The Notorious Misadventures of an Alchemist and a Phoenix Chapter 43
Seasons changed and people adapted, the great poopening had been cleared and life began to improve. It was spring and the time to sow fields and harvest the moss that had crept over the fields in winter. The moss was mostly used for animal feed but you could sell it for a small profit to the Alchemist Bank. No one knew why the prestigious shop would pay for animal feed but money is money and waggon after wagoon made its way to the delivery door of the Alchemist Bank.
The Alchemist Bank hired more people than you would think. The Alchemist Bank used to have horse carriage stables, it was used for delivery for the goblin-owned bank before it was redeveloped. Now it had been turned into a cleaning station. One of the biggest profit drainages was potion vials. The price of reused vials was a fraction of brand-new ones, so a small business was set up where the old stables were. Instead of sheds to house horses, they were recycled into cleaning stations, each one manned by a woman from the slums.
The Alchemist Bank hired the space and paid for the cleaned products. The small business was owned by the slum ladies. They used the space to wash clothes for a fee and used the bag boys to deliver the product.
Spring was a busy time for the ladies as they had their usual delivery but also the massive amounts of moss that the Alchemist Bank used. They washed the moss and sieved the excess water. They piled the green onto the conveyor belt that led into the Alchemist Bank. The young ladies sat around cleaning, bickering and just spreading rumours. It was a nice little job for low-stat girls.
Following the moss, it travelled into the Alchemist Bank where it was chopped, dried and then compacted into cubes and the final stage was a young man in black leather like a failed heavy metal rock star who then went on to drain the block of moss of its components and bottled them up.
The speed this young man's arms moved was astounding. Bottle after bottle, ingredient after ingredient was prepared as he moved from one place to another. It was difficult to know if this man even had one pair of arms due to the many after images his speedy arms moved. A scoop of powder was tossed into a caldron and before the powder even touched the liquid the young man had rolled up some leaves and finely sliced them up. Action like this was common, and yet due to the speed, the young man had to cool down.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
At normal hand speed, the young man scooped up a beaker of flowing liquid that came from an indoor river and added five secret herbs and spices to make a recovery drink. Slurping it down he sat down and watched the news. According to the news, the cleaning project to get rid of the titan parasites and crap that lined mountains was almost complete. It was a nice earner to those who could stack a claim and sell the product.
The young man sighed to himself in contentment. Titan crap was a weird fertiliser that could cause strange mutations or hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in one crop. It wasn't as reliable as a traditional fertilizer as one day you thought you had planted corn and the next day the plants were fighting and boxing each other to become champion of the field. And yet to an Alchemist, the weird evolution was something that could boost potion creation in new and weird ways.
There were the usual pieces of feel-good news, a mega squirrel had learnt to sunbathe and everyone was gushing over its cute bushy tail and the way it would rub its nose until it went on a godzilla-like rampage and caused everyone to run away screaming.
"It was their fault," thought the young man "If you visit the land of giants expect to be squashed like a rotten pea"
It was then a plump swan-sized phoenix ran into the young man's office carrying a portable TV orb over his shoulder
"Noah... Noah, Have you heard the bad news" said the phoenix in a tizzy of panic, he was almost waving the TV orb under Noah's nose
Leaning back on his chair to avoid each strike, Noah shrugged as to say he didn't know and didn't care
"They.. they excommunicated Valentina" explained the phoenix with tears in his eyes.
Noah rolled his eyes. Valentina was the new undead on the show called The Undead and Restless, a show that followed newly formed undead trying to come to terms with what they were. The only reason Noah knew about this soap oper bitch fest of a tv show was because the phoenix didn't shut up about it.
The phoenix dropped to his knees and started to bawl his eyes out. Noah might have felt bad for the phoenix but Noah would have sworn to the high heaven and lowest hell that the phoenix suffered from Bipolar and even if he didn't he was a massive asshole.
Noah took a long noisy slurp from his drink to break the dirty ugly sobbing. It got to a point where the phoenix was grabbing onto Noah's trousers leaving long streaks of snot.
"You got to do something about it" pleaded the phoenix
Noah's face twisted into a mixture of "What the hell you want me to do" and "Get stuffed"
The phoenix looked up with giant round eyes and begged "Please......"
Noah's hand reached out and patted the phoenix on the head "In your dreams"