana has touched or been incorporated into the alchemical process in any way.

Straight forward. Trillia liked it and activated it immediately. Trillia also silently berated herself for not looking through these skills before. Some of them may have helped her experiments.

Stabilize Concoction:

Any alchemical process that is using your mana has a (5% per level) lower chance of failing. In addition. At levels 5, 10, 15, and 20 of this skill, alchemical processes that are using your mana can handle one more ingredient before destabilizing and risking an explosion.

Another skill she activated immediately. She finished her soup, stood, and began getting ready with the others. The group headed off toward the dungeon to deal with a shark problem.