Lucas finally found a routine, and between his training and alchemy class, there wasn’t much time left for him to do anything else. He barely saw Aysha those days as she seemed to be pretty busy herself, doing a lot of quests for the city hall. However, Lucas had hit a wall in his progress with his new skill.
He realized there was a limit to the things he could learn relying entirely on himself. It was true that he had become much better with his new blades, and he could now defeat the whole squad of wooden dolls. But he was still breaking his blade two to three times out of ten, when he struck one of them. That was still a lot if he wanted to use them in an actual fight. There was no room for such errors. But he wasn’t sure of what to do about it. He thought about getting himself a teacher, like Aysha had for her archery, but that would be hard if he wanted to keep his new class a secret. So he let it be for now.
On the alchemy front, he had learned a lot during that week. It turns out that Hilda was an excellent teacher, and Lucas was already able to make a competent potion with only a few failed attempts in between. As he gained knowledge, he admired her even more. She was a master of the craft, and they had become pretty close lately. Lucas even befriended Satyel, who had gotten over their first encounter when Lucas very rudely snatch him in the middle of the streets, hopefully realizing he had done it for their own good but probably just feeling satisfied with Lucas’ bribes in the form of snacks.
He was about to leave on his last day, after being able to successfully craft a health and mana potion that could recover up to a hundred health and mana points. He was pretty satisfied with his progress and felt sorry he couldn’t continue learning alchemy from the old lady.
“Well, that’s all I have to teach you,” she said, sounding a little sad. “It was nice having a student after so long. My last student was my grandnephew, but he…”
Having dropped the subject of her dealings with the Alchemy Emporium, he decided not to ask any more personal questions to her, but the old lady hadn’t talked about her grandnephew the entire time they’ve been together, so he got curious.
“Come, I’ll show him to you,” she said, surprising him, and he followed her to a small room. There he saw a man lying in a bed, apparently asleep, with Satyel seated beside him. “That’s him; his name is Elliot. He has been like this ever since he went on a quest and got poisoned.”
Lucas looked at the man and saw his emaciated and pale skin; he could have mistaken him for a corpse if it wasn’t for the breathing moving his chest every now and again. Hilda continued:
“I used to sell my potions on my own, at my old place. But ever since Elliot got poisoned, I couldn’t do both things: sell and make the potions, so I had to sell my house and stop working for some time,” she paused for a while before she continued. “Elliot requires a special potion that only the people from Alchemy Emporium know the formula. I used to buy it from them, but they were kind enough and made an arrangement with me that they would provide me with the potions for free and a few coins every month if I made them a few potions to sell daily.” She said that and then looked at Elliot with sadness in her eyes. “They saved him, you know. A few of their men found him in the forest, and if it weren’t for them, he would be dead now.”
Lucas listened to the entire story in silence, but his mind was working fast. He already suspected that the Alchemy Emporium was scamming her due to how poorly she seemed to be remunerated, but she insisted on saying they were paying her with something more important than money. Now it was clear that she was referring to this potion. It just seemed awfully convenient that they came to offer her—one of the best alchemists in the city—a helping hand, just after miraculously finding Elliot poisoned in the woods. A poison that only they had the “cure” to, a cure that didn’t heal him completely, but only kept him alive in a semi-dead state. Fury was emerging within him as he realized what kind of plot that kind old lady had fallen into, but he kept it together.
“How long has he been like this?”
“It has been almost three years now.”
“Has he not seen a doctor?”
“A healer you mean? He has. One of the best healers in town, courtesy of the Alchemy Emporium too. He said that if he kept taking the potions, one day he would wake up,” she told him with a sad voice. “I wake up every day, hoping this will be the day, but he still hasn’t woken up.”
They remained silent for a while, observing the man in the bed, when she talked again.
“He showed great talent for alchemy and would start helping me make the potions. He was actually on a quest to look for ingredients. He had said that while he did the quest, he could look for ingredients for our potions too,” she paused, a tear dropping on her face. “He was so devoted; it reminded me of my great-uncle… it is my fault he’s like this, that’s why I have to do everything I can to keep him alive.”
Lucas clenched his fists tight. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault and say that those people from Alchemy Emporium had fooled her. But he didn’t have enough evidence; so far it was just an assumption, and he didn’t want to confront her with just that. However, he had already made plans to get to the bottom of this.
“I’ll see what I can do to help you,” Lucas said, but Hilda was having none of that.
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“I don’t need charity; Elliot and I are just fine the way we are.” As an alchemist, she was proud. She had just fallen from grace, but she still had that pride ingrained in her, and Lucas understood.
“It’s nothing like that, trust me.” She stayed silent, hearing that with doubt in her eyes. What could a boy who barely learned how to do alchemy do for her? She was helpless; all she could do was wait.
Before he left, he asked her for the name of the healer that had diagnosed Elliot. He claimed that he was feeling a weird pain in his left side and wanted to get it checked out. Unsuspiciously, the Hilda gave him the name.
After leaving, Lucas went straight to the library. He thought about going to see John for this, but even after having met him a couple of times after arriving, he still didn’t entirely trust him, so he chose to go to the librarian instead. She had helped him with his orb and asked for nothing in return, which had shown a little of her character. When he arrived, the librarian, Alva, as it was written on her badge, smiled towards him.
“So, how did it go?” she asked, and Lucas took a couple of seconds to understand what she was talking about.
“Oh, it was fine, just like you said. I only received the main classes as options,” he said dismissively. The truth was that he had already done the tutorial before asking her about it, but he couldn’t just say that.
“I knew you’d be fine,” she lowered her tone for the next part. “And the orb? Have you found your ‘key’?”
“Not really. I hadn’t had time to look into that lately; I’ve been quite busy,” he said, and it was true. He had almost completely forgotten about his orb and the alleged ‘key’ that should open it. “Actually, that’s one of the reasons I’ve come here today. Do you know who owns the Alchemy Emporium?”
The expression on her face turned to a frown when she heard his question.
“Yes, I know him. Why?”
“I have been learning some alchemy, and I wanted to know if he’s interested in some sort of partnership.”
“I wouldn’t do business with him if I were you,” she replied categorically.
“Why?” That picked Lucas’ interest. It seemed he had the right idea coming here.
“That man is Gregor Hastings, the son of the mayor. He is a person without any scruples who will do whatever is necessary to gain some advantage. If you go do business with him, he will find a way to rip you off, and you will walk out with nothing. I’ve seen him do it too many times already. The Alchemy Emporium is just one of his business; he owns multiple hotels and other smaller businesses in Zoria.”
The first thing Lucas thought when she said mayor was John, but that clearly wasn’t the mayor she was talking about; that should be the NPC mayor, the actual mayor. Lucas thought about what she said. If that man had the protection of the mayor, then Lucas could understand how he could do so much harm to so many people and walk away with it. After all, both those guards waiting on the gates of the city were higher-leveled than him; they could get rid of most of the problems people inside the city could create. If that were the case, it would be hard for him to do anything to the man. But before making any further assumptions, he asked:
“Does this Gregor Hastings have the approval of the mayor to do these things?”
“No, at least not directly. The mayor has stepped away from most of his duties ever since his wife died. He probably doesn’t know what has been going on. But his son isn’t unprotected,” she said, almost like she was reading his thoughts. “He has enough money to buy a few bodyguards for himself.”
Lucas nodded, understanding. It made sense that a man who had created so many enemies wouldn’t walk around unprotected.
“I will stay way from him, if that’s the case,” Lucas said, to ease her concerns about his well-being. “Say, I’m thinking about seeing a healer, but I don’t know if he’s any good. Do you know a fellow named Kairos?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of him, but he isn’t the best healer around; actually I haven’t heard from him in years. If you want a good one, I can recommend you one.” Lucas thanked her and wrote down her recommendation before leaving.
He sighed when he was back on the street again. Before this, he had planned that after finishing his alchemy classes, he would focus completely on his training, but it seemed it was not meant to be. He couldn’t let Hilda get scammed like this, with her grandnephew hanging on death’s door, and do nothing about it. He still had some decency ingrained in him by his mother, and he would be damned if he let this George do as he pleased.
But he needed to be cautious about this and plan his steps carefully. This wasn’t some irrational beast that he could face head-on and be done with it. No. This was a game of chess, and he wanted to checkmate before his opponent even knew they were playing; that was the only way he could think of to defeat an opponent that had much more influence than him. Only after this affair was done could he go back to his training. But first he needed to be sure he wasn’t making a mistake, so he went to the healer Alva had recommended.
She wasn’t far from the library, so it was pretty easy getting there. When he asked her to come see his friend who had been sick and couldn’t get out of bed, she agreed immediately. Despite being big for an NPC city, in Lucas’ point of view, it was still a small city considering Earth’s parameters, and they didn’t have that many cases where a person couldn’t even stand. She was even more surprised when he mentioned that he had been like this for three years.
They arrived at Hilda’s house a few hours later. She was very surprised to see him at her door, just after saying goodbye to him not so long ago.
“What are you doing here?” she said. “I told you I have nothing left to teach you.”
“I’m not here for that,” Lucas replied, and then pointed at the healer by his side. “I brought a healer over to check up on Elliot.” Hilda looked at the healer and back at him.
“But I told you Elliot has already seen a healer; all he needs now is his potions,” she said stubbornly. “Didn’t you ask me for his name just before you left?”
“I did… but I found out he wasn’t very good. And besides, the healer here said that it is always advisable to have a second opinion, isn’t that right?” he turned to look at the woman that seemed kind of lost.
“… Sure,” she said, still looking a little confused at being uninvited there.
“See,” he said, turning to Hilda, who sighed.
“Fine, but I can’t pay for this…”
“I know, I know, don’t worry.”
They stepped inside the house, and Hilda led them to Elliot’s bedroom, where Satyel sat at the man’s feet. The woman didn’t tarry in doing her work; she pulled something from her briefcase that looked a lot like binoculars and peered through it at Elliot’s body. A few seconds later, she gasped.
“What?” Lucas and Hilda asked at the same time, both anxious. She pulled her binoculars off her face and turned to look at Hilda with a very grave expression.
“Why have you been poisoning him?”