It took Salire and Theo longer than they had expected to get the Major Stamina Potion nearly done. Sarisa ran off to Xam’s place, grabbing food for everyone. Tresk joined them in the lab, eating her food and watching the alchemy. Unfortunately, Alex could no longer fit inside buildings. She was an outside goose now, spending all her time waiting for someone to toss something yummy out the window. Or foraging for her food in the grass around the Newt and Demon.

Tresk was moderately interested in the new alchemy equipment. Theo couldn’t stop thinking about the time he first met her. When he felt the pull in his chest, drawing him to her like nothing before in his life. The Tara’hek’s bond was almost a predestined thing, drawing two people together because they would work. The definition of how those people would mesh was fuzzy, but the results were clear. Tresk used to run around, gathering reagents or helping with simple reactions. Now she just watched.

“I wonder who made that fancy gizmo you’re using.” Tresk sat on a free table, kicking her feet over the edge as she watched. “He must be a smarty pants.”

“I heard his daughter is a terror,” Theo said, tapping the end of the condenser. The essence had finally finished condensing, coming to rest in a large flask at the end of the run. Like the other stamina essences, this one was a faintly yellow color. While the first tier essences had powerful scents, this one was almost odorless, but still smelled vaguely of grass.

“Yeah, yeah.” Tresk waved the jab away. “Make your potion so we can go to sleep.”

Theo nodded, finding the nearest chair to get to work. The last rush of Wisdom had put him on his butt, so he wouldn’t risk bonking his head on a table this time. The reaction of this newest potion was much like the last. Each had been at about the same level of purity, binding to the catalyst and enchanted water with no problem. He watched as a small cloud of smoke rose from an individual vial, holding on for the onslaught of attributes.

Although the prompt appeared, allowing him to select which attribute he wanted to enhance, he inspected the potion first.

[Major Stamina Potion]

[Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Grade: Good Quality

Alignment:

Tero’gal (Perfect Bond)

A major stamina potion. Drink to restore mana.

Effect:

Instantly restores 265 mana.

“I don’t think we’ll see much use from these potions, but the points are nice,” Theo said, passing the vial over to Salire.

“Because you never go adventuring.” Tresk pushed off from her table, standing on her tippy-toes to inspect the potion Salire held. “Popping low-tier potions is a pain in combat. Downing one like this is more efficient. Especially if you only have a few seconds to drink one.”

Theo shrugged. “Then we’ll put a premium price tag on it, because these are a pain to make. Okay, someone catch me if I fall.”

Without waiting for anyone to get into position, Theo placed 10 points into Wisdom. His head swam as the people in his lab turned into ghost-like streaks. He watched as Sarisa darted across the room, a full five seconds before he actually began falling. Getting Wisdom to 80 had brought a level of precognition he couldn’t have expected. As he waited for himself to tip over in real time, he wondered how this worked when more than one person had a lot of Wisdom. Perhaps they canceled each other out. Or fights between people with high Wisdom was like a match they played out in their heads.

Whatever the truth, Theo smiled as his eyes fluttered. Sarisa’s actual body darted across the room, catching him as he fell from the chair. “Gotcha,” she said, her voice muddy in his ears. “Okay. Who wants to carry the idiot?”

“I think he likes you the most, Sarisa,” Tresk said with a wink. She winked a few more times, her tongue sticking out as she did so. “He’s incapacitated. Grab his butt.”

“I’m not gonna grab his butt.”

“Don’t grab my butt.”

“I’ll do it,” Rowan said.

“The first person to grab my butt gets sent to the shadow realm,” Theo said, his head swimming. “I’m very dizzy, not unconscious.”

“Let’s get this little guy to bed. He’s tuckered out,” Sarisa said, her voice taking on a strangely motherly tone.

“I gotta go.” Salire left the lab first. Although his vision was swimming, Theo thought he could see her blushing.

Theo made it back to his manor without getting his butt grabbed. Sarisa placed him gently in his bed, and he was eager to head into the Dreamwalk. He felt bad that Alex had to sleep outside, but perhaps he could commission someone to make her a barn or something. Perhaps there was a seed core for that. He grumbled something to Tresk that she couldn’t understand, but all members of the Tara’hek were snugly in bed a moment later. They all fell into the Dreamwalk.

“Well, that was uncomfortable,” Theo said, rolling his shoulders. The group stood outside of the walls of Broken Tusk, looking out over the rolling fields.

“Those people need to get better at taking orders.”

Theo took a deep breath, allowing his precognition to come into play. He watched as Tresk turned away after saying something. “Hold on,” he said, trying not to smile. “I wanna try something.”

“What? Look at this.” Tresk turned, showing that she had exactly no butt to grab. “Zero muscle definition down there. You’re more likely to grab some tail.”

“No. Come over here and hit me in the face.”

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Theo watched as a phantom version of Tresk kicked off from the ground, leading with her fist directly at his face. He tried not to scoff at how quickly his companion would slug him. He slid his foot out to the side, pulling himself out from the strike and pivoting just as she launched into the air. “Too slow,” he said.

And Tresk didn’t waste any time. She launched another attack, catching only air. With a frustrated growl, her daggers were in her hands. Theo didn’t have the most Dexterity in the world, but he had enough to move his body out of the way. It didn’t take long for her to grow frustrated from the fight. The alchemist jumped back when he saw several versions of her spring out from the main one, striking from four different angles. A moment later, he took a dagger to the chest.

“Not fair,” Theo said, looking down at the blade sticking from his torso. “There were too many versions of you.”

“Yeah, I was watching you through your eyes, stinky cheater.”

“I’d argue that’s not cheating.” Theo narrowed his eyes. He allowed his aura to envelop his body. “Wanna try that again without watching through my eyes?”

“How does that work?” Tresk asked, ignoring his question.

“I’m not entirely sure. But higher Wisdom means I can predict possible futures. But when you looked through my eyes, I saw several futures.”

“I wonder if that’s what Khahar felt like. Hey, speaking of… Is everyone screwed in heaven?” Tresk only seemed slightly concerned about the people who owned realms.

“Why don’t you just read my mind?” Theo asked, taking a deep breath. Tresk was being polite, of course. “Well, that’s the problem. They’re not really in the heavens. The ascendants took up a place on other planes and called them godly heavens. They told the system to rename those things, but they’re not true gods.”

“So, the actual gods have come home. And the fake ones are gonna get purged. That’s kinda metal.”

“Agreed. But Khahar and Glantheir saw this coming. Apparently. I’m pretty sure Glantheir is going to take one spot as a god while Khahar stays behind as a throne holder.”

“Good for us, right?”

Theo had some thoughts on that. After watching Void’s behavior, he was certain the new gods were bound by far more rules than the ascendants. After the shards were returned to the mortal plane, the rules for the ascendants would change. Their powers would be restricted, which might affect cores on the mortal plane. He couldn’t be sure how that would work, since the flow of energy from realms to the mortal plane was allowed. But even if that didn’t change, many ascendants would lose their realms and their cores. Which put Theo and Tresk in an awkward situation.

“People who hold a realm can make cores, right?” Theo asked. “Why can’t we evolve ours?”

“Woah. Slow down there, tiger. That sounds tricky.”

Theo shook his head. “Doesn’t matter how hard it is or what you think about it. Both of us will lose our cores if we don’t do something—core evolution is a thing, right? I’ve evolved one core, so why can’t I evolve the others?”

“You’re talking about the difference between making a friction fire and starting a nuclear reaction with a breath.”

“So put on your lab coat. I don’t want to devolve to using a damn basic alchemy core. Why can’t I copy the principles of Drogramathi Alchemy and make it my own? Come on. Where’s your fighting spirit?”

Tresk glared at Theo for a moment. But he could feel her rolling the situation over in her head. It took her a minute, but she reached the same conclusion he did. Like the problems they faced in Broken Tusk, the only way to address this one was to figure it out now. Not after he brought the shards from the Deep Void, but now. While they could still take advantage of the power of their cores. Of Theo’s cores, almost all of them were aligned. Only his Earth Sorcerer’s Core wasn’t. The others would crumble if he didn’t evolve them to become Tero’gal cores.

But that brought a question Theo wasn’t certain he could answer. What made a core an aligned core? The obvious, surface-level thing was the influence of an ascendant’s realm on the core user. In the early days, Theo’s actions weren’t always his own. Drogramath didn’t control him, but there his influence made him lean in one direction. Immense willpower and the Tara’hek took care of that. Cores normally followed a theme. Drogramath was all about alchemy and herbs. Glantheir’s cores were themed around healing. Zaul was the shadow guy. But being the shadow guy could take many forms. Stealth, assassination, willpower manipulation. There was a through line, but it wasn’t solid.

If Theo and Tresk created a core based on Tero’gal, what would it be about? That brought his next question. Did it really matter? The strength of Tero’gal as a realm, when compared to other realms, was middling. It was powerful because it was unlike the other realms, not because it was that high of a level. If the answer to his question of ‘why’ was ‘why not’ all he had to answer was ‘how’.

“What is a core?” Theo asked, imagining a core that fell into his hand. “When I construct a containment core for my golems, it only has a few parts.”

“Metal, soul, energy.” Tresk nodded. She had been following along with his thought process. “The metal contains the soul and the energy powers it.”

“I don’t think our cores contain a soul, though.”

Tresk let out a heavy sigh. “Blah, blah. Yada, yada. We’re talking about doing Coresmith stuff.”

When the problem was boiled down to such a simple statement, it felt cheap. But Tresk was right. No matter how much he tried to wrap his mind around it, he could jump to the same conclusion. They were trying to do what the Coresmiths did. If he could pluck the information from the air, it might have been easier to understand the concept… but there was always…

[Wisdom of the Soul]

It is likely the Coresmiths fuse nescant souls into forms usable by mortals. These souls probably come from monster cores that are transferred into a complex containment core, after which they are infused with unaligned mana.

You don’t have enough information to know if the standard [Coresmith’s Core] can create aligned cores. It is more likely that this is a process achievable by an ascendant. In your case—as the owner of a realm—you can bypass a few steps.

“Chatty little message, isn’t it?” Tresk laughed. “The power was inside you the whole time!”

“Meh. Maybe.” Theo turned away, summoning an empty containment core the shape of a class core in his hand. He reached up, motioning to draw energy from Tero’gal. But nothing happened. “The Dreamwalk doesn’t want to simulate Tero’gal’s energy.”

“Yeah. She’s been temperamental lately…”

“Have we wronged you recently?” Theo asked, looking up at the dream realm. It didn’t respond.

“You’re just kinda talking to the manifestation of my throne through our connection, right? So that’s kinda weird.”

“Whatever. You said it yourself. We only need to combine a containment core, a monster core, and some energy to make a core. We can certainly give it a try in Tero’gal.”

“Why not? Doesn’t cost us much, and we might get some fancy cores in return.”

Theo turned, laying eyes on the stupidly big goose pecking at the ground. A faint glow surrounded Alex as she searched for bugs. It was likely unrelated to their discussion, but that glow had a familiar feeling that he couldn’t place. Theo and Tresk decided to work on this problem during the day. But he already had an idea of how to make this work for them now. Or in the near future. And Alex was a big inspiration for that. The pair ran off to enjoy some combat with unknown monsters. The alchemist stayed behind to ponder.

Approaching the core problem from the idea that they were going to create new cores wasn’t the way forward. Instead, Theo thought about something Alex had done a while ago. She was born with an affinity for fire. It might have been genetics, a random lottery from the system, or the hand of whoever put her in the mine. But she was meant to be a fire goose. She did everything she could to get herself in front of nature energy, developing an affinity for nature. No one part of her transformation resulted in the change, but a series of small things. Absorbing nature energy through various means was likely the best way to give her a new affinity.

Theo and Tresk had been exposed to Tero’gal energy for a while now. The power of that realm had gotten to where it was bleeding through into the mortal realm. Some of that energy flowed into the nearby dungeons, while others soaked into the lab. He couldn’t be certain if it would work, and he didn’t know if Drogramath would be mad about it. But Theo was certain he could soak his current cores in Tero’gal energy, changing their affinity. Without evidence, he determined that allowing that energy into his cores might have an effect.

Faced with the concept of losing his cores or trying something like this, Theo knew which option was the best.