“Agreed.” Jasper took the card and pulled out another five Lesser monster cores.
The man looked to the monster cores and then to Jasper. “One silver and thirty coppers.” His eyes shone as he smiled at Jasper.
“Agreed,” Jasper said.
The man quickly took all of the monster cores into his storage ring and then pulled out a stack of silvers and coppers.
Jasper glanced at the money, checking it quickly before it disappeared into his storage ring. “Good doing business with you.” Jasper turned and left the booth and the store.
He pulled out a list of different items that had been requested by the residents, the academy, and the barracks of Alva Dungeon.
Across Wild Reaches Trading Outpost, there were all kinds of strange sales happening. A lady walked into a tannery and sold twenty different hides from level seven and eight creatures. Another woman walked into a weapon store and sold off five different iron weapons that had all reached the Apprentice grade. A man stepped into a butchery and pulled out animal carcasses to be sold.
As many big deals were made, there were no ripples on the surface. The sellers all wore clothing to hide their identity and the buyers, not wanting to offend them and keep their gains to themselves, kept their secrets.
At the same time, small items were being sold on a grand scale: paper, ink, jewels, refined metals; even Alchemist Tommins had five different visitors purchasing various potions, powders, and books that he had.
The Bloody Ram was purchased by new owners, the staff given a bonus and asked to stay on as long as they made an oath to the new owners.
The transactions passed smoothly over the space of a week, the people from Alva Dungeon trying to make as little of a stir as possible.
***
Sergeant Niemm watched as Egbert walked up the side of the mountain.
“Dear gods above!” he yelled out and tripped on the hem of his robe, falling down the hill. His legs went everywhere in an explosion of bones. “Dammit! That’s the third time this month!”
“Oh, by Grabthars Hammer!” Taran grumbled as he looked at the sorry collection of bones at the bottom of the small incline.
“Jones! Get off my small toe!” Egbert yelled as he started to reassemble himself.
Jones looked down and picked up the small bones. “How did you feel that?”
“Well, it is my damn small toe, just, you know, over there instead of here,” Egbert said.
Taran looked at the pile of bones with his hands on his hips. “Now, will you cast the damn bleeding spell that’ll tell us how big this iron vein is?”
“I need to get up the hill and do a ceremony and...”
“I read the damn book, you shiny skull-headed twit! You just want to do that bit to look like some evil undead mage,” Taran said.
“You didn’t have to be mean about it,” Egbert said, but didn’t deny Taran’s words.
“You will cast the spell or I’ll put your head on top of the academy’s library,” Taran said.
“You know how uncoordinated my body is!” Egbert complained.
The smith and undead stared back and forth at each other.
“You blinked first!” Egbert said a moment later.
“You don’t have eyelids—how is it even a contest?” Taran raised up his hands in aggravation.
“Pssht, someone’s a bad loser.” Egbert grabbed his head and put it on top of his spine. “Shit, around the wrong way.” Egbert turned his head to face forward as he kicked his foot around, re-aligning the bones in it.
“Egbert,” Taran said.
“Fine!” Egbert sighed. He raised up his hands as the world darkened. A massive magical circle appeared in the sky. It looked ominous, made from black smoke with the runes carved from purple lightning.
Sergeant Niemm felt the Mana in the area being gathered into the spell formation.
The robe around Egbert whipped around, making him look like a hellish undead mage as he laughed and lowered his hand. The rumbling formation shot forward, expanding; a purple light shot out of the spell formation into the ground.
The earth seemed to shake with the impact as the Beast Mountain’s skies returned to normal.
Everyone was quiet under Egbert’s display of magic.
“Hmm, looks like it’s a pretty good vein.” Egbert pulled out a map and started to update it. “Got some good gems in there that could be used for crafting. About three thousand iron ingots’ worth of ore, pretty pure—even have some enhancer elements around the outside of the iron vein.”
How can he change his personality so much in a short period of time? Sergeant Niemm could only sigh, putting it down to one of the oddities that had happened with the people of Alva ever since Rugrat and Erik had come along. It’s like there’s weirdos popping out of everywhere!
Niemm couldn’t really be blamed as Egbert and Taran, who had been complaining at each other, were now both looking over the map that was being transcribed via magic.
“Why don’t we make a Mana drill? We can harvest about one hundred iron ingots a week!” Egbert said.
“Do you not remember about the whole part where we don’t have the Mana to spare?” Taran said.
“Well, what else are we going to do?” Egbert asked.
“We’ve got plenty of smithing apprentices. It’ll be good training if they know how to mine the raw materials—also improve their strength,” Taran said with authority.
“I don’t know what’s scarier—that he wanted to make a bigger show of the spell, or that he completed it so easily,” Corporal Tei said beside Niemm.
Niemm could only nod. He hadn’t seen that kind of magic before. It had been overwhelmingly powerful and Egbert only raised his hand to call it down on the world.
“Just make sure you never piss him off,” Niemm said, offering his best advice.
“Let’s get started!” Taran pulled out a pickaxe.
With that, Egbert guided him to a part of the wall. His smithing apprentices followed. Taran swung the pickaxe with all his strength. It smashed into the wall, sending rocks exploding outward.
Around him, the other smithing apprentices also started to hit the wall. With their strength, they made quick work of the wall, and found the cave hidden behind.
Taran and Egbert went first. One could hear the sounds of pickaxes as they struck the ground, clearing out the cave and making room for Alva Dungeon’s first iron vein mine.
“All right, I want trip wires around the area to let us know if any beasts come to check out the noise. Use some of the pee from the panthers—that should dissuade anything other than high-level creatures from coming to check out the area.
“Tei, Knox, I want you to find an overwatch position and mark out a place for a watchtower to be made,” Niemm said, organizing his people and starting to build the defensive structures that would secure the mine from the monsters in Beast Mountain and protect those working inside.
Chapter: Crazy Idea
Erik prepared three of the Lidel leaves in one go.
He did it a few more times. He didn’t succeed every time but as he went on, he reached one hundred percent. He didn’t think about the outside world, only focusing on the ingredients in front of him and the flames that danced around him.
Instead of moving on to prepare four of the Lidel leaves in four flames, Erik took two leaves in his hand. He let out a breath. Fire surrounded the two leaves as he started to refine them both within the same flame. It only took a few seconds before he failed.
Erik didn’t stop. When the leaves turned to ash, Erik would pause, centering his mind again and thinking about what had happened, and then start again.
He burned through leaves, getting further and further with each attempt. It wasn’t long until he reached down and there were no more Lidel leaves. All concept of time was gone inside the sealed chamber.
Erik collected himself, thinking about all the gains he had made in prepa
ring the thousands of Lidel leaves. He looked down at the vial filled with nearly forty drops from the Lidel leaves. He would be easily able to prepare three of the leaves at the same time without much difficulty.
Erik lay down on the bed within the room and fell asleep. He woke the next day and looked at the notifications that had been hidden from his vision as he worked.
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Skill: Appraisal
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Level: 3 (Novice)
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No bonuses at this time. You must prove your skills first.
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Skill: Alchemy
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Level: 29 (Apprentice)
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Able to identify 1 effect of the ingredient.
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He had simply refined his ability to work with his flames, increasing the chances that he would properly prepare his ingredients for the final formation.
The forming stage, the most complex stage, was harder than all of the others as the alchemist needed to rely on their own strength enhanced by the tools that they used to concoct a powder, potion, or pill.
Integrating and refining these ingredients together would enhance their effects. As they became more powerful, then it was harder to fully meld the ingredients together into a whole that was stable enough for someone to consume.
Erik checked how close he was to reaching his next level.
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109,581/195,000 EXP till you reach Level 16
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“About halfway there.” Erik laughed at himself.
If he had just stopped at preparing one of the Lidel leaves, repeating the process for the entire time, he might have reached level sixteen already. With all of the failures, he had destroyed so many ingredients, increasing his skill and knowledge. But the Ten Realms only rewarded one when they completed an act, so as they went up in ashes, his knowledge increased but his Experience stagnated. It had taken him two hours to clean out all of the ash he had created as he couldn’t move around properly. Thankfully, storage rings made it much easier to clean up.
With each success, Erik would get Experience. In the failures, he wouldn’t gain any Experience, but his skill could increase in Alchemy.
When he was able to refine three of the Lidel leaves at once, he had gained a mass of Experience that mounted with every further preparation he carried out as they came closer and closer to preserving the efficacy of the Lidel leaves and refining away the impurities without refining away the prepared product.
Erik held up the vial of the prepared Lidel leaves. As he had worked with them, he had been thinking of some amazing potions that he could make with them.
Lidel leaves were practically everywhere because of the difficulty in preparing them. Few people in the realms had the time needed to refine the Lidel leaves so they were left alone to spread across the Ten Realms. They also lived for an incredibly long time. It wasn’t hard to find some Lidel leaves that had been growing for hundreds of years, or even thousand-year-old Lidel leaves. These leaves weren’t usually thousands of years old but in Mana-rich areas, it was possible for them to age faster and increase their potency.
Erik took out a dropper. Taking a drop from his vial, he opened his mouth and let the drop touch his tongue. He closed his mouth, consuming the drop as he sealed the vial and studied his body’s reactions.
Erik felt as his body changed. The powerful potency of the drop spread through his body. His face started to change and slight changes went on the surface of his body, but the biggest change was within Erik’s mind and body.
It was as if his vitality had skyrocketed for a period of time; his body rejuvenated before settling back down. The effect of the drop was powerful, but without other ingredients to try to control and direct it, only slight changes occurred.
Erik felt his face was different. He pulled out a mirror and looked at himself. “The hell?” Erik saw that he looked as if he were in his early twenties instead of his early thirties.
He thought on the changes he felt in his body and his original thoughts. “I was right—the Lidel leaves have a powerful vitality to them. I didn’t think that it would lead to something that could increase someone’s lifespan. If this happened with a drop from a ten-year-old Lidel leaf, I wonder what would happen with some of those century-old or longer leaves?”
Erik’s mind raced for a bit before he could try to calm down. “I have increased my skill in preparing ingredients but I haven’t yet tried to make an Alchemy concoction with just my flames.” Erik got excited as he sat where he had been sitting for the last couple of weeks.
With a wave of his arm, he cleared away the ashes on the floor collecting them into a storage ring to be disposed of later. He took a few breaths and pulled out an ingredient. He smelled it, thinking of possible concoctions he could make with it. From there, he pulled out other ingredients, smelling them and leaving them out or putting them away.
After a few minutes, he had a number of ingredients in front of him. He took out two of the ingredients and tossed them up into the air. Flames appeared like snakes, wrapping themselves around the ingredients.
Erik checked over the ingredients. Feeling little strain, he threw out another ingredient. So he went. Once he felt he could handle the ingredients wrapped in flames, he would throw out another until they were all being refined in different-colored flames that circled Erik.
Compared to the complexities of the ever-changing Lidel leaves, refining these ingredients was easy for him.
He finished the first preparation, the separate ingredients being placed into new containers as Erik started to combine two ingredients. One was a pile of metal-looking shards; the other was a powder.
Erik coated the metal shards in the powder, increasing the heat slowly. After some time, the metal and powder combined, changing color and becoming a block-like structure.
Erik threw in a yellowish liquid. The block dissolved into the yellow substance as Erik started to add more and more ingredients. His confidence increased as the selected ingredients came together. A puff of black smoke appeared as the potion fell apart.
Erik looked at the failed combination and let out a deep breath.
He pulled out another ingredient. Thinking of a concoction, he pulled out other ingredients and started to work.
So he continued on, his confidence shooting up as he was now able to make potions with just his fire.
He introduced a cauldron into the mix after the seventh potion and the second one to fail exploded, making Erik’s ears ring as he fought to heal the burns on his hands and his eardrums.
With the cauldron, his success rate soared.
Erik created potions for the thrill of creating, making those that would challenge his boundaries. There were as many successes as there were failures. Erik didn’t think on the gold that he was destroying with each failure, punctuated with a successful concoction.
Sometimes as he was going through creating a new concoction, he found that he was actually unable to carry out what he wanted.
For days, he continued to experiment and try out new ideas.
The air around his workshop was filled with the smells of success wafting through and lifting the soul, or the nose-burning smells of failure.
Erik spent three days and nights on his own concoctions before he once again retrieved the prepared ten-year Lidel leaves.
Erik reviewed the three concoctions he had thought to create with the Lidel leaves.
He pushed aside how much the prepared Lidel leaves might get him and started to preheat his cauldron. He threw in several ingredients. His flame leaped out, gathering the ingredients, preparing them and combining them.
A faint haze started to appear around Erik as he took out a dropper and put a drop of the Lidel leaf liquid into the cauldron. The parts of the concoction started to come together, through a
series of fusions and mixing.
There were three parts to the potion. One was the part that would prepare the body to accept the powerful energy; one would enhance the power of the Lidel leaf; and the final would allow it to be released over time so that it didn’t overpower the person who drank the potion.
Erik slowly started to merge these three solutions together. He used Simple Organic Scan to look through it all and search out the smallest issue as he combined them all together. They came together slowly. Erik did not speed up the process at all, so that he could see every small thing that was happening.
The three parts of the potion came together. A wave of pressure filled the cauldron, banging against its walls. Erik didn’t account for the added pressure and the potion came apart. The different solutions counteracted one another, spoiling.
Erik removed the by-product, resetting and starting again. He went through five more attempts before that pressure wave passed and a dull silver liquid appeared in Erik’s cauldron.
Erik used a potion bottle to collect up the potion. He took out a dropper, taking the potion and putting a drop on his tongue.
The power was reduced compared to what he had with the raw drop he’d had the first time. Its power was calmer, lasting longer but having no less of an effect.
“Success!” Erik laughed and looked at the silver potion. It was a solid mid-Apprentice-level potion, approaching a high-tier Apprentice potion.
“Well, it’s going to need a name. I’ll call it the Age Rejuvenation potion.”
Erik studied the potion, the product of two and a half weeks of focus. He put away the Age Rejuvenation potion and pulled out the ingredients again.
“One success deserves another.” Erik laughed as he continued to make more and more of the potions. With each potion, his skill grew, increasing in power as Erik’s practice with the Lidel leaves improved his Alchemy abilities.
Second Realm Page 9
