The soil here at Pup Leisure Pond is still contaminated by the dark bramble, even after the bramble's been removed. I could use [Grow Plant] in the soil that Mrow created from the bramble, but it wouldn't do too well. The roots would eventually end up in the bad soil and then the plant would become contaminated and die off.
[Cleanse] has an extremely limited range at only a quarter of an inch per point Magic that I have. Mrow can purify things he consumes as he converts it to soil as a part of the magical process he uses, but he doesn't eat soil itself and only shifts it around as he moves through the ground. The waters here were contaminated by the dark bramble, though it's flowed out enough since my visit yesterday that they're purified now.
Except the contaminated waters traveled down the river and started affecting the touched soils. That wasn't something I'd considered when clearing this up yesterday. I probably should have done something to block the water's flow, then tried to purify the pond before letting it leave.
Well, those soils will purify more quickly due to the lesser amount of the contaminants so that's not as much of a concern. The area around this pond has too much, though. Letting the miasma fade away on its own could take decades. Time might pass differently here than back on Earth, but I'm pretty sure that would still take a long time.
"Whoa there, buddy," I quickly reach down and grab the small form darting past my legs. "Don't jump into the… pond… uh… Flow?"
The wolf pup looks up at me as I turn him to face me, his tail wagging excitedly. He has dark blue fur with silver paws and silver tips to his ears and tail. His eyes are silver as well, indicating his status as a mythical-level beast, just like the azulvitt wolf he is.
[Azulvitt Wolf] Category: Mythical A mythical-class creature which moves through minds and dreams, guiding those lost within forests to safety.
"Woof!" Flow's tail starts wagging more excitedly, then he pauses and tilts his head. "Woof?"
"Your name is Flow, right?" I ask, and he starts nodding enthusiastically. "Wait, before that-you guys should also-"
Before I can try and stop them, the four wolf pups I'd spotted a moment too late charge into the pond, all of them azulvitt wolves. Actually, one of them appears to be an azulvitt fox pup. Maybe I should have put more energy into that, but something tells me the pups would have jumped in, anyway.
"Well, at least the water is clean," I say. "But buddies, the soil around isn't so be careful, okay?"
The pups all yip in excitement, then start floating in the water. While I can't "feel" minds and emotions, I can tell that they're all feeling content. They didn't come here to play, they came here to relax.
A pup leisure pond… that's a pretty descriptive name for this place, it seems.
"Alright," I set Flow down, and he jumps into the water. "But you're not really a pup, are you?"
Flow looks at me and holds his head up proudly, then swims over to his friends. Where did the pups come from? The fog wall is still here but this place is dead. There shouldn't be a way for them to survive here, just like the monsters.
Then again, they can move through dreams. It's possible they traveled that way to get here, or to leave. Though whose dreams? It's probably either the monsters' or Mrow's, since those are the only things I know for sure are here.
I can only watch the pups relaxing in the pond before my own desire to take a dip is too strong, so I undress and lower myself into the waters, taking a seat in one of the higher portions of it. The pups all swim over to me and relax, though they're floating in the water rather than swimming.
The water is cool, almost cold, but not uncomfortable. It doesn't take me long to adapt to it. A couple of the pups start to get bored of swimming and exit the pond to wrestle around in the dirt.
"Be careful not to eat the soil," I tell them. "It'll make you sick."
Flow gives a warning bark to the pair of pups, who yip back before continuing their wrestling around. As I watch them, a vision of this spring flashes through my mind.
In it, the sky is clear and I can see until the undergrowth of the forest is too thick. Immediately around the pond is mostly grass and a few boulders, and some azulvitt wolf and fox pups swim in the pound, sunbathe in the grass, or wrestle around in either the water or on the grass.
A full-grown azulvitt wolf, which would stand taller than me were it standing, watches the pups. He lets out a soft woof at the three pups which began wrestling in the waters. They stop and swim out of it to wrestle on the ground.
Some part of me can tell that the big one is Flow and he's shifted himself down into a smaller form right now to go swimming in the pond. The vision for the Whispering Life Springs occurred in the past, as evidenced by the boulders still being whole rather than the rubble they'd become. This one might also have been of the past.
If that's the case, then just how old is Flow?
I look over to my clothes and gesture with a hand, using Telekinesis to pull my phone out of my pants pockets and pull it over to me.
"Hey, Flow?" I ask the pup, who's floating right beside me. "Can I take a picture with you?"
"Woof!" [Animal Communication] lets me know he was saying I can.
Flow repositions himself so that he's floating on his stomach right beside me and I snap a selfie of us. Then he hops out of the water and transforms to his full size, lying on the ground behind me with his body stretched across, his head to my right.
"You want another one?" I ask, and he gives me a small nod.
I snap a picture of us like this. As I do, the other pups all get out of the pond or jump up onto him, and they all start climbing on him. Flow lets out a small woof to get them to settle down a little, and I take a picture of all of us.
I set my phone down and return to relaxing, and the pups return to goofing around, all of them wrestling with each other now as Flow returns to both his pup form and to floating in the waters.
"Hey, Flow?" I ask after a little while. "I need to leave. It's getting later than I expected and I have some other stuff to do before bed. I'll need to find a way to clean up the soil so it's safe for growing plants in, though the Whispering Life Pond has some plants growing there now."
According to my phone, I've been relaxing in the pond for almost an hour. That's… dangerously long and I need to leave or I'll just keep going until I all asleep. Time's slipping away from my mind again.
I climb out of the pond and pull a towel from my pack. One never knows when they might end up soaked in a Dungeon so I always have a towel in my pack.
After drying off, getting dressed, and pulling on my pack, I tell the pups goodbye and return to my workshop. I already did my Daily Dungeon Quest and went to check on the different zones I can access so far so there's nothing else for me to do away from home and the shop unless it's to try and grow more plants. I want to hold off on that for another day and instead, prepare some more stuff for the shop.
While I told Nate and Emily that I usually do my brewing on weekends, I sometimes do it during the week as well. My stock of mana potion is depleting, especially the higher-potency one, but I don't have the reagents for that yet.
I do, however, have some reagents for another potion I can brew up. There's something else I want to do before that, thought.
"Hey, Evan!" Cole greets me as cheerfully as ever when he answers the call. "Want to place another order?"
"Yeah," I answer. "I'd like to place an order for two five-cube bracelets at Tier 7."
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"That big?" He asks. "Those will be nearly one mil, each."
While spending almost $2,000,000 is a huge expense I couldn't have dreamed of before, my Daily Dungeons are quite bountiful. I haven't sold all of my loot from this week yet but the total value is even higher than that. Gone are the days where I'll need to invest most of my loot sales into the shop.
"My Daily Dungeons provide plenty of loot," I tell him. "I'll have the funds once I sell them all, though I've also earned a bit extra from my shop this week."
"I've heard you increased your stock to contain mana potions up to 500 MP per ounce," he says.
"I did," I confirm. "Will be including something new tomorrow as well. I've gotten reagents from my Daily Dungeons every day so far and decided I should expand my stock a little again using some of them."
"Oooh," he says. "What sort of expansion?"
"Stuff for dealing with poisons," I answer. "Do you know how long it will take to make the bracelets?"
"I can have them done in the next few hours," he answers. "Though if you won't have the money until this weekend, I can hold them until then."
"Alright," I say. "See you this weekend."
"See you!" Cole responds.
I end the call, pull on some gloves, and head down to the basement to retrieve the desired reagents from my storage. Once everything is in my main workshop, I begin working. There are two ways to deal with poisons when it comes to alchemy. The first is through potions, the second is through a salve.
A salve is good only if the poison entered through a wound or contact and even then, only if it's applied quickly and before the poison can spread through one's body. Because of that, most hunters prefer potions, especially as those are easier to use during a battle. That can make a world of difference if hit with a strong poison magic while fighting.
Because of that, I start by preparing an essence water base, though this one has a slight tweak to it over the normal base. I pour in a five-gallon bucket of mystic spring water, then a five-gallon bucket of gold-tinted life spring water from Whispering Life Spring.
[Life Spring Water] Tier: 7 Mystical water infused with life magics.
After stirring the two waters for a minute, I add in ground essence crystal dust until it's dissolved, then pour inanother thirty-five gallons of essence water and another thirty-five gallons of life spring water, alternating five-gallon buckets of each.
The first of those are mushrooms with pale stems and green caps with black spots, which I've stored in two buckets due to the volume needed. These ones are dangerous to even touch, and I wear a separate pair of gloves to handle them, use a separate cutting board and knife to chop them, and separate containers to store them in after I dice them.
[Deatheye Mushroom] Tier: 7 A mushroom containing a potent poison, quickly eroding the life of those who touch or consume it. Contact Poison: 1,400 HP per second Ingested Poison: 3,500 HP per second
Those values aren't exact and one can lose more or less per second depending on how much was touched or how much was ingested. To make a poison by itself, one would use only the caps. As I'm making a curative, I use both the caps and the stems as the stems contain a neutralizing factor.
I chop them finely, filling an entire five-gallon bucket with the pieces. While they took up two buckets initially, that was because of how much air was present in the bucket due the shapes of the mushrooms. Chopped into small cubes, they fit together better and so there's less air in the bucket.
The gloves and tools used for them are set to the side and I begin preparing the next reagent with a fresh pair of gloves and tools.
This one comes in a couple of sizable crates. When I open up the first one, a wave of cold air flows out. The crates themselves are made of wood, but the insides are lined with a thin seal enchanted with a cooling magic for preservation. I open up a second, empty cooling crate, then pull the next reagent out of the first one.
It's a lizard with pale green skin and black, lightning-like stripes down its back.
[Leechblood Lizard] Tier: 7 A lizard with a heart that produces a poison. Contact with the poison weakens one over time, while ingesting it also drains one's HP. Poison: 350 HP every second
I cut out the hearts and brains of the lizards and dump them into a bucket, then remove the rest of their guts and dump those into another one. The remaining parts of the lizards are placed into the empty cooler crate.
After I harvest what I need from all of the lizards, using the first lizard crate to store the remains from the second one, I reseal the crates, set the gloves and tools to the side, and move the crates to the side. The bucket with the hearts and brains are placed next to the one with the mushroom parts, then I pull out the third reagent.
This is a five-gallon bucket filled pale yellow berries resembling raspberries, violet swirls running across them. I didn't need to worry about them crushing each other as I need them mashed up and the berries have already been washed, dried, and relieved of their stems.
[Neutriberry] Tier: 7 A berry which neutralizes toxins in those who ingest them. Potency: 70 Magic
I pour the contents of the bucket into a wooden barrel, then begin mashing them with a tool. Once they've been fully converted into pulp, I scrape it back into the original bucket, then check on the cauldron. The liquid inside is clear with a faint, gold-green tint to it.
[Life Essence Water] Tier: 7 Mystical water infused with the essence of life itself.
Perfect.
Now that the base and other reagents are prepared, I begin adding things to the cauldron, stirring as I go. It takes some tweaking, but I manage to receive the quality I'm intending by the time it's done. The potion lacks transparency and is instead an opaque, rich green color.
[Poison Cure Potion] Tier: 7 A potion which can cure any and all poison within a person as long as they are no stronger than it, and will reduce the effects of those stronger, regardless of the type of poison or toxin; 2oz dosages. Potency: 50 Magic
This won't be too useful in later parts of a Category 5-1 Dungeon, where beasts and plants will be even stronger than that, but its effects will be useful in the earlier stages and in other Dungeons, such as higher-level Category 1 Dungeons.
I measure out forty gallons of the potion, of which there's roughly ninety gallons after the magical process of alchemy does its work. With that measured out, I add in more life spring water, mystic spring water, and ground essence crystals. I have to add in more of the other reagents as well, but end with a Tier 6 version of the potion with the same potency, then a Tier 5.
Each time, I measure out some of it, then continue adding to the cauldron to reach the desired Tiers and potency levels until I finish with the last batch. Keeping the same potency was neither necessary nor feasible, as an area with a lower mana level would be unlikely to have a higher potency on its poisons. As such, I dilute not just the item's Tier and the effect as I work.
[Poison Cure Potion] Tier: 1 A potion which can cure any and all poison within a person as long as they are no stronger than it, and will reduce the effects of those stronger, regardless of the type of poison or toxin; 2oz dosages. Potency: 15 Magic
This will give a more affordable dose of the potion to people in weaker Dungeons.
After I measure that out, I begin bottling some of each batch of the potion, to have the doses already prepared in case someone wishes to buy them. Some hunters will want larger amounts that they can portion out themselves during a run or hunt, so I also make sure to leave a few buckets of each type for that.
I move the new stock into the product storage room, then clean all of the tools, dishes, and gloves used for this. After finishing, I head up to my home and take a shower.
As I plop onto my couch after the shower, I check my phone for messages. There are a few of them, including from Ryan.
[Ryan]: Back in the city at last!
That's followed up with a picture of him after a shower, his hair still damp. Since he knows I don't mind the pictures, he didn't bother cropping it or putting something on for the image. It's not taken or sent as something suggestive, just a snap of him after his shower, which I like.
Though it does make me want to meet up with him tonight, except we have a date on Saturday and while I don't know about him, I know that I never hook up with someone I'm dating outside of date nights unless we go exclusive.
He'd also probably not return the message or say "no" if I asked tonight. About an hour after that message and picture were sent, he sent me another text.
[Ryan]: Meeting up with one of my fwbs
That was about thirty minutes ago, so he's probably busy. I send him a picture and let him know I've finished working for the day. Should I see if there's someone available or should I just head to bed?