The Notorious Misadventures of an Alchemist and a Phoenix, Chapter 17

Getting fired was becoming a habit for Noah. It would seem that the headmaster didn't have a sense of humour and fiercely sacked Noah on the spot. Noah was waiting for the various heads of education and government prison service to battle it out. Unfortunately for Noah, he had to do probation work.

Noah stood in front of an adventure board filled with quests. This was minotaur shit. The terms of the probation meant he had to do work for free and in short, adventure work was considered community work.

Noah snatched a mission from the board, turned away and registered for the quest. He left with haste and a foul mood, leaving a small friction mark where he had pulled the paper away so quickly.

As Noah travelled to his mission on a giant rickshaw peddled by a single human with thighs that could crush barrels, he went over the mission.

It was a difficult mission for normal adventures but for Noah, it would be a piece of cake. It was an undead mission.

There were many different kinds of undead, most were boring and weak, some were sexy and drank blood but there were also those that were truly destructive, the undying undead. Whoever came up with that name should be called a weeiner.

The undying undead couldn't be destroyed for long, they went down but they would rise from nothing. A creature that wanted to destroy but couldn't be finished off was a massive pain in the ass, and yet there was a solution.

The Pied Piper Clan had spent years redirecting the undying undead in circles with their special kind of magical musical mind melodies. As time went forward so did recording technology and the Pied Piper Clan branched out into music careers. It was more common to have a member of the Clan at number one in the music top ten than not to. They didn't have the best lyrics and their beats were lacking but their mind magics still worked on the undead, even tho it was recorded. People bought the hits just so they would be safe.

That was where Noah was heading. With a power core in his hands, his mission was to replace the power source in a Catacombs that held a hoard of vengeful undying undead.

"Are we there yet" Noah rolled his eyes at the constant whining of the phoenix. Somehow he had been kicked out of his secret warehouse by his house bear for excess bullying but Noah didn't know that and the all-powerful legendary living fire known as the phoenix wasn't going to tell the tale of how a bear managed to get the best of him.

"Why are you here" demanded Noah

The phoenix didn't have anywhere to go. He had run out of cash and when he tried to take some from Clair the little floating skulls had somehow told on him. What Clair did to him the phoenix wasn't going to say but he wasn't going back until everything blew over.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The phoenix rolled off the top of the roof and floated down landing beside Noah. The whole action was filled with elegance until the phoenix tripped on the wooden boards and stumbled into Noah's leg

"I thought you might need my help" explain the phoenix

Noah tried to pull away from the phoenix grip but only caused his fabric to stretch and crinkle

"You are more likely to get in my way than to help me" muttered Noah

The phoenix hovered up to Noahs, with one wing over Noah's shoulder while the other patted him on the face he uttered "you need me, don't you remember when I saved you from that army of gnomes"

Anger flowed through Noah's veins "That wasn't an army, that was a village trading partner that I was trying to get Melvelo Root from" Noah tried his best to stop the face patting but even with his amazing hand speed he was unable to stop the forceful power of the phoenix from steady and more forcefully hitting his face.

"And when you pissed on their saint statue, and pushed over their children, and set fire to their church, they rightly thought you were a demon out for their destruction and chased us out" instead of Noah trying to stop the pats his incredibly fast hands went on the attack. With hardly any strength behind his hands, Noah poked and jabbed into any hole it could find.

"Ahhhrger, not the nose. You haven't washed your hands" moaned the phoenix.

This pleased Noah. The last potion he had made needed a powerful ingredient and the smell of bleach was still on his gloved hands.

When the operator came to see what was going on he quickly left the violate ball and continued to peddle, choosing to ignore the sounds coming from the back. He wasn't paid enough to get involved in that mess.

Of course, Noah got the sharp end of the stick, his face had swelled because of the continuous slaps he had received from the phoenix. It wasn't fair, Noah must have hit the phoenix a hundred times more and yet each hit was as soft as a tenderized pillow

Dabbing his face with one of his creations, Noah left the coach. The phoenix followed without a care in the world.

Instead of beginning the mission, Noah got to work harvesting the tofu moss. This ingredient was the best, the moss would absorb the elemental energies of whatever was around it. Tofu moss grown in volcanic areas would take on a very small amount of fire element and the same moss would take on death-like elements when grown near the undead. The beauty of it all was you needed an insane extraction technique to gather the ingredients, something that Noah had when he upgraded one of his three "Extract skill" spots and received the "perfect, absolute no waste" to the skill. It would take another skilled Alchemist with the same addiction to "extract" to even think about taking advantage of the tofu moss. No stinking goblin was going to steal this ingredient from him, even if they had the recipe.

It grew everywhere, was insanely cheap and others couldn't take advantage of it as Noah could. The perfect ingrediant.

Using a small lightweight bone dagger, Noah cut clumps of the tofu moss and stashed it away. Noah used the tofu death attribute moss as a cleaning ingredient but it could be modified to create painkillers, poisons, and birth control, the list was longer than the phoenix criminal record. If Noah had to do jobs for others he might as well get paid for it in some form. Two paychecks for one job.

While harvesting the tofu moss Noah would give the surrounding cemetery an odd look. He could see shambling Undead slowly walking and shifting throughout the grounds. A soft eerie sound echoed through the trees, occasionally the sound would change to that of a long stretched tone causing goosebumps on the back of your neck to stand.

Noah quickly ducked behind a wall when an undead peered in his direction. Having tens of thousands of undead reaching out for him still caused him to hide from his ultimate fans.

This was going to be a long day. Perhaps prison would be better