The Newt and Demon - Book 7 Chapters 16,17,18 (Patreon)

Chapter 16

The Sensation of Discovery

Theo was surprised the next morning when things were still calm. He sat, eating his breakfast and sipping his moss tea, all the while expecting something to go wrong, because things normally did. But nothing happened. He sat at the table, ate the sausage and eggs, and reviewed his administrative reports. There had been no movement on the dungeon problem. Whatever had been done to stabilize the other dungeons was working, for now. Even with all the new space elves and the infirmary releasing void energy.

Xol’sa had created a power sink that absorbed the energy. Theo didn't want to investigate it closely, realizing that anything absorbing void energy would need to be disposed of. It wouldn't hold it forever. Instead, he stuck his head in the sand and pretended these problems didn't exist.

Tresk waited for Fenian and the others to arrive in town so they could delve into the dungeons. She hung around with Theo after getting Alex from the stable. The marshal joined them as they headed for the Newt and Demon. Of the many storage vessels in the building, quite a few were old stills used to brew potions. They now sat disused, but today they would be given new life.

"How much booze are we making?" Tresk asked, watching as Theo pulled a still from storage.

Theo tapped his chin, thinking about the early estimates for the number of people in attendance. They would need to create quite a lot if they were going to have one long, rolling party. He knew things would get rowdy with the local half-ogres. That was one reason why he had never undertaken a large-scale brewing project. Instead, he had invested every single unit of alcohol he made back into his alchemy. When the half-ogres had a few drinks, they became unmanageable.

"I don't actually know," Theo said. “Doing some mental math. Half a million units, maybe. I can't really say."

"That's a lot of booze," Tresk said.

Indeed, it was a ton of booze. Starting with 10 500-unit stills, they could produce 5,000 units of zee liquor a day. There was no shortage of corn in town, so that wasn't a limiting factor. Instead, time was their enemy. The only thing they had going for them was the simplicity of the brewing process. It required absolutely no alchemy skills and could be done multiple times a day. Unlike the alchemy system, distilling alcohol in this world was far faster than it should have been.

“Do you remember the process,” Theo asked, leading the way to his giant metal cube. The metal cube was rather ominous, and most locals disliked it, but safe experiments were a necessity here.

"Yeah, yeah, you just toss some of that crap in the water and then press the button," Tresk said. "Right?"

Alex roared behind them, letting out a small stream of fire. Every time she moved, the ground thundered beneath her feet. Theo was almost certain Tresk was still feeding her dragon bones, and he worried she would outgrow the stable soon.

"I want you to take notes, and we'll do a test run,” Theo said, “we might actually hire some locals to do some of the brewing. But we'll handle the first round."

They made their way to the giant metal cube. Of course, Alex had to stay outside as they went in. He raided all ten artifice stills in the room, putting barrels underneath the condenser coils. Thanks to the size of the massive cube, he could at least double the number of stills inside. He thought in silence for some time, trying to figure out a way to automate the process even a little, but nothing came to him. The mash had to be loaded manually and then mixed with purified water, but at that point, one only needed to press the button and allow the artifice to get to work. The run would last somewhere between four and six hours, depending on whether the enchantments on the stills were functioning.

Tresk took notes with a physical piece of paper and a fountain pen, its nib a feather. But she left after the first one was started. Theo remembered they had a few more smaller stills back at the lab, and she went to fetch them. Alex poked her head through the doorway and snorted. Fortunately, she didn't release any fire into the cube. Results would likely have been explosive.

The metal cube was soon far too stuffy. Once Theo had all the stills running, he left the door cracked to give it some air. Decent ventilation would have been helpful, but that wasn't the building's purpose. He didn't want to invest resources in changing it.

Now that he had a few minutes to himself to think, Theo considered how to approach third-tier essence-making. His experiments had given him a pretty good lead on how it worked, and with some modification, he believed he could have Throk build the appropriate devices. The new form of third-tier essence crafting was similar to the old version. This new version, however, required more precision during the distillation process of second-tier essences. Liquid mana had to be injected into the still while it brewed.

This served to remove a great amount of the impurities within the essence, allowing it to achieve even greater heights. This was an infusion process, rather than a purification process, and the quality of the mana injected would influence its purity. Theo had a few ideas about how to take this process to the next level, but he was a few steps away from actually producing potions. Anything he considered still in the conceptual stage, he didn't want to take to mass production.

Proper testing was the difference between a living and a dead alchemist.

Tresk appeared from the shadows, stepping out and placing her hands on her hips with pride. "So I've asked around and found some workers willing to manage the ominous cube."

"Hopefully they come cheap," Theo said.

"Oh yes, they're going to work for booze," Tresk said, rubbing her hands together. "Amazing what you can get half-ogres to do when you offer them liquor. Actually, there were also a few elves who wanted to do it too."

Theo organized a project with Tresk and some junior town administrators. This would be a great project for those aspiring to be full-blown administrators, offering valuable practice. Managing a small project with minimal consequences was ideal for them. So, once everything was organized, he left them to it. A team of three administrators would manage the project. They would be self-contained, coming to Theo only if they truly needed help.

"Break out that long list of projects," Tresk said, doing a small dance on the streets of Broken Tusk. “What do we have to do next?"

“Let's go down the list. First is the dungeon. We need to get you and the team in there to clear it and see if we can destroy the dungeon core. Next is the booze, which we're working on now, and I think I can check that off for the time being. Next are my third-tier potions. I need to get some equipment from Throk to do that, so that might be a problem. Next, we have the shard stuck in the void. That's something I can't do until the elves return. Bringing all the space elves back is also on my list.”

"Whoa, calm down," Tresk said. "Sounds like we can't do most of that stuff, and I'm definitely not going to be helpful."

Theo rubbed his chin, trying to think of something Tresk could do. When she got bored like this, she became quite annoying, and he knew it would only get worse. The most likely scenario was that she would find a hornet's nest to poke and then stab repeatedly until she was stung. It was best to give her direction before that happened.

"There's actually something you can help me with, but it might be very boring," Theo said. "I need to come up with a strategy for upgrading the town and the alliance, but I need some numbers on how much that would cost and whether I have the capital to do it."

“Okay, what level is the town at right now? What level do you want it to reach?”

“The town is at level 30, but the alliance is at level 20. I'd like to get the alliance to level 30 and the town to level 40. That will be extremely expensive, so if we can't afford it, don't bother.”

"You know the cave dungeon is still mostly active underground," Tresk said. "I mean, it's at a dormant status, but we can still run it. Xol’sa said we shouldn't run any of the dungeons, but I'm sure you won't mind if I do. I could farm some level 45 monster corpses from there.”

Theo stopped her before she could continue. He messaged the town's Lord Wizard, asking about the restricted dungeons. The dungeons were off-limits because the Lord Wizard didn't trust random townspeople to manage them. However, Tresk wouldn’t tamper with the dungeon core after clearing it, and she was the perfect person to reach the high-level areas at the end quickly.

This only shattered part of Theo's plan. He wanted Tresca to handle the upgrading of the town, but it would take her, at least the rest of the day, to farm an appreciable amount of the cores he needed to upgrade the town to level 40. He would need at least 40 cores, depending on how needy it felt. The nation would require far more cores—almost 50 per level. Fortunately, level 20 cores were fairly abundant, and he was confident he could secure them.

"This might actually be the last round of upgrades we do for the town," Theo said, feeling a pang of sadness spread through his chest. "Unless we figure out a way to get more cores for the nation, we'll be bound to its maximum level. I believe the town can be 20 levels higher than the nation, but I guess we'd have to test that."

"Hey, I'm on it, boss," Tresk said, saluting. "Come on, Alex. We've got a dungeon to run."

"Oh, I do love running dungeons," Alex said, stomping excitedly. "Let's go."

Theo watched them leave, thinking about upgrading the town. He couldn't help smiling to himself—upgrading, operating a nation. They had to inject it with coins, basically. That's how most people worked, anyway. But Throk had created a system to make counterfeit coins instead. The funny part about the coin press they used was that it became their method for absorbing void energy. They had to create a system where the mint produced batches of pure coins and those tainted with void corruption.

The alchemist shivered, thinking of the damaging effects of the void energy. He diverted his attention by heading to his lab and greeting Salire. As always, she had a temporary worker on the first floor and concerned herself with the things happening on the third floor.

"I love the smell of restoration potions in the morning," Theo said, smiling to himself as he went to the third-tier essence equipment. It hadn't seen much use, but he was eager to do a bit more testing today.

“We are basically all set with healing potions, as well as disease-curing potions,” Salire said, "I'm actually doing a run of attribute enhancement potions right now."

"Really? And how is business going?" Theo asked.

“With so many people passing through town, we can't effectively hold onto stock.  Since our production capacity is severely limited, the store downstairs is always sold out. Don't worry. We're holding about half of the potions I make for the town, and those are going into collective storage.”

Theo nodded along as she went over the financials. He split his attention between messing with the mana infusion artifice Throk had made and listening to her talk about money. The design of the mana infusion artifice was interesting. It effectively took a big tank of essence and a tank of liquid mana and mixed them together in a chamber, heating it until it became a vapor. The result was an extremely pure form of essence that condensed in a standard pressurized tube and then dripped into a flask or liquid storage of the building.

Something about the way the mana was injected into the process had Theo's brain tingling. There was something more he could do, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Even his Wisdom of the Soul pop-up told him as much, although it didn't provide useful information. It just reiterated what he felt through his alchemical instincts.

"What are you thinking about?" Salire asked, hovering over Theo's shoulder. Of course, only a half-ogre could hover over his shoulder. Every dronon he had met was at least a head taller than this world's humans.

"Feels like the still is talking to me," Theo said, gesturing to the device. "Like I can do more with this thing, or maybe that it wants something from me. I don't know. This is a weird sensation I haven't felt in a while."

"Oh, that's the sensation of discovery!" she said, clapping her hands with excitement. "What do you think it is?"

No matter how much he stared at the device, he couldn't figure out what he wanted. He cleaned the equipment and prepared it for a small run. As long as Tresk was busy in the dungeon, he had some free time. And it seemed like a worthwhile investment. "Let's find out," he said.

Chapter 17

Infusion Potions

There was something strange about the way the mana infusion worked with third tier potions. Theo did a run of their standard second tier restoration potions… a tiny run that really didn’t stress the artifice. Doing such a small run allowed him to watch the reactions with his stunted magical senses, observing all the invisible stuff mixing together and doing their thing. Of course, his powers were driven by Shadow—formerly Zaul—to allow him to take a look behind the veil.

Interactions with Shadow’s powers were weird at the best of times. They were built on a foundation of aura manipulation—a concept Theo wasn’t completely familiar with yet—and the infusion of one’s willpower into that aura. That infusion was similar enough to the way the essence was infused with mana during the third tier process. There was something there. Theo was certain of it.

“You sure are concentrating over there,” Salire said.

Theo shook his head, stepping away from the still for a moment. “I’ll be working on this for a while. I’m not sure what your take is on the interaction between the essence and the mana, but I’m curious. Would only Tero’gal mana work?”

“That’d be my guess,” Salire said with a shrug. “I saw it more as a bridge than anything. Something to go from here to there.”

Theo shook his head. They didn’t agree on that. “This is more like an infusion, where the pieces of mana are introduced to the essence and fill the gaps.”

“Yeah, like a bridge,” Salire said.

Theo blinked a few times, but shook his head. They were talking about the same thing in a different way. “Right, so if the mana makes up for what the essence lacks, what else could it do?”

Salire stood beside the still, tapping her foot. "You're talking about infusing something into the essence itself, instead of bridging the gap with empty information," she said. "You want to do so with what? Other properties?"

"Maybe other properties, or maybe concepts," Theo said, stroking his chin. "The very start of a plan is forming in my head, but I don't have enough information to make it happen. What I need to do is some experimentation. I need to figure out how receptive the essence is to change while it's in the mixing chamber first."

"Which means you need to take this thing out of the lab before you blow us all up. We both know what happens when we start experimenting."

Theo simply nodded. Of course, she was right. It wasn't likely that he could do much here. And even if something did happen, it could have explosive consequences. When he was finished with this run of third-tier essences, he placed the result in the building’s storage and took the entire device into his inventory. He then set off to find a nice field to do his experimentations in. Tresk was still running the dungeons and having a lot of fun with Alex. The Aquamist began his testing by emptying the essence container and the mana container. Then he got to work.

Starting with tests on the pliability of mana, Theo attempted to introduce different things to it. He started with other essences, which caused some magnificent explosions in the open field. Fortunately, they lacked the force to destroy any of the equipment, but they produced a splendid plume of black smoke that rose high into the air. Next, he tried to manipulate the state of matter the mana was in, finding that he could only produce it in liquid and gaseous form. He was close to making it solid, but then realized that wouldn't be of much use.

"What exactly is he trying to do?" Sarisa asked from under a nearby tree.

“Gods only know,” Rowan grumbled. The black clouds still hung overhead and his eyes were locked onto it. "Let's just hope his powers of future prediction are strong enough to make sure we don't die."

"See, I think he's trying to change the way his mana works," Sarisa said, tapping her chin. "Seems to me like he'd be better off infusing it with something that comes from his chest, you know?"

"Well, that's where the mana comes from, isn't it?" Rowan asked. "What else is formed in that man's soul?"

“I think the aura comes from the soul, right? But I've heard the local wizard talking about forming spells there. Maybe he can make a spell into a potion? How would that process work?”

"Too bad Theo's spells are based on his potions," Rowan said. "So what would happen if he made a spell potion? Hold on, I'm getting a headache."

"That's not as stupid as you two might think," Theo said, nodding along as the two bantered. "I think I could infuse some mana with the concept of a spell, but you're also correct in assuming that my spells are based on the properties within the essences."

"Hey, did we actually figure something out?" Sarisa asked.

"We're a lot smarter than you think, sister. Theo will realize that one day.”

"Just like you might realize," Sarisa said, humming to herself, "since he has extracted the properties from reagent to spells and turned them into spell forms, he could use those to create potions. But hey, I'm just a stupid half-ogre. What would I know?"

Theo turned, giving Sarisa a severe look. She withered slightly before her pride kicked in, and she thrust her chest forward, prepared for combat. He had no plans to fight her or say anything to her, not until he was sure that idea would work. But it was true: he could extract properties from reagents and use them to create spells. This had been moderately useful for his mage's core to create wards. The issue was that the effects typically weren't incredibly powerful. They required infusion with an absurd amount of willpower.

Theo held his hand out, watching as it filled with mana from his chest.  His mana glittered a peculiar shade as he held it.  There was a silver sheen on top, and the contents within seemed to shift with prismatic colors. The only way this would work, though, is if he could brew something with a blank base, or maybe…

"You idiots just gave me a really good idea," Theo said, setting up the essence side of the still. He withdrew a bottle of Searing Regeneration essence from his inventory and placed it into the essence container. He then held his hand over the mana container.

Each property that Theo extracted and turned into a spell form had a certain feel. It was like a piece of a poem, according to the old dronon form of magic. When he transitioned to his own type of magic, based on Tero’gal’s will, it changed slightly but mostly remained the same. He felt the meaning of a property and allowed it to flood into his mana. That part of the process was far simpler than he had first imagined. The mana dripped into the container, forming a shimmering pool at the bottom.

"This is a cheat," Theo said. Closing the top of the container for both the Searing Regeneration essence was Tier 2, and technically his mana was Tier 3. But that was only technically. He didn't really know how to classify it.

Mixed together, these two things should have exploded. The binding medium that normally held them together was the suffuse potion, but it was lacking here. Instead, it would be bound together with the concept of two or three essences, and he wasn't certain if that was good enough. Still, he locked the mechanisms in place and started the brewing process. Of course, he created a wall-like shield to keep himself and the other two safe if an explosion occurred.

"I'm always instilled with the greatest confidence when you put a shield up like that," Sarisa said, petting Theo on the shoulder.

Theo was busy watching the reaction. He observed as the mana and essence were vaporized and then sent to the mixing chamber. Once they were combined, they were pumped into the condenser coil, which allowed them to drip into the flask he had placed on a table. To his surprise, the resulting mixture looked strange. It took him longer than he would admit to realize that a brood potion, rather than a distilled essence, was being produced. It might have been the first time he had witnessed this process without the help of a catalyst. It shouldn't have been possible, but a lot of things about this shouldn't have been possible.

"Why is this working?" Theo asked, taking mental notes as he watched. "Everything should have exploded by now, and we're getting a refined potion at the end.”

The good thing about the Monomixing apparatus was that it could work with incredibly small amounts of essence—down to a single unit if need be. That's exactly what Theo had done. Even though he had designed it to run on a very small amount of essence and mana, it still took about an hour for the process to complete. He watched, rapt with attention, as the drips slowly came.

"That's a potion," Theo said, watching as the machine finished its work. "This thing made a potion instead of essence. That goes against everything I know about alchemy."

"Is that good?” Rowan asked. “You basically skipped a step."

Theo wasn't certain if it was good. It was fine, as long as the resulting potion was usable. This was uncharted territory, so he approached the potion with caution, looking into the future to ensure he didn't blow himself up. He intended to pick it up, swirl it, and watch himself do it in the future. Nothing negative happened, and the potion appeared to be a normal Reforge Soul potion, so he walked up to it and inspected the resulting potion.

[Infused Lesser Reforge Soul]

[Potion] [Infused Potion]

Legendary

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 98%

Imbibing this potions reforges the drinker’s soul. This process reverts the drinker’s soul back to a base state. Once the transformation is complete, any system-related changes are then re-applied. These conditions are only persistent ones driven by class cores, etc.

"That's not right," Theo said, narrowing his eyes as he read the description. There were several things that seemed odd about this potion.

The first strange thing was the title, and in more ways than one. First, it had taken tier 2 essence and downgraded it to a first-tier potion. Second, it was called an "infused potion," which he had never seen before. That was strange enough for the title, but then he looked at the description.

"The text on this potion is completely different from what appears on the one made by normal means," Theo said, gritting his teeth as he reread it. "And there's a very frightening bit missing here. The original one only allows the potion to work on mortals, but this one doesn't have that restriction."

"Wait, so you're saying a god could reforge a soul?" Sarisa asked. "What does that mean?"

"I'm not actually sure," Theo said, shaking his head. "The reforging process is entirely different. This one is basically a factory reset for people, rather than a restorative potion."

"Alright, alright," Rowan said. "Why don't you distill that down for us?"

Theo didn't even have the willpower to glare at Rowan right now. He was thinking about all the ways he could make potions different. "We can make infinite suffuse potions, so long as we have one part," he mused. "I'm very interested in trying this with mana on both sides, but I don't think that would work."

"Does this mean Tresk didn't have to steal all those flowers?" Sarisa asked. "That would be a shame."

"No, we still needed the flowers, but yes, this could be big. It'll change the way we make all our suffuse potions, but I don't know. We need to do more testing."

As far as Theo knew, nobody on the planet had done potion infusion. This was a new frontier, and he considered it an extremely advanced technique. It was hard to place it into the tiers because the skills required to manipulate mana were immeasurable when infusing his mana with the concept of a property. He had used no small amount of willpower, and for a person with willpower that might rival the gods, he doubted most mortals could access this technique.

“If Kahar had access to an Alchemist class when he was on the mortal plane.” Theo started tapping his foot nervously. “I doubt he would have been able to perform this.”

"Wow, don't get too big a head now," Rowan said, chuckling nervously. "Oh, I think he's serious. 

“Yes, that's his serious face," Sarisa said with a scoff. "Is this one of those world-shattering revelations you have every so often, Theo? If so, I'd like to be appropriately nervous."

"Yeah, you guys might want to start crapping your pants," Theo said, as his mind spiraled out of control. He thought of the different ways he could use this technique to make potions. If he tried hard enough, he might even be able to learn spell forms from different schools of magic. Right now, he had only focused on creating spells based on his essence properties because that was easy. But why should there be a limit? If he could learn and understand a spell, he could technically infuse it into a potion. That would open up a world of possibilities—infinite properties he could infuse into base essences.

"You don't actually want me to crap my pants, do you?" Rowan asked, looking around nervously.

"He'll do it if you tell him to," Sarisa said, turning to her brother. "Go on, poop yourself."

"See, I'm not going to do it if you tell me to do it," Rowan said, folding his arms. "Theo has to tell me to do it."

Theo turned, giving Rowan a flat look. "Please don't poop your pants.”

Chapter 18

Doubling Down with Infusion

“He just gets a little confused when he’s scared,” Sarisa said, patting Rowan on the shoulder.

It was more like Rowan had an existential crisis for almost no reason. But Theo had nodded at Sarisa’s words, putting her brother’s mind at ease when he was assured everything would be just fine. There were some seriously big implications from this kind of potion-craft, and the alchemist was eager to see what would work. But when he went through the portal at the town’s square, he realized how inaccessible Xol’sa would be today. The man seemed to get busier by the day.

Theo then tried to approach Zarali, who was even busier trying to keep all the space elves alive. Apparently, the shock of having their souls reforged after being infused with void energy was almost too much. It took everything the healers had to keep them going. But at least they could now take the task in shifts, giving each the occasional break.

But this left the alchemist with no other option. Despite his most sincere objections, he had to turn to books. Which meant he had to read through pages of nonsense to find the information he wanted. With a sigh, he left the crypt—infirmary—under the temple and headed for the lab. There he dug through the endless storage crates which seemed to multiply by the day to find a book he had been given by Xol’sa.

“This brings back some memories,” Theo muttered, cracking it open. Thanks to his enhanced memory, he could still remember Axpashi. The language used by most mages in the world was a direct link to the magical world. When spoken in the right order, with intent, and the correct class these words could produce spells. One could also form these words as magical arrays in their soul, producing similar effects.

With the idea of combining a random magical property with an essence that worked with suffuse, Theo flipped through the book and found a few basic mage spells to test. He might have learned Axpashi, but he had spent almost no time understanding how the underlying magical theory worked.

“Should be easy enough… Right?” Theo asked, scratching his head as he leaned over the book in his lab.

Salire edged over, poking her head around him as he looked over the book. She cleared her throat. “Don’t do that in the lab.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t cast Fireball in the lab. Please.”

Theo looked up from his book, narrowing his eyes at her. “I wasn’t gonna.”

Salire pointed a finger at the door. “Out. I know that look.”

Theo grumbled, but secretly smiled to himself. He had fully intended to try casting a small fireball in the lab. But he left, heading out to one of the many empty fields around the lab. He found one with few dead trees. It wouldn’t go over well if he caught the town on fire. Then he got to work on forming his first spell.

The theory was simple enough. All he needed to do was form the right spellwords in the right arrangement, and a spell would happen. Easy enough in theory, but in practice it was much more difficult. The alchemist looked between the image he had conjured of his soul, and the textbook. After some adjustment, he had a basic spell array formed. He flooded the arrangement with mana and held his hand out.

A small flame appeared in Theo’s hand, flickering and almost dying against the slight breeze that blew through the town. He added more mana to the spell until it became stable, then invoked the rest of the spell. A small ball of fire lumbered forward, losing momentum and falling to the ground. He watched as it fizzled out after a few seconds. It might have seemed like a failure, but the fundamentals were there. And there was an infinite arrangement of spellword arrangements he could form.

“Which one are we gonna do first?” Theo asked, rubbing his hands together. He felt the excitement building in his chest as he flipped through the book. Eventually, he found something overly ambitious. “Come on. Why not, right?”

Theo cleared out his essence infusion artifice, dumping a few units of Dexterity Essence into the essence side of the contraption. He then held his hand over the mana side and focused. The array he wanted to infuse into his mana was more complicated than the last one he had done. With the Imbued Lesser Reforge Soul Potion he had created, he had only used a full concept instead of an array. Properties from reagents came as concepts, while the arrays came as completed spells. The spell he had selected was in the support category, and had a few more parts than he was comfortable casting.

Despite these challenges, Theo successfully infused the mana with this spell. It dripped into the container, settling in and crackling with flashing purple energy. The best part of all was that it didn’t explode. The charged mana sat there, bubbling slightly but otherwise not exploding.

“Cool,” Theo said, shutting both containers and clicking the artifice on. It got to work, and he stood behind a conjured shield as it mixed the two vaporized liquids.

As expected, the interaction between the two elements was more explosive than the first. Small strikes from the bottled lightning lashed against the side of the container. It was fortunate that Throk built these things to last. The first drops of the new potion fell into the flask, swirling with a bright purple color. It might’ve been the most colorful potion Theo had ever crafted. Bits of that same lightning raced just under the surface, as though he had literally bottled purple lightning.

Just as with last time, it took about an hour for the two-unit mixture to brew completely. Theo found it hard to wait until the mixture was done brewing, but he managed. Once it was done, he approached with caution and observed with his future-sight. As he inspected the potion, he had a better understanding of how this system worked.

[Infused Lesser Dexterity Potion]

[Potion] [Infused Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 98%

Drink to gain the swiftness of the wind.

Infusion Array:

[Gale’s Speed]

Effect:

+20 Dexterity for 1 hour.

Increase movement speed by 25% while out of combat.

“That’s a weird potion,” Theo said, nodding to himself.

It wasn’t a bad potion, but it was weird. It had infused the power of a spell called Gale’s Speed into the Lesser Dexterity Potion. When cast by a support mage, this spell would’ve increased a person’s run speed while out of combat and given a minor Dexterity boost. When combined with the standard dexterity potion, this both increased the amount of Dexterity it granted, and gave the speed bonus.

“Neat.”

Before returning his findings to the lab, Theo reproduced the technique, taking physical notes to share. He made the same kind of potion, but instead used a strength-based buff applied to a strength potion. He inspected the resulting potion.

[Infused Lesser Strength Potion]

[Potion] [Infused Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 98%

Drink to gain the strength of the earth.

Infusion Array:

[Earth’s Might]

Effect:

+20 Strength for 1 hour.

Increase force from strikes by 25%.

"Also neat," Theo said, nodding at the potion.

With the confidence that he could reproduce this process, Theo headed back to the lab. The day was wearing thin, but his excitement for the new alchemic method was overwhelming. He was happy that Salire was still working on the third floor, finishing up a run of potions. The alchemist extended one of the two potions he had just crafted, smiling all the while.

"What is this?" she asked, holding the potion out with knitted brows. "What is an infused potion?"

Theo handed over the notes he had taken, and felt giddy as she read them. When she was done, he explained the process verbally, which excited her just as much.

"What is this? A new way to handle suffuse potions?” Salire asked, reading over the instructions once again. You can imbue any spell array into the potions."

"I think there's a limit to the complexity of the array, and it has a lot to do with the skill of the person as a mage. But the two pieces also have to fit together, just like the suffuse potion."

"I've heard of some pretty complex spells," Salire said, shaking her head. "So I can't really imagine the kind of crazy things you can make with this. Does this replace the third-tier process? No, it's more like a side process. Just as you said. How many more of these are we going to discover?"

Progression through alchemy sometimes did this. As they ascended through the tiers, the path forward wasn't always a straight line, but sometimes one that led to the side. This allowed Theo to create more powerful potions by combining other elements. While Theo wasn't completely sure of the capabilities of infused potions, he was excited to see how far he could take them.

“I know Xol’sa is a good mage, but I don't think I would put him on the level of an archmage. And the only archmage I know is on the moon."

"Why don't you just go get that archmage?" Salire asked.

"Because Uharis is a jerk, and I don't like him," Theo said. "He had a chance for redemption and blew it. Maybe one day I'll pluck him from the moon, but I was thinking it would be funny if he stayed there during the entire reset."

"Just remind me not to get on your bad side, I'd rather not live on the moon.”

Theo helped Celia finish her brewing for the day. They then flipped through the only magic book he had, discussing which spells would synergize with which potions. If one dug deep enough into spellwork, they would find a spell array for almost anything. But the alchemist's instincts told him that not every spell would suit his purposes. He could tell that simply by feeling.

"This has a lot of potential to do some extremely evil things," Salire said, jabbing her finger into the page. "Could you imagine getting into this?"

Theo nodded. He could imagine getting into necromancy because he had already accidentally done so. There were whole classes of magic that the book warned about: necromancy and death magic, along with some combinations of common elements that would produce devastating effects. He had no intention of brewing potions with this, not unless he really needed to, but that drone questioned his ability to do it. The arrays for these were incredibly complex, and while he might have been able to form them in his soul, transferring them to his mana might be a problem. This was a topic of discussion between him and Salire.

Despite not growing up in Broken Tusk, she had many half-ogre instincts. They often believe the ends justify the means, and a few war-crime potions would be great to have on hand. Theo cited more of a marshal's point of view, favoring retaliation ‌at the time of attack. But he couldn't deny that some half-ogre preparedness lurked within him. Broken Tusk was still standing, and preparation was a large part of that. Just because they had giant rail guns on the walls didn't mean they planned on bombing everyone around them. They were defensive measures.

"I think we'll get the most out of this by targeting enhancement spells," Theo said. "Although there are a few fire-based spells that might really give our bombs some kick."

"We should do a potion with this spell," Salire said, jamming her finger into the page. 

Wizards of the world broke their spells into tears, just like alchemy, but it didn't seem to follow the same pattern. The estimated spell she pointed to was meant for people between levels 30 and 50. It was a haste spell that made a person faster, not just physically. It also made their thinking faster. I've never seen a pure haste potion and thought it would be very interesting.

"We could brew one if you didn't mind," Theo said. "Staying up a bit late tonight. Tresk might be upset with me, but I'm sure we could get Rowan and Sarisa to cater it, kind of like an event."

Sarisa, of course, stepped out from the shadows. "Yeah, what do you guys want for dinner?" she asked, smacking her lips. "I'm getting hungry."

"Just whatever you feel like whipping up," Theo said. "You can bring it to the field outside of the lab, just to the northeast. That's where I have the still set up."

"You got it, boss," Sarisa said, stepping back into the shadows and vanishing. 

The duo grabbed everything they would need to create a new potion based on this haste spell. After all that discussion, Theo finally got to show her how the process worked in person. She watched as he prepared the mana side of things, focusing on the spell array for the haste spell. It was more complicated than the ones he had used before, but it wasn't outside his skill range. The array would have been far more difficult to form if he didn't have a perfect memory. For the base of the potion, they decided to use something fairly standard.

The issue with the haste spell was that it needed to bind to a potion with a movement aspect. They had plenty of Retreat Potions. So, why not?

Standing back, Theo felt that the mixture was good. As the vaporized mana blended with the vaporized potion, they mixed, creating a green mixture that lingered in the air before being sucked into the condenser coil. Sarissa and Rowan returned sometime later with tables. They piled food onto them and then produced a bunch of chairs. After a while, Tresk and Alex also returned, barely saying anything and grabbing food. Eventually, Tresk dumped a bunch of level 40 monster cores onto the ground before the alchemist.

"We have a shared inventory," Theo said, giving Tresk a flat look. She simply shrugged.

When the potion was done, Theo pulled it up for inspection. This was one of his favorite potions because it provided many escape options during combat.

[Infused Lesser Retreat Potion]

[Potion] [Infused Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 98%

Alignment:

One second after drinking, the imbiber will teleport backwards to a safe location. They will then get the [Lesser Haste] effect.

Effect:

Teleport backwards to a safe location.

Gain the [Lesser Haste] effect, increasing movement, reaction, and thinking speed.

“Hey, can I get about a thousand of those?” Tresk asked.