Brewing Bad Ch. 91-92

Ch. 91 - Aqua Vitalis

After he popped that potion, every point that Lucas made was repeated at least once over the next few hours as Heisenburgle peppered him with questions. What was her expression? What was her tone? How long was the pause?  The gnome seemed to be obsessed with every detail. 

Lucas had been in the box with detectives who were less thorough than Heisenburgle, but he didn’t complain. Truthfully, he was still a little freaked out by the whole situation, and he was glad for any insight the gnome might be able to offer him. Heisenburgle had clearly been dealing with this for a lot longer than Lucas had. That was evident merely from the size of the tome he was taking his notes in. 

During all of this, the alchemist remained fairly calm. The only time he really freaked out was when Lucas mentioned the word Lwynthenll. That sent Heisenburgle into a flurry of activity. 

“Lwynthenll,” he repeated. “You’re sure she said that. That word exactly.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what it is,” Lucas said. “She just said it's a lot like some elvish potion and—”

“Not some Elvish potion,” the gnome yelled out. “The elvish potion. The waters of life. Aqua Vitalis. It's supposed to be capable of doing all manner of miracles. It can heal the sick and even turn lead into gold.”

“Well, Skylara said it was some kind of party drug, so I’m not sure you two are talking about the same thing,” 

Lucas said. He was only halfway serious, though, and he mostly set it because he knew that such a comment would get under the alchemist's skin in the state the gnome was in. Lucas had no idea how right he was, though as Heisenburgle jumped out of his chair and scampered across the room, he could see his barb had struck deep. The tiny alchemist was so irritated he muttered- to himself as he made his way to the ladder for his bookshelf and moved it to retrieve a large red tome. 

Once he’d retried it, he brought it back to the desk and then slammed it down, flipping through the pages until he found the appropriate page. The book was obviously old, and the handwriting was crabbed and difficult to read, but there was no mistaking the illustration in the center of the page. There, illuminated quite fancifully in blue inks and silver foil as a picture of his Blue. It was an uncanny resemblance. It looked a little lighter and glowed a bit more, but otherwise, it was the same thing.

“Could be,” he said noncommittal before he asked the next question, which was sure to send the gnome through the roof. “But can’t we just compare the formulas and know for sure?”

“Compare the formulas? Compare the Formulas?!” Heisenburgle yelled, briefly going apoplectic. “No one has this formula, and if the elves thought you did, they would stop at nothing to end you before you could spread that knowledge. Why would you even… Gahhh… just read the damn book!”

Lucas did with a shrug, suppressing his smile as best he could. He was enjoying this far too much.  

The book itself was interesting, too, once he got past the handwriting. It claimed some crazy shit, like the ability to bring the dead to life and grant superhuman powers. That seemed like a bit of a stretch for the potion of mana intoxication he’d been pedaling, but he wasn’t exactly an expert, and his old master had mentioned more than once about using what the elves used because ‘they know what’s right. It's their forest. You just see what they pick, and you do the same, and it will turn out okay.’

Lucas had ignored that advice as soon as he’d figured out that not everyone could see the same pop-up windows he could, but now, well, now maybe the old man was on to something. Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, could it? It couldn’t just be a matter of finding some elvish herb he’d overlooked and adding it to the mix, could it?

Well, actually, he thought, zoning out as he pretended to read the book. We already have these four ingredients. What if we don’t need another ingredient? What if we just need a different catalyst? 

After all, he realized, the other three plants were all native to the region. They were practically common; Heisenburgle said so himself, on a regular basis, comparing them to ditch weeds. Sour dwarf berries, though, were imported. The odds that the elves would use three completely local ingredients and then one completely unrelated ingredient… seemed far-fetched. 

For now, he decided not to say anything to Heisenburgle about this theory. Instead, he just said, “So the dragon wants this elf potion, and we might have it. So what’s the big deal?”

Heisenburgle put his face in his hands and shook his head. “I will just assume that you are too tired to see the significance… yes, yes,” he muttered to himself. “Otherwise, I’d have to have you tied to a post a beaten with this book until its knowledge managed to make its way into your thick skull!”

Lucas finally broke and started laughing. The image was simply too ridiculous for him to resist any further. “You think this is funny?” the gnome countered, pointing an accusing finger at Lucas. “We’re damned if we do now and damned if we don’t. Either we fail to make an impossible potion and incur the wrath of Skylara, or we succeed and incur the wrath of the elves. This is a catastrophe!”

“One,” Lucas said, enumerating each point by extending a finger as he counted them off one at a time. This was both to be dramatic and because even with Heisenburgle’s boost potion, his head was still more than a little fuzzy. “Will you please calm the FUCK down? Everything is going to be okay. Two, I really think you’re overreacting. The dragon lady just wants to get high. You should have seen her. We could give her the shit we got for a long time to come, and she would be fine. As long as we make a little progress now and then and give her stronger shit, she’ll be just fine. She just—”

“You really think that—” Heisenburgle tried to interrupt, but Lucas kept talking. 

“Three…” Lucas continued loudly, “How in the hell are the elves going to find out. We could make fifty gallons of the stuff. We could ship it to the Dragoness’s mansion or cave or wherever the hell she lives, and they would never know.”

“Did you even read this?” Heisenburgle asked, gesturing violently at the book with both hands before he whirled it around to his side of the desk and started reading it out loud. “The waters of life, when consumed, link the mind of the imbiber directly with the Goddess Lwyn to grant the heart's desire of the mortal. On the rare occasions that a human has managed to complete such an act in the past, it has rippled through the entirety of the elven collective unconscious and has almost always led to war.”

“I didn’t know that the elves had a collective unconscious,” Lucas mused, wondering how he missed that. He definitely needed to sleep. 

“What you don’t know could fill my library were it not already filled with that which you lack most: knowledge,” Heisenburgle answered with a shake of his head. “So, you see, the shape of the problem now? We are undone!”

“But like… How is that our problem?” Lucas asked. “Let’s say that Skylara gets this potion, and it does exactly what it says on the bottle… Why would the elves be pissed off at you or me or Lordanin? It’s not like the Goddess is going to say, ‘Oh, this is the fault of Lucas Parin and Heisenburgle the black. Go kill them.’ They’re going to get pissed off at a certain menace to society, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll do something about her instead, right?”

Heisenburgle opened his mouth with an expression that said he was about to explain how stupid Lucas was in some new and clever way. Only, he never got that far. Instead, he froze with his mouth open and then, after reconsidering it, said, “Yes… that might indeed be an outcome that could work in our favor…” 

The gnome quickly moved back to his journal and began to scribble away. Lucas thought about asking what the plan was but decided that he didn’t care. Instead, he said, “So, if that’s everything, I think I’m going to crash out now if that’s cool with you.”

“Yes, yes… we shall get back to work in a day or two,” the gnome answered, not bothering to look up as he gestured peevishly toward the door. “Do consider taking the time to do a bit more reading once you are fully recovered.”

Lucas didn’t even dignify that comment with a response. Instead, he left the office and walked the short distance to his room, where he took off his boots and then lay down in bed, fully dressed. 

He’d thought that when he finally made it here, he’d be out like a light. That isn’t what happened, though, because the potion that Heisenburgle had given him wasn’t quite through with him, and his stomach was cramping slightly as he struggled with Nausea. So, instead of being frustrated, he turned his thoughts over in his head. 

Thank goodness we killed those fucking slants at least, Lucas thought with a sigh as he stared at the slowly brightening ceiling. Dealing with the whisperers was bad enough. If those assholes had walked out and told all of their friends instead of going berserk, everything would have gone to shit ten times worse. 

Lucas felt pretty lucky about that, and he had time to consider what else a better catalyst might be, but somewhere between his plan to dig through Heisenburgle’s stash for a likely candidate and plan to search the woods one plant at a time in the spring if it came to it, he passed out into a deep and dreamless sleep that his body desperately needed.

Ch. 92 - Wake-up Call

Lucas slept the night and the day away and woke up sometime after lunch the following day after an 18-hour coma. He wasn’t sure if that was because of how bad he’d screwed up his sleep schedule, Heisenburgle’s pick-me-up, or both. 

He didn’t give that much thought, though, because the reason he’d finally woken up was a pounding headache. Lucas groaned as he braved the sunlight long enough to get to his bag and pull out a lesser tincture of healing, which solved the problem almost immediately. After that, he just lay there feeling like he was recovering from the aftereffects of a hangover, with dry eyes and a stiff neck. 

It was only when that started to ease, and he could feel himself relax as the potion worked its magic, that he realized he finally had the privacy and the energy to try bringing up that screen he hadn’t gotten the chance to explore before. 

“Bonus experience,” he whispered, trying to make it appear, but nothing happened. He lay there another few seconds in frustration as he tried to figure out what he’d said last time, but the moment he reviewed the statement from before in his mind, the glowing blue screen burst to life once more. Bonus experience? What is this, a video game? What in the world do I need a character sheet for?

Ohhh… Character sheet, He thought as he figured out what the real trigger was. 

Name: Lucas Sharpe Class: Alchemist  Level: 1

Agility: 13 Endurance: 9 Appearance 7

Intelligence: 14 Strength: 11 Soul: 9

Health: 100% Mana: 100%

Status Effect: Minor healing: Ongoing

Wakefulness withdrawal: Ongoing

Fatigued: Moderate

Imbued Equipment: Ring of Vanishing (Fine Quality)

You have unspent points. Please use them to increase your ability scores or gain feats/perks.

Lucas sighed. There was a lot to unpack there, and he had zero frame of reference for it. 

There was no number for the experience, but there was a little bar next to where it listed his level that was mostly empty, so he assumed that was where the experience bar was. Likewise, if this was a video game, he would have expected to see a health bar or a mana bar or something, but it just said 100%, which was less than helpful. He didn’t, though. Instead, there were just the status effects, and when he focused on them, more information expanded from each of them, making whatever this was fairly intuitive, if nothing else. 

Minor healing: ongoing - You have recently imbibed a minor healing tincture. Its effects will continue for the next 2 minutes or until its injury threshold is exceeded. 

Fatigued: moderate - You have had irregular and insufficient sleep for more than 24 hours. Your performance in all activities will be lower until this is rectified. 

Wakefulness withdrawal: ongoing - You are suffering minor withdrawal from the use of a wakefulness potion. This can be cured immediately by consuming another wakefulness potion. Caution, repeated use of wakefulness potions can lead to addiction. If no further potions of this variety are consumed within the next 48 hours, this withdrawal will abate. 

Addiction? What the fuck did that asshole give me? Lucas wondered. He made a note to stay away from the alchemist's potions without a little more careful review. 

“Man, I would have thought there would have been more here,” Lucas sighed to himself. “I don’t give a shit about these stats; I want to see alchemy shit. Where are the recipes that I learned? That achievement mentioned…”

His words trailed off. As he spoke the magic words, an achievement panel opened up. Only a few of the options were lit up, though. 

Murderer: 1/1 - You have committed your first murder. +2% to all damage

Killer: 1/10 - in Progress.

Alchemical Scholar: 10/10 - An excellent start! +10% to the effectiveness of all created alchemical mixtures. 

Alchemical Scholar: 23/50 - in Progress. 

Perfectionist: 10/10 - You have perfected several easy recipes. Additional levels of quality have been unlocked. 

Serious Perfectionist: 10/100 - in Progress. 

“What in the actual fuck?” Lucas said out loud. This was the last thing he expected to see. 

Killer? Perfectionist? That was crazy. There were a ton of partially started achievements below those, along with an apparently endless amount that he hadn’t started that he couldn’t read. 

Accomplished forager: 87% reagents gathered. 

Careful Dosages: 28% use solvents to purify toxic reagents. 

Exceptional Etiquette: 33% learn all of Lordanin’s cultural rules. 

Fancy Footwork: 40% complete - learn one style of sword fighting.

Happily Ever After: Fall in love with a partner who reciprocates.

Naturalist extraordinaire: 44% You have discovered many reagents, solvents, and catalysts, but there are always more to find!

Practice makes perfect: 91% Different failed potions created will help you learn what you did wrong that much faster! 

There were dozens of these stupid things without apparent rhyme or reason, and his eyes glazed over as he flipped through them. Why should it matter to anyone how many herbs I’ve picked or how many times I’ve failed to brew a potion? He wondered. 

Lucas felt like he was losing his mind. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to march downstairs, find Heisenburgle, and explain everything to him in the hope that the gnome might have some understanding of what this was. He couldn’t do that, though. Tipping his hand about something like this? He had a feeling that would be a big deal. For now, he would just have to go through the gnome’s library and see if any of the books he kept mentioned it. 

For now, though. Lucas didn’t get up. He kept digging. He found a screen for both recipes and ingredients when he finally stumbled on the Alchemist class interface. It was like a wiki in his head for all the potion stuff he’d discovered until now, and out of everything he’d found in this jank-ass interface so far, it was by far the most useful. 

With a thought, he could search through every herb and root he’d ever seen and look for every one of them that had an effect on intelligence or even a positive effect on intelligence. He could then sort that list from highest to lowest or most to least common. He could even sort them alphabetically. It was very impressive. 

Certainly, it was more impressive than the list of potion recipes he had. Those he disagreed with almost entirely. As far as he was concerned, there was no one right way to make a potion, but if there was, it certainly wouldn’t be to make a boost potion with a poison value of four. 

Lucas almost gave up on that interface completely until he checked out one of the potions that he’d made ‘perfectly’ according to the logic governing this thing. That at least showed some promise. 

Potion of Lesser Mana Regeneration: Ground distilled vessin root, leached sardic blossoms, kobold marrow. 

Variation 1 of 13 perfected. Additional options are available. 

Considering the additional options brought up another menu with two more recipes. Neither of these was completely filled out, though, and some of the ingredients were simply listed as ????.

What he didn’t see anywhere on any of these lists were potions of mana intoxication, which is what the pop-ups had called Blue for the longest time. That was one mystery, but maybe not the most important one. The real question, beyond what the hell did all this shit mean, was why now?

He’d been in this world for years now. It had been nearly half a decade since he was chased by angels and fell from heaven into a stranger’s corpse, and now, all of the sudden, he was level 1? Why? Who determined that? It didn’t make any sense, and he rubbed his eyes in frustration. He was not sure what he was supposed to do about any of this. 

He was about to put the whole thing away when he suddenly remembered the damn points the thing had mentioned. Lucas reluctantly shrugged mentally and decided to check that out, too. Might as fuckin’ well, he thought with ever-increasing frustration. 

It turned out that he had 3 points to spend. He had no idea if that was good or bad or what the stats did, but apparently, he could raise one three times if he wanted to. There were other things, too. The list of those was nearly endless. Sneak attack, effortless upkeep: invisibility, endure blood loss, endure pain, poison toleration, advanced appraisal, and many were listed in row after mind-numbing row. 

“I can’t believe I have to deal with this nerd shit,” Lucas sighed. He hadn’t played D&D since high school, and he’d long ago pawned his play station for other, more important needs. Video games and all that were alien to him, and now some aspect of his survival was dependent on them. It was more than a little frustrating. 

On a whim, Lucas picked out Superior Forager and gave it a look. It was straightforward enough. This feat will let you detect all reagents within a quarter mile to make your task of finding them that much easier. This feat uses mana for the duration you upkeep it. 

Would you like to select this ability? Y/N

Lucas declined and picked another one. This time, he chose Superior Scavenger, curious about the difference. This feat will reveal the closest source of a chosen reagent within one mile so you can find exactly what you are looking for. This feat uses mana for the duration you upkeep it. 

Would you like to select this ability? Y/N

“They’re basically the same thing,” he said in annoyance. 

They weren’t, of course. They were different enough, but really, he didn’t need either. He knew where the shit he needed grew by now. He wasn’t fucking Adin, after all. He was actually competent. 

Adin. Just the thought of that man-made Lucas wonder what it was that he was out there fucking up, and the interface dropped away as he realized he needed to send another note to let Danaria know that he was still doing okay. If she was rising all the way over here every few nights, the last thing he wanted was to worry her. 

He quickly sketched out a quick note, folded it up, stuck it in the window, and then went downstairs to find something to eat. ‘Doing great, making progress. Things got a little more complicated, and this could take longer than I thought.’ 

“Complicated,” he chuckled darkly. “That’s an understatement. I have to deal with a dragon, find the recipe for a mythological potion, and who knows what sort of fresh hell that will unleash.”

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t exactly just a long for the ride this time. He was pretty sure that Heisenburgle could labor at this for fifty years and never crack it, but Lucas already had a few good ideas. He was pretty sure this was a solvable problem, and then, well, then, some pretty powerful people were going to owe him some pretty big favors.