by Jez Cajiao
I grinned to myself and reached out, plucking a Pergola tuber from the collection of random shit I’d piled up. I had two of these left from when I first found them in the Great Tower. Before, I’d found a single use for them; now, I had three when I examined it using the ‘Greater Examination’ spell.
Pergola
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
These long tubers have an earthy taste but are oddly satisfying.
Uses Discovered:
1) Somnolence
2) Perception Poison
3) Fire Resistance
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
76/100
N/A
I nodded to myself as I looked it over; then I used the new spell instead, pouring the mana into it and watching as it blossomed, growing to a single point of energy that filled my right palm. Once it was stable, it flowed sideways, sinking into the tuber I held in my left and suffusing it, seeping through its layers, then oozing back to the surface and flowing back to me, like a lazy breeze.
When it returned, I felt… or tasted, something totally new.
It was an entirely new sense, and I struggled for long minutes to make sense of it, but eventually, I did, and I smiled unconsciously at the wonder of it all.
This new sense had carried impressions back to me, parts of patterns that I now knew were suffused throughout the realm and indeed the universe around me.
I examined the patterns, or fragments, feeling the heat that radiated from the section that granted the resistance to fire. It literally formed an overlay to the substance I was made of, adding a pattern that seemed to make the fire appear to be a part of me.
It wouldn’t last long, as it was, in essence, a liquid version of the pattern, and it’d break up, dissolving away. But what if I added other parts, if I took that tiny piece of the pattern, and added to it? Building upon the piece I had, like constructing a jigsaw, I could see more of the picture.
I could see more of the pattern of reality, and I could alter it.
I moved through the ingredients before me in a daze, gathering up some, tossing others aside, and examining still more, until in the end I had five ingredients laid out before me.
The Pergola tubers, Mora Telendril, Labian Leaves and Mugrot stems, as well as the damn Bernicle Beans. I remembered Lydia telling me that the Bernicle beans were used to boost your sex life, and I saw that stood out… prominently… when I examined each ingredient now as well. However, each of them, even though the ‘Greater Examination’ spell hadn’t picked up a use for them that included fire, still resonated in that way to me, strangely. I decided to trust my new instincts.
I set to work, first locating the part that held this ‘pattern’; in some, it was a leaf; in others, the furry underside of the leaf. In still others, the sap that I could squeeze out from the roots.
As the hours passed, I ran out of many of the ingredients, finding that adding water ruined some of them, while it enhanced others.
I boiled, chopped, and reduced. I dried some sections out, and still others I ground up whole, but after nearly six hours, my limbs feeling leaden with exhaustion, my eyes gritty with a need to sleep, I had a single new potion sitting on the desk before me. I’d hoped to have dozens, but I also had three new prompts…
Congratulations! For staying true to your choices and for walking the Path of the Creationist, you have gained a point of Intelligence!
*
Congratulations, Journeyman! You have taken your first steps to a wider understanding of the art of the Alchemist! No longer content to trudge along, playing with the simple knowledge that most can possess, you have started to truly experiment! Your discoveries mark a turning point in your Profession, stepping aside from the simple, well-trodden path. Instead, you have begun to explore the wilderness of the universe’s potential!
The Path to Fire Pattern Mastery has begun! 7/100
*
Congratulations! You have taken your first steps along the path of your Secondary Profession of Herbalism and Organic Compounds!
No longer must you wait and hope. No longer must you only purchase or rely upon whimsical luck to guide you in your search for ingredients. As a Novice Herbalist, you will now be guided to Organic Compounds that could enhance or be otherwise used in your Primary Profession of Creationist Alchemist by all of your senses. Perhaps the secrets of life reside in your dinner? Mayhap that unusual smell you scent on the wind is actually a poison so deadly that cities will fall? Only the Gods can stop you now!
Gain +2 to Perception!
I looked them over, grinning to myself despite my exhaustion, before turning to the potion I’d managed to create. The information almost seemed to leap into my tired mind, and I read it quickly, smiling proudly.
Anti-Fire Balm
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This Apprentice grade balm will grant a 7% resistance to all forms of fire for eleven minutes when spread evenly on a surface.
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Potency
Rare
No
100/100
4/10
“So, I basically made sunscreen?” I wondered aloud, reading the details, until Oracle shook her head and told me what I was missing in my sleepless, addled state.
“No Jax, you made a balm that would protect you from seven percent of a FIREBALL. If you could improve on this, you could walk naked over magma and not feel anything… it might be an Apprentice-grade potion, but this is hugely significant. You managed to make this from scratch, with no guidance, save your own instincts. Half the ingredients there shouldn’t work together, and yeah, only a few of them made it into this potion in the end, but you learned so much about mixing and making them into a single product, didn’t you?”
“I did…” I admitted, realizing that by the time I’d used up most of the ingredients, I’d learned what didn’t work for some of them, and what did for others. I’d need hundreds of each, I now knew, but once I had them? I could start to really grow into my profession.
I suddenly realized that the healing potions I’d been using and giving out were basically weak as all hell, because they’d been made by utter amateurs. I’d yet to come across a potion made by someone who really knew what they were doing. Even the ‘greater’ potions were simply particularly good versions of the basic recipes, with perhaps one or two additional ingredients added in.
My eyes widened in recognition as I grasped the faintest possibility of what I’d discovered. If I could find the Pattern for Healing… I needed to devote serious time to this, I knew suddenly. I could find information in every goddamn ingredient out there, and if I could assemble it all together, I’d have a potion that could damn well resurrect the dead.
I remembered a series of books from my past, and a greasy man who’d spoken of bottling fame, of putting a stopper in death itself.
This was a way to actually do that.
I could give my people potions that would even the playing field even with Nimon if I worked hard enough. I could create mana potions that would transform someone’s mana channels, making them more powerful in every way, not simply increase the regeneration speed.
I sagged backwards, the world of possibilities flooding my mind. I felt my head hit the wood of the deck as my exhausted mind finally gave out, and I slept.
Some seven hours later, I was awoken from a dream in which I was beating a giant gummy bear to death with a potted fern, only to find Oracle shaking me, fear in her eyes.
“Wha…” I mumbled, confused, until her panic fought its way through the levels of sleep-fogged incomprehension that filled my mind.
“Jax! Wake up!” she snapped, and I rolled to my feet, displacing her, and looking around the room frantically, trying to spot the threat.
“Jax!” Oracl
e shouted, and I spun on her, my mind filled with a mix of fear, aggression, and a need to fight.
“What!” I shouted back, before I felt it…
There was a feeling or terrible warning, and it was emanating from the north-east. I grabbed my naginata and sprinted for the door, Tang throwing it open and getting out of the way barely a second before I’d have taken it off its hinges.
I ran to the ladder to the upper decks, leaping and triggering my ‘Soaring Majesty’ ability for a long second, sending me flying out of the hatch and into the air.
I spun in the air, dropping onto the lower deck, and staring into the distance. My eyes locked on something that was still beyond the horizon, a structure literally hundreds of miles away, as Oracle focused in on the feeling, receiving a message from Seneschal, even as Jenae spoke it aloud to me, her voice grim as it rang in my mind.
“Beware, Eternal… The Dark Legion of Nimon has begun to march on the Great Tower of Dravith. The War of the Gods has begun.”
“Tenandra!” I bellowed, spinning around. “Get us caught up to the fleet. Fast!” I snapped out the order, turning to the others as they raced up on deck behind me, ready for a fight. “The Dark Legion is heading for the Tower. We need to get there, now!” I snapped at them, hoping we wouldn’t be too late…
Epilogue
“Move up!” bellowed Turk, jogging along and waving Thomas forward. He ran a little faster, buoyed by the joint feelings of comradeship and a building bloodlust. The bloodlust was an old friend, always there in battle, and had been back in the old world as well, when he’d been crossed, but since swearing to Nimon, he’d found it easier and quicker to rise.
Thomas grinned at Coran as the pair ran side by side. The trail they followed was well-trodden by the time they hit it, the green leaves and reaching fronds smashed aside by well over a hundred other soldiers before them.
The hours of running, of constant drilling and pushing that the Dark Legion had instilled in them every day suddenly made perfect sense to Thomas, as they ran at a speed barely below a sprint for hour after hour in full armor.
The Trail-Masters, specialist mages of the Dark Church, hurried along with them, men, and women whose only points, it seemed, were invested in Intelligence and Wisdom. They flew atop disks of air, their voices echoing as they chanted the great ‘Trail-Song’.
The marching spell boosted the constitution of those who heard it, while decreasing the weight of the world upon them.
“Gravity magic!” Thomas grunted enviously, staring after them longingly as they flowed through the air, making it possible for the Dark Legion to literally run down horses and still be able to fight at the end of it, all in full armor.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to try to learn that next!” Coran called to Thomas, grinning as he ran alongside him. “Twenty years’ service, that calls for, on top of the standard!”
“And it’d be worth it!” Thomas called back. “Besides, you know you’re only pissed because they wouldn’t teach you the Force-Push!”
“It’s stupid!” Coran grunted. “Imagine being able to use that in a fight; parry, Force-Push them over, stab, and you’re onto the next one!”
“True, but we all know you only wanted it to be able to lift Mella’s dress!” called Sergeant Belladonna from ahead of them as she laughed, and the others joined in.
“Seriously, how many people did you tell?” Coran gasped, glaring at Thomas, who laughed and ran harder, resolving to stand out to Belladonna if it was the last thing he did.
Thomas was part of the Advance, a place of high honor, he’d been told, as the team of three hundred rushed forward, closing the distance to the Great Tower. They were to get the Portal Mages there and hold the territory until they could create a stable bridge for the rest of the army, all five thousand of them, to cross over.
Such a portal was horrifically expensive, not just in material costs, but in lives. At least some of the twelve mages required to build it were guaranteed to die in the casting. Literally years and years of specific, dedicated training went into each mage, and most would be able to cast such a great working only once or twice before being drained to point of death or crippling injury.
The survivors would be rewarded, and the dead bundled away. Part of Thomas rebelled against such waste, but the new part, the part that was growing to glory in the fight, in the sheer relief of not having to worry anymore, of each day being fresh, filled with opportunities to test himself, to fight and to grow, that part reveled in it.
Thomas jumped over a large rock in his path and landed with a crunch, his black and gold breastplate bouncing slightly atop his chain-mail hauberk. He grunted, resolving to get his straps checked by Coran when he stopped, even as he shifted his bags to a better location, keeping a constant watch on the sides of the trail and hoping some monster might try its luck.
The march; hell, the sprint, he might as well call it, had been worked out as just over four hundred miles, apparently. The column could do an average of ten miles an hour, slowed substantially because the damn terrain was so heavily wooded. Two of the Trail-Masters were literally charged with smashing the trees apart as they went, then the soldiers would run over the wreckage. Each company got half an hour in the lead before dropping back, and the next one cycled forward to stomp the ground flat.
Four hundred miles, with the soldiers running for ten hours a day, gave an estimate of four days for the Dark Legion Advance to reach the Tower, and another day to set up the portals.
Thomas couldn’t wait. Five more days, and he’d be able to gut the fucker that had claimed his brother’s name.
He glared out of the full-face helm, hearing his rough breathing echoing raspily, as the constant anger, one of Nimon’s Dark Gifts, bubbled along, directly competing against the steady low-level rage he’d spent his life filled with.
The result was a warrior who was rising fast in the Dark Legion, and who had already caught the approving eye of others, as well as inciting jealousy and hatred.
That was good, though.
As Nimon taught, only the strong could live. The weak were food.
The End of Book Four
Facebook and Patreon
Hi everyone, well, there’s a steadily growing Facebook group you’ll find here at https://www.facebook.com/UnderVerse-105675691131178/, where you can message me, leave comments and I occasionally run giveaways… (This will be happening more, its just a question of time!)
There’s my Website, where you can sign up to the mailing list: https://theunderverse.co.uk/
And lastly, for those who’ve got a hankering for the next book already… there’s the Patreon site, where once this book goes live, I’ll be uploading the first few chapters of book 5 :-)
https://www.patreon.com/Jezcajiao
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LitRPG Guildmasters Titles:
Altered Realms: Ascension by B.F. Rockriver
Brightblade by Jez Cajiao
Grim Beginnings: The Ashen Plane by Maxwell Farmer
Primeverse by R.K. Billiau
Shattered Sword by TJ Reynolds
Tower of Gates: Hack by Paul Bellow
Cipher�
�s Quest by Tim Kaiver
Watcher's Test by Sean Oswald
Star Divers by Stephen Landry
Fragment of Divinity by Jamey Sultan
Hive Knight by Grayson Sinclair
Condition Evolution by Kevin Sinclair
Berserker by Dimitrios Gkirgkiris
Glitchworld by Damien Hanson
LitRPG!
I’m often asked for personal recommendations, so if this book has whetted your appetite for more LitRPG, please have a look at the following, these are brilliant series by brilliant authors!
Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko
The Land by Aleron Kong
Challengers Call by Nathan A Thompson
SoulShip also by Nathan
Endless Online by M H Johnson
Silver Fox and the Western Hero, also by M H Johnson
The Good Guys/Bad Guys by Eric Ugland
LITRPG!
There's one LitRPG page that’s probably the first one I found, and hopefully it'll be a great starting point for you all if you've never read any before, its Aleron Kong's group: LitRPG!!!
There’s also a few really active Facebook groups I’d recommend you join, as you’ll get to hear about great new books, new releases and interact with all your (new) favorite authors! (I may also be there, skulking at the back and enjoying the memes…)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGsociety/
