Chapter 47

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“Just need to…..” Jason muttered to himself quietly as he once again pressed his newly created [Lesser Ring of Heating and Cooling] to the side of a small bowl of half-congealed white sludge. In mere moments, the mixture began to melt down, and he mixed in several handfuls of crushed leaves.

“Ready Ravs?” he asked in a quiet voice, turning to the sorceress.

Currently, he was standing in front of a stone table, courtesy of Lumi, that had been grown up out of the pavilion floor, off to one side where they’d be out of the way. All around, adventurers went about the business of readying themselves to move out the moment word came back from the scouting parties. Weapons were checked, sharpened, and oiled. Temporary travel packs were assembled and made secure. Many had elected to wait to try out Jason’s [Feast of Spring’s Bounty] until just before the scouts were due back, and now sat at various tables, eating and drinking.

Jason and his companions were no exception, though as almost all of his party’s supplies were sequestered about his person in various spatial storages, there was little for them to check. Lumi however did elect to do a weapons check for everyone, carefully testing them for any flaws or damage, and sharpening the few blades they had; namely, Ravs' [Mistblades] and her own [Frostscourge]. She even looked over a simple steel mace that Aldin had produced seemingly from nowhere; Jason hadn’t even been aware he’d had a weapon, but when asked, Aldin had just shrugged, and said he needed something in case a dungeon-spawn rushed him while he was out of mana. Jason had agreed with the sentiment though. It was exactly why he’d made the phase blade.

“Just about,” Ravs murmured quietly back to Jason. She was standing to his left, eyes closed in concentration as she focused on whatever strange power she received from her patron.

To his right, Kera stepped away from the table, pulling Echo and Ceri along with her. Aldin and Lumi joined her, making small talk. Together, they a formed a deliberate, casual buffer between the table and the rest of the pavilion that would draw attention to them and away from Jason and Ravs.

“Go.” Ravs said. “Shroud: Perception Ward,” she commanded quietly.

The light around the table seemed to dim slightly, and the air grew hazy. Jason knew that behind him, any glances cast their way would be glassily sliding off of he and Ravs, only to focus on his companions’ idle conversation behind them. When Ravs had informed him that she had acquired a new spell from her patron that made other people overlook you, even in a crowd, he’d been ecstatic. [Shroud] didn’t make you invisible per se, but rather unnoticeable to anyone who wasn’t in your system-enforced party. It was like having a huge blind spot in the middle of your vision and memory. People couldn’t look directly at you, and if they tried, they’d forget about it the moment they looked away. Ravs assured him that while particularly strong-willed observers who were on edge and watching for the effect might be able to realize it was there and take countermeasures, but otherwise, is was every bit as good as invisibility, with the added bonus that as long as you didn’t interfere with an onlooker directly, they simply couldn’t realize that you were there, and you could go about your business undetected.

She’d proven it earlier by stealing a cup of tea right out from under someone’s nose, with an assist from Kera to turn the man's attention away from his food for a just a brief moment. Jason had had to bite his tongue to stop from laughing as the man had gotten a confused, glassy look on his face for a moment when he moved to take another sip. Then Kera asked him a question, and he looked up at her and then continued on with the conversation as if nothing had happened. A few minutes later, Ravs handed him a new ‘refill’ as if she’d gone to fetch him one, and he accepted it like nothing strange had occurred at all.

Jason suspected it wouldn’t fool a camera, as it seemed to be some sort of mental compulsion effect, and he suspected it probably wouldn’t fool Kaerlin’s remote viewing either, but it was ideal for his current purpose. Namely, passing off some subtle crafting as nothing more than a bit of herbalism on the side.

He activated [Synthesize] quietly, and then began scooping the substance that resulted into a series of small tins while assigned his newest creation a label.

Elric’s Insect Repellent: This pale white cream is formed from a specially treated mixture of yarrow, swamp tea, and common mallow leaves. When spread thinly across the face and hands, it gives off a pleasant-smelling scent that repels most forms of common insects for several hours. Also provides slight relief from existing bites.

“Now there’s a product to sell, with no-one the wiser,” Jason said half to himself as he held up on of the tins. He grinned over at Ravs.

Ravs, with a look of vast relief on her face, immediately stuck both hands into the bowl and scooped the last remaining bits of the stuff out with her fingers, applying it aggressively onto her face and arms. The elf girl’s fragile skin held quite a number of red wheals.

“Oh, thank the gods!” she exclaimed, shuddering slightly as the relief effect kicked in. With how pale she was, Jason could actually see the redness of her many mosquito bites fading away more than a little. Ravs shakily slumped down into a chair, blowing out a sigh as she dispelled the [Shroud] again.

“Why couldn’t we have started with that first?” she sighed.

“Sorry, I hadn’t realized it’s been that bad for you,” Jason apologized. “It’s not like they can get into my suit. Next time say something sooner?”

Ravs just nodded, her eyes closing as she began to visibly relax in her seat.

Jason turned to the others. “Done!” he called to them. He scooped up a pair of the half-dozen tins he’d made and deposited them into the storage module on his belt. Then he handed another one of them to Kera.

“As requested!” he said cheerfully to her. “One tin of bug repellent. It smells good, is an excellent moisturizer, and even acts a bit like aloe gel in that it relieves a little pain and itchiness.”

Kera hastily opened the tin with a half-hearted glare in Lumi’s direction and a mutter of ‘so unfair’. She immediately dipped a finger in and began smearing it along her exposed legs. Lumi cocked an eyebrow at the other girl with a wry grin of amusement. While Lumi didn’t have an enclosed suit like Jason’s, she hadn’t had much trouble with the local swamp bugs. Unlike Ravs, who was some kind of mosquito magnet, apparently Lumi was one of the lucky few who’d won the genetic lottery: she wasn’t appetizing to them at all. As long as someone else was around, they’d nearly always choose them over her.

Not that that stopped her from taking the tin from Kera after she was done with it and using some herself.

“There should be enough cream in there for at least a dozen and a half applications,” Jason told them as everyone took a turn. “I’ve set aside two more for us, and there’s plenty more ingredients where that came from. This place is a gold mine of, er, herbalism ingredients.”

Jason glanced at Ravs thoughtfully. “In fact… Kera’s brought me enough stuff here we should probably just distribute a tin or two to the others. Plenty more where this came from, and I’m sure Ravs and Kera aren’t the only ones suffering.”

He grimaced. “Besides, with the aspects in the water here… maybe best to avoid bug bites as much as possible.”

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“I’ll go mingle some then, if you don’t need me further” Lumi volunteered, grabbing a second tin. “I’m tired of standing around in one place. Those scouts can’t get back soon enough.”

“I think we’re good for now,” Jason replied. “Thanks.”

Lumi waved a hand in an ‘it’s fine’ gesture before moving off towards the other tables.

“Want me to keep getting more?” Kera asked. “My mana’s about refilled now.” Kera asked. She reached up towards her shoulder where Ceri was perched, and gave him a few scratches under the chin. “ And Ceri’s enjoying the chance to really stretch his wings. He’s been pretty cooped up lately and is really happy helping.”

Jason thought to himself a few moments. Then he shook his head. “Let’s wait a bit. I’ve got to get all this stuff filed away, and want to make some notes about what all we can do with it.”

Kera shrugged. Then she wrapped her arm around his and leaned slightly towards the table to look at the assembled pile of plant parts they’d collected. “What all have we gotten so far, anyway? Its dark enough out there that while I’m guiding Ceri I can’t really pay attention to what you’ve been muttering to yourself about at the same time. I’ve mostly been concentrating on his senses, not mine.”

“A whole bunch of stuff,” Jason replied, mentally shrugging at Kera’s sudden contact. He’d noticed that she’d been a lot more physical with both he and Lumi of late. Maybe it was a kitsune thing? It had certainly seemed to be for Reis, whom Kera had gotten the form from.

“I never realized how much medieval medicine came from swamps and marshes,” he said instead of voicing his thoughts. “That was a great suggestion of yours, to use that history textbook app to poke around. Here, I’ll do a party-only share…”

He brought up his notification history and condensed it down into a series of summaries.

New Traits Discovered: Confusion, Cure, Disease, Illusion, Insect, Numb, Pain, Paralysis, Reduce, Repel, Soothe, Venom, Weaken.

Additional Sources Discovered For: Cure, Poison, Restore, Insects, Weaken.

Flora Identified: Black Mangrove Root, Marsh Mallow, Mugwort, Nightshade, Snakeroot, Swamp Tea Leaves, Yarrow, Willow Bark

He and Kera had been busy. For the past two hours, Jason been surreptitiously looking different plants up on his encyclopedia app while Ravs shielded him with a shroud, and then comparing what he found there with the knowledge that [Advanced Herbalism] provided him. Then, Kera guided Ceri remotely via [Shared Senses] flying from the improvised staging grounds out into the nearby forest and swamp to acquire various samples at Jason’s direction.

The results had been… more than a little impressive. A dozen and a half alchemy traits, two thirds of which were entirely new, across eight varieties of common plants. All of them had multiple, proven medical uses dating back centuries, at least on earth. A few even had potentially useful modern chemical extracts as well, if Jason could work out a way to obtain them.

While Kera was doing the actual searching, Jason had assembled them into partially assembled packages. Some of the plants he divested of seeds or packed away carefully as sprouts, fully intending to keep samples to begin growing them himself. Others he’d dried, chopped, or bundled into pre-prepared poultices and vials that needed nothing more than an activation of [Brew Potion] to be turned into various remedies, be it [Antidotes] and [Potions of Cure Disease], or something as simple as quickly brewing up a magically-infused tea made from willow bark and mugwort to calm the nerves and reduce pain. Jason was now tentatively hopeful that he could, with some work in his lab, synthesize something not unlike actual aspirin: according to his phone, willow bark contained a chemical called salacin, an aspirin-related anti-inflammatory.

“Wow…” Kera said, peering at the list of thier results. “Those are some… really useful traits. You could even make some weird poisons too with that nightshade or snakeroot right?”

Jason scratched at the back of his head. “Eh… I could I suppose. I’m a bit… hesitant about making that kind of stuff. I don’t want to run afoul of any laws, you know? Who knows what trouble carrying around a bunch of poison arrows or something might get you in, you know?”

“You could always ask,” Kera suggested. “Aurion would know. Some kind of paralysis rounds for your gun would be pretty cool, I think. Ooh! I know, you could —eep!”

Kera cut off as Ravs suddenly sat up and poked Kera in the side with a finger.

“Hold up. My monitoring spell just picked up someone’s attention just now.”

“Huh?” Kera asked.

Ravs craned her head around to look beyond Jason. She nodded her head in that direction, and Jason turned slightly, Kera still holding onto his arm, to see a pair of guild-hopefuls approaching: A medium-build, leather armored man with fair hair and smooth skin, and an equally fair-haired, shorter, younger woman.

Jason wasn’t totally sure, but they looked related to him, probably brother and sister. Judging from their perfectly-groomed appearance and the cleanliness of their weapons, Jason also suspected they might be of lesser nobility, vaguely on the assumption that only a nobleman would worry about looking spotless while standing around in the middle of a swamp during a combat operation.

That’s a question worth considering, he thought. Do nobles have any special classes? I should ask sometime. Or invest in some kind of class identifier skill.

The girl, who couldn’t possibly have been older than eighteen or nineteen by Jason’s estimation, tucked an arm behind her, swayed slightly, and gave him a shy smile and a small wave as they approached.

Jason reconsidered. Ok, maybe not nobility. Or else very good at faking sweet and shy.

“Hi,” she said hesitantly while her companion merely inclined his head an a short, if friendly, nod. “Um. You’re uh… Jason right? The um, cook and herbalist right?”

“Among other things,” Jason replied. “What can I do for you?”

“Um, your friend showed us some of that… stuff for keeping the biters away? I was wondering if, um… you had any more?”

“Oh, did she run out?” Jason asked. “I’ve got another tin I could give her to pass out.”

“No not that,” the girl said. “I mean, that is, I was wondering if we could buy some? Or like, make a trade? It smells nice, and other than Rennig, our squad is all girls and we have the worst time in places like this, and…”

She trailed off shyly for moment, and then shrugged. “It seems to be working and it’d be nice to not have to deal with getting bit all the time. It’ll be even worse once we’re out there. We know this [Witch] who usually buys Elerie’s stuff she harvests, and makes us some stuff in return, so we keep an eye out for plants and bugs and stuff. It’s gross, but maybe we have something useful to you?”

Jason thought for a moment, and then shrugged as Kera nudged him. Barter was a common thing between adventurers, and he figured it wouldn’t hurt to hear her out at least. “I’ve got a few batches of the stuff,” he said, “so I don’t see why not. How much are you looking for and what are you willing to offer?”

She reached into a small bag she had at her side, and pulled out a few small miscellaneous jars, placing them on the table.

“Go ahead, take a look,” she said.

Jason examined them with [Arcane Sight]. Several held various swamp herbs, one of which he immediately identified as more nightshade. Another held a jar of large, live beetles crawling around on a half-rotted piece of wood. The last one got his attention though. It was mostly empty, containing a bare handful of long, black, flattened… somethings that rattled around when he picked up the jar to examine it closer.

[Dried Swamp Leeches] Traits Identified: Blood, Leech.

Curious, Jason put the jar back onto a table and held up a hand for a moment to ask the girl to wait a moment while he quickly brought up his status sheet, referencing the ‘Leeching’ trait.

Jason consider the entry. Huh. It’s not actually related to the creature type, but rather to the Drain rune. Like ‘Potion of Life Leech’. That… could be very useful.

He closed his status and picked up the jar, regarding it as if giving it serious consideration. Which he was, really.

There weren’t a lot of the leeches. Only a handful, and his skill informed him that he’d need quite a few to extract enough of the trait. But if he had his guess….

“These are actually pretty useful,” he told the girl. “Any chance you could get more? This here isn’t really enough for my purposes, but…?”

The man, who Jason guessed was Rennig, finally spoke up.

“Doable. Just gotta stick a leg in,” was all he said.

The girl looked up at him and grimaced. “Ew, Rennig! You’d better be the one volunteering!”

Rennig just shrugged.

The girl sighed, turning back to Jason. “Sure, we can do that,” she replied. “Would say… a full jar do? I’m not sure we’ll have time for more than that before it’s time to head out.”

“That sounds great,” Jason replied. “I’d be willing to part with say… three tins for a full jar? And if you want to bring me more later, I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Deal,” the girl said, offering a hand. Jason shook it, and she and Rennig returned to the crowd, presumably to locate their squad for a quick foray.

Kera squeezed Jason’s arm for a moment before finally releasing him, and picking Ceri up off the table. “See? Told you could totally make stuff people want to buy with no one the wiser. She just totally assumed you had some kind of apothecary class like Flora’s. As long as you don’t charge an arm and a leg, people won’t even think to wonder about what you’re really doing.”

With Ravs' and Kera’s assistance, Jason began the process of bundling up the various materials and storing them away. One hour later and a jar of leeches richer, Jason was ready to go, and the scouts had returned.