The Newt and Demon

Broken Tusk was currently at level 30. Theo knew that when it broke through the next barrier, it would finally leave the status of “massive town.” That was one factor preventing him from upgrading it. There was something appealing about it being a town rather than a city, but one more upgrade cycle and it would become a tiny city.

“Farewell, town,” Theo said, patting the monolith.

Thanks to the glut of monster cores, Tresk had brought him enough to get it to at least level 35. Theo wasn’t sure if he wanted to spend that many cores bringing it all the way to 40, but that depended on the upgrades available to him during the level 35 offering. He started shoving the cores into the monolith and felt the power radiating outward. Technically, the levels for the town would allow him to expand their territory, which would be fine. He had no plans to purchase many more adjacent sections, but the option was always good.

“Here we go,” Theo said, inserting the last few cores until it upgraded to a city.

A message appeared, overlaying even the town’s upgrade option.

[Broken Tusk] can be upgraded to a [Tiny City]. The prerequisite conditions are met.

Upgrade to [Tiny City]? Y/N

From what Theo understood, this was an upgraded name only. It was a gate that he was required to pass if he wanted to continue expanding his town. Well, expanding his city. He selected “Yes,” and another pulse of magic radiated through the area. Nothing else happened, though. He opened the upgrade menu and looked at his new option.

[Deep Roots, Verdant Fields]

Your crops produce more food. Your trees are thicker. Your mines run with deep, rich veins. This upgrade improves all the natural resources within your city’s domain. All natural resources produce more and are replenished faster.

Yeah, that was a difficult upgrade to decline. Theo was surprised the system gave him such an excellent upgrade, but he wouldn’t complain. He selected it without question before inspecting the city.

[Tiny City]

Name: Broken Tusk

Owner: Theo Spencer

Leader: Archduke Theo Spencer

Faction: [Southlands Alliance]

Level: 35 (5%)

Upgrades:

[Stone Walls and Gates]

[Stone Roads]

[Defensive Emplacements]

[Synergistics]

[Dynamic Incorporation]

[Dungeon Information]

[Deep Roots, Verdant Fields]

Effects:

[Troll Slaying]

[Coordinated Fire]

[Defensive Effects]

Current Resources:

Timber: 15,500

Stone Blocks: 0

Metal: 1,320

Motes: 50,001

He viewed it in simple mode, filtering out the buildings and defensive emplacements in the town. It was otherwise too much information, but there was something else interesting to note from the pop-up. Their resources had become dwindling recently. Ziz and his boys were constantly chewing through their supply of stone and rarely added it to the town. Only when there was damage to buildings or the walls did he bother putting any in there.

Perhaps with the newest upgrade, they would have access to more resources. It really was a great upgrade, and Theo couldn’t have been happier with it. There was apparently a city-wide notification about the town being upgraded to a city. A ripple of cheers spread through those gathered in the street, and the alchemists couldn’t help but smile. If he included non-citizen residents within the city’s domain, Broken Tusk had nearly 6,000 people mingling.

That seemed to be far too many people.

All of the core population stayed within the walls, protected from the strange dungeon. Some of the new population and all the overflow found their homes outside the walls, typically in the areas between Broken Tusk and the rivers. Ziz’s constant building of homes along the way had already bore fruit.

But Theo liked to leave most of the administrative tasks to the people he hired to do such things. Instead, he often made his way to the new demon to meet with Salire and see how her experiments were going. He caught her upstairs, holding her hand over the mana container, part of a mana-injection artifice. She turned, her cheeks going a deeper shade of red as she spotted him.

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“I can’t perform while you’re watching,” she said.

Theo stifled a laugh and nodded. He turned around and said, “I’m waiting.”

“God, that’s even worse,” Salire said. “Theo, I think I might need some help filling this with mana.”

The smile on Theo’s face widened as he turned and approached the artifact. First, he gave it a look to see what Throk had come up with. The design was similar to the first one he had created, with some interesting differences. It was easier to check how much liquid was in either tank now, and there were improvements to the mixing chamber. He could easily fill the mana tank for her, but this must have been a teaching moment.

“Have you been practicing your mana control?” Theo asked, looking at the small amount she had managed to conjure. It filled about a quarter of the reservoir but seemed as pure as any he could produce.

“I have, and I thought it was working for me, but I just can’t get the volume you can produce,” Salire said. “Do you have some kind of secret?”

“Let me see you try,” Theo said, stepping back and folding his arms.

Salire gave him a flat look before taking a steady breath. She held her hand over the mana container and produced a few drops. Theo used his aura to sense inside her soul. He felt the mana swirling around and generally not obeying her requests. She struggled on for a few more minutes before he stopped her.

“I’m not really an expert in these kinds of things,” Theo said. “But it seems like you’re not making as strong a connection with your soul as you could.”

“What does that even mean?” Salire asked. She was clearly frustrated. “I’m telling my mana to come to my hand, and it doesn’t want to come to my hand.”

“Take a breath, Theo said. Close your eyes and imagine your soul. Tell me what you see.”

“Some random colours. Maybe a kind of mist swirling around,” Salire said.

“Try imagining your soul as cores floating in a void. Picture them as bits of light, sticking out against the darkness. Reach out and touch your alchemy core. Inside it should be the mana you want to use. All you need to do is bring it out into your soul and then guide it through your body.”

This was just how Theo had come to imagine the stuff, invisible stuff happening in his chest. He worked with her to get the technique down, and it only took an hour for her to understand how this technique worked. He had taught her originally, but had failed to follow through and make sure she understood every aspect of mana control. It was really the only part of Image’s skill set the alchemists needed to understand.

“That’s much better,” Theo said. He watched as she opened the faucet of her soul and poured her mana into the container.

“Damn, now I can finally test this thing.” Salire grumbled as she added some essence to the other side of the equation. “I thought I’d have something ready for you to check out by the time you got back, but I guess not.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Theo said. “Let’s see how it works.”

Theo didn’t really understand how Throk was such a genius with artificing, but he had made adjustments to this model that made it more efficient. Perhaps it was the valves that connected each reservoir to the mixing chamber, but when it started operating, it vaporized and added the two parts of the mixture to the chamber much more efficiently. The vapor spent less time in the mixing chamber and was sent over to the condenser coil with much more haste.

When the first drop of essence hit the flask at the end of the line, Theo picked it up for inspection, replacing it with an empty flask. He judged that the purity of the essence was fairly high for the third tier, but it still wasn’t as good as it could be. At 80%, it was better than what he expected. Even if their second-tier potions were in the high 90s, jumping a rank and only dropping 10% was amazing.

“When do you think you’ll be ready to learn infusion?” Theo asked.

“I don’t know if I can keep up with you on that one,” she admitted. “You might be the only person creating those potions.”

That was likely true, but it got Theo thinking. He had created two reforged potions, one for the soul and one for the mind. He was once again thinking about what else he could reforge, or how he could use that property to make another powerful potion. The thing about infused potions was that they seemed to be without limit. If he could find the specifications for a spell, he could infuse it into a potion.

One thing that sucked about the way mages operated in this world was that they were slightly secretive about their knowledge. Theo had been to the market several times and had never seen a spellbook available. His only point of reference was the instruction manual given to him by Xol’sa. And that particular space elf was still busy with his own projects, too busy to drag him off and teach Theo some random spells. Although the value of an extra planar spell was obvious.

Salire reported that their current brewing efforts were going well. She was still focusing on producing the standard array of potions they offered at the shop and had no plans to stop. But soon they would return to mass production of specialty potions, and she even mentioned taking custom orders in this shop again. Despite everything happening with the end of the world, things were getting back to normal.

After Theo finished instructing Salir on how to properly control Hermana, he returned to flipping through the magical textbook he had been given. He reviewed his mental list of potions and tried to find the best combinations. For now, he would keep it as a mental list, working on the actual preparations later. When he was finished, he headed out to check on his liquor brewing enterprise.

The people hired to manage this were doing well. It wasn’t a complicated process, and the stills did most of the work. The materials just needed mashing and adding to the artifice, and it would handle everything else. Theo was satisfied with their work and left them to it. If there was a discrepancy in the amount of liquor being produced, he didn’t want to know about it. It was too much effort to count every barrel of sight-stealing moonshine.

The alchemist found himself outside, sitting on a random log, and messing with his magic. Most of his magic was derived from the properties of potions and reagents. He had a few that were incredibly useful, such as the defense ward, which would create a barrier around something. Going through his mental list of properties, he picked one to mess with and tweaked his way through the standard list of triggers and reaction types.

“Well, that one seems rather nasty.” Theo said, adjusting the parameters on the ward. It was indiscriminate, so he narrowed it down to only affect enemies. He then inspected it, chuckling to himself.

[Field of Hopelessness]

[Advanced Ward] [Linked Ward]

Creates a reactive barrier that inflicts [Hopeless] to all enemy targets within the area.

Trigger:

Detect Enemy

Duration:

50 days.

The Lost Hope property came from the bones of an ascended dragon. It was a property Theo didn’t think he would have much use for, but as he fiddled around with the ward, he decided this would be a decent way to create a field of pacification. Other properties could be mixed to create fields as well. He could make a field of pure elemental magic. For example, a field of fire that reacted only when enemies were present. Fortunately, this advanced ward could target only enemies, leaving allies unaffected.

One thing Theo was interested in doing was taking something like this and infusing it into a potion, but so far, he could not extract combinations of properties and use them with his magic system. He decided he should be happy with the infusion system he already had. He could now recreate rare properties simply by using his magic. That alone made it worth pursuing this art.

Once Salire was done with her testing of the new stills, he could get to work on both testing the infused potions and creating more third tier potions. For now, he had some time to relax. Except Theo has an allergy to relaxation, so he messed around with properties instead.

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