The Notorious Misadventures of an Alchemist and a Phoenix, Chapter 3
Relaxing in his chair Noah was facing the wall of his small office while listening to the soft taping of his coffee brewer. Right now he needed some peace with little to no stimulation. This wall was having none of that and was dancing and glowing like its life was depending on it.
"God damn show off" muttered Noah
"NOAH" a loud shout came from behind Noah
Stiffening in his chair, Noah slowly swivelled in his seat. There, standing at the doorway was the headmaster
"By the gods' man, what are you doing" the headmaster's massive handlebar moustache bristled with anger
Noah had turned to face the headmaster while wearing his plague mask. His mask was used to protect him from dangerous concoctions but he also used it to smoke chill weed. The smoke gently left the mask's beak giving it a demonic look to it.
"ARE YOU SMOKING.....DRUGS" the headmaster's voice began to rise "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN"
Taking a long breath, Noah calmed his mind and absorbed the smoke, "This is expensive stuff, let them get their own stash"
The headmaster slapped the desk causing it to buckle a little.
"A person of many physical like Warriors classes, judging by the creaking of the table and the speed of the hand," thought Noah
You could always tell who had dedicated to a single class or had divulged to many. A single class was weak in a lot of areas but amazingly strong in a thin area. Noah for example was a strict Alchimst and his class stats were in dexterity, wisdom and intelligence. His hand speed was incredibly fast that he could swipe a wallet from the back pocket of an all-rounder thief, sometimes even without them noticing. But he couldn't take a hit or even move at super speed like agility-based classes. There was always a weakness.
The weakness of all-rounder people was that their highest stat wasn't even close to the dedicated single class and their highest stat. The difference between stat gains in the Beginner tier and stat gains in Expert tier was huge.
The headmaster's physique showed that he had at least three hardcore physical classes. The handlebar moustache alone could support a cup of coffee with ease.
The headmaster slapped the table again "Do you want to go back to jail"
Noah's shrug caused the headmaster to grab the paper sachet out of Noah's fiddling hands, or at least try. The blurring headmaster's hands grasped at empty air. Noah just sat there with his impassive-looking plague mask. At a speed faster than the eye could take, Noah used the pouch and poured the contents into his mask's beak.
The headmaster not expecting his dexterity to be dwarfed by Noah fell into an angry temper. He raised his hand and slapped the plague mask off Noah's face, leaving the smoking face of Noah
"There's no way to reason with scum like you" the headmaster growled while pointing at Noah
"So that you know" the headmaster stood straight while tugging on his moustache "I will be talking to the city's council about your behaviour. I don't think you will be here in.........."
Suddenly the headmaster dropped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Noah looked over his desk "hardcore old man"
The headmaster had slapped the mask off Noah's face but that had been where the drugs had been. When the old man stroked his moustache he had accidentally inhaled a tiny amount of Noah's drugs that now stuck to his hand and was wiped on his moustache.
Noah's drugs were always top-notch as he had made them but that also made them immensely powerful. Not for the weak of Constitution. There were other benefits to increasing your class as far as you could and that was passives.
Alchemist's two passives were Toxin resistance and disease resistance. This was why Noah could snort the fattest lines of the vilest and most dangerous mind-warping narcotics and think it was just a good day despite having a low constitution but for others.......well the twitching headmaster was all the reason not to steel the stash of an alchemist.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Noah was now standing over the dancing twitching headmaster. "was this real" thought Noah. He had seen some wild stuff through the use and misuse of elixirs
"Baah" now the headmaster was making funny noises.
"Better safe than sorry" with that Noah pulled out a piece of white chalk from his belt and rubbed it under the headmaster's noise.
Almost instantly the headmaster calmed down. The chalk was Noah's safeguard against his powerful drugs. Now and again you would get some brave soul or stupid poohead taking the chance of taking a pinch of Noah stuff only to drop to the floor if they were lucky. This was one of the many reasons that Noah was realised from jail early. The guards couldn't contend with warriors who were out of their small minds thinking that an eldritch horror was tap dancing on their eyeballs.
"Ding" Noah heard the notification of the system. His mind became cool and the drugs that were now in his body seemed to not affect him
Noah's mouth stretched into a wide grin. A clear mind could only mean two things. Either the drugs had worn off, which was most unlikely or he had just reached Master tier in his class. Noah needed a safe place to check his notifications. Of course, there was only one place he would choose. His room, the vault.
Noah skipped over the stilled body of the headmaster and paused as he was about to leave. Turning on the spot Noah snapped his antidote chalk in half and stuffed one half up the nose of the headmaster and the other half in the mouth. Slapping the headmaster gently on his cheek Noah left.
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The phoenix was still faffing about trying not to clean the stinky piss by knocking over random bottles of various ingredients and hoping something would happen. Instead of a small puddle of golden liquid, there were now pools of hizzing splattering pockets of multi-coloured piss-smelling abomination. The liquid had gained some kind of consciousness and was edging towards the phoenix. Instead of doing something usefully, the daft bird had doubled down on potion tossing, however, it made no difference as the blob of piddle widdle became faster. It came to a point where the blob was climbing up the table leg and the phoenix was beating it back with an empty bottle. That's when Noah return home
Noah crashed through the door causing both the phoenix and the blob to pause still and turn their heads slowly to Noah. All three of them just looked at each other waiting for movement from the other.
Noah analysed the newly formed blob "Good idea, making a cleaning slime to clean up the mess" and then moved on to his vault
The phoenix slowly and hesitantly patted the blob on the top of what he hoped was the head with the empty bottle "yea..... he's a good boy...thing"
Noah entered his vault and closed it. The vault was Noah's bedroom a place left over from when he bought the bank and refurbished it. It was the most secure place he knew of. Most people would have used the vault to store valuables but after the first time his recipe was stolen, Noah never wrote down his recipe again, they were all in his head. And so in a way, the most valuable thing was Noah himself.
Checking his notification Noah's lips twitched in controlled happiness. He had most defiantly reached master tier. It was all thanks to the idea of a transmigrator called Luke from a planet called Earth. The things Luke had told him sounded fake, for one, who would call their planet after soil and dirt but Noah still learnt about mass-produced items and selling vast amounts at cheaper prices. However, the greatest information came from production lines.
Noah had bought the bank because of how secure it was and how large it was. This was all thanks to the five goblins who had pooled their gold together and started a banking system to get more of the city's wealth. Everything would have gone well if it wasn't for the goblin's need for gold. They started to steal from their customers and then blamed each other for it. After the people rioted and prison time for the goblins it was sold to Noah for near to nothing.
The goblins had ransacked the bank of anything of worth. Noah was the only person who was willing to buy such a massive building that was busted up so badly.
This was when Noah reached Expert tier in the alchemist class. Selling barrels of potion to merchants and adventures meant he could make more cash for less effort while the merchants would then repack the liquid in their bottles. This was the start of something great.
Though out the city some kind of Noah's concoction was being sold and thanks to luke this was just the start. With this newfound wealth, Noah had the bank refitted and doubly reinforced.
His secrets were his own and he would be damned if they were stolen again. The entrance would stay the same but instead of customers withdrawing and depositing gold, they would buy potions. The rest of the bank would be shut off from the public and only Noah would have access
The back of the bank was where the magic happened. Vast equipment that dwarf normal alchemist equipment swirled and diced while long conveyor belts would dump ingredients into simmering giant copper cauldrons. Noah was particularly proud of two rooms. The first was his blessed room.
The main ingredient for the potions was holy water and yet Noah didn't use the church product as it was by far too expensive for him. Instead, he used twenty "Decanters of Endless Water" poured at the same time to create a man-made river that wound around a room plastered with pages of religious text and was filled with copious amounts of religious symbols causing a weak holy aura that blessed the free-flowing water. This saved Noah so much cash that he splurged out on his second room.
Luke had mentioned how overpowered bags of holding were. His idea was to fill it up with water and logs and rupture it so all of the water would flow out with the logs and cause a wave of pain to any creature in its way. The cost of the items made the idea impractical but it had given Noah an idea.
By using the idea of a bag of holding and a giant glass bottle Noah was able to create a massive greenhouse in a small bottle. In these bottle gardens plants were left alone with a decanter of endless water and a weak heat stone. Like the blessed room, bottle gardens continuously produced the weakest level of health potions. At first, just a trickle but with hundreds of bottle gardens working together a river of free-flowing weakest potion was being created. Rinse and repeat with different ingredients and Noah had access to many different tonic rivers which he took full use in developing new recipes. Noah sold the liquids for cheap. It wasn't long before the whole city was using Noah's products. Plus, his cheap but reliable brew was being sold far and wide, even to other plains and worlds.
Then there was the money, so much cash that you could drown a family of behemoths. At first, Noah bought farmland to grow his ingredients and make it easier for him but there was only so much land a non-Nobel could own. The cash rolled in and when Noah was visited by several thieves he quickly bought a lifetime pass from the thieves guild. With help from the thieves guild, Noah targeted others to collect what he was missing. Better ways to brew concoctions from the witch class, an interesting subspecies of moss that acted like tofu and absorb the elements that were around it. But even this didn't make a dent in the flow of gold coming in. It became a big problem when Noah owned 30% of all the gold in the city but couldn't spend it fast enough. So instead of spending it, he exchanged it for experience orbs
Experience orbs didn't advance the class but evolved the skills of the class. Noah's skills were simply amazing. By upgrading his skills he was able to extract everything he needed in potion making from cheap ingredients, keeping costs down and profits way up.
Noah locked himself in his room and started to fiddle with his interface.
First was the increase in stats. Expert tier stat gains were on a whole another level when compared to Beginner or Intermediate, this was how Noah was able to easily outclass the headmaster with his dexterity despite only having one class.
Then there were his new skills