Chương 148: Chapter 144

Wade returned to the kitchen with the chitin fragment held in his hand like a winning lotto ticket.

"Got it! Plan B was Plan A the whole time. Who would have guessed, right?" The group left behind in that kitchen were only Leon and Medy, chatting amicably together. Zin had gone off somewhere, likely to avoid getting roped into anything further. And so long as Leon was there to keep watch over the menace, she couldn't possibly ruin his kitchen too bad. Leon looked up from his phone, "You convince skeleton? Oh, well done. Not thinking that possible."

"It wasn't." Wade confirmed.

"He's basically the spiritual reincarnation of a team fortress two player - whatever hat he gets his hands on is never leaving him. But I didn't need to wrangle the helmet off him." Wade set the fragment on the counter beside the cauldron.

"I got this puppy right here."

"Oh, yeah!" Medy grabbed the fragment off the counter and held it up to the window light, turning it between her fingers.

"This should work right?" And brought it right to her face to sniff. Because of course she would. It was like watching a supermodel dig through a dumpster like a happy raccoon. And exactly as elegant.

"I mean, it's got residual mana inside it, I can feel it evaporating off." She squinted at it further, tail wagging behind her as her curiosity took over everything.

"I could probably draw essence of hunger, death, and a few other things linked to creatures? Instincts for mana control? I don't usually work with creature bits from the arcane realm, every bit of mass that gets added to a realm transfer just adds to the difficulty for the Captain, so they really want to travel as light as possible when it comes to goods.

I just don't know how any of that would mix together to make something that deals dama - okay you don't care about the theory part, I can sense the confusion coming from you both."

"Well, I don't technically need to learn Alchemy," Wade shrugged.

"We'll get you all the items you need, and you make us all the potions we need. Delegation is the bedrock upon which all great nations were build over." Leon gave a few enthusiastic claps at that. But all Medy heard was that she'd be in charge of brewing potions. And better yet, she'd be the one doing everyone's potions. Which meant a lot of potions. The sharp tail behind her started getting real dangerous, and Leon took one step backwards in case the happy wagging accidentally sliced him.

"Okie dokie, sounds good to me!" She chirped, rocking back and forth on her hooves, then turned to investigate her panel, following what directions she needed. It eventually ended with her tossing the chitin fragment into the cauldron without much more fanfare. She then stirred the cauldron, humming to herself as she fiddled with angle of the spoon and the fire intensity. A moment later, she frowned, then hastily started tracing patterns in the air, index finger quickly going through circles, squares and triangles.

"Oh, it's a lot easier than I thought. This game thing of yours is showing me what patterns to draw and when to stir, I just need to time it right." Her tail wagged faster.

"I don't know why, but it's really fun when it says I got things perfect!"

"She's doing quick time events," Wade whispered to Leon.

"Da, I see."

"I mean, I knew it was going to happen, there's always quick time events these days on everything." He just somehow hadn't expected that to have weaseled into something as omnipowerful as the System itself.

"I got it!" Medy yanked the empty glass vial from the counter with a flick of her tail, grabbed it in hand and plunged it straight into the cauldron, swiping through and lifting it back up. What was left was an amber glowing potion, slowly swirling within. It seemed to radiate anger incarnate, with specks of black negative light fading in and out. Medy tilted her head, squinting at something Wade couldn't see.

"Uh, so there's this little box that popped up? It says I'm... maxed out?"

"Maxed out on what?"

"Potion crafting? It says I can't advance past grandmaster level alchemy unless I unlock the next level." She poked at the air in front of her face, other hand still holding the vial.

"Which, like, I don't even know what that means because I didn't know there were levels to begin with? It just showed up after I made the potion."

"Is it supposed to do that?" Wade asked instead, keeping an eye on the more dangerous looking vial in her hand. Crafting levels in video games was pretty common. Having a potion with damage potential outside in real life was not so common.

"Do what?" Medy asked, for once having the common sense not stick the vial close to her face. Even she could tell there was something dangerous about this thing.

"The black bits. They're moving like they're… alive?" Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. They moved in a pattern, as if trying to escape the vial. And when Medy brought it up to look, at a respectable distance, the specs seemed to almost react to her, floating in a circle, mimicking the shape of her eye.

"I dunno!" She shrugged then held the vial out to Wade.

"Can you give this that investigate ability?" He held his hand out, and carefully took the vial. Warm to the touch, but not too warm either. Quest complete - Alchemy Reagents (Part 2) One storefront coin added to inventory.

"Niiiceee." Wade hissed under his breath. Easy coin get. The quest also came with some negligible leveling experience, which didn't really change a thing on his end right now as they were capped to 1% until he unlocked the next leveling upgrade. With the completion of this one, he got sight of the next. Alchemy Reagents (Part 3) - Defeat an enemy level fourty or higher using the Vial of Inevitable Destruction to deal the killing blow. Rewards: One Storefront Coin. Negligible leveling experience. Copper Lootbox.

Storefront progression options. On one hand, he was already gearing up to do exactly that. And there were no shortage of highly territorial monsters in the Arcane realm. He could do this. With a good plan. He had loads of good plans. Hence why he hadn't died so far. Apart from the two other times, but one of those was intentional. Last round was also a fluke, it didn't count. This time would be different.

"Identify." Vial of Inevitable Destruction (Rare) - High Quality. The rest of the text showed the exact same description he had seen on the original recipe. So this was a genuine, bonafide System potion. First of its kind. And Wade had no idea how to actually use it, but he would soon.

"System interface is showing me it's high quality, good work Medy." She frowned, "Not perfect quality? Oh no, I'm so sorry, I missed a few of those timed steps at the very start, but I didn't know it would work like that at first! I can do better next time!"

"It's totally fine, this should work. Besides, so far the Identify thing has only ever shown me three options, low quality, high quality and System quality."

"It only showing me the name of things." Leon shrugged.

"No upgrade here." Wade grabbed a stool to look over what was left in the cauldron, calculating how many more vials he could fill up.

"Plus, for all we know I fuck it up and waste the potion trying to figure out how it wo-" He stopped talking, and instead stared. The cauldron was empty.

"What." He leaned closer, blinking. It was not mostly empty. Not dregs-at-the-bottom empty. The pot outright looked like it had been sitting in a cabinet for six months. Like Medy hadn't even used it yet. There wasn't a single stain of wet metal anywhere, it was bone dry.

"That's weird." Medy said, now also looking over Wade's shoulders.

"There were leftovers when I brought the vial up with the solution. Where did the rest all go? How did it all evaporate that fast?" Sure, the chitin fragment might have dissolved in boiling water, that was a stretch but it could be possible. But there were two copper coins tossed into this thing, and Wade knew for a goddamn fact that copper did not dissolve in boiling water, and those two coins should have been at the bottom of this cauldron. They were very clearly not.

"So, I taking it we have only one vial?" Leon asked, not needing a stool to look over. Wade looked between the cauldron, and up to the vial in hand. Calculating. While he had access to all the other ingredients, he only had one chitin fragment and that had been used up. And splitting it in half would have probably gotten the System to roll its eyes and tell him his greed had fucked him over.

"Unfortunately, I think this is it." Wade slowly said. He had a choice now. Uncork it, pour it into the spray bottle, and see if it remained a fully functional potion to do testing with. Or keep it in the vial and not risk the chance the System counted it as a working potion so long as it remained inside the vial and was used correctly. He licked his lips with nervous energy, now realizing how precious what they were holding onto was, and looked over to Medy.

"There's no instruction manual on this thing, right? Nothing on your end that said how to use it?" She shook her head.

"No, just what is needed to brew it up. Sorry. But if you get me another trophy, I'm sure we can make another!" Wade could almost hear the distant jaws clicking outside. And the unworded challenge that was in there. Zero chance he could Indiana Jones an actual astronaut helmet and swap it with Eri's trophy. The skeleton would know.

"No, we'll have to make do with what we got here." Wade said, feeling more determined. Sure, if he fucked this up and lost his potion, that'd be a real shame. But he hadn't yet figured out any kind of functional build around this, so it's not a critical thing to lose. He opened up the spray bottle, uncorked the angry looking new potion, and poured half of it into the spray bottle. The three all looked over at the bottle, watching for it to melt or break down somehow.

"Five seconds." Wade said, "That's what the description says. So if it does damage it should be right… about… now." Nothing happened.

"Identify." Leon whispered. Then nodded to himself.

"Hah, see for yourself." He did. Spray Bottle of Inevitable Destruction (Rare) - Low Quality. Wade started laughing his ass off. Low quality was very likely all about the bottle and nothing to do with the potion inside. Couldn't be helped, it's not like a random disposable spray bottle cleaner would be top notch quality. But if it's stupid and it works, it's still stupid and Wade's luck stat clearly kicked in.

He still had half of it in the original vial, and that remained high quality, but likely for more pragmatic reasons than the potion's efficiency. Testing it out was rather simple: He went looking for his original prey, insects. And in this case, Zin had brought back meal crickets along with his purchase on Wade's request by the pet shop. Just about as many of them as the archdemon could get. The nozzle loomed over the box of innocent insects.

And all at once sprayed a full mist of deadly potion, sticking to just about every target within the box. Wade watched. The insects showed no signs of panic, still moving around as normal. He counted down in his head. At five seconds exactly, the fireworks started. The droplets of potion all glowed bright amber for half a second, and then instantly turned pitch black, imploding inwards. Most had been completely coated by the sticky potion. Destruction was inevitable.

The box blew up, as if firecrackers were lit inside. Crickets died from the potion, exploded, wounded their others, and those equally died a moment later, repeating the cycle. Wade's new boon was going haywire all across the box. A moment later the entire box was blown off the table from the inside out, hitting the flat ground, fire starting to catch the sides. It crackled one more time as some final poor cricket within tried to crawl out, expired, and promptly detonated.

Wade looked at the destruction, and the ripped apart cardboard box with licks of fire slowly starting to eat the sides. And then at his spray bottle of doom. He'd kiss it if he wasn't worried the thing had spare droplets that could potentially attack him. But yes. This would do very nicely for what came next.