The Interview

Entering the Apothecarial barrier at Springfield General Hospital was very anticlimactic. He had expected the local base of one of the most powerful guilds in the Abyss to be some sort of fantastical location. He didn’t really have any specific expectations aside from ‘fantastical’ or ‘magical’ in mind, but he sure hadn't expected it to just be a barrier copy of the same building, unchanged aside from the usual minor skew of barrier copies. Though after a moment’s thought, the size of it was at least impressive, being at least twice the size of the Brighton Manor barrier as far as he could tell.

Going inside brought a bit of the fantastical feeling back. While the building itself remained largely mundane looking, aside from some signage referring to things like a ‘curse’ ward, much like at the market the people present were a mix of races. In one waiting area visible from the entrance, a man with a cracked stone arm sat next to an elfin woman apparently made from polished wood whose skin was dotted with small fungi and a fire elemental of indeterminable gender whose flames turned turquoise when they coughed.

Rather than get involved with that, John and Qhila approached the reception counter, which was manned by a blue skinned, androgynous elf with the moderately odd name A. Bettik. As they got close, the odd elf looked up at them with an expression of bored disinterest. “Appointment or walk in patient?”

“Kinda neither, we’re here for an apprenticeship interview.”

With a look of utter indifference, the elf repeated itself, “Appointment or walk in patient?”

John tried his best to swallow his annoyance. “Look, I just told you tha-”

He was interrupted by Qhila nudging him backwards slightly. Confused, he took a half-step back while the receptionist repeated itself again in the same bored monotone.

“[Appointment,]” Qhila evidently felt confident that the person spoke Low Draconic. Which might be reasonable enough, John had no idea how commonly known a language it was.

Continuing in the same flat tone, the receptionist switched language seamlessly. “[If you are an outpatient coming in for a scheduled treatment or examination, please proceed to the ward where your doctor usually receives you and check in at an appropriate waiting area. If you are a visitor to an inpatient, please check in at the suite section of the ward you are visiting. If you are a regular business contact, please go check in at the office floor reception. Otherwise, please identify yourself.]”

“[Qhila, no surname, and John Newman.]”

“[Please follow the orb,]” the elf droned on, while an orb appeared in midair, glowing softly white. After a moment, the orb started floating towards a hallway at a moderate walking pace.

Following it, John looked at Qhila. “[I take it you know what that was about?]”

“[It was a protosapient, not a real person. Basically, anything that’s smart enough to take verbal instructions, and sometimes respond, but still falls short of the Harkness Threshold. There’s dozens of ways to make them. Judging by where we are and how much of an afterthought training it seems to have been, I’m guessing it’s a homunculus that someone’s apprentice made as a training or proving piece and then they figured since they had it, it might as well man the reception.]”

“[Harkness Threshold? As in the Harkness Test?]” John didn’t quite succeed in suppressing a chuckle.

Qhila shrugged. “[Never heard of ‘the Harkness Test’; as far as I know there’s a few different ways to check. It’s the boundary where there’s clever animals and complex automata on one side, and true sophonts, or people, on the other. The ones that are meant to be some sort of assistant like that one are usually about as smart as a voice command assistant on a phone and respond with some sort of default if anyone who isn’t imprinted as a trainer or owner says something they don’t understand. Purpose made ones like rat ogres usually come with some inbuilt understanding of that purpose, in return for being harder to train for anything else.]”

“[I guess that kinda tracks for the Harkness Test, though it’s mostly a thing for arguing if hypothetical sex with a fictional creature is ethical xenophilia or bestiality.]”

John chuckled as Qhila rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand and muttered something about “bloody perverts.”

The room they were guided to by the orb of light was an odd mix of meeting room and unfurnished laboratory. Which is to say that there was a table with a fume hood but no actual lab equipment present. They were given the option of renting such from the Apothecaries for the interview, along with a handful of other things. But given that they had everything they needed to demonstrate most of what he could do at this point already, the only thing they had actually paid for was a set of 5 unmarked vials of assorted mystery fluids.

At the meeting table sat three people.

Dr. Soren Riverford
Level 67 Hydromancer
Science Purist

Dr. Shiiro Serizawa
Level 71 Curse Eater
Princeps Medicus

Dr. Darya Breshnik
Level 82 Spirit Healer
Burned Witch

Dr. Riverford was a man in what appeared to be his 50s, with close cropped salt-and-pepper beard and hair, steel-rimmed square glasses resting on a beakish nose, straight laced bearing, and an expression of careful neutrality. He was wearing a lab coat, but was a simple change of clothes away from visually fitting as well into a corporate board room or lawyer bench as he did here.

Dr. Serizawa was a small-framed Asian man who looked to be of advanced but otherwise indeterminable age. The combination of his look of serene insight, long grey hair, and three tip fu manchu with long tendrils trailing down past the table’s edge gave him the air of the Ancient Master of some Chinese monastery that his lab coat only diminished slightly. He also had short, pointed ears revealing partial non-human ancestry. Half-elven, according to the information that Lord Chastain-Wessel had ‘happened’ to have on hand.

The combination of an air of female maturity and very faint hints of crow’s feet made Dr. Breshnik look to be about the same age as John’s mom. Straight, dark red hair framed a fair-skinned face, the pleasant symmetry of which was simultaneously broken and underlined by a beauty spot below the corner of her mouth. Grey eyes shone with evaluating curiosity from behind her black-rimmed glasses as she beheld John and Qhila. Meanwhile, the Gamer struggled to keep his gaze directed at eye level, as the slavic beauty’s open lab coat and loose shirt tented downwards from a pair of massive breasts. `Score one more for the Abyssal Women Default to Hot theory'

To keep himself from open ogling of his potential mentor, John turned part of his attention to the information in their nameplates as they approached for handshakes and initial pleasantries. The Apothecarial trio’s class spread was not exactly what he had expected of an academic research guild with an online application form. Then again, the Apothecaries were magical and old, tracing their origins back to the Mediterranean mystery cults from before the rise of the Roman Empire. Their Levels, on the other hand, were well within what he expected them to have, though it was a welcome surprise that his hopefully future mentor outleveled what seemed to be the head of the hospital part of the Springfield Apothecaries, if not head of the whole thing.

Pleasantries settled, Serizawa and Riverford exchanged a glance before the latter spoke, “We do not usually do double interviews in this manner, hence the form having a single name field. While my esteemed colleague decided to humour you at least as far as this interview goes, both it and the insistence that the two of you are a ‘package deal', as you put it, puts you in an unfavorable position from the onset.” As best John could tell, the man’s Low Draconic was impeccable. Unlike renting equipment, requesting the interview to be in that language had been free. His objection was also expected.

“We understand that it is an unorthodox way to do things and appreciate that you have humored us this far. And we have what I believe to be a compelling reason to continue to do so, a facet of which is also a major part of why we wanted to interview together. I am a Late Bloomer.” Even if that information had been requested on the form, John would have preferred to only reveal it in person for the sake of keeping it between as few people as possible for now.

Riverford’s face shifted through an expression that was too brief for John to read before returning to the careful neutrality. Breshnik, meanwhile, added a small smirk to the curious shine of her eyes. “How long has it been since you awakened to the Abyss?”

“Two and a half weeks, which neatly brings me to the first relevant point about a multi-faceted Innate Ability: it supports rapid learning. By its nature, I had no knowledge of Low Draconic before then, and my knowledge of alchemy and biomancy was limited to mundane pre-collegiate chemistry and biology classes.”

They proceeded to do a quick run through of what he had learned about those two topics since gaining his powers, followed by some questions. About half of them, he didn’t know the answer to and had to present his best guess instead, with Qhila then following up with either additions, corrections or, more rarely, acknowledging that this was beyond her knowledge as well.

“I believe that makes a sufficient picture of the current extent of your understanding.” Dr. Serizawa’s first words since introducing himself put an end to that phase of the interview.

With a nod, Dr. Breshnik switched gears. “So it is. Innate Abilities that are conducive to rapid learning are fairly common as such Abilities go, even if ranging from languages to biomancy is a fairly broad range. I assume there are other relevant facets to it, and you implied earlier that it is also connected to the two of you seeking a joint interview.”

“Yes. Though I think part of that would be best with a demonstration.” He turned towards the table with the fume hood, retrieved the self-packing alchemy lab from his inventory, and got it started on unpacking. “In the name of transparency, the automated unpacking is just an enchanted item, not my Ability. Though it does have some minor utility functions that are quite useful in the lab. But while that unpacks, I can show something else.”

He grabbed the rack with the vials of mystery fluid, firing off an Observe at each in rapid succession. “We're fairly sure it's an unusual form of assensing, providing certain information with a great deal of precision, even when dealing with something unfamiliar.” Pointing at the vials in turn as he went, he declared their contents, “Blood and essence sample from a dwarf, taken by a person named Michel Carter. SunnyD orange juice. A nearly finished elixir of clarity made by Dr. Breshnik-” ’So she has some alchemy going on even if it's not her class.’ “-water demineralized by Dr. Riverford, and oil of vitriol bought in bulk from Pharmagician Inc. Notably, I have never met Michel Carter, done business with Pharmagician, or handled dwarven blood or essence before.”

None of the senior Apothecaries gave any indication to whether that display was impressive or not, but in the meanwhile the lab had unpacked. “The next aspect I would like to demonstrate is also the reason we wanted a joint interview. It will take a few minutes, and I need you to look at, and compare, some measurements, in order to prove that the effect is genuine and not just a prepared trick.”

He passed around pairs of measuring vials each containing the exact same amount of a given ingredient. Once returned, John combined two ingredients in a measuring cup, then John and Qhila each added one of the other parts of those pairs to another measuring cup. He then passed both cups around, showing that because of Party Synergy the second cup held more of the product than the first. “A modest increase in output, but one that can be compounded, if you would like to see that in action.”

“Is the effect consistent across different or successive reactions? Proportional to the input?” Dr. Riverford asked in a tone of clinical neutrality, to which John and Qhila nodded both times. “Then I believe we’re all familiar enough with basic arithmetic to get the picture.”

Dr. Breshnik’s tone, on the other hand, was not hiding the curiosity. “It would be interesting to hear how much grasp you have of the principles behind the effect.”

“We believe his Innate Ability is affecting the outcome in a similar way as Symbolic Arcana,” Qhila responded, referring to the phenomenon that, for instance, making elixirs related to elemental air had a higher yield during a storm or at high altitudes.

Nodding, John added, “Within the scope of the Ability, it happens through forming a synergistic bond. Alchemy is more effective when I work with Qhila than otherwise, and the bond is still developing.”

“Can you form that bond with other people? Say, a mentor, for instance?” Dr. Breshnik’s example seemed to not be particularly randomly chosen.

“In a sense.” He paused briefly. “I have formed two bonds at the moment, with three more being nascent, but the effects are unique. It is unlikely at best that a bond with someone else would benefit alchemy. Also, the bonds are not formed on command, it's something my Ability does autonomously. We haven’t nailed down the exact criteria, but it appears to be either social or psychological, and trust is a major factor. In any case, I think as long as my relationship with my mentor is positive, it would be a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ one will form.”

“Interesting,” Dr. Breshnik commented thoughtfully. “Is there a way to estimate ahead of time what a bond will do?”

Thinking back on Christie's Synergy Bonus having an odd reflective surfaces conditional, he shook his head. “Not that I know of thus far.”

“Any other pertinent facets to this Ability of yours?” Dr. Riverford cut in, in a tone as if he was asking about other symptoms.

“Yes.” John’s firm reply caused a tiny flicker of expression to slip through the hydromancer’s clinical professionalism, though it was once again too brief for the Gamer to read the actual emotion. “Though it's heavily constrained by a variety of factors, my Ability makes certain types of transmutation very accessible. Like so.” He grabbed the near-complete elixir of clarity from the vial rack, retrieved the missing ingredient from his inventory, and cast Quick Create. The ingredient turned into a mote of light that flew into the vial causing the contents to glow softly green for a moment and then turn into a finished elixir, skipping past what would normally be a 4 hour long simmer.

“Given enough understanding of the alchemical processes it would normally take, I can transmute ingredients into a finished product with a very small mana investment compared to typical transmutation requirements. That's… not the only transmutation option at play, either, but the only one with direct academic intersection….”

“But?” The Slavic apothecary had correctly read his pause as there being more. John had been momentarily split between whether it was better to reveal this proverbial card as enticement, even though the Apothecaries were among the few guilds likely to be less interested in it, or keep it closer to the chest in case joining them didn’t pan out.

“But it might be of indirect interest, depending on how exhaustively transmuting living people has been studied. Due to my assensing being unusual, I don’t know how readily noticeable it is to anyone else, but through my Ability Qhila has exceeded the usual limitations of the Feeble Races. By about 20% so far. The conditions around triggering this transmutation are a bit involved to explain, beyond a general statement of it being connected to the two of us accomplishing things and overcoming difficulties together.”

Dr. Breshnik looked like she had further questions, but ceded the word to Serizawa doubling his direct participation in the interview, “I believe the application mentioned an original drug development.”

John took a half-step back, while Qhila fetched a bottle from her knapsack. “This is the latest iteration of a heat moderating medication that I’ve been working on in my spare time for the past 10 years, primarily for personal use. It works around the Skytail Tribe’s innate treatment-resistance to common heat management drugs like Lagocalm while remaining cheaper and with less side effects, at least within 5 years of regular use, than more general psychoalchemica like elixirs of clarity.”

She put the bottle on the table where the interviewing apothecaries were seated while Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Riverford shared another look. Then, the latter spoke,