Chương 193: Basic Alchemy

With a shout, I drove a final barrage of punches into the standing stone. It cracked near the base. The force of my punch created a hole in the stone's center. Debris flew out the back, scattering across the dirt, and the cracks travelled through the rest of the stone. As it toppled over, I stepped away. Unstable, it collapsed into ten different chunks of stone before it even hit the ground. They thudded down, shaking my footing. Owl stood behind me, watching.

"You're the first one to topple your stone, Levi. Good work." I had been far more focused on the stone than I had been on the rest of the training group. All that mattered was taking it down. Looking down at my knuckles, I grimaced. Blood trickled down my forearms. Still, the skin was getting tougher. I had hit the stone twenty times in a row to finally knock it down.

"Now," Owl continued, "turn the rubble into dust." ~ ~ ~ At the end of the next week's Labyrinth run, I stood over the corpses of the monsters we'd defeated. A lava gorilla (I still couldn't convince myself to call it a flameknuckle when I'd spent so long thinking about it as a gorilla), a couple skeletons coated in Imperial Steel, a heap of Titanium-tier bats, and a tarblood lizard. The tarblood lizard had been a Silver, about as strong as Jaruwain.

It had been our first 'plaza boss' we'd eliminated so far, and the ease that we'd destroyed it gave me confidence. Could we go after a Gold next? But more important was its blood. I wanted to run an experiment. I gave Anchor the siphon, and while he worked to harvest the Presences of the beasts, I tried to extract some of the lizard's blood. Tarblood lizards had a high sugar content in their blood, and it sealed over wounds quickly, potentially saving it from a deadly bleed. Just like sap.

I doubted I could perfectly replicate infusing real sap from an arcane tree into my limb, but I wanted to test whether this could get me closer, or if it would work. Maybe I'd have to mix it with something. It wasn't poisonous, though, and I would have Sage on standby in case I needed help. For now, I slit open the beast's legs and drained the thick black liquid into a jar, filling it to the brim. I'd gotten the jars from the inside of a house we'd looted (where we'd failed to find any arcane equipment).

They were simple clay jars filled with dust, but they'd do the job. I collected as much blood as I could, then walked over to Anchor, who had a heap of Presences before him.

"This is much better, sarge," he said. He held the Siphon out to me.

"I don't think I can grab any more of them."

"Brawl struck the final blow on the tarblood." I took the siphon back.

"I say he gets the largest Presence. We'll split the rest."

"Thank you, brother." So we did. We passed the Presences around the group, splitting the rest evenly, then went hunting for nearby treasures. In the second floor of a shop, we found a ceremonial bracelet and a few rings, each with their own weights. They were weak, according to Anchor and Sage—only Iron or Steel tier, which translated to Novice-tier Skills, but it was better than nothing. I had to get a perception Skill of my own, though.

That would be a much better use of my Perception rather than just using it for my physical senses. A problem for later, though. We still had to get out, and with all our Imperial Steel intact. ~ ~ ~ If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. On the way up, we encountered a small band of orcs in the upper city. They were fresh down here, judging by their comparative cleanliness (for orcs, at least).

At first, they seemed lost, but they were heading toward the exit. We interrupted them. Most of them were Irons, except for a few Steel-tier trolls that travelled with them. I didn't have to spend a single point of Presence to slay them. More concerning was the fact that they were here at all, roaming the caverns. I knew how they'd gotten here, of course—through the underground tunnels—but did that mean an attack was imminent? Were they scouts? We searched the bodies for suppression collars and found nothing.

"They were likely just a dispatch from across the Thelea," Anchor said.

"They travelled undergorund to get here. I'd bet they're sending hundreds of raiding parties down into the Labyrinths, parties just like this. Not all of them will survive, but enough of them will."

"They'll wreak havoc on the countryside and the rural Labyrinth entrances," Sage lamented.

"They've probably already taken hundreds of slaves…"

"If there was a way to open the tunnels up, then there has to be a way to shut them all down," I said.

"Do we know why they opened in the first place?"

"Not a clue," Anchor said.

"Tampering, in some way or another?" I chewed the inside of my lip. It was getting raw. (Sure, the inside of my mouth had become more durable as my Vitality increased, but my Strength had also increased, balancing out the damage I could inflict upon myself.) Finally, I said, "I'll talk to Lord Ceonwin about it when I have a chance. He might know something about the Labyrinths." ~ ~ ~"You're up late, dustbrain," Sage remarked. I knelt beside a fire, standing alone.

The other Dupes wouldn't get a retelling of any Earth movies this week—I had to work on continuing my bodily enhancement. I had set up a cauldron, and I currently boiled the tarblood over it, thickening it even more and purifying it. It was a Silver-tier resource, but maybe I could make it stronger.

"You're not with Brawl?" I asked.

"He was exhausted. And I know what you are planning. You will need a healer."

"Do you have any objections?"

"Your body will likely reject the blood," she said.

"At least in this form. But feel free to try."

"Gladly." I dipped the tip of my spear in, then pricked my forearm with the blood-coated tip. The maegen in the lizard's blood, along with all the other arcane substances, created a weak slurry in my blood. It wasn't supposed to be a complete reforging, but rather, it was just supposed to be building upon my original body. The material would reinforce it, making it closer to me. Crackling with arcane energy, the blood sank into my body, rushing inward with the Blessing of Aelfwine's Birch. So it was working?

I glanced at Sage and gave her a grin— A pang of pain rippled through my arm, and clenched my teeth together, wiping the grin off my face. She cast me a look as if to say, I told you so, dustbrain.

"Is it supposed to hurt?" I asked.

"No. An enhancement builds on what you've already built. Your muscles should feel tired, like they do after a long day of physical conditioning. It should not be painful." I shook my arm out. The pain was already fading, and the skin below bubbled. A blight, like a boil on a tree, boiled up beneath my skin, black and crusty on the surface. The skin around it turned bright red. At first, I only stared at it. Was that really growing on me?

"Well, do something, dustbrain," Sage said.

"Can you heal it?"

"Of course. But first, cut off the blight." I used the head of my spear like a dagger. Since the shaft had mostly burnt away in our Labyrinth run earlier today, I was waiting for a new one from the blacksmith shop. Still, the Imperial Steel was sharp enough to remove the blight. I probably wouldn't have been able to cut it off so easily a week ago, but I'd spent the last seven days training myself to punch a rock and purposely hurt myself. I slid the spearhead along my arm, shearing off the blight.

Pain rocketed through my limb, and I clamped my eyes shut. A moment later, a warmth blossomed on my arm, soaking up the pain. Sage absorbed it with ease. I opened my eyes just in time to see the skin knitting shut. The bleeding stopped, and the rest of the blight disappeared.

"Thanks," I told her.

"And sorry."

"Next time, test it on your leg," she said with a sigh.

"I won't feel the pain as much that way, and it makes it easier to heal. But don't try it again tonight." I bowed my head.

"Will do." She must have been running low on Presence, considering she was using Morph as a stool instead of walking on her own two legs.

"Do you have any idea how I can make it work? Because that didn't work, right?"

"Correct. That was an absolute failure. Except, perhaps, in the fact that damaging and repairing yourself does increase your Vitality in minor measures."

"Can I purify the blood somehow? Make it into something more sap-like?" I tilted my head.

"Or should I just abandon that hypothesis…?"

"Perhaps it needs to be part of a mixture," Sage said.

"You may need to check the library for proper ingredients and more alchemical information." I nodded.

"That might just work. You really think I can make something like sap?"

"I think you can do pretty much anything you put your mind to, Sir Levi. I would never have guessed you would pull off half the things you've done. So why not this?"

"I suppose…" I poked my fire again and gave my pot a stir.

"I'll figure something out, then. No way am I only gonna be satisfied with half the benefits of an enhanced body."