The Notorious Misadventures of an Alchemist and a Phoenix, Chapter 19
Noah had left the catacombs, returned to his city and handed in the quest, hopefully, he wouldn't have to do something like that for some time to come. Back home, Noah had a little nap safe in the knowledge that the phoenix was in the catacombs boogieing on down with the undead and nowhere near him.
Noah dreamed of peculiar colourful light and nothing more. His mind had been stimulated with adventure to such a high degree that Noah's brain stopped making sense of it.
Noah's sleep was abruptly disturbed by the usual golem fight that was commonplace around here. Noah started his new day by grabbing a tall mug of special brew coffee from a wicked-looking machine that was surely from a torture chamber.
Noah had reshuffled and designed a grand new room with a ginormous silver and gold cauldron with glass windows as its focal Point. Inside was the lone beating heart of the fallen titan. Pipes were fixed to the heart's ventricles and a steady supply of holy water was pumped in using the heart's power. The titan heart had been corrupt and wore a nasty-looking black rash that was akin to a Rorschach test. It sat in a bath of honey with various herbs and spices.
Noah was pretty sure that the black rashes were curse marks but he wasn't going to invite some stuck-up bishop into his workshop only for the pompous holy man to take one look at the heart and scream to the high heavens how blasphemous it was and end up confiscating it. Instead, Noah would use his skills to remove the curse.
This wasn't Noah's speciality, it was vastly more efficient to get a priest to remove curses for a fee but Noah was given it his best. Silver and gold were holy metals known to fight evil and curses. The mixture the heart sat in was honey and specially made potions dusted with old wives' tales remedies. Noah would use whatever he could.
Basil was used for inflammation, ginger for protection, and cloves for exorcism. The list continued as more and more herbs were used. When this was all done, the excess honey would probably taste nice, if you didn't mind being cursed.
One if not more of the remedies seemed to work as the black inky rashes receded and the grey muscles of the deformed fake titan heart turned to a more healthy pink. Of course, Noah wasn't going to stop it there. With a tug on a lever, various hatches and whirling sounds caused a beam of light to cascade through the chimley with the help of super-shinned mirrors. Sunlight had always been connected to the gods and if there was something more divine than the gods then Noah didn't know. The soft bright light landed on the organ causing a soft ripple though out as the muscle absorbed the holy nature of light.
It would take some time before the marks would disappear and so Noah allowed the medicine to do its work by soaking it like a stubborn dirty cooking pot with last night's burnt casserole stuck on it.
It wasn't like Noah didn't have other things to make. He had a "to-do list" the size of a grand chalkboard and a whole clipboard of special orders. Fires were stoked, holy water freely flowed and the creation of a highly potent healing tonic that could put the peep back into a delead pencil was created. Noah's hands blurred as he shovelled medical dust into pill-making machines.
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Watergates were open, vast amounts of holy water and weak healing tonics mixed in a blazing copper witch cauldron. Noah had got the cauldron from a broken Witch coven, it turns out that the trinity of witches that owned the cauldron had fallen out with each other, something to do with a prince and a very charming frog. Still, the cauldron had an amazing ability to add random effects, Noah would reverse-create these potions and develop new recipes.
Mass amounts of tofu moss were brought in by conveyor belts that lead to showers and shook to get rid of dirt and grit, the mass of green was divided into jars that held industrial-sized blades that with Noah's alchemy skill "Stir" was used to turn the blades at high speed to dice up the plant material. The remaining plant mush was packed tightly into cubes Noah used his Alchemist skill "Extrac" to pull out all the things he needed. The reason the plant material was chopped up and formed into cubes was Noah could use his skills on a larger amount of material with a single cast. The waste product of moss would be used in animal feed.
Indigestion tonics for the rich that had too much greasy food, Hair restoration balm for the bold, muscle growth formula for the wizards, teeth whitening for the merchant guild, poison for the Assassin guild and clown college.
Noah's head was filled with his work and yet there was something in the corner of his mind that wiggled and twisted, begging to be recognised. It was only after this mysterious thought figuratively kicked down the door did Noah look up in realisation "CHOCOLATE, CHOCOLATE IS MORE DIVINE THAN THE GODS"
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If any of the gods were listening to this declaration all they could do would shrug and nod. When you're right, you're right but unfortunately, they were talking about the very messy circumstances surrounding Noah. It was never a good idea to have the full attention of a god, let alone a room full of them.
It would be fair to say that the gods when dealing with their interests and happiness had taken the vague actions of treating it like a corporate industrial enterprise. They had little to no patience with Noah acting like a very successful mum-and-pop store that would take a sizeable chunk out of their profits. Resources had to flow to the gods' champions, where the gods could fill their gambling addictions without some long shots messing with the odds. After all, no one likes to lose.
Slow muttering and hard frustrating finger-tapping was the only thing breaking the silence. Every low-tier god in this room had no idea what to do, and each plan to curve the resource sink held problem after problem. No matter what plan they devised to throw at Noah the odds were in his favour. The problem was that the city was in Noah's pocket and could be utilised in his defence.
"We could send in a champion to work out the problem"
"Khan the Forgetful is close"
"Who is that"
"Who is what"
"What?"
"Huh"
"STOP THAT" yelled the little gingerbread man called NomNom. The god of baked goods.
"Ladies, Gentlemen, non-corporal entities, anthropomorphism items. Listen well to this. My grand plan to stop Noah 8676A89P72 from draining the resources"
"Just kill him" stated a reverse shark mermaid god
"Shut your pie hole" and just like that a meat pie materialized into a gaping mouth. The shark mermaid god wasn't happy about being told off but the pie was unusually good, some might say godly good but not anyone with a mouth full of delicious pie.
"You can't kill unfairly without the system causing some repercussions, after all the system is above all fair and rewarding" explained NomNom
"Well, how do you stop someone like that without being told off by the system"
"I'm glad you asked that, it all starts with a challenge, then a reward that hurts the user"
It was just then that Noah received a system alert.