The Newt and Demon

There were quite a few reagents that Theo had never completed his experimentation phase with. Most of the time, it was a matter of him finding what he needed from a specific reagent and moving on. Other times, it was a property of that ingredient that didn't seem all too useful. Perhaps it wasn't the best use of his time, but the alchemist felt the urge to select at least two of these reagents and create a potion from an unused property.

"Which one are we picking?" Salire asked, rubbing her hands together. She looked over an assortment of ingredients with hunger in her eyes.

I feel I wanted to investigate the pitch property from the Dongra Blooms. He had already decided on that one, but there were many other reagents he could pick from to either discover new properties or experiment with one he hadn't used before. This, of course, came at great cost to their current production strategy. They would need to leave two stills empty so they could experiment. Taking the experiment to the giant metal dome wasn't preferable, but he would do it if they couldn't clear away at least two.

"We can always mess with that deadly flower," Theo said. Of course it wasn't on the table right now.

"Are you talking about Deathbloom or Night’s End?" Salire asked.

"That was mainly a joke," Theo said, rubbing his chin. He remembered extracting the Venom property from the deadly flower. If he could avoid it, he never wanted to do it again. Instead, he plucked a small piece of cotton from the table. It was sand-colored and had a slightly gritty texture, as it hadn't been processed into fiber. “We haven't discovered the third or fourth property on Kahari cotton. How about we do that?”

“I was hoping for something more exciting,” Salire grumbled.

“You’re confusing excitement with death.”

Theo hummed to himself as he thought. They had already discovered all the uses for the Deathbloom reagent, so there was no point working with that. He had no desire to work with the Night's End flower, so the cotton only made sense. As he searched back through his memories, he realized that not only did it have a hidden third and fourth property, but they hadn't tested the second property, Flutter.

"This is perfect," Theo said, holding the cotton up. "We'll have to clear another still to run. Whatever interesting property we find, but it'll be fun."

"Flutter, huh?" Salir asked. "What do you think that'll do? Give you wings and let you fly like a butterfly?"

"We can only hope," Theo said, pulling out a few samples of the Kahari cotton to decompose.

This was where the fun was at. Properties that came from a plant typically had a theme. If it was a poisonous flower, it would provide damaging effects. If it was a restorative herb, it would provide effects that restored a person's health. But there were always the oddball properties on reagents. The alchemist held his hand over a sample of the Khahari cotton. He allowed his mono to drip onto it, watching as the smoke rose. It decomposed into a primal essence. Breathing the scent of the smoke was usually enough to reveal the property. Only a few moments later, a system message appeared.

[Property Discovered]!

Deconstructing the [Khahari Cotton] has revealed the property: [Fluff]

Deconstructing the [Khahari Cotton] has revealed the secret property: [Expand]

Theo read the new properties out for Salire to hear. Her brow knit as he recited the messages that had appeared.

"See, this is what I'm talking about. 'Fluff' and 'Expand' don't sound like very interesting properties."

“You never know,” Theo said. “Especially when you’re talking about modifiers. Expand might make a decent modifier on things like bombs.”

Salire sighed before nodding. She went to prepare the stills for a tiny run of each property. That left Theo to decide which property they would focus on. He couldn't see the fluff property being anything but horrible, so he focused on the Expand property from the Kahari Cotton and the Pitch property from the Dongra Blooms. Once the spare stills were prepared, he processed the blooms in the cotton, mashing them, adding the correct amount of enchanted water, and setting the stills to work.

Of course, it would take about a day for them to complete with a new alchemy process, which sucked. Theo had grown too used to being able to complete a full run of 500 units in a few hours. Now he had to wait, like some common alchemist. At least he gave him time to go through their stocks and organize the other things they had. After being rather content with the amount of restorative herbs they had in their possession, he withdrew a Potion of Veil from one of the many storage crates in the lab.

“You know this potion was very useful before the gods got involved.”

"A lot of our potions are very useful, Theo," Salire said with a laugh. "And I don't really like the dangerous ones."

"How is this one dangerous?" Theo asked. "We have tactical nukes in our storage. Why would a potion that shields you from detection be dangerous?"

"I've never really trusted mages," she explained. "If you shield yourself from them, they have more reason to come after you.”Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"Now that's an interesting take," Theo said. He took a deep breath, analyzing the scent of the brewing essences. "I have an idea of what that Dongra Blooms brew is going to do, but the cotton smells weird." �

"You've always had a stronger sense of smell than me for this kind of stuff. How do you mean 'weird'?"

"It's like something I've never smelled before," Theo said.

Suddenly, she patted him on the shoulder, shaking her head. "I'm sure there are a great many smells you've never smelled before. This is probably nothing to be concerned about."

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Theo granted a response going back to his assessment of their current reagents and their properties. His plant hybridization project wasn't going quite as well as he would have liked, but it was fine. Pulling out new properties from existing regens was very difficult. He withdrew a strange-looking hybrid plant from the depths of his storage. It had been quite a long time since he had seen it. This was a plant the local loremaster had named Throk’s Weed.

It was a hybrid of the local corn-like zee and Earth's wheat. Not only had Theo completely neglected to do anything with this, he hadn't even discovered the hidden fourth property. And he had enough samples of the item in his lab alone to feed a small town for a few days.

"We never did anything with this,” Theo said, holding the crop up for Salire to see. “The third property is called Aura and I just never really thought to do anything with it.”

Salire crossed the lab, holding the stock in her hands and inspecting it. She nodded a few times. "Wanna brew it? I actually have some old samples of the aura essence in storage somewhere.”

Theo didn't know why she held onto an essence without brewing it into a potion, but more than likely she had just done so to get some practice when she was first starting out. There were several storage crates filled with random things that she had crafted for practice.

"Why not?" Theo asked. "I'll help you find the essence, wherever it might be."

Of course, it was in the last possible crate they could have checked. Both floors of the lab, the third floor and the second floor, were crowded with dimensional storage crates. Those crates were filled with just as much junk as useful things. Discarded experiments, reagents, bits of wood, all kinds of things were stored.

"And I found Tresk's hidden store of salamander eggs," Theo said. "Finally."

“Knowing her, she probably forgot about them.”

The system didn't mind if they mixed and matched the new forms of alchemy, which they all found surprising. He found himself looking over at the shrine to Drogamath as he worked. The shrine was completely useless, but he owed just about everything to that fallen patron. But it didn't matter. The system was happy to accept the old essence to create a new potion. The alchemist understood that it was partly his skill that stabilized the mixture and partly his levels and attributes.

“Ready?” Theo asked, holding a fleck of iron above the glass vial. It was one of the many glass vials that Salire had designed. The ornate ones.

"Oh, stop stalling," she said, huffing.

Theo dropped the iron into the violin, watched the reaction. It was more tame than he had expected. He didn't need to do much to keep it under control. He just watched it. It put off a strange scent, kind of like metal mixed with dirt. It was hard to explain, but the bloom of smoke that came from the top of the vial was a shifting color that reminded him of a certain demon patron.

"Smells like Toru’aun," he said, shaking his head.

"That's kind of creepy," Salire said, bringing her gaze level to the table. The reaction was calming down by now.

"I have a sensitive nose, remember?" Theo said. "Anyway, let's inspect this potion."

The pair inspected the resulting potion.

[Aura Potion]

[Potion]

Uncommon

Created by: Theo Spencer

Grade: Excellent Quality

Imbiber gains an increase in the power of their aura.

Effect:

Increases the effectiveness of the imbiber’s aura.

"I'll be honest, I don't even really know what an aura is," Salire said

"Well, that makes two of us," Theo said with a heavy sigh. "I understand that your aura comes from your soul and is kind of an extension of it, but I don't really have one. What I have is a fake aura generated by my core.”

"Do you think this potion would enhance that?" she asked.

Theo shrugged, downing the potion in one go. Salire wasn't even surprised when he did so. It was kind of his move. He expanded his shadow aura slightly, trying to detect any differences. It took a moment, but he felt the quality of that bubble increase, and then it increased some more and some more until it was so overwhelming for Salire that she nearly took a knee. Perhaps it was too late to realize, but the alchemist figured out that the potion made his nonexistent aura more potent when it joined with the shadow aura. It had a doubling or tripling effect that was too much.

He withdrew that aura as quickly as he could, feeling it suck back into his chest and going dormant once again.

Salire took a deep breath, sighing it out with relief. "It felt like you were crushing my chest," she said.

"I wonder how useful that would be," Theo said, looking at the empty vial in his hand. "Could be used as a weapon, or it could make my existing aura-based abilities more powerful."

There was another use that the alchemists could think of. While he planned to take most of the Alliance with him when they left this world, there was a problem with that. There was a lot of land mass, and he still wasn't certain he had the ability to bring it all. His limiting factor was the size and strength of his shadow aura.

"Bear with me for one second," Theo said, closing his eyes and rolling his shoulders.

Salire physically braced herself against the table.

A dome of shadow spread out. First over the Newton Demon itself, then the road outside and the surrounding buildings. Before long, it encompassed Broken Tusk and then the lands outside. It went further, dragging along the ground and encompassing everyone and everything in its power. Before long, it had enshrouded Qavell, the bay, and right to the edge of Rivers and Daub. With a great breath, he sucked his aura back in. Something within his soul stirred, as though restored by becoming whole again.

He realized Salire was on the ground.

"Please don't do that again," she said, panting for breath.

Theo looked to the sky, smiling to himself. "Wait for it… wait for it…”

[Aarok]: We’re being attacked by a giant shadow monster. Fighters to your stations.

"Wow, he has a quick response time," Salire said with a chuckle.

"Could you not?" Sarisa said, emerging from the shadows.

Rowan emerged quickly behind her, clutching his chest. "What was that?"

"Could one of you run and tell Aarok to stand down?”

"I got it," Sarisa said, heading for the door.

"I don't know," Rowan said, scratching the stubble on his chin. "Seems like a great opportunity to test our readiness. If we're expecting attacks at any time, this might be a decent test."

Theo tilted his head to the side and nodded. "That was a very good point," he said. "If we are expecting either the dungeons or the lizard people to attack at any moment, some drills were a good idea."

Rowan struck a pose, placing his hands on his hips and thrusting his chest out. “I have good ideas sometimes.”

"How did it feel for you?" Theo asked, eager to learn more about this potion-enhanced aura situation.

"Like someone had their hand around my heart, slowly crushing it,” Rowan said, clutching his chest again. “I’d rather not experience that.”

As expected, Theo got a message through the Alliance’s messaging system shortly after. Aarok was upset about the sudden burst of aura at first, but Sarisa had convinced him it was a good thing. Instead of telling the defenders that this was just a test, he treated it as a real attack.

“Well, that was exciting,” Theo said, closing his administration interface. “Guess we’re getting close to dinner… Wanna come to the manor for food?”

“Sure,” Salire said, nodding. “Right after I check all the stills…”