There were small tables and chairs pushed up against the walls throughout the skeleton room, and they decided to take the sturdiest table and a chair for each of them before heading back to the entry room. Vanya stood and worked at the table. The chairs that they had brought fit the table, but she preferred to stand—she had been wheelchair bound for almost seven years, and she wanted to use her legs. She smiled at the thought of the freedom this game was providing her with, and she marveled that her legs were not tired from the day’s travels.
She was attempting to create potions, specifically any that would restore health. She had twelve different herbs in her pouch, with multiple doses of each of them. Whenever she selected an herb, there was a brief description of possible uses for it, and she had a few that related to healing. Feverfew, milk thistle, and blue moss all had general healing properties. Goldenseal was supposed to prevent infections, so hopefully that would help with the necrotic damage to Isla’s leg. All of the herbs were listed as having a rarity of common, except the blue moss, which was uncommon.
Vanya’s main problem was that she had no recipes. She could invoke the skill, and when she did so, she was prompted to add the ingredients into one of her measuring flasks. She tried to make potions from each one of the healing types individually and then each combination of two of the healing types using water as the liquid component for each trial, but none of those produced anything. She was frustrated that she lacked access to a database of recipes at her fingertips. She hated trying to guess and check her way through things, but she desperately wanted to be useful to the group. She wasn’t really worried that they would abandon her, but this world made her very afraid since she didn’t have any potent fighting skills. She had assumed that a healer class would have actual healing spells, but apparently that had been too much to hope for.
They each had food with them, and the rest of the group had eaten and discussed the next course of action while she had worked on her potions. She was about to start combining the herbs in groups of three when Ewtain came back from another check of the skeleton room. “The bones are all gone!” He exclaimed. He was carrying a pouch, which he placed and opened on the table that Vanya was using. She was startled and annoyed with him for disturbing her work. Then her display flashed, and the message indicated that the contents of the pouch were ten doses of strengthened bone dust, which could be used as a reactant in the creation of potions. Excited and now grateful for the interruption, she said as much, and then Ewtain said, “It’s needed in some poison recipes also.”
“My message just mentions potions,” Vanya said, displaying her message so that they could all see it.
“Maybe our skills trigger the information,” Ewtain said. “I have the brew poison skill, so maybe that’s why I got the notification about the dust.”
“Good idea, Ewt,” Taloc said. He went and inspected the bag. “I received no information. Anyone else?” The other three went to look in the bag, but none of them received a notification either. “Well, we should keep the things that we find as long as we have storage space for them until we can either get more info on them or find a use for them.”
“Can I use the dust to try to make some potions?” Vanya asked. “I’m hoping to make some that heal or cure in some way.”
“Can you save me a dose?” Ewtain asked. “I want to try to use that stinger and make some poison. It probably won’t work on the undead, but eventually it’ll be useful.”
Vanya was willing to split the doses evenly with him, but if he only wanted one, so much the better. “Sure,” she said, and began prepping a potion with just the goldenseal.
Ewtain turned to Maroftis and asked, “Can I get that scorpion tail?”
Maroftis accessed his inventory after Vultressant translated. “I have good news and bad news...Well, maybe just good news,” Maroftis said through Vultressant. “There’s no tail, but there are two vials of scorpion venom.” He got them out and handed them to Ewtain. “I’m not sure why they’re in vials, but that’s handy.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“It was the same thing with the dust,” Ewtain replied. “The pouch wasn’t mine; it was just sitting on the ground where the skeletal champion had fallen. Hmm, never mind on that dose, Vanya. This is already considered poison and doesn’t need to be brewed further.”
“Well, that’s good but annoying,” Vultressant said. “I don’t really want to wait around for an hour or more to see what loot drops.”
“Maybe there’s a way to speed the process along,” Taloc said. “We didn’t try to use any sort of loot option; we just did it the old-fashioned way. Next time, we can experiment.” In most online games, you just had to click on a recently killed creature, and a box would appear with the items that it was carrying, any of its body parts that might be useful for sale or for crafting, and any quest items related to the monster. This loot could then be taken or assigned to another member of the party. Taloc was the party leader, and that usually meant control of the loot options.
Vanya successfully made a potion called treat disease on her first try by mixing echinacea with the skeletal dust. She immediately received a notification: You have discovered the recipe, treat disease. For a more potent tincture, you can increase your skill or use better ingredients. There was a description for the potion, and it listed minor necrotic damage as one of the ailments that it treated, so she gave it to Isla. After drinking the potion, Isla said, “Thanks. The infection is gone, but my Dex will still be reduced until my leg is healed more.”
“I’ll work on it,” Vanya promised. She went back to work but noticed that her mana was no longer full. She tried again and watched her mana as she worked. She successfully made another potion of treat disease, but she had spent another quarter of her mana making it. She waited for her mana to fully replenish before attempting to combine her other herbs with the dust. The attempt with feverfew didn’t work, and neither did the milk thistle, but the blue moss produced a healing potion. It only healed 20 HP, but it did so in only three seconds. There was a message regarding the potion recipe, and it indicated that if she learned life magic, then the potency of the potion would be higher. She then tried the three different combinations of pairs of healing herbs, and the only combination that worked was feverfew combined with the blue moss. This potion was also called healing; it healed 35 HP over three seconds. She checked and found the same message regarding the potency. She then used her interface to mentally change the name of the first potion from healing to minor healing so she could differentiate between the two. Finally, she combined all three, producing a mending potion. This potion would treat broken bones and torn muscles, again with the same notification; she hoped that this would be enough to cure Isla.
Isla was fast asleep. She sat in a chair with her head resting on the table. Maroftis was snoring loudly from one corner of the room, and the others were awake and periodically monitoring the skeleton room. Vanya gently shook Isla awake. “Drink this,” she said to Isla when she had sat up.
“Thank you,” Isla said in a sleepy voice. She drank the potion and grimaced. “That one could use some sugar.”
The potion effect took a minute or so to work, but it was a success. “The Dex penalty is down to just two points. I don’t know if the potion is done or not, so I might be fine soon. Great work, Van.”
Vanya beamed. “I have one more dose of the dust, so I can make another one, and you should have no penalty after that.”
“I’m fine; don’t waste that last one on me.”
“We’re likely to need more of it in the future,” Vanya said, “but if that room respawns, we can just camp it for more dust. I might have to go topside to look for more herbs, but for now I want to get you fixed and get some sleep myself.”
After creating the second potion of mending, she received an announcement that her potions skill was now level two. There was no indication as to what exactly this meant, but generally, as skills increase, the ability that goes along with it increases as well. In some games, certain skills could not have a level that was higher than the character’s. Since she was still level one, that rule didn’t apply here. She gave the potion to Isla, who choked it down with a bit more grace than she had with the previous one. The Skirmisher then removed her chainmail shirt, revealing a cloth shirt beneath, and found an unoccupied area to lay down for the night.
Vanya had wanted to spend time practicing her skills, but now she was too tired to think more about that, so she too found a place on the ground to sleep. She brought a bed roll out of her inventory and put it down near the stairway, and she was asleep almost immediately after curling up atop it.