Chapter 9 - Lab Safety Rules!
Tutorial World #336: Day 1
Doc had felt a strange pressure all around him for a moment. It was like he had quickly dived into the bottom of a pool. As soon as the pressure appeared, though, it was gone and the top of the giant hill had disappeared. Doc and Grizz found themselves in a dark, gloomy space with more trees. These trees were much smaller than the forest below the hill and provided an oppressive canopy that light could hardly penetrate. The darkness of the glade could cause problems for his dungeon dive, but Doc was still excited about the possibilities. A notification popped up in front of his face.
You have entered into Common Ranked Dark Grove Dungeon. This Dungeon has three levels.
Right after that notification, Doc received a new quest.
You have received a Quest!
Quest Name: Dungeon Explorer 1
Quest Description: You have found an unexplored Dungeon! Dungeons are areas with larger concentrations of ambient mana. This extra mana has created a miniature dimension to channel the mana away from becoming supersaturated. The mana is focused on creating challenges and magical items. Dungeons are equally dangerous and profitable due to these extraneous mana conditions. Completing a dungeon successfully can provide great treasures. Unexplored dungeons have no blueprint for completion, though, making them even more dangerous. Complete an unexplored Dungeon.
Success Conditions: Be the first to complete an unexplored Dungeon.
Failure Conditions: None
Difficulty: Medium
Quest Reward: Free Skill Upgrade
Quest Failure Penalty: None
Doc was excited to see that he could benefit from something he had already planned to do anyway. Knowing that this Dungeon was unexplored and therefore more dangerous didn’t deter him in any way. Upgrading a Skill for free would be worth it, especially if he could buy an upgrade for the skill to the next level first. Doc had spent some time looking at his Skills list earlier while he was eating the Chinchillycorn Filet and noticed that each Skill had an option to upgrade. The cost was dependent on the rarity of the Skill. His common ranked skills would cost 100 XP to upgrade to the next level, but his two uncommon Skills, Identify 1 and Moster Resource Pack 1, would both cost 250 XP to upgrade. Upgrading either of the two uncommon Skills to the second level and then the third level for free would be optimal. Seeing what he had looted from the Chinchillycorns, upgrading his loot power seemed like it could provide some incredible resources. Doc was still enjoying the increased dexterity from cooking the chinchillycorn. Doc wasn’t sure what upgrading the Identify 1 Skill would do yet, but information was power. Getting more of it couldn’t be a bad thing.
Doc got one more notification for entering the first level of the dungeon.
The first level of the dungeon is a Crafting Challenge. Using the table and ingredients in front of you, correctly brew an antidote, a health potion, and a mana potion. Failing to make all the potions correctly, you will be exited from the Dungeon for one day.
Doc smiled in relief. Not only was this in his wheelhouse but he already had the Alchemist 1 Skill. If it kicked in at all as the Chef 1 Skill did, he should be able to know if the potions are being made correctly.
Doc looked at the table that was sitting in front of him and Grizz. The table itself was just an old stump that had its top flattened. The stump was at least two meters in diameter with plenty of space. It was laden with different objects that could be used for potion-making. There were glass flasks of different sizes, test tubes, mortar and pestle, and lots of lovely, fresh ingredients lying next to the different tools. Next to the ingredients, a sheet of parchment paper was laid down with explicit instructions on how to create each potion.
“I thought the description said this would be difficult,” Doc said after reading through the notifications and looking at the table filled with what he could only describe as an exciting day’s work. “It is the first level of a common dungeon, I guess. Maybe that means it will ratchet up the difficulty as we move forward through the levels.”
Grizz looked at Doc with incredulous disbelief. What are you thinking? Grizz growled at Doc. You have just jinxed us into oblivion probably! This was going to be a nice start to a Dungeon and now it is probably going to be the last thing that we ever do!
“Pfff,” Doc scoffed at Grizz’s superstition. “That is not how things work. Nothing gets harder or easier just because you reflect on the process beforehand.”
Doc reached for the sheet of instructions to begin the process of using his alchemy Skill for the first time. The writing on the parchment was written in clear English, but it was tiny writing and he wanted to bring it closer to his face for examination. As he touched the parchment he felt a sting in his hand and a new notification popped up.
You have come into contact with Vitality Drain Poison. You have a health loss of 2 HP/minute for the next 4 hours. Your health regen has dropped to 0. Create an antidote to save yourself.
“Well,” Doc said, biting his lip in concern. “This just got a lot less straightforward. Should have known it couldn’t be that easy. This contact poison will kill us in about an hour and a half.”
This is your fault, Grizz chided Doc. The universe has threatened us because of your blatant disregard for karma.
“That is not how things work at all,” Doc said. “That is just a Post Hoc Fallacy. That parchment was poisoned no matter what I said. I didn’t magically speak it into being!” Doc couldn’t believe he was having this argument, especially using the Post Hoc Fallacy as a comeback. That had always been the argument of his best friend, Jose, when growing up. For all he knew, magic absolutely could have created that poison just now. Doc felt another pang of pain run down his arm and saw his health drop down two points.
“Why are we even arguing about this?” Doc exclaimed. “We have a limited amount of time to make this antidote. I don’t feel like dying again today. Let’s get to it!”
Doc grabbed the instructions once again and started looking at the recipe for the antidote potion. Thankfully, it didn’t look overly complicated. He needed to grind down the stem of the Death Weave Vine while at the same time boiling the leaves of the Living Lettuce and then adding the ground-down stem to the Living Lettuce water.
Knowing that water takes time to reach boiling temperatures, Doc looked around for a container to hold the water, finding a small cauldron that would be perfect for the job. Water was running quickly in a stream several feet off to the side of the table, so he took the cauldron and scooped up some water. He set the cauldron of water off to the side until he could get the fire set up.
Seeing that kindling and logs had been provided along with flint, Doc decided against using his magic to start the fire, saving some MP that might be an invaluable resource moving forward. Making a small nest out of the kindling, he scraped some of the magnesium into the nest just like he had seen in his countless hours of watching Survivor. Taking his knife from his inventory, he started striking the flint to create some sparks. After about eight or nine strikes, one of the sparks lit the shavings up and the nest of kindling he had created around the shavings started to catch with a flame merrily starting to grow. Placing a few small sticks into the nest, Doc picked up the small kindling bundle of fire and quickly moved it to an empty hole in his log cabin-style stack of logs. Continuing to add kindling to the small blaze that was forming, Doc watched in proud satisfaction that comes from creation. He had always enjoyed making the fire whenever he had gone camping.
Once the fire was the right size, Doc hung the cauldron in the flame from the spit that had also been provided and left the water to start boiling. Doc was very happy with all of the different tools that the Dungeon was providing. It dawned on him that this was basically an alchemist’s start-up kit and he decided that he would be taking some of these items along with him after he had finished making the potions. From what he was able to tell, the Dungeon created objects to utilize excess mana from causing problems. What those problems were was anyone’s guess, but he figured that taking the items would be a help to the system.
Suspect reasoning aside, Doc identified several pieces of ingredients until he found the two necessary plants.
You have identified: Death Weave Vine
Uncommon
Death Weave Vine gets its name from the overwhelming urge it has to cause death to any other plant it can get its sticky tendrils on. Sadly, the properties of this vine are purifying. The tighter this vine wraps around its “victims” the healthier the other plants get. The purifying essence of this plant can be utilized to:
1. This plant can be used to create a purifying antidote
2. This plant can be used to increase an individual’s resilience for a short time.
You have identified: Life Lettuce
Common
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Life Lettuce is a head of seemingly normal lettuce. Boiling regular ‘ole lettuce has been connected to unfounded medicinal properties like being a sleep aid. Life Lettuce is also useless medically on its own, but it does provide a magnifying effect on the properties of other, less benign herbs or items.
The Death Weave Vine was a very stringy, green plant. The main vine contained millions of brown fibrous tendrils that it would use to grab onto its host. Red and yellow striped leaves grew randomly along the length of the vine, giving it a dangerous look. Doc could see the plant’s intent to cause harm and chuckled to himself at how massively it failed. Case and point, this plant would help purify him from a deadly poison.
Following the instructions to the best of his abilities as an old chemist, Doc removed the leaves of half a meter of the vine and placed the leafless plant into the mortar. Taking the pestle, he began grinding the long, dry vine into greenish-brown plant powder. He set it aside until he was ready to add it to the lettuce water.
The recipe called for only four leaves of lettuce but made sure to state that the core of the lettuce head needed to be removed first as it would rob the leaves of their magnifying properties. To remove the core quickly and easily, Doc used a trick that he had gotten from all his Taco Tuesday nights in college. Slamming the head down quickly on the table, the core dropped free from all of the leaves and he grabbed four leaves to put into the cauldron.
It had been about half an hour since the whole process had begun, making the fire and prepping the ingredients. Doc was starting to feel the wear and tear of the poison taking a toll on his vitality. He had already lost more health from this poison than when Brrrt had stabbed him with his ice horn. His health had dipped below the triple digits mark and he knew time was growing short. The pressure was beginning to mount.
Grizz had sat back and watched his summoner going through this process. Grizz knew the frustration that Doc must be feeling but also knew that when there was a time crunch, there was no one better to focus on and complete the task at hand. Grizz knew several of the techniques that Doc was using, but couldn’t help that much as he didn’t have the proper appendages to accomplish fine motor movements. He was a beast in a fight, but crafting would never be his cup of tea because of his monstrous form. Grizz was ok with that. He was enjoying the discovery of who he was apart from Doc. He didn’t want to just sit around and be a bump on a log, though, so Grizz started checking on the fire and making sure that it was burning strong. The water needed to come to a boil as quickly as possible.
Doc noticed Grizz working on the fire and that relieved him a bit. One less thing to continue to think about. Just as Doc separated the leaves of the Life Lettuce, the cauldron began to bubble as the temperature rose quickly. A few minutes later, the water was churning as the gaseous water molecules tried to escape the clutches of their liquid counterparts. Doc placed the leaves into the steaming cauldron and sat for a moment, taking a quick minute to relax. Boiling lettuce leaves was a short process, and this would be about the only downtime that he would have for the next half hour.
After the leaves of lettuce had sat in the boiling water for about two minutes, the recipe instructed Doc to pull out the leaves and pour the remaining Life Lettuce water into five test tubes. After distributing some of the water into the test tubes, as there was more water than necessary, he separated the Dark Weave Vine powder into five mostly equal measures and placed them into each test tube. Doc had to then cap each test tube with cork test tube stoppers and shake each test tube vigorously for another minute. Each clear test tube contained a weird green and muddy colored liquid that had an unappealing odor. Doc shook the test tubes for the proper amount of time and set them out to cool down. Reading over the recipe’s last line started to freak him out.
“If properly concocted, the potion will turn from a muddy-green opaque liquid to a clear emerald. Do not consume the antidote until it has turned the proper color.”
There was no time limit on how long he should wait. Doc didn’t know if he had properly made the potion and his health had dropped another thirty ticks since he had finished shucking the leaves of lettuce. The fire was still burning brightly as Grizz continued to tend it, but if he had to make another dose, he would have just enough time. He decided that he didn’t want to leave it to chance and started reaching for another length of vine on the table when the first test tube that he had shaken up began to change.
The clear crystal glass of the test tube allowed Doc to see the foul-smelling muck that had been the mixture before resting begin swirling around in the test tube of its own volition. Faster and faster the potion twirled in the test tube, causing the test tube to begin to vibrate in the rack. The other test tubes started their own violent motions one after the other. Doc’s heart sank as he began to doubt his work. He started speed-reading through the recipe three more times to see if he had missed a key step. Just as he finished his third read-through, though, the first test tube stopped vibrating and the muddled green and brown mud was gone, replaced with the clear green liquid that the recipe had described. Doc had created his first potion. He used his Identify Skill to see its properties.
You have Identified: Death Weave Vine Purifying Antidote
Sporadic
This potion was made by extracting the purifying essence of the Death Weave Vine and magnifying it with the extract of Life Lettuce. It has the following properties
1. The user of this antidote will clear away most poisons of sporadic rank or lower.
2. Increases the user’s resilience by 2 for two hours.
Three of the other test tubes also turned the clear emerald color of the antidote while the fifth and final test tube exploded, nasty burnt goo being flung everywhere. That last vial had had less of the powdered vine in it than the rest. This seemed to have made the potion unstable and explosive. Apparently, Doc thought to himself, alchemy was as exacting as chemistry was. He would need to be more careful in the future.
An 80% success rate was more than okay in his book currently as he grabbed the first test tube, pulled off the cork, and drained the contents. Weirdly, the potion was no longer hot or warm despite having just been boiled and going through a violent reaction. Doc felt a refreshing coolness spread down his body. The magic of the antidote cleaned through his veins and removed the poison that was racking his body.
Doc sighed with unpained relief as a notification popped up telling him about the changes in his status. As the description of the antidote had said, not only was he no longer poisoned, but his Resilience had increased by two points. Doc was no longer losing health constantly, but because of his relatively high resilience, he was beginning to regenerate the lost HP at about eight HP every 5 minutes. He would be back to full strength in less than an hour. The stress of preparing the antidote began to fall away as his body began to recover.
No longer encumbered with poison, Doc felt amazing and ready to take on the world. Not wanting to test the limits of his antidote just yet, though, Doc didn’t touch the parchment with the recipes on it with his bare hand but nudged it with his knife to a spot where he could see it better. That is when he saw the pair of leather gloves beside the recipe parchment. Had those been there the whole time he thought to himself. He sighed in deep disappointment to himself. He had failed one of the most important rules of being a science teacher; lab safety. He could imagine the hard time that his students would give him after the number of times that he had had to tell them to protect their eyes and not the top of their heads. Doc put on the gloves and read through the other two recipes with a lot less stress than before.
Creating the other two potions was much simpler than the antidote. The health potion had relied heavily on the pedals of the Feral Flower of Life, the same flower that he had found and harvested while walking through the woods earlier. Mixing them with a Shadowhearth Berry, Doc was able to quickly make five health potions. There were no failures this time and he happily placed all the vials into his inventory for safekeeping.
The Shadowhearth Berry was an interesting little fruit. About the size of a blueberry, these were midnight black. After squeezing the berry for its juice, it burst forth with a warm and pleasant-smelling black juice. It looked and smelt like the black ashes of a campfire. When Doc had identified it, it had mentioned that anyone who ate the berry would feel well rested after their next sleep and it helped to increase the healing effects of other herbs.
You have identified: Feral Health Potion
Uncommon
This is a classic healing potion. It provides 55 HP instantly while also adding a regeneration of 2 HP/ second for the next 10 seconds.
The mana potion was much of the same as the other two. A relatively simple process that, when not dealing with a poison that would kill you, provided five vials of Mana Potions. This recipe relied on the work of two new plants. The first was called Arcane Fruit. Very on the nose with its name, it was filled with stored mana. The second ingredient was a cerulean blue powder called Flowing Salt that helped to channel the juices of the Arcane fruit to the Spirit of the user.
You have identified: Arcane Mana Potion
Uncommon
This is a classic mana potion. It provides 44 MP instantly while also adding 1 MP/ second for the next 10 seconds.
Doc had enjoyed the process of mixing the different ingredients into something usable. The creation process was riveting and Doc was beginning to think about how he could replicate the processes of each recipe with different ingredients to be able to get different results. It seemed that for these potions to be produced, a main ingredient was used for the essence of the potion while the other ingredient was a catalyst to help transfer the power to the imbiber of the potion. Doc wondered if each of the catalyst-like ingredients could be substituted with another of its ilk. It seemed as though the Life Lettuce water that he had boiled for the antidote would be a perfect delivery system for other potions. It also didn’t escape his notice that the antidote was of sporadic rarity compared to the uncommon variants of both the healing and mana potions. He was looking forward to experimenting with his alchemy skill in the future. He was getting some ideas on what else he could try.
It took another two hours to complete the three potions. Without having to rush to complete the other two potions, Doc and Grizz chatted with each other, shooting the shit to pass the time. By the end, Doc had fully recovered from the initial health drain of the poison, become thirteen potions richer, and was mercilessly ridiculed by his Soul Summon for not following proper lab safety protocol. The first level of the Dungeon completed, a notification popped up in his vision once again.
Congratulations. You have successfully completed the first level of the Dungeon without dying. Would you like to move to the second level or exit the Dungeon?
Doc knew exactly what his choice was, but before he moved on to the second level and whatever challenge they would face there, he had one more thing he needed to do.
“Let’s grab all of these supplies and ingredients,” Doc said to Grizz with excitement in his eyes. “We never know when we’ll need new potions and I doubt all of this equipment would be cheap to get whenever we make it to civilization.”
Grizz nodded in agreement. Your staying alive is of top priority. Make sure you grab those gloves. Lab safety and all that jazz!
Doc rolled his eyes as he scooped up the different equipment and placed it into his inventory. Thankfully, the different types of equipment stacked and each one only took a single space in the 10 x 10 magical inventory. If either of those things didn’t work that way, he was not sure if he would have been able to take the whole table's worth of supplies. Some of the ingredients he hadn’t even used, so he was hoping he could work out some new alchemical goods in the future when he had some time to experiment.
The last thing to get stored in Doc’s inventory was the parchment with the recipes for the three potions on it. He wasn’t sure why, but his instincts were screaming that he needed to bring it along. Since his instincts had gotten him this far, he wasn’t going to stop listening to them now.
“I know this wasn’t the most riveting experience for you,” Doc said to Grizz. “Hopefully, this next level is more in your wheelhouse.”
You will never see me complain when I can sit around and make fun of you, Grizz chuffed at Doc. Either way, I am well-rested and ready for whatever comes next. Let’s get this show on the road.
Doc nodded in approval of his Summon’s attitude and mentally selected to move to the second level.