The Newt and Demon-8.2 - Fast Me

Theo leaned against the counter on the first floor of the Newt and Demon. A bored-looking half-ogre stood behind the counter, thumbing through a book he had never seen. The person working the counter was now always some random dude hired from within town. Potions weren’t such a precious thing that they needed to be sold en masse anymore. Most of their stock went to the town to be used by the adventurers. Exports of the potions was more profitable than selling them from the shop.

Yet the shopkeeper lingered. Perhaps they were just a monument to the way things had once been, but Theo wouldn’t complain. It made him feel as though his shop was more complete than it really was.

“Working hard or hardly working?” Theo asked.

“Hardly working,” the man said with a disinterested nod.

“Sounds about right.”

In his hand, Theo held a bit of Spiny Swamp Thistle Root. From within the reagent, he could feel the alchemical and magical potential. It was like an entire universe of effects housed within such a small package. He knew the basics of how his alchemy worked. Smashing the reagent up, mixing it with water, and heating it for extended periods would produce an essence. This was the core of distillation alchemy. The process got more complex after that, but the base-level was just that simple. The point was that distilling essences was the fastest way to extract magic from a reagent.

Theo focused on the description of his newest skill. He could use facets of himself and Tero’gal to bend the rules of alchemy. What exactly did that mean? The rule was: he needed to heat a mashed reagent in water to extract the essence. So, how would he ‘bend’ that rule?

From his inventory, Theo withdrew a Flame Artifice and a copper pot. After a quick test to ensure the pot was alchemically inert, he filled it with enchanted water, placed some Spiny Swamp Thistle Root inside, and turned the heat up.

“Time for tea?” the half-ogre attendant asked, perking up.

Theo gave him a flat look for a moment before his expression softened. He then withdrew another Flame Artifice, a teapot, and some Moss Nettle from his inventory and started some tea. “Well, now that you’ve mentioned it…”

It must’ve seemed strange the way Theo was staring into his pot of boiling roots. But the more he focused on it, the more he could feel unseen interactions. The essence wanted to bubble to the surface to mix with the enchanted water, but the rules of the system forbid it. The alchemist pressed his will into the boiling pot, watching as it sputtered and released fragrant vapors into the air.

“There’s something here,” Theo said, removing the teapot from the fire idly and pouring two cups. “Almost like I can influence the way the alchemical reaction happens. But does that make sense?”

“Are you asking me?” the half-ogre asked.

“Only if you have answers,” Theo said with a grunt. His attention was now back onto the boiling pot, and anything the shopkeeper said failed to penetrate his mind. He sipped his tea while he experimented with the boiling reagent.

There was a lot going on with this experiment. Most importantly, Theo had a clear sense of what was going on when he did different things. If he focused his willpower on the pot, he felt it surge with potential. Adding mana to the water had a similar effect, but it was less pronounced. The alchemist arrived at one conclusion: he could extract an essence from the reagent without putting it under pressure. Perhaps he could take it as far as pulling an essence from a reagent without heat. That would require more experimentation.

When a skill said it scaled based on willpower, Theo knew things were going to get silly. He withdrew a flask from his inventory, placing a fresh root inside. After dripping some mana inside, he held his hand over the top and imposed his will. The root within vibrated, sloshing the loose mana around until the reagent itself liquified. The mana and root combined, resulting in a sloshing liquid that was far thicker than normal essence.

When Theo leaned in to inspect the resulting essence, nothing came. He recognized the hidden qualities of the essence. It was a Healing Essence of some kind, although he couldn’t tell if it would work with his normal brewing process. With a concerned look to the idle shopkeeper, he stood and left.

“Enjoy the tea,” Theo said, departing from the lab. The half-ogre offered a non-committal grunt in response.

The alchemist marched to a less-populated part of the city, finding his way outside the giant ominous metal cube. Skipping a few steps in the distillation process was fine. But he had jumped ahead some pretty big steps, making him feel uneasy about the stability of the resulting essence. Also, it was way too thick. He pressed his back against the cube and sat, once again refocusing his willpower on the liquid.

“Maybe we can skip another step,” he muttered, adding more mana and observing the reaction.

It was nothing like the regular process. There was no bubbling or the creation of vapor. It just got slightly more like a liquid, and shone with a deep red color. The alchemist’s brow knit tightly, wincing as he looked at the ‘potion’ in his hands. He was certain he had created a potion. It was about 3 units by volume and smelled deeply of the earth and metal. This left him with a singular question.

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“Should I drink it?” Theo asked himself, tapping his chin as he thought about the consequences. His alchemical senses told him it was safe… ish.

“Drink it,” a haunting voice came from behind.

Theo turned, watching as Sarisa—a very imposing half-ogre woman when she wanted to be—emerged from the shadows. She had a taunting look on her face, and wiggled her eyebrows to make her point. “You know you want to do it.”

“Indeed,” Theo said, pulling the flask close to his lips. He took the smallest of sips. Well, it was more of a bite with how thick it was. He winced, clutching his chest and falling over with a strangled shout.

“Oh, crap!” Sarisa shouted, rushing over and grabbing Theo by the shoulders. She hoisted him up with strength he didn’t know she had. “We gotta get you to a healer!”

Theo slapped Sarisa on the back after she had thrown him over her shoulder. She was dashing down the road by the time her pace slowed at all. “I was messing with you,” he said, slapping her back harder. “I’m fine.”

“What!?” Sarisa shouted, tossing Theo to the ground with no care to how hard he fell. “Are you serious? I thought you were dying!”

“You hoped I was dying,” Theo said, standing and dusting himself off. Just from taste, he could tell the mock-potion had excellent restorative effects. The one problem was, just like with the essence, it didn’t have a system description. “This is weird…”

Sarisa folded her arms, looking down at Theo with an annoyed expression for only a few seconds. Half-ogres, the alchemist had come to learn, were big fans of pranks. Her anger didn’t last long. “What’s up?”

Theo jogged over to the place where he had dropped the flask, scooping it up and handing it over. “Check that out. A potion without a description.”

“Ew, why does it look like jelly?” Sarisa asked, taking the flask, but holding it at arm’s length. After a few moments, she ate some of it. After a few breaths, a wave of light spread across her forearm under her armor. She peeled back the layers of armor, revealing her skin. “I had a pretty bad scratch there. So I guess the potions work.”

“Yet it doesn’t explain why the system doesn’t recognize it,” Theo said. “Maybe this new skill is just weird.”

“I’m going with the weird theory,” Sarisa said, nodding. “I was wondering what you were doing…”

“Let’s try something else,” Theo said, withdrawing a few Salamander Egg shells from his inventory. He stowed the other flask and added the shells to an empty flask before heading south. Sarisa followed behind him, bouncing with excitement as they went. He added his mana and forced his will onto the mixture, creating an essence in moments. Repeating the previous steps, he added even more mana and gained a swirling mixture of glowing red liquid.

“Oh, that looks dangerous,” Sarisa said.

Theo stopped on the road, blinking a few times as he realized something. “Without a system message, you wouldn’t know how dangerous it was. You’d have to be an alchemical expert to know the differences between reagents. Maybe I finally have my training wheels off.”

“Or you’re poking a snapper with a broken leg. Just begging for trouble. You know, the way you always are.”

Theo actually agreed with her. He wasn’t ready to chalk this method of alchemy up as the ‘better way’ just yet. There were too many unknowns when the resulting potions—or bombs in this case—gave him no information. The volatile mixture within the flask sloshed from side to side as they moved past the smelters. By the time they reached the rocky mountains to the south, the bomb threatened to detonate on its own.

“Okay,” Theo said, spotting a rocky area without vegetation that would be perfect to test. “Ready?”

“Let’s go!”

The alchemist tossed the flash into the hills, watching as it spiraled through the air. His eyes went wide as the glass shattered against the rocks. The fireball that rose into the air was far bigger than he had expected. Washing out like an oncoming tide, the flames doused the entire hillside in cleansing fire. Theo barely got up a barrier, encasing himself and Sarisa in a layer of fire-repelling magic. Still, they both felt the heat pressing through as though to suffocate them.

As fast as the fire had appeared, it flashed over the pair and dissipated into the air. Left behind was a greasy slick on the ground that crackled and popped.

“Okay! That was something!” Sarisa shouted, digging her finger into her ear.

“That was at least twice as powerful as my best basic firebomb,” Theo said, studying the way the remaining flames burned. The lingering effect wasn’t as good as the initial blast, but it was still impressive. The jelly-like material did a great job of sticking to a target. “We could blow up some serious stuff with this.”

“How about other potions?” Sarisa asked. “Like a go-fast potion.”

“You wanna go fast?” Theo asked.

“Is that even a question?” Sarisa asked. “Yeah. I wanna go fast. Like… real fast. Come on, magic man! Fast me!”

As much as Theo wanted to make Sarisa the fastest half-ogre who had ever zipped through Broken Tusk, he wasn’t sure it was within his abilities. The closest thing he could think of was a Dexterity Potion imbued with Elemental Wind, but that was a few too many steps for him right now. Instead, he settled for creating a Dexterity Potion with this new method to see what would happen.

Theo sat so he could concentrate, and whipped up the gooey potion in no time at all. He held the shimmer purple mixture out and Sarisa winced.

“I’m impressed with your speed, but could you do something about the consistency?” she asked.

Theo shrugged. “I doubt this will even make you go fast. At most, it’ll increase your Dexterity in some unpredictable way.”

“Hmm. An untested potion that feels like an unpalatable goop in the mouth… But I might go pretty fast?” Sarisa asked. “Those are odds I’m willing to take.”

And take the potion she did. Far too much of it, as was her way. Sarisa slurped down the entire flask’s worth of potion. Then she began twitching. Then vibrating. Theo watched in horror and amazement as Sarisa did some of the quickest, and most impressive combat moves he had ever seen.

“My body is filled with electricity!” she shouted, scratching at the back of her neck as every muscle in her body twitched. “How fast am I?”

Theo watched as the woman darted around the area. She was a bit faster than before. Maybe. He couldn’t really tell with the way she lurched here and there.

“Way faster,” he lied. “Come on. We got some… And she’s gone. Why did I expect anything else?”

This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢