The Newt and Demon

Theo found no surprises with the [Refined Dissolve Essence]. Zarali’s improvements on his stills meant he didn’t have to worry about a second process to get the most from his essences, gaining him much needed time. He inspected the essence one last time before deciding on what form of potion to create.

[Refined Dissolve Essence]

[Essence]

Epic

Created by: Belgar

Grade: Excellent Quality

Alignment:

Drogramath (Middling Bond)

Alignment Effects:

Chance to consume half of required essence during brewing.

1 units (liquid)

Concentrated, refined essence of dissolve.

Looking at the faint hue of blue in the essence reminded him of those detergent-style essences. The alchemist set up a sample reaction within the lab, relying on his various skills and building bonuses to keep the essence from exploding. He worked his way up from a tenth of a unit of essence to 20 units of [Purified Water] all the way to half a unit of essence, finally getting the reaction he wanted. It bound to the water perfectly, the flask he used swirling and letting off a smell like a fresh sea breeze. Before inspecting the potion, he felt a strange sense shiver through his body. His intuition said it was an intent-driven potion, which would have been a first. He inspected the potion.

[Tunneling Potion]

[Potion]

Epic

Created by: Belgar

Grade: Excellent Quality

Alignment:

Drogramath (Middling Bond)

After pouring this potion on stone, dirt, or other naturally occurring terrain materials, this potion will create a tunnel to the user’s mental specifications.

Effect:

Removes all naturally occurring terrain materials based on user’s [Willpower], and the quality of the potion.

Potions normally gained their name from the property of the reagent. It was rare enough to see the result gain a different name, but it wasn’t a revelation. The [Tunneling Potion] was exactly what he needed, even if he didn’t understand the effects completely. As soon as the miners created the security area, he could begin digging down. It was dangerous, considering the idea of caverns, to just dig without regard. Another idea sprung up in his head, though.

Theo swirled the potion in the flask. If it could remove terrain, they wouldn’t need an [Earth Mage]. The water elemental dropped enough of the reagent for him to clear a mountain away, if it worked as intended. As with most things related to alchemy, it required testing.

The garden behind the Newt and Demon was lush. Too lush. The new upgrade he bought for the greenhouse also enhanced the growth rate of weeds, inviting them in to plague his crop. There wasn’t damage to his sprawl of reagents, but it was annoying. He spent a long time weeding that place out, preparing the cultivated [Spiny Swamp Thistle] for planting, and sorting them out for distillation. Back in the lab, he prepared his stills for a large run. He loaded two stills up with [Spiny Swamp Thistle Root], then dug into his supplies for the last of his [Flame Roses]. The trader would be interested in [Healing Potions] and [Strength Potions], they provided the most obvious benefit.

That also left room for experimentation. The stat-enhancing potions would act strangely with modifiers, but Theo still hadn’t given them free range to see how well they did.

A bell rang downstairs, Azrug’s excited voice chiming in to meet the cheer of the tinkling sound. Heavy footsteps ascended the stairs moment later, Throk throwing the door open with a look of annoyance. The old Marshling took a deep breath, forcing his face into a smile.

“You’re working me to death, alchemist,” Throk said.

Theo waited for more context, but that was true.

“The mine thing is done,” Throk said, withdrawing a spherical cage from a dimensional bag at his side. “So is this thing.”

“Excellent,” Theo said, taking the mesh.

“And I’ve got workers tearing up the ground again, making some shoddy building for your boilers,” Throk said.

“You’re the best,” Theo said, finishing up his work with the stills. “I’ll expand the mine today. Looking for silver.”

“You won’t be satisfied until you strike gold,” Throk said. “And I’m guessing there’s gold in the ground, cause that’s your luck.”

Theo nodded.

“Do you know anything about sailing?” Theo asked. “I have an idea for a harbor—”

“No thanks,” Throk said, turning on the spot. “I’ve got enough Theo work for now.”

“But I haven’t even asked…”

Throk was already gone. It wasn’t Theo’s fault that he was the most useful person in town, but the old Marshling would have declined any work he couldn’t handle. That bravado was without substance, just something he did to keep the alchemist from piling more work on him. He wanted to ask about making a port, and the best way to carve out large sections of earth for a harbor. Even if a Marshling didn’t like the water, they seemed at home submerged.

With the defensive room operation within the mine, there was nothing to stop him from trying out the new potion. He brewed 10 of them to start, just enough to get the feel of how they worked, before departing his lab. He looked north while descending toward the mine, noting that the building Xam was working on seemed done. She wouldn’t open the bathhouse until the pipework was done, something Theo delayed unintentionally. The alchemist stopped by Nira’s smeltery before heading off to the mine, finding the Human woman covered in soot and sweat, working the crucible.

Like him, she never took a break.

“Question,” Theo shouted, trying to match his voice to the clang of metal and the rattle of oversized chains. She shot him a glare, which was her way of saying she was listening. “Any experience with a coin mint?”

That got her attention. She stopped pulling the chain immediately, leaving her ingot mold half-filled. She jumped down from the iron scaffolding, bounding toward the alchemist before composing herself. Nira let out a breath, straightened her leather apron and waited.

“Any experience?” Theo asked.

“Not directly,” Nira said.

“Indirectly,” Theo said, nodding. She always distilled things down to a few words, never one to speak more than was necessary. “A porter for a mint?”

“Smelter’s hand,” Nira said, nodding to herself. “Poured the silver.”

“Anything you can tell me about the process?” Theo asked.

Nira looked around as though there were eyes lurking behind the Ogre Cypress. She beckoned him into the smelter’s workshop and lowered her voice before continuing. “You’d be a fool not to do it. You own the mine, the smelter, the town. Energy in this place is,” Nira paused for a long moment. “Powerful. Puts the Qavelli mint to shame.”

“Perfect,” Theo said. He had a feeling she’d know something about it, but she’d never offer the information up without prodding. “Do you have 2 core slots? Don’t level anything you don’t want to get rid of, I need someone to work the mint.”

Theo turned to walk away, she was usually happy with that amount of information, but she grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around.

“Don’t puff me up,” Nira said, still glancing around for unseen foes. “You want to do coins? Silver? Gold?”

“Whatever we can mine,” Theo said. “I figure we’re going to start with copper. That’ll give you a chance to level up.”

“What about the smelter?”

“That’s what laborers are for,” Theo said. “I’ll have Alise keep an eye out for [Smelter’s Cores], and the town will fund it. I suggest you recruit as soon as possible.”

Nira answered that with a nod. She smiled before turning away, jumping up the scaffolding and finishing her pour. Someone with that level of excitement for creating coins was the right person for the job, and she was already under his standard contract. Once he got the project underway, it would be useless to keep it a secret. Alongside that was the idea that it was a normal thing to do. From what he’d heard, it was almost expected that he would create his own money in time. Without reprisal from the capital, he felt good about that project. But the mine called him.

Gridgen and his men were taking a break outside of the mine. The fruit of their labor wasn’t visible, having been stored automatically in a [Dimensional Storage Crate] near the entrance. The workers greeted him with smiles, waving enthusiastically. He could feel their expectations for more tunnels, knowing that the alchemist would only visit if he had plans to work on the mine.

“Good morning,” Gridgen said, smiling. The group gave similar greetings.

“Time to test,” Theo said, withdrawing his [Tunneling Potion] for them to see.

Gridgen led him into the mine. There were several corpses of Goblins piled just inside the entrance, the smell was a choking miasma in the enclosed space. Theo could tell, without inspecting the bodies, that they were very low-level Goblins.

“Any issues?” Theo asked.

“Well, the Goblins just pop into existence sometimes,” Gridgen said. “Everyone here plunks enough points into [Strength], so a swift hit over the head usually does them in.”

“No need for adventurer patrols?” Theo asked.

“None,” Gridgen said, leading the alchemist down those narrow passages.

The space inside the mine was too tight for Theo’s liking, but these miners were like moles. They seemed to enjoy the enclosed space, and none of the problems Theo expected had arisen. They were either too far south, or the magic of the mine prevented floods from happening. Logically, it should have been flooded long ago, but that never happened. The interior was always dry.

“Here’s the fancy new defensive stopper,” Gridgen said, gesturing to a large cavern.

The miners had dug the place out to allow adventurers room to fight. They created an interior larger than the size of the adventurer’s guild, lanterns burning on the walls to cast long shadows across the gray rock. Massive iron bars prevented anyone from passing from one side to the other, complete with a gate in the center. Gridgen produced the key, unlocking it and swinging it open. Throk’s work always amazed Theo, but this was beyond anything he expected. They proceeded to the far side of the cavern and Theo focused on the wall.

“Your job isn’t to dig tunnels,” Theo said, holding the potion up. He sometimes felt a twinge of guilt when he replaced someone’s job with alchemy, although that was rare. “It’s to mine ore.”

Theo dripped the potion on the wall, a rush flooding through his body. He saw the wall in front of him with a ghostly blue outline superimposed on his vision. It reminded him of interacting with things inside of the Dreamwalk, giving him an edge. He poured more of the liquid, letting it pool on the cavern floor, and commanded the system to change the image. It started as a straight hallway, heading to nowhere. The alchemist poured more the entire bottle of the potion, imagining an identical room to the one he was standing in, connected with a short hallway. With his mental approval, the potion went to work.

Gridgen let out a surprised sound as the potion flashed blinding blue light, eating at the wall with ravenous hunger. Theo stepped back, the resulting reaction put off a vapor that stung his lungs. But the potion worked away, over the course of half an hour, and the pair just watched. The single potion was enough to make another room of the same size, doing the job in a fraction of the time it would take the miners.

“Sure seems like you’re trying to take our jobs,” Gridgen said, wiping his brow and laughing.

“We just need to find the nodes,” Theo said.

Once again, Theo was reminded that this world didn’t work like reality. Ore didn’t run in seams along the walls of the mine. They spawned in nodes that replenished themselves if enough time passed. It was just like the reagents Theo harvested for his alchemy. Like those reagents, the nuggets didn’t always spawn in the same spot, just a general area. The plan was to create a series of exploration tunnels, and more defensive gates. That would ruffle Throk’s feathers, but he’d pay double to get the job done.

“You were a porter for the smelters,” Theo said, daring to enter the hazy room. The vapors no longer burnt his lungs, it only stung a little. Gridgen coughed as he followed.

“Was that a question?” Gridgen asked, still coughing.

“There’s a logic to the mine,” Theo said. “I think of it as an extension of the entire seed core building. When you were a nugget-hauler, do you remember where the nuggets spawned?”

“Well, they just filled up carts,” Gridgen said, falling into another coughing fit. Theo approached the far end of the cavern, placing his hand on the wall. There was no evidence of metal here. “But I can tell you what I’ve seen here.”

“Copper appears near the top layer, iron is a tad deeper,” Theo said, withdrawing another potion from his inventory. He poured it on the ground, imagining a switchback staircase of stone. It started working, and the pair retreated while the man coughed. “Lower than that is silver, or something else. They’ll spawn in layers, it only makes sense.”

“Not sure why you asked if you knew,” Gridgen said, sounding slightly scornful.

Theo took a breath of the relatively clear air. “I wanted to know if it worked this way everywhere. Remember, I’m just guessing based on my intuition. Everything works in tiers—”

Theo stopped himself before saying ‘in this world’. He didn’t keep his alien nature a secret because he didn’t trust people, it just seemed foolish to sing it from the rooftops. Gridgen had everything to lose by coming to Broken Tusk. Anyone with a child got put to the front of the alchemist’s mental list of trustworthy people. They wouldn’t risk their offspring for something as stupid as spying on the town. Besides, he was a hard worker. Theo liked hard workers.

“Copper at the top layer, iron just under that, then somewhere between here and the Hells, we’ll find silver and gold,” Gridgen said, smiling once again. “I follow your reasoning. From what I remember, depth is the determining factor. When we hauled silver, we were deep.”

“Did you ever see gold?” Theo asked.

“Never,” Gridgen said. “Not sure if anyone produces gold in Qavell. If they do, they keep it enough of a secret so no one knows.”

“The Merchant’s Guild,” Theo said with a nod. “They would do anything to keep that a secret, and I’ll eat my feathered hat if they didn’t have a hand in it.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Gridgen said.

They waited there for some time. Theo could tell the miasma hurt Gridgen’s lungs more than his own, likely owing to a difference in physiology. The alchemist’s plans for the mine were simple enough. For every level he descended, he’d have one of his defensive emplacements. His cores, or his intuition he couldn’t tell, told him whatever lay in the caverns deep in the earth weren’t to be provoked. The more iron they had to chew through, the better. From the other side of those defensive gates, he’d run tunnels to probe for silver, or any other valuable metal.

“How is the family?” Theo asked.

“Well, Sarna is happy,” Gridgen said. A group of miners were talking in an adjacent tunnel, not willing to brave the toxic air. “She’s had a lot of time to spend with Gasem, since we get paid well enough.”

“Well enough,” Theo said, feeling his stomach knot. Their pay wasn’t great, but the silver would change that. “You’ll be living like a king when we pull gold out of Dead Dog.”

The miners in the hall were listening in on that. They all cheered.

“I don’t mean to overstep my bounds,” Gridgen said, holding his hands up defensively. “But I think you’re chewin’ the bone before you’ve had your meat.”

That was another idiom, likely from Qavell. Theo liked it, and understood the miner’s meaning immediately. The alchemist often found himself pushing for the best possible thing, but that was a problem here. It could take him a long time to find silver, let alone gold. But the upper levels of the mine already bore copper and iron.

“We should expand the upper floors first,” Theo said. “Right. You’re a miner, I’m not. Direct me.”

Gridgen was surprised at Theo’s forwardness. Where he had developed the sense that the alchemist was unapproachable was beyond him, but the miner led the way up the slick path to the top level. They were almost at the entrance before he stopped, pointing at an unfinished tunnel.

“I’d take a dagger from your Tara’hek if this path didn’t have copper,” Gridgen said.

Theo spent his time, almost until the late afternoon, helping the miners create new tunnels in the upper level of the mine. They were amazed at the speed which the potion dug through the rock, shouting victoriously when a new tunnel was created. The alchemist had to go back to his lab to create more of the potion, but Gridgen’s intuition was excellent. Of the 30 new tunnels they created, more than half of them had swathes of nuggets, ready for mining. They were embedded in special sections of the rock that regenerated over time. This made them easy to discover, since the potion refused to chew through them.

More than once, a section of rock hung in the air awkwardly. It was a strange sight.

Gridgen slapped Theo on the shoulder, grinning. “Now we won’t have to sit on our hands when the nuggets run out.”

Theo talked with the miners for some time, listening to their problems and worries. He felt his [Governance Core] growing stronger as he spoke to them, ignoring the messages that popped up about experience points. Their concerns were laid to rest when Theo expanded the scope of his plans for the mine. It was a pillar of their economy, representing one of the three major ways they made money. Wood, metal, and stone would see them all rich in time.

When Theo finally departed from the mine, it was late into the afternoon. He would normally have felt as though he wasted his time there, but the excited looks on the miner’s faces was worth it. For the alchemist, it was comforting to know that he influenced the production of the town with his alchemy. But as his eyes turned north, back toward the Newt and Demon, he knew his next task involved the brewing of an absurd amount of potions for Fenian. That man was the town’s lifeline.

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