The Newt and Demon - Book 7 Chapters 7,8,9 (Patreon)

Chapter 7

An Impatient System

Theo felt oddly relieved that nobody had a solution for the negative dungeon by the time he went to bed. He got to enjoy a pleasant dinner in his manor and the company of his friends without worrying about that situation. He had the unfortunate pleasure of being taken to that dungeon Tresk had delved in the Dreamwalk, though. It was just as horrible as he had remembered from sifting through her thoughts. The landscape made no sense, and it was filled with strange monsters he had never seen before.

One interesting thing to note about the Negative Dungeon was just how random the monsters were. Not only did they not follow a theme, but individual monsters could have great variations between them. Theo took a rabbit-type monster from Tresk’s memory as an example. One version could fight against her, while the other could barely move. Even between those different differences, there was even more variation.

"This is pure randomness," Theo said, looking around and unable to link any two things together. "It's like the negative level confused the system and now it doesn't know what to generate."

“Right?” Tresk asked as she punted a rabbit. “I’d be laughing if it wasn’t so horrifying.”

High above lingered the form of Frank. It was more impressive than anything else within the Dreamwalk version of the Negative Dungeon. It sailed through unseen clouds, emitting a sonorous song. When it angled itself too close to the ground and emitted a massive blast of wind that nearly shook both Theo and Tresk from their feet. He couldn't say whether the monster was based on something in the real world, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to find out.

Tresk held her hand down, a mischievous smile spreading across her face. "I want to test something," she said.

Before Theo could command her to do otherwise, she had tossed the improvised explosive high into the air. It sailed far away from their position, perhaps driven by some imagination on her part. While the Dreamwalk had been picky lately, it was happy to simulate what would happen if Tresk threw a nuke at the giant whale. This time Theo was actually blown from his feet, tumbling onto the ground from the shockwave alone. The wide-open landscape gave no breaks to the force of the explosion.

"More warning next time," Theo said, dusting himself off as he stood.

But the whale didn't seem damaged at all. From his sense that spread through the Dreamwalk, Theo could tell that the monster had taken exactly no damage. He realized now that Tresk's assessment of the level ranges within the dungeon was wrong. This thing was likely far above level 100, and he would be surprised if it was anything less than level 1000.

"Imagine if that came in a dungeon wave," Tresk said. “We’d be screwed.”

Which made it even more important for them to find a solution to this problem. It wouldn't be a simple problem to solve, as most things that went weird in Broken Tusk ended up being complex and difficult to solve problems. He closed his eyes and remembered defeating the beast that lurked under the mine. At least that was simple. Just toss it off a cliff and watch it die under a hail of fire from rail guns. That was a simple solution.

With that thought, Theo changed the landscape before them. He had lost interest in the weird dungeon and didn't want to think too much about it. Instead, he envisioned Broken Tusk a few hours ago. Instead of the normal version of Broken Tusk, he envisioned one overlaid with his magical senses. Thanks to his Shadow-aligned core, he could produce the effects of somebody with enhanced magical senses without doing the training. It was a swirl of different energies.

"I wanted to look at the whale some more," Tresk said, crossing her arms.

"I wanted you to look at this," Theo said, gesturing to the strands of magical power. "Notice anything strange?"

"Yeah, this isn't normally how I see the world," Tresk said. "But I don't notice anything different. Looks normal based on the memories you have."

"Yet it shouldn't be normal," he said. "Remember, we took in a bunch of space elves. We should be looking at a swirl of void magic. But I only see one strand."

Tresk squinted, sorting through the various strands of power until she found the void. It coiled near the ground, shooting up into the air and then heading west. Theo could practically feel her mind rolling the information over. She made connections between things they had seen in the past and what they understood about how this power worked. If there was ever an expert on heavenly energy, Theo was it.

"Something is absorbing that power," Tresk said. "Wait, is that possible?"

“Our Dungeons did the same thing,” Theo said, “but something tells me this isn't a dungeon. Something else in the world is drawing the power in. Which is strange, seeing as that something would need to be powerful to pull it in from so far away.”

"Oh, another mystery," Tresk said, rubbing his hands together.

Theo wouldn't tell her that he was almost certain he knew what was absorbing the energy. He kept it to himself and guarded that part of his mind so she couldn't pluck it. It wasn't super important, but sometimes it was nice to have some things hidden from her, if only for his own sanity.

After exploring the few mysteries that had popped up in the town over the past few days, Theo and Tresk broke off into their own forms of training. She fawned over Alex's new appearance and took a while to get used to her new look. After that, they were off on whatever little adventures they went on. Theo spent his time in the Dreamwalk practicing various forms of alchemy. Unfortunately, it wouldn't let him touch fermentation. Salire was working on that back in the real world, but since he hadn't discovered its exact function, the Dreamwalk was still finicky.

When the Dreamwalk finally ended, the pair went downstairs to have breakfast. Sarisa and Rowan had already prepared a meal of sausages, eggs, and the local equivalent of buttered grits. Theo was happy to eat the meal, starting with the grits, moving to the eggs, and ending with the sausages; he liked to leave the best for last nowadays. When the meal was done, he half expected Tresk to go off on her own adventures. But he remembered how she had glued herself to his hip in recent days. Whatever made her happy.

“I need you to check on the mine if you could,” Theo said as they were leaving the manor. “After that, if you could double check the dungeons, that would be lovely.”

Tresk needed no further instructions. She vanished off to find Alex and then to the mine. He knew he could trust her to do the job correctly. Without hesitation, he then made his way to the Newt and Demon to see how his apprentice was doing for the day. Even before entering the building, he could smell brewing potions. A sign in the front was flipped to open, and there was an elven man working the counter that he didn't recognize. With only the briefest of nods, he headed upstairs.

The second-floor stills were occupied by an assortment of restoration essences. They were all running and in various stages of completion. Theo inspected the half-full flasks to check for quality. Salire had made great strides in recent days on her quality, and every new batch she ran seemed to be better. He then made his way to the third floor and was unsurprised to see more of the soul and mind potions being brewed.

Salire looked as though she had woken four hours before dawn only to come here and work. Her hair was a mess, and she wore a leather apron over a basic shirt and slacks. When she turned to him, it seemed as though she could only barely manage a smile. She just nodded and got back to work.

"We are completely out of Soul Bloom," Salire said, shaking her head.

"We have enough though, don't we?" Theo said, inspecting the completed essences resting on a table.

“More than enough, actually. And that's good news. I know how you like to have a surplus.”

Theo walked around the third floor of the lab, double-checking that everything seemed to be going well. Indeed, the quality that Elise had been producing was more than sufficient for what they needed to do. Both her restorative potions and these new reforging potions were all coming out at extremely high qualities. As long as they kept it below the real version of tier 3, everything would be fine.

“So I think I've figured out as much as I can about fermentation. As you had expected from the description of the skill, there's not much difference. It's just about the same thing, with mana injection and all that being important.”

"That's good. The last thing we need is for more systems to change. Have you made anything with the fermented modifiers?"

"Not yet, but there's not much room to do anything but create these potions," Elise said, drawing her mouth into a tight line. “I think we'll be on Tero’gal before I have any chance to test that.”

"That's fine," Theo said, waving her concerns away. "We should be more concerned with creating as many practical things as we can to help us in the meantime. As we saw with the negative dungeon, this world isn't done throwing us curveballs."

Both Theo and Salire had a decent understanding of how their new form of alchemy worked. Theo was certain that something more would change when the reset happened, but he figured that his planet was consistent, if nothing else. Things might change, but the principles would be the same. So it was more important than ever to understand every single facet in excruciating detail.

The alchemist was broken from his thoughts when a set of footsteps came up the stairs. The door to the lab swung open, and a bedraggled Xol’sa stood, heaving for breath.

"We might have an issue," he said, looking between Theo and Salire. "Could we speak in private?"

Theo nodded, joining the wizard down the stairs, out of the lab, and back to his manor. Once they were settled in the massive dining room, he made them some tea as they sat down. He slid a cup of moss tea across the table, taking his own seat and breathing in the scent of the earthy aroma.

"Do you remember how we were concerned about the void energy from my people?" Xol’sa asked.

“Actually, I have some information on that,” Theo said, "I'm guessing you sensed the direction of the energy."

“Yes, actually I did. I didn't think your magical senses were powerful enough to detect it, but what have you figured out?”

Theo smiled to himself, happy to outmagic the mage for once in his life. But this had become his specialty. He was very good at dealing with void energy, and he wasn't certain if it was a title he was proud to carry. It came with a lot of complications that put him in the center of attention of many powerful people.

“All I have is a suspicion,” Theo explained. “The way that the energy was drawn from the air into the dungeons was strange, but our dungeons were already experiencing a weird drain before that happened.”

"I have theories about that as well," Xol’sa said. "There is something in the system in this world that's dying. Likely part of the reset."

“Well, concerning that, I think the system is getting impatient with me. It's taken me longer than I expected to get everything lined up, so it's starting a bit early.”

"And how does that help us?" Xol’sa asked. "Seems as though we want our planet to remain intact while we're fixing it."

“I'm getting to it. So, the issue comes when we think of how the dungeons absorbed the power that came into this world. It was a foreign power, so it went to the dungeons first. The first thing that would absorb it, right?”

“I think I’m following,” Xol’sa said, leaning over the table as though being closer would help him hear better.

“Anyway, I'll stop with the dramatics. I believe there's at least one shard remaining on the planet.”

"How could you possibly know?"

"I'm unofficially in charge of them," Theo said, nodding to himself. "I feel a certain connection to them, even if I haven't restored any. And the true guardian of these shards let his hand slip, even if he didn't mean to. I know that guy is powerful, but in some ways he seems kind of naive.”

"Reminds me of someone," Xol’sa muttered.

“Anyway, he had explained his transportation ability to me. He can swap positions with his pet whenever he wants. When I met with him, we talked briefly. And then he vanished. Except he didn't vanish and become a bird or a tiger. He didn't swap positions with his pet. He teleported away in another way.”

"Which must have left behind a magical signature," Xol’sa said.

“He has the faintest magical signature of the shards themselves. I've spent enough time with them, even if they're inactive, to recognize it. Thanks to Shadow’s aura, I can understand the basics.”

“Your assumption is based on the fact that he can't traverse the void, or perhaps you're thinking he can't teleport to an inactive shard.”

“Either way, I think he teleported away to a shard that's still on this planet. And that's the very same shard that our void energy is being drawn to.”

Xol’sa snapped his fingers. "Well, that solves another one of our problems, doesn't it?"

Theo smiled as he nodded. "Yeah, we don't have to worry about how to activate him now. Since this guy clearly knows what he's doing." He produced a communication crystal from his inventory. “Why don’t we give him a call?”

Chapter 8

Hooray, Alchemy!

Theo held the communication crystal in his hand, focusing his intent on contacting Elrin. He felt the same mental haptic buzz as he had so many times before; the other end was ringing. While it took the man a few minutes to answer, eventually his voice flooded into Theo's mind.

"How does this thing work?" Elrin asked. "Do I just say what I want to say?"

"You could also think it," Theo said. "If you don't mind, I have a few questions to ask you."

“Actually, I'm kind of busy.”

“This will only take a second. Actually, did you do anything to activate a shard on this plane? Maybe empower it or turn it on? I've got some void energy near my town, and it's being siphoned to the west.”

“Yes, that was me. Can I go now?”

"Normally we have some kind of sign-off…" Theo trailed off as the connection between him and Elrin was cut. “You know, that guy is kinda rude.”

"Did he cut the connection?" Xol’sa asked. "Were you able to get any information out of him?"

“It looks like he is both aware of the siphoning effects of the shards and the one responsible for activating them.”

“That's a good thing, right? I didn't know that the shards could do that, but this works in our favor.”

Theo should have seen more things like this coming. Elrin had said that he had a connection with the shards. He claimed to be the guardian of the shards, actually. While it was still impossible to tell his exact motives, it seemed safe to say that he wasn't working in a malicious capacity. If anything, he was working in a way aligned with the interests of the system. While the system didn't always have its denizens in mind, in this case, it should work out for the benefit of everybody.

Xol’sa had some more things to go over. Just as Theo was attempting to adjourn the meeting. He brought up the topic of the dungeons. As much as the alchemist wanted to groan and complain about the report, this was extremely important.

"I've started experimentation on the affected dungeon," Xol’sa explained. “What I have observed paints it as a system-based error. So far, only one dungeon has reached the negatives, and it hasn't gone below one. And I don't think it will go below negative one.”

"Any progress on destroying the dungeons?" Theo asked.

“If we're interested in destroying the dungeon, we should do it sooner rather than later. The issue is that to destroy the dungeon, we need to proceed to the core, where I need to cast a ritual spell. I've never done it, and it's supposed to be incredibly dangerous.”

Which presented a massive problem if they wanted to destroy the negative dungeon. Getting to the end of it, which is where the core should have been, would be difficult, if not impossible. Then, they couldn't be assured that their methods for destruction would even work. Since most of the contents of the dungeon were acting strangely, it was likely that the core would act strangely. Yet, the prospect of dealing with so many negative dungeons in their immediate vicinity wasn't appealing.

“Let's get a meeting going with the local leadership. I want you to bring this to everyone's attention. Do you have any recommendations for moving forward?”

"We should destroy them all,” Xol’sa said plainly. “Imagine a gaggle of negative dungeons around town. The danger to our people would be incalculable.”

"Get the meeting going," Theo said. "Make sure everybody understands it's urgent."

Xol’sa finished his tea before heading off. Theo was left alone in his manor, with his thoughts. He wasn't certain when this whole thing started, or if destroying the dungeons was an option, but with his town's wizard confident, he would be happy to go through with it. A pang of nostalgic guilt hit him in the chest as he thought about removing the dungeons. Yet, the rational side of him said that he wouldn't want to bring them along when they moved the alliance.

Before leaving the man, Theo inspected his administration and its interface. As expected, there was a lot of chatter about many things. Trask was giving reports about the negative dungeon, and the administrators were working with the adventurers to come up with a solution. So far, nothing had broken out of the dungeon, but it would only be a matter of time. Then there were Xol’sa’s fresh reports flooding into the top of the interface.

"This is going to be a long couple of weeks," Theo muttered to himself as he stepped out onto the streets of Broken Tusk.

At least if his list of things to do had dwindled to almost nothing, that left him free to ponder things related to his alchemy. Theo was proud of the administrative machine that had been established within the town. Now, if there was a problem, he could assess it, give it to the people who had the most experience in it, and let them go to work. Rather than babysitting them every step of the way, he could leave them free to do what they were good at.

He didn't busy himself with something to be busy. Instead, he made his rounds around town to check on various people who might feel forgotten. With how busy everything was, it was easy for people to feel that way. And he wouldn't blame them if they got angry. Of the various production buildings in town, one of the most important, based on recent events, would be the farm.

The main farm in town was run by a half-ogre named Banu. The farm had many large fields producing both the local crop of zee and a hybrid of Earth-based wheat and that very same corn-like stuff. These farms produced food at a far higher rate than those back on Earth. The seed core building that was the foundation of the farm provided a constant stream of magic to the crops, resulting in a growing time of somewhere around a week, depending on the crop. Joined with the large farm was Theo's Golden Run farm, just down the hill. While he hadn't expanded that farm in a while, it was constantly producing new crops thanks to his Plant Golems.

As expected, Alise had done a lot to expand the production of the farm. Since she was in charge of this task, she took it very seriously. There were more fields, and more workers were working those fields. Theo stepped onto the farm's property and noticed the buzz of activity.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Banu said, sauntering down the road and doing a little pose before Theo. The red-skinned half-ogre looked more burned by the sun than normal.

“Just checking on our production,” Theo said. It was a small lie. He could see the town’s production by inspecting the reports in his administrative screen. “Our party is gonna kick off soon. I hope.”

“Production has never been higher,” Banu said, gesturing to the busy fields with pride. “We’ve got local and foreign workers busting their buns planting and harvesting without end. I heard the meat import business is kicking off. Although, now that I think about it… Who cares? Won’t be able to use this money once we leave the planet.”

“Don’t you want to tell your grandchildren about the time you had a huge party during the end of the world?” Theo asked.

“Not what I meant, Mister Archduke. No matter what, all this stuff runs on coin. Who cares about coin if everything goes away?” Banu asked.

Theo nodded, smiling to himself before turning to the half-ogre. “Because you can bring your money along with you.”

“Really? And it’ll have value in the other world?” Banu asked.

Theo shrugged. The money they could bring would definitely have value, but how much value it would have, he didn’t know. “You would have a use for your money in the other world, just as we would have use for food and other stuff.”

Banu went on for a while about how he would be super useful in the new world and how she should be elected to some kind of chair of power. Theo nodded along, agreeing with everything he said, as he wasn't interested in rocking the boat. Once the time came when it was polite enough for him to leave, he headed north past the many fields on the farm and down into a flatland area Tresk had named Stabby Grove. The area had expanded slightly since Theo had been there last, but his target wasn't the homes of the adventurers.

He instead headed more north, ascending a slow incline. The landscape shifted from damp soil to jagged rocks, not long after that. He arrived at Ziz's quarry, but the area was mostly empty. Still, the hill gave him an excellent view of the area below. He could even see a little bit to the east, where the stone masons were working on constructing temporary houses. Theo hoped they wouldn't need as many houses as the man was constructing, but it was hard to say. Some of the people coming to attend the end of the world party were already here.

Those who found residence in those temporary houses were happy.

The mountains to the north blocked most of the view of the road and train track, but Theo got a decent view of the area. He could see some of the market and harbor area through a shroud of mist. Ships were sailing up the magical canal to the harbor, while others were out in the bay, anchored, as there was only limited capacity within the harbor. There was still no sign of the lizard folk from this outpost attacking. If they had taken offense to Tresk stealing their stuff, they hadn't shown it. Not only had they not sent warships, but they had also not sent an emissary.

Theo picked the ponderous path down the hillside. He wandered around down towards the market as he checked on Tresk’s progress with the dungeons. She had been scouting the mine at first, but shifted her attention to the various dungeons after that bore no fruit. The mine was safe for now, and that was a good thing, but the dungeons seemed less certain. Although none of the others had dipped below level 1, that didn't mean they couldn't do so at any moment.

Even now, Aarok was organizing teams to go into the dungeons with Xol’sa. They planned on destroying the dungeons. It wasn’t an ideal outcome, but it was better than being left with a handful of negative dungeons to deal with. If only his future sight could stretch further than seconds, he could figure out which dungeon would fall next. More than likely it was the Ocean Dungeon then the Mountain Dungeon. He checked his interface once again before entering the market, confirming that each dungeon was still dormant.

As expected, Alise bought most of the meat that was imported from other lands. The only things remaining were monster cores, seed cores, items, and other junk. All those provisions were tossed into dimensional storage in the town hall or added to the town storage itself. Mingling among the people, they are buying things for their daily lives. May Theo feel better. As he was waiting for several things to come together on their own, he was slightly aimless. At least there was an update in his administration interface about Xol’sa’s beacons and tethers. They were only waiting for several magical devices to finish absorbing some kind of mana, then they could finally test them.

Theo expected there to be a testing period without much success. But that’s how he worked best. After growing bored at the market, checking on the rail, and inspecting the boats moored in the harbor, he made his way back into town. Tresk’s reports continued to roll in as he settled into the lab with Salire. The last run of soul and mind potions were just about done, only needing to be brewed. Tomorrow would be a new day for the lab. They could resume normal operations, content with the knowledge that they had enough potions for every single elf.

“I was thinking of going through the different properties we haven’t had much time to test,” Salire said, presenting a range of reagents she had placed on a table. “I don’t expect them to have much useful, but it wouldn’t hurt to do a decent test of the fermentation system.”

Theo nodded, allowing his mind to wander. They weren’t just creating potions out of habit. There was something else on his mind. “We’re making some decent potions,” he said, trying not to change the subject. He thought his nod was enough to let her know he was down to make some potions. “We can continue to do so. And I’m wondering if we’ll really need some good ones before the end.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I have a feeling about our weird dungeons,” Theo started, allowing his thoughts to collect, “If stuff gets nasty with those dungeons, we’re going to need every potion we can get.”

“Oh. You think it’ll be that bad?”

Theo opened his administration interface. Xol’sa and his team had only set off an hour ago, so they wouldn’t have a report. But when that report came in, he expected them to have failed. It wasn’t as though he had no faith in the elf, it was just a feeling he had about it. “I think we’ll be getting some nightmare waves soon enough. And I don’t think we’ll be able to destroy the dungeons.”

“Have some faith.”

“I’d like to,” Theo said. “But we know how these things go.”

“I wish you were wrong,” Salire said with a nervous chuckle. “We’re not going to die, are we?”

Theo tried not to, but he laughed. “You know I have an emergency parachute, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I could drag everyone to Tero’gal right now if we needed. Well, it would go better if we had all the shards. But I could do it.”

“That’s encouraging!” Salire said, brightening up significantly. “Anyway… Enough of that. Let’s do some alchemy!”

“Hooray, alchemy!”

Chapter 9

Fluff and Expand

There were quite a few reagents that Theo had never completed his experimentation phase with. Most of the time, it was a matter of him finding what he needed from a specific reagent and moving on. Other times, it was a property of that ingredient that didn't seem all too useful. Perhaps it wasn't the best use of his time, but the alchemist felt the urge to select at least two of these reagents and create a potion from an unused property.

"Which one are we picking?" Salire asked, rubbing her hands together. She looked over an assortment of ingredients with hunger in her eyes.

I feel I wanted to investigate the pitch property from the Dongra Blooms. He had already decided on that one, but there were many other reagents he could pick from to either discover new properties or experiment with one he hadn't used before. This, of course, came at great cost to their current production strategy. They would need to leave two stills empty so they could experiment. Taking the experiment to the giant metal dome wasn't preferable, but he would do it if they couldn't clear away at least two.

"We can always mess with that deadly flower," Theo said. Of course it wasn't on the table right now.

"Are you talking about Deathbloom or Night’s End?" Salire asked.

"That was mainly a joke," Theo said, rubbing his chin. He remembered extracting the Venom property from the deadly flower. If he could avoid it, he never wanted to do it again. Instead, he plucked a small piece of cotton from the table. It was sand-colored and had a slightly gritty texture, as it hadn't been processed into fiber. “We haven't discovered the third or fourth property on Kahari cotton. How about we do that?”

“I was hoping for something more exciting,” Salire grumbled.

“You’re confusing excitement with death.”

Theo hummed to himself as he thought. They had already discovered all the uses for the Deathbloom reagent, so there was no point working with that. He had no desire to work with the Night's End flower, so the cotton only made sense. As he searched back through his memories, he realized that not only did it have a hidden third and fourth property, but they hadn't tested the second property, Flutter.

"This is perfect," Theo said, holding the cotton up. "We'll have to clear another still to run. Whatever interesting property we find, but it'll be fun."

"Flutter, huh?" Salir asked. "What do you think that'll do? Give you wings and let you fly like a butterfly?"

"We can only hope," Theo said, pulling out a few samples of the Kahari cotton to decompose.

This was where the fun was at. Properties that came from a plant typically had a theme. If it was a poisonous flower, it would provide damaging effects. If it was a restorative herb, it would provide effects that restored a person's health. But there were always the oddball properties on reagents. The alchemist held his hand over a sample of the Khahari cotton. He allowed his mono to drip onto it, watching as the smoke rose. It decomposed into a primal essence. Breathing the scent of the smoke was usually enough to reveal the property. Only a few moments later, a system message appeared.

[Property Discovered]!

Deconstructing the [Khahari Cotton] has revealed the property: [Fluff]

Deconstructing the [Khahari Cotton] has revealed the secret property: [Expand]

Theo read the new properties out for Salire to hear. Her brow knit as he recited the messages that had appeared.

"See, this is what I'm talking about. 'Fluff' and 'Expand' don't sound like very interesting properties."

“You never know,” Theo said. “Especially when you’re talking about modifiers. Expand might make a decent modifier on things like bombs.”

Salire sighed before nodding. She went to prepare the stills for a tiny run of each property. That left Theo to decide which property they would focus on. He couldn't see the fluff property being anything but horrible, so he focused on the Expand property from the Kahari Cotton and the Pitch property from the Dongra Blooms. Once the spare stills were prepared, he processed the blooms in the cotton, mashing them, adding the correct amount of enchanted water, and setting the stills to work.

Of course, it would take about a day for them to complete with a new alchemy process, which sucked. Theo had grown too used to being able to complete a full run of 500 units in a few hours. Now he had to wait, like some common alchemist. At least he gave him time to go through their stocks and organize the other things they had. After being rather content with the amount of restorative herbs they had in their possession, he withdrew a Potion of Veil from one of the many storage crates in the lab.

“You know this potion was very useful before the gods got involved.”

"A lot of our potions are very useful, Theo," Salire said with a laugh. "And I don't really like the dangerous ones."

"How is this one dangerous?" Theo asked. "We have tactical nukes in our storage. Why would a potion that shields you from detection be dangerous?"

"I've never really trusted mages," she explained. "If you shield yourself from them, they have more reason to come after you.”

 "Now that's an interesting take," Theo said. He took a deep breath, analyzing the scent of the brewing essences. "I have an idea of what that Dongra Blooms brew is going to do, but the cotton smells weird."

"You've always had a stronger sense of smell than me for this kind of stuff. How do you mean 'weird'?"

"It's like something I've never smelled before," Theo said.

Suddenly, she patted him on the shoulder, shaking her head. "I'm sure there are a great many smells you've never smelled before. This is probably nothing to be concerned about."

Theo granted a response going back to his assessment of their current reagents and their properties. His plant hybridization project wasn't going quite as well as he would have liked, but it was fine. Pulling out new properties from existing regens was very difficult. He withdrew a strange-looking hybrid plant from the depths of his storage. It had been quite a long time since he had seen it. This was a plant the local loremaster had named Throk’s Weed.

It was a hybrid of the local corn-like zee and Earth's wheat. Not only had Theo completely neglected to do anything with this, he hadn't even discovered the hidden fourth property. And he had enough samples of the item in his lab alone to feed a small town for a few days.

"We never did anything with this,” Theo said, holding the crop up for Salire to see. “The third property is called Aura and I just never really thought to do anything with it.”

Salire crossed the lab, holding the stock in her hands and inspecting it. She nodded a few times. "Wanna brew it? I actually have some old samples of the aura essence in storage somewhere.”

Theo didn't know why she held onto an essence without brewing it into a potion, but more than likely she had just done so to get some practice when she was first starting out. There were several storage crates filled with random things that she had crafted for practice.

"Why not?" Theo asked. "I'll help you find the essence, wherever it might be."

Of course, it was in the last possible crate they could have checked. Both floors of the lab, the third floor and the second floor, were crowded with dimensional storage crates. Those crates were filled with just as much junk as useful things. Discarded experiments, reagents, bits of wood, all kinds of things were stored.

"And I found Tresk's hidden store of salamander eggs," Theo said. "Finally."

“Knowing her, she probably forgot about them.”

The system didn't mind if they mixed and matched the new forms of alchemy, which they all found surprising. He found himself looking over at the shrine to Drogamath as he worked. The shrine was completely useless, but he owed just about everything to that fallen patron. But it didn't matter. The system was happy to accept the old essence to create a new potion. The alchemist understood that it was partly his skill that stabilized the mixture and partly his levels and attributes.

“Ready?” Theo asked, holding a fleck of iron above the glass vial. It was one of the many glass vials that Salire had designed. The ornate ones.

"Oh, stop stalling," she said, huffing.

Theo dropped the iron into the violin, watched the reaction. It was more tame than he had expected. He didn't need to do much to keep it under control. He just watched it. It put off a strange scent, kind of like metal mixed with dirt. It was hard to explain, but the bloom of smoke that came from the top of the vial was a shifting color that reminded him of a certain demon patron.

"Smells like Toru’aun," he said, shaking his head.

"That's kind of creepy," Salire said, bringing her gaze level to the table. The reaction was calming down by now.

"I have a sensitive nose, remember?" Theo said. "Anyway, let's inspect this potion."

The pair inspected the resulting potion.

[Aura Potion]

[Potion]

Uncommon

Created by: Theo Spencer

Grade: Excellent Quality

Imbiber gains an increase in the power of their aura.

Effect:

Increases the effectiveness of the imbiber’s aura.

"I'll be honest, I don't even really know what an aura is," Salire said

"Well, that makes two of us," Theo said with a heavy sigh. "I understand that your aura comes from your soul and is kind of an extension of it, but I don't really have one. What I have is a fake aura generated by my core.”

"Do you think this potion would enhance that?" she asked.

Theo shrugged, downing the potion in one go. Salire wasn't even surprised when he did so. It was kind of his move. He expanded his shadow aura slightly, trying to detect any differences. It took a moment, but he felt the quality of that bubble increase, and then it increased some more and some more until it was so overwhelming for Salire that she nearly took a knee. Perhaps it was too late to realize, but the alchemist figured out that the potion made his nonexistent aura more potent when it joined with the shadow aura. It had a doubling or tripling effect that was too much.

He withdrew that aura as quickly as he could, feeling it suck back into his chest and going dormant once again.

Salire took a deep breath, sighing it out with relief. "It felt like you were crushing my chest," she said.

"I wonder how useful that would be," Theo said, looking at the empty vial in his hand. "Could be used as a weapon, or it could make my existing aura-based abilities more powerful."

There was another use that the alchemists could think of. While he planned to take most of the Alliance with him when they left this world, there was a problem with that. There was a lot of land mass, and he still wasn't certain he had the ability to bring it all. His limiting factor was the size and strength of his shadow aura.

"Bear with me for one second," Theo said, closing his eyes and rolling his shoulders.

Salire physically braced herself against the table.

A dome of shadow spread out. First over the Newton Demon itself, then the road outside and the surrounding buildings. Before long, it encompassed Broken Tusk and then the lands outside. It went further, dragging along the ground and encompassing everyone and everything in its power. Before long, it had enshrouded Qavell, the bay, and right to the edge of Rivers and Daub. With a great breath, he sucked his aura back in. Something within his soul stirred, as though restored by becoming whole again.

He realized Salire was on the ground.

"Please don't do that again," she said, panting for breath.

Theo looked to the sky, smiling to himself. "Wait for it… wait for it…”

[Aarok]: We’re being attacked by a giant shadow monster. Fighters to your stations.

"Wow, he has a quick response time," Salire said with a chuckle.

"Could you not?" Sarisa said, emerging from the shadows.

Rowan emerged quickly behind her, clutching his chest. "What was that?"

"Could one of you run and tell Aarok is able to stand down?”

"I got it," Sarisa said, heading for the door.

"I don't know," Rowan said, scratching the stubble on his chin. "Seems like a great opportunity to test our readiness. If we're expecting attacks at any time, this might be a decent test."

Theo tilted his head to the side and nodded. "That was a very good point," he said. "If we are expecting either the dungeons or the lizard people to attack at any moment, some drills were a good idea."

Rowan struck a pose, placing his hands on his hips and thrusting his chest out. “I have good ideas sometimes.”

"How did it feel for you?" Theo asked, eager to learn more about this potion-enhanced aura situation.

"Like someone had their hand around my heart, slowly crushing it,” Rowan said, clutching his chest again. “I’d rather not experience that.”

 As expected, Theo got a message through the Alliance’s messaging system shortly after. Aarok was upset about the sudden burst of aura at first, but Sarisa had convinced him it was a good thing. Instead of telling the defenders that this was just a test, he treated it as a real attack.

“Well, that was exciting,” Theo said, closing his administration interface. “Guess we’re getting close to dinner… Wanna come to the manor for food?”

“Sure,” Salire said, nodding. “Right after I check all the stills…”