Chương 196: Syrup

I didn't know much about alchemy, and I didn't intend to become an alchemist. But I needed to learn a little in order to process the tarblood into sap. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but what I had here was more than enough to get started. One evening, after most of the other Dupes had returned to the barracks to sleep, Sage and I stood in front of a fire pit between the outer wall and the inner wall, near the edge of the obstacle course.

Workers were already taking it down and resetting it for tomorrow morning, but I'd promised them I wasn't spying on them. They shook their heads and left me to my business, though one of them complained about the smell. Since my Perception had been increasing, I forced myself to block out most scents unless I absolutely had to. It wasn't like everyone here was wearing perfume, and it could get rather unpleasant, even with regular baths. The blood, however, I did smell.

You couldn't really stop yourself from smelling boiling blood. It was somewhere between vinegar and asphalt paving.

"So, mae is a unit of 'existence' and life? Life energy, right?" I asked, glancing between the alchemy notebook I'd snuck out of the library and Sage. I'd planned most of this out beforehand, but I wanted to check over my reasoning with a more experienced Path-walker before I committed my resources to an irreversible alchemical reaction. She may not have been an expert, but she knew more about alchemy than I did.

"Correct," she replied.

"And blood has a lot more mae in it than sap."

"Also correct. Animals and men have far more 'life energy' than plants."

"So, to make it more like sap, and to achieve the desired result for continuing to slowly temper my body, I should reduce the mae—""In theory, but with the reaction on your arm the first time you tested it. That wasn't the way something high in mae should react. Decay, rots, boils, and blights? That's something that vorghul would cause."

"Yes, but I wasn't done," I said.

"This is the blood of a monster," I said.

"It's high in vorghul because it came from a monster." Vorghul. The void—anti-life energy. Morph scolded Sage with a leafy chitter, and she shook her head, then reluctantly said, "I should have let you finish."

"Either way, the saliva is to counter the effects of the vorghul," I said, tapping the book with my finger, while stirring the pot with a crossbow bolt. I hadn't made notes directly in the book, but I had done my best to memorize the chain of reasoning.

"The saliva of giant moles is unnaturally high in maegen," Sage confirmed.

"It filters the energy out of its blood, maintaining a high vorghul concentration in the blood. Hence why you can usually find a giant mole's tunnel by finding patches of unusually dense forest growth above."

"Right," I said.

"Then that's everything. It should work." I set the book down, then uncapped the jar of saliva. They were just ingredients, and I could always get more. I poured it into the pot. I didn't have a precise measurement, but I needed to infuse it with far more saliva than there was thick blood. The mae had to balance out the vorghul, and in high enough quantities to turn it into something alchemically similar to sap. The better question was if it would be spiritually similar enough.

Blessings didn't seem to work the same as cold rationality, and I was using a Blessing to help it diffuse through my muscles. The saliva poured into the pot with a hiss of steam. I emptied three jars in, turning the liquid inside into a gray slurry, then stirred it as quickly as I could. It boiled down, turning into a black syrup that didn't resemble either blood or saliva.

"Do you sense anything from it?" I asked Sage.

"It has an overall Gold-tier weight. I cannot detect anything else about it. However, it doesn't feel…cold. Not like something high in vorghul should."

"A good sign, then." I paused.

"Why Gold?"

"You distilled it. You combined two powerful ingredients from a powerful monster, and that was enough to make it a tier more valuable. It's a good sign, because that means whatever you did is changing the materials' form."

"What do you mean?"

"The Path is registering them as something entirely different, no. You have changed them on a spiritual level."

"A good sign," I agreed, repeating what she'd said earlier.

"Time to test it?"

"I'm ready to heal you." Before I began, I checked my reading slate, trying to get a baseline of where my stats were. It read: If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Vitality: 86 Agility: 91(+4) Strength: 89(+10) Perception: 54(+1) Focus: 105 Presence: 115 Same as before, I dipped my spearhead in the liquid, then pricked my arm, like I was giving myself a tattoo with the syrup.

Instead of boiling and blighting, the liquid seeped into my arm, diffusing beneath the skin and surging toward my gut. I could practically feel it rolling through my flesh, enhancing what lay below as it wove through my veins and crossed between my organs.

"It's…working?" I said.

"Check your reading slate," Sage said.

"That's the only way to be certain, dustbrain." I refreshed it by letting go of it then taking hold of it again. The stats changed slightly. Strength gained a point, as did Vitality. Only one point, but even that would stack up, given time. I raised my eyebrows, dipped the tip of my spear in the pot, then pricked myself again, this time on the other arm. Nothing changed. I felt it travelling through my body, racing toward my gut, but as it travelled, it didn't enhance anything.

There was no tingle, no ripple of flesh.

"Oh," I said.

"It will take time," Sage replied.

"This isn't an instantaneous enhancement like the first attempt. You will need to wait a day or two between each enhancement. Your body will reset itsself, and it will be ready to integrate more arcane material into your muscles, enhancing it continuously as a Path-walker does."

"All Path-walkers have this limitation?"

"Correct."

"I don't suppose I can just chug it all at once, or inject it constantly, and have it all take effect at once? No matter how awful it would taste."

"It can only improve in incremental bursts. Drinking it would be a waste of all this material." I pulled the pot off the fire before I burnt my syrup.

"How far can it go?"

"You can keep enhancing your body incrementally for as long as you want, however, you will need more powerful resources when you get stronger. Once you advance past Gold, this won't work."

"So, once I get to Emerald?" I tilted my head.

"What's past Emerald to work toward?"

"Do not ask me, dustbrain. The Warlord and his followers keep that a secret. If it's even possible to advance past Emerald, I couldn't say."

"Well, thanks for the advice, still," I said.

"Now, it's time to pour this back into a jar." ~ ~ ~ The weeks leading up to Vaelheall Week passed in a breeze. No other squads resigned, and our conditioning continued on much the same schedule. No break weeks to punch rocks. In fact, there were very few breaks at all, especially for me. In the mornings, I woke up early to look after Burr, then I travelled to the mess hall to eat breakfast. As usual, we ate infused food, though my squad supplemented it with our own extra supplies.

Abacus approved our sale of the extra armour to the 294th, so we had extra income flowing. At the same time, Sage, Anchor, and Brawl used their saved up wages to acquire extra food like I had in the weeks leading up to my joust. All in all, it improved our rate of attribute gain. I made sure that we purchased more vials of Archerbane toxin and Shepherd Beans to help enhance our Perception as well.

After breakfast was our obstacle course, then physical conditioning in the form of running and working out in the fields north of the castle, testing our standards and preparing ourselves for the final test of our physical conditioning. In the afternoons, we continued with sparring practice. We used riftrocks to weigh ourselves down, and we fought against the high winds of the fields outside the castle walls. Slowly but surely, we worked ourselves up to a steady combat pace again, even with all the restrictions.

After dinner, we headed to the sandpits, where I used my excess Presence to help us train our sparring under my Mass Hammer Art. I didn't know if it was helping, but at the very least, it improved our combat abilities while under even more increased strain, and it forced our Focus to increase just to handle the extra mental and physical load of the gravity well. There shouldn't have been a mental load.

But concentrating on fighting someone while under such intense stress was difficult, and at the same time, you had to account for any changes in the speed of their attacks. After our individual sparring, we met up with Habit and Yesman's squads, where we worked on our team fighting practice. Although we didn't have a goal to work toward, we continued practicing in groups. Finally, after we cleaned off in the baths, we settled down around a fire to calm down.

I told stories, as best I could, and recounted plenty of movies I remembered from back on Earth, telling them in as engaging of a way as I could. Then we slept as much as we could. By then, we were all exhausted. As for me, though? I couldn't sleep so soon, some days. I kept up my weekly meetings with Cuthward and Hardric, monitoring my lands as best I could. Hinlaw hadn't shown any open signs of hostility, yet. Was he waiting for something? I couldn't tell.

Maybe he was just probing out defenses, trying to figure out what we were capable of or what I'd left behind, and the Greencloaks were taking care of it. As well, I received weekly letters from Alis. She said she'd dispatched Arnulf, and he was crossing over the mountain passes to meet me. He should arrive at some point after Vaelheall Week, and when he got closer, she'd tell me where and when to meet him.

She also told me I would likely have to remove Hinlaw's heirs, either through violence or forcing them to abdicate. Still, she promised me she would try to think of alternatives. At least the flower I'd sent her arrived, though. Apparently, it was 'in a terribly rough condition,' and it only had one petal left, but she was trying to resuscitate it in a glass of water. I cursed myself, and sent another next week wrapped inside the letter, so the wind wouldn't rip it apart as Croak flew.

Still, according to Alis, the first flower had far more charm. Whatever that meant. Every week, we had our Labyrinth runs. We killed what we could, venturing farther and farther from the city center each week, while restoring our Presence income to its earlier amount. I tried to turn up one or two treasures every week, which we brought to Drywsone to test and experiment with. If it didn't have a Skill any of us could use, we sold it off as scrap.

Finally, on the evening before Vaelheall Week began, I met with Abacus. He claimed that he had finished his report on the finances of my lands, and he had something he needed to tell me.