Into The Alchemist’s Lair

Authors note: I will be taking a three week Easter break. Mainly to recharge since I post weekly every Thursday. See you on the 5th of May, hope you have a great Easter.

Ellie placed a hand on John’s shoulder. “I have to just ask once more, are you sure about this?”

John smiled and took the knife. “Yeah, since last week I’ve woken up at the exact time I’ve set, so I won’t oversleep, I will also set multiple alarms just in case, and like I said, I’ll tell my mom to come to wake me up, and have you be my last line of defence.”

Ellie nodded. “Alright, I’ll leave it to you…”

A lightbulb appeared above his head. “Hey, so what Ellie said earlier has actually got me a little worried. Would it be possible to add one last clause? If I’m hindered by anything or anyone on the way to the meeting point, would it be possible to have, say, an hour or so leeway?

Primrose smiled warmly. “Hmm, that should be doable… If some outside **** interferes with your journey to the meeting point, the meeting time and time to complete your task will be postponed up to an hour and a half… How does that sound?”

“Yeah, that sounds better. It’ll at least give me a buffer just in case something goes wrong.” John nodded, gripping the handle of the knife. He felt Ellie grip on his shoulder which prompted him to cast Observe on the knife.

Dagger of the Blood Pact

(Enchanted Item)
A curved knife with runic engravings across the blade and a red twisted gnarl wood handle.

This dagger is used to seal and enforce verbal magical contracts between two or more individuals.

John nodded, the description was simple enough. He gripped the knife tightly before wincing as the blade cut across his palm. Blood began to bubble, and as soon as John had dropped the knife, Primrose reached across offering her hand which was now dripping her own blood.

John took a deep breath, reached out and firmly took hold of Primrose’s hand. It felt as if an unseen third party began to press both hands together, almost painfully, then a slightly dizzying sensation.

When the pressure vanished, the two loosened their grips and pulled back. Between them was a thick red liquid connection, and as they pulled it became thinner and thinner until it became a red thread, threatening to snap, which began glowing slightly. With one final tug the blood connecting them severed, whipping back towards John.

The blood disconnected from his hand as it made contact with his wrist and began to soak in, until all that was left was a blood-red string bracelet.

John looked at it, before attempting to pull it off. Primrose cleared her throat. “Uh, I wouldn’t do that. It’s a symbol of the contract we just formed and you are more likely to hurt yourself than to remove it.”

John stopped tugging. “Oh, right… Okay. Uh, so I just give you the ten thousand and that’s it then?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s it for now. Though we should exchange personal numbers, just as an extra precaution,” Primrose said, bringing out her phone.

Before John could get his own, Ellie had also pulled her phone out. “I think it might be a good idea that we exchange numbers too. That way there are multiple points of contact.”

As John pulled his own phone out, Primrose nodded in agreement. The couple exchanged numbers with the Danuki girl. Primrose picked up the mill before the three of them headed downstairs.

Reaching the bottom and entering the shop, Ellie spun around. “Hey, you’re an alchemist, right? You sell all kinds of alchemy stuff? I know you’re closed for the day, but before we leave, you wouldn’t happen to have small glass containers like the ones on my glove, would you?” She held one of the vials up towards Primrose.

Primrose moved past the couple and with a heavy thud placed the large stone mill on the counter. She turned around, plucked the tiny glass tube from Ellie’s hand, and turned it over in her hand to inspect it before she looked back at the budding alchemist.

“I do actually have glass bottles this size, but they are mainly for people to make jewellery out of or to make little display things. They would be useless for what you intend to use them for. You’d actually want crystal bottles which I don’t stock but I can special order them for you. They will be fairly cheap, but if you plan to use a lot I’d recommend ordering in bulk,” Primrose stated. “You’d be looking at maybe fifty to seventy cents if you buy around ten or so, but you can probably get like sixty percent off if you buy a hundred.”

“Oh, that’s not too bad, could you look into it and I’ll text you how many I want?” Ellie asked.

Primrose smiled and nodded. “Sure thing, it’s always a pleasure to be of service to others.”

“Oh actually, one last thing…” Ellie paused. “Do a lot of people have easy access to your back door?” John tried and failed to stifle a laugh, which earned him a slap on the shoulder. “Oh, be quiet, you dork! That’s obviously not what I meant.”

Primrose let out an amused laugh. “No, the back of the shop is secure, only accessible for deliveries and such, why?”

“Would you allow me to have access so that I could use it to get into my lab without being seen? I haven’t exactly been using safe areas to go in and out of there and it would be useful to have somewhere I’d be comfortable with,” Ellie explained.

Primrose nodded, and thought for a moment. “No, sorry, it’s only accessible by key and we’ve kind of only just met so I can’t really give you permission. However, there is a tunnel between my building and the one next to me that allows access from the front to the back; it only has a gate on the front so you’d be able to go in and then there are two doors facing each other towards the back of the buildings, you could use your key on the door on my building.”

Ellie perked up. “Oh, that would be great, thank you. Won’t your neighbour be suspicious, though?”

“Nope, I’ll let them know I have a friend staying in my apartment for a little while and they should be fine.” Primrose smiled.

“Out of curiosity, what’s in the doors?” Ellie prodded.

John sighed. “Haven’t you already asked enough already?”

Primrose laughed. “It’s no problem, John. Nothing interesting, unfortunately. It’s just access to the electrical boards. The doors are metal and have locks on them, so unless I give the key to an electrician, no one is really getting in.”

John grabbed Ellie’s hand. “How about we stop bothering Prim and get out of her hair?”

Ellie nodded, the two exited the building and Primrose followed them to point out the arched tunnel between the windows of Ancient Wisdom and the store next door.

John waved goodbye to Primrose as Ellie all but dragged him towards the tunnel and rushed the two down to the door. She turned to John. “Do you think there is actually electrical stuff in there or do you think it’s some secret?”

John rolled his eyes. “If it was a secret, she wouldn’t have bothered giving you an answer, you are looking way too far into it.”

“I don’t know, something about her just feels off to me… Anyway, come on, let’s get inside,” she said, as she pulled her key out and opened the door to her lab. She put one foot into the door before turning back to John. “Hey, I just remembered, that thing you refused to show Primrose, I wanna see it.”

John stepped back a little surprised. “Oh, no, I can’t. If I take it out, it could possibly lure dragons here.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “At least let me look at it in your inventory then.”

John groaned but could tell by the look in her eye that she wasn’t going to budge. “Can’t we do this in your lab? You know what, fine!” he complained as he opened his inventory and pointed out the item.

Ellie looked at it and cocked her head a moment. “What’s with the purple outline on it?” She asked as she reached and poked it. Suddenly, the helmet appeared, clattering to the ground. “Oh fuck, sorry,” Ellie yelped.

A rush of panic washed over John as he fumbled his way to the ground and stored the item. He quickly pushed Ellie into the lab and closed the door, crossing his fingers that nothing bad would happen.

Ellie almost stumbled and fell backwards. “Ouch, you ass! Did you really have to push me like that?”

“Shit, sorry.” He reached down to pull Ellie back to her feet. “And maybe… that helmet has some super strong pheromones on it, I really hope nothing caught the scent or anything.”

Ellie huffed, shaking her head. “I think you’re worrying too much, it was only out for a moment, and I couldn’t smell anything, so I’m sure it is fine.” She opened her knapsack and pulled out a handful of tiny glass tubes. “Now, we obviously have some things you need to talk about. Follow me, I just want to do a thing while we talk.”

She walked over to the corner of the room where two large desks full of equipment were set up. John followed and spotted the book Ellie had gotten from Dewdrop; curiously, he noticed the edge of the book was filled with sticky tabs and labels. On the desk were maybe twenty or thirty small round bottles all filled with different coloured liquids and a large mortar and pestle was half full of something orange and salt like which he assumed was luminite due to a full crystal sitting on top.

Ellie quickly got to work. First, she grabbed two round bottles from the table, one black and one a murky grey-green colour. She used a glass spoon to take a small amount of the orange salt and tipped it into a clear liquid at the bottom of one of the burners. The entire thing ignited and she put some apparatus above it.

She popped the cork of the bottle with black liquid and put it into the metal clamp. Then she grabbed a tiny glass tube before she uncorked the grey-green bottle quickly replacing it as fast as she could with the tube, and placed that onto the apparatus too.

“Sorry about that. So, before we move on to talking about serious stuff… anything new with your powers? Have you levelled anything up? Have you gotten more dragon mutations yet?” Ellie asked.

“Uh, not rea… actually, yeah. I’m an idiot, I had quite a bit of an update with my stuff. I have more info on Observe, I have new calculations for a bunch of my stuff, and my inventory is now based on my physical stats. Oh, and I have five stat points to spend. Oh shit! I forgot about the thing you’ll like the most, another gif… wait! I just realised you said I couldn’t give you more gifts then took the Schrödinger's gift thing,” John complained.

Ellie couldn’t help but give a cheeky smile before turning around and checking on the bottles, which were both currently bubbling away. “Well, it’s not like you knew what it was either and you got it for free from your powers and it sounded super interesting. I wanted to know what I’d get. Finish what you were saying… wait, you were about to say you were going to give me another gift, weren’t you? I don’t think so, I took my glove because you got it after getting your own little gift of looking up two girls’ skirts.”

John sighed, bringing up the new Skill Share feature. “Such a shame, I thought you’d find this really interesting and would want to get your hands on it.”

Ellie peeked over her shoulder before she turned and looked at the screen, reading quickly. “Okay… I changed my mind… I’ll take your gifts, but only if I approve of them… Hmm, if I could only take one of your skills, which should I take? Open your skills sheet please.”

John chuckled as he did what she’d asked, allowing her to look over the list. After a second she had an idea. Humming, she reached out and tapped one of the skills, getting a pop up with the description of the skill. She went through the entire list reading each one intently while simultaneously keeping an eye on the boiling liquids. By this point, both had gone from a watery consistency to that of honey.

“Okay, so I can’t use your mana and I don’t have my own, so that cuts the list down significantly. I’m down to your gamer skills, Hand to Hand, Observe and…” She rolled her eyes at the last one. “Sex… I don’t think I’ll be needing that one.”

She continued to hum as she looked at her options. “If I took Gamer’s Body, I’d get HP and I’d have your fast healing abilities; if I took Gamer’s Spirit, I might actually get some rewards for my alchemy, maybe even some unique or special recipes and skills of my own. Oh! Observe would be really helpful too, it’d make finding ingredients much easier.”

“Don’t forget about Physical Resistance, that’d mean you wouldn’t be hurt so easily,” John interrupted. “Also, you don’t just have one choice, Lani doesn’t need my power, so I’m giving you two of my skills.”

“Oooh, just give me the gamer skills then.” She jumped up and down gleefully.

John opened up the Mate’s Mark skill to find that it had a different look. In the menu were now two tabs, one with Ellie’s face and the other with Lani’s. John tapped on Ellie’s face and was met with a rather empty page, only showing a button for Skill Share.

John tapped the button, and to his surprise, there were skills missing from the list: all of his core gamer skills along with his draconic mutation skills were all missing. “Uh, so, it seems you can’t have either of those skills…”

Ellie huffed. “Yeah, I see that… Fine… Then I’ll definitely have Observe and…”

“How about sex? Could use a little bit of work, don’t you think?” John teased.

“What’s your excuse, you already have the skill,” she shot back with a smirk, which wiped the smirk off his face. Quickly, the two laughed together. Looking at the list of skills Ellie tapped both Observe and Physical Resistance.

“Guess that settles that then. Wanna test your new skill out? All you have to do is focus on something or someone,” John explained.

Ellie nodded. “Yeah, I’ll test it out soon, I’m just going to finish this up first. Don’t want to burn either of these, I’m just condensing them.”

Ellie turned back to the bubbling liquids, took one of the small vials from her glove, and poured out the black liquid before tipping the grey-green bottle over. Somehow the glass plug in the bottle allowed the liquid to transfer from the round bottle into the one with the black liquid in it. Popping out the glass stop, she quickly replaced it with a cork but in the short time the stopper was off, John watched as the liquids began to grow, completely filling the bottle.

Ellie smiled triumphantly and held the bottle up before casting her own Observe. Her UI looked different. It essentially looked like a book open to a page, which showed an illustrated image of the small bottle along with the description text.

Ebony Ichor

(Alchemical compound)

A mixture of Mana Enhanced Ebony Sap and Proliferation Gel
This compound’s unique properties allow for the liquid to rapidly expand once exposed to air. This substance has strong antibacterial and antifungal properties. Ebony Ichor is extremely useful as it is self-adhesive. Very strong **** will cause the compound to lose its adhesive properties.

Mana Enhanced Ebony Sap
Extracted from the ebony tree and infused with mana to strengthen its properties. When initially created it has a slimy consistency but can be easily poured like. Once condensed it becomes a tar-like liquid. This sap is known for its medicinal properties.

Proliferation Gel
Made from a mixture of Floam Spoors, sodium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide, olive oil and Mana Infused Water.
This gel expands itself and any substance it has been mixed with. The effects of the other substances are usually spread through the expanded mass, lessening its potency slightly.

“Ooooh, look how cool my stuff is, it looks like a book, and look it’s broken down the composition and ingredients of each part of the compound, that’s so cool. I wonder if it would show me the ingredients of a potion or something I didn’t make?” Ellie wondered. “Hey, would you see the same info? Like, it’s your skill, is this part of your update?”

“I don’t know, I’ll take a look,” he said as he cast his own Observe at the glass tube.

Ebony Ichor

(Alchemical Compound)

Be careful not to touch this if you don’t want it to stick. Curiously, anything stuck with this is able to move to a certain degree so long as they are in contact with the liquid. This isn’t only a magical superglue, it’s also got several medicinal properties like antibacterial and antifungal. Once in contact with air, this liquid will expand rapidly, making for a great pair of impromptu handcuffs.

“Wow, so they are different,” Ellie noted before shaking her head. “Okay, I’m done with this for now. It’s time to talk, I think.”

John felt uncomfortable, knowing this was likely going to be an extremely awkward conversation. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he stood there silently.

Ellie looked at him and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Fine! If you aren’t going to start, I will. And we’re going to start with you worrying about me too much and going overboard protecting me. What happened in that barrier wasn’t your fault. Neither of us expected what we went into and we were both new to that kind of thing. Yes, I lost, but I didn’t actually die, I am fine, and you need to stop trying to apologise for it. With this lab, you’ve enabled me to protect myself. If you don’t believe me or try arguing, I’ll fight you right here and right now. I’m not some fragile thing you need to guard.”

John let out a deep heavy breath. “Ellie, you weren’t on my side of things, I watched your lifeless body hit the ground and held you in my arms, I can’t go through that again. I keep thinking about telling you to stay out of the Abyss stuff, but at the same time, I want to experience it with you… I have to protect you, in any and every way I can.”

“First off, I’m sorry you had to go through that, it’s not something anyone is prepared for, but you have to remember that I’m fine. It was like a bad dream. Secondly, you better get your draconic ass ready for a fight.” Ellie brought her hands up in a fighting position. “If you don’t, you’re gonna get hurt and you can’t blame me when you do.”

“I’m not going to fight you, and I know you aren’t goi-” John gasped as Ellie stepped forward and punched him square in the chest. He heard a crunch and looked down as she quickly retracted her hand.

-10HP

An inky spot sat squarely in the centre of his chest before it began bubbling. Then, in an instant, covered his torso. He tried to lift his arms, but covered in the tar-like substance, he only had any control of his hands and forearms.

“Fuck, that hurt, you know! Now get me out of this! We’re supposed to be talking!” John raised his voice.

“Tough! How about you try with all your strength to get out of that stuff while I go get something,” Ellie said as she moved towards one of the doors.

John could feel that the liquid had soaked through his clothing and onto his skin. Trying to put the ichor into his inventory failed, so he struggled with all his might trying to brute **** his way out but it was no use.

Ellie returned with her hands behind her back. “Still not gotten yourself loose from my weak attempt at fighting? Well, too bad! My evil lair is no place for a damsel in distress such as yourself, why… I could just take advantage of you right here, right now!”

Ellie laughed as she slowly stalked towards him, revealing a set of handcuffs and a length of rope she had hidden.

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