He was so close now. Just a little bit more.

He concentrated as hard as he could, forcing his body to curl up around the edges, imagining a vice constricting around his squishy flesh, pushing inward, inward, inward.

“Come on now, Slime-bro,” the madman whispered softly. “It’s the last stretch… play it nice and cool… slow and steady does it…”

Slime-bro contorted his tiny little face, stiffening his body, as the two inwardly folded parts of his skin moved another few millimetres inward. Just a bit further!

He didn’t actually know what millimetres were – but the madman had used the term repeatedly, and after some thought in his little Slime not-brain, he figured that it was a unit of measurement. Slime-bro was a smart little Slime, after all.

And soon, he would be a thick, intelligent Slime. Whatever the madman promised, he delivered.

He didn’t know how or why he had been drawn to the madman’s abode. There was just something so tantalising about the place. He didn’t even remember much about who he was before he met the madman – all he knew was that one day he had been wandering around as all Slimes did, saw his house, sensed something in the air, and curiosity brought him closer.

And there… his eyes (well, not-eyes, according to the madman) were opened.

At that moment, just slightly more than a week ago, Slime-bro knew his identity. He was not just a Slime, he was an [Enchanted Slime]. He even had a name of his own: Slime-bro.

Slimes did not know who they were. They simply existed. They could not think, could not feel, could not control themselves. Until Slime-bro had met the madman, he had been exactly the same as every other Slime that had ever existed.

“Come on, Slime-bro!” the madman urged. “You’re almost there! Don’t give up! Believe in me who believes in you!”

…well, perhaps Slime-bro was not as intelligent as he thought he was, since he didn’t understand what the madman had meant by that last sentence.

He didn’t know the madman’s name. He had never properly introduced himself to Slime-bro, and in fact had almost been about to kill him shortly after awakening to his new life as an [Enchanted Slime], but had thoroughly impressed the madman with his intelligence. He could move at will, bounce around, and he was only getting smarter with each passing day.

Today, he would prove it. He swore it upon his name as Slime-bro.

“SLURRAAAP!”

With sheer force of will, he yelled in a way he never knew he could, forcing the folds of his skin inward. Blue, wobbly Slime liquid parted in the wake of his effort. The two folds met, and –

“SLURRRRRRP!”

He reorganised them, just as he had practised thousands of times over. The madman had spoken of things of legend known as ‘gap junctions’ and ‘tight junctions’, of ‘cells’ and ‘compartments’, and of the forbidden art of ‘membrane fusion’. Over the last week, he had practised, practised, and practised. Even when the madman had gone to sleep, he had continued on altering his size by changing the structure of his skin in a way he had never fully understood until the madman had explained it to him.

The tightness and fluidity could change by shifting these things he called ‘tight junctions’, while ‘gap junctions’ allowed sharing of ‘cytoplasm’, but Slime-bro didn’t understand what the madman meant by that. Still, he trusted him.

Today… it would all come into fruition.

The madman gasped loudly, but Slime-bro couldn’t spare a thought to be pleased at that right now. Intelligent though he may be, thinking about multiple things at the same time hurt him in a way that wasn’t quite physical, something he couldn’t understand.

New of these junctions formed where the folds of skin met. A thrill of satisfaction coursed through him, and he looked up expectantly at the madman’s face –

Only to be met by a look of sheer horror on his bespectacled form.

“SLIME-BRO! You –”

He had made a mistake. Where the membrane had been pinched off as a separate blob that bounced onto the floor, what was left of him now had an open hole, bits of Slime liquid slowly leaking out through there.

“Of course… membrane topology… this isn’t the same as a true lipid bilayer, since it’s just his cells…” The madman stuttered, almost… panicked? Was that the right term? Humans were hard to read. “Slime-bro! You need to seal it shut! If you can understand me, you need to make new junctions between the cells at the site of the leak!”

Slime-bro’s eyes widened in realisation. Just like the simulations! How was the madman this smart? Had he predicted this from the very beginning?

He knew that if he didn’t immediately form the same junctions where the ‘hole’ would otherwise be at the area that was pinched off, his liquid Slime-flesh would simply leak out, and he would cease to exist.

He could not allow that to happen. With his eyes opened, the horizon as broad as could be, with this fabled Biology that the madman [Biologist] had spoken of, he could not afford to die here!

He was an [Enchanted Slime], first and last of his kind. He had done this hundreds – no, thousands of times over, changing the tightness of his membranes in order to change the size of his body. This was no different.

I… will… not… fall here!

“SLURREEEURRP!”

With a raw, primal cry, his skin welded shut, his size reduced to about half of what he had originally been after having separated a Slime-bleb from himself and losing more fluid from the leakage.

For several long moments, there was silence.

“You did it, Slime-bro,” the madman said, awed. “You actually did it.”

Slime-bro gave a soft trill, as the weight of what he had just done crashed down upon him. He, an [Enchanted Slime], had just done something no Slime had ever done before, to the best of his (arguably limited) knowledge.

But more importantly… he knew he was only just getting started. So long as he stood with this madman, he knew that he would only become stronger, smarter, and more unique among the Slimes. His companion was a strange one, even if he didn’t know much about human behaviour to compare his actions to. All he had were hazy thoughts of his past life as a mere Slime, when he hadn’t been even a [Slime] or [Enchanted Slime].

“Go and take a soak in the Slime-broth, Slime-bro. You’ve earned it.” The madman paused. “Huh, that sounded odd. Slime-bro-oth?”

He snickered to himself, as he scooped up the shed piece that had once been a part of Slime-bro, immersing it in a jar of water. Within moments, there was the characteristic ‘pop!’ as water rushed into the sac and caused it to burst. The madman walked over to the corner of the room, where the skin and flesh of Slime-bro’s lesser kin had been thoroughly studied, their sacrifice paving the way for Slime-bro’s ascension into something else no Slime had ever seen before.

One day… one day he would pay the favour forward.

He bounced toward the tank of Slime-broth, refilling the liquid of his core, idly adjusting the tautness and permeability of his skin that would result in a size of his body that he was comfortable with.

And right there and then, he felt something change in him. It was almost like the sensation he had felt when he first become truly aware of his own existence in this vast, vast world.

At that moment, he knew without the slightest bit of doubt, that he could do something more.

[Reorganise Membranes].

-o-o-o-

It surprised me how frightened I had been when I saw Slime-bro bleeding out in front of my eyes.

In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. In regular cells that divided by fission, or pinched off bits of their membranes during endocytosis, blebbing, or a whole myriad of other cellular processes, the phospholipids that formed the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane would simply interact with one another at the pinched site, join together, and fill up any gap that would have been there.

Slime-bro didn’t have that. His membrane, to be more accurate, was more akin to the skin of animals. They were discrete cells, joined together by cellular junctions. When that part of him had been shed off, what was left didn’t form hydrophobic interactions in the same way that the lipid tails of amphipathic phospholipids did in normal cells.

In the end, Slime-bro had somehow pulled through, by sheer force of will and his own ingenuity. It had been almost inspiring to watch, as he didn’t panic in the slightest while lifeblood slowly eked out of his Slime-skin, focusing solely on patching up the leak.

Without a doubt, Slime-bro was intelligent. When had he even become so good at controlling his membranes? When I had first started him off on my experiments to see if the size of the bodies of Slimes changed due to the turgidity and permeability of their skin, he had taken upwards of ten minutes to effect a change.

Now, he had achieved the same thing in a matter of seconds.

I smiled to myself with an odd sense of pride for Slime-bro’s achievement. I didn’t have pets back on Earth, but I supposed that this was what it might feel like when people saw their cats, dogs, or whatever other household pets they had perform a new trick or do something particularly intelligent.

The piece of membrane Slime-bro had shed wasn’t large, measuring approximately ten centimetres by ten centimetres, but size didn’t matter to me. Biologists had their ways to expand a single cell in culture almost indefinitely.

And I was not a mere Biologist. I was a [Biologist].

I performed a quick [Bio-Acceleration: Tissue Culture] on that piece of membrane, now covered with a generous portion of Slime-broth, in a dish that was far larger than a petri dish. The conditions for growth of the Slime membrane had been optimised through hundreds of different set-ups over the past month. Within a day, I could further sub-clone Slime-bro’s membrane with impunity, in the same way that I would grow out any regular cell line back in the lab.

Using that particular skill no longer drained me. I still had no idea how skills were even a thing – they were evidently magical, since they required expenditure of mana. I had a little theory going forward, now, in light of my findings surrounding the Fire Eel just the day before.

My conjecture was this: ‘Mana’ interacted with ‘Biological life’. They were two fundamentals of this world, in the same way that fundamental forces in physics relied on an interaction between elementary particles. Here, that interaction resulted in phenomena that cannot occur solely by Biology, whether it be expelling a [Fireball] from a [Flame Acolyte’s] hand, bolstering a [Berserker’s] strength passively and in execution of powerful techniques, or [Detecting Poisons] by imparting some sort of extrasensory sight to an [Alchemist’s] eyes.

However, I didn’t have enough evidence to support or refute this theory. In the month I had been in this world – Vergence, the natives called it – I had been thoroughly focused on studying their Biology, through the most basic of model organisms. My success with the Fire Eel yesterday told me that further ignorance on the topic of magic was no longer acceptable, if I wanted to characterise the many ways and intricacies behind how mana interacted with life.

… if my model was even correct, of course. There was still too much unknown going on here, and I needed to refine it along the way as I obtained more knowledge.

Luckily for me, I knew exactly where to start.

I eyed what remained of the two liquids I had obtained from the glands of the Fire Eel. The tubes were stoppered, and their contents had been slightly diluted with water to lower their concentration – there was no need to cause an incendiary explosion the way I had yesterday. Water would probably be safe, since the presence of long ducts meant that they were seromucous glands, rather than sebaceous glands that secreted an oil-soluble product.

This was just going to be a proof of concept… a sales-pitch, if you would.

“Come on, Slime-bro,” I said, placing the back of my hand on the table. He eyed me curiously. “We’re going off to Aksal’s. We’ll trade off our little discovery here, for some insider information about alchemy.”

Slime-bro squinted, nodding sagely, before trailing up my arm with surprising dexterity. Surprisingly, he didn’t nestle himself in the space between neck and shoulder as he’d always done, and instead squeezed himself down my collar, resting between my skin and garment.

“What the –“ I stiffened momentarily at the cool touch, startled. “Slime-bro?”

Then, I realised something.

This… control of his membrane to this level of precision hadn’t been something he’d been capable of before. I could feel his body stretched out lengthwise, almost like a coiling snake, winding himself around my body, spreading himself out evenly.

How? Why?

Something had changed. Somehow, pinching off that blob of himself had given him a masterful understanding of his own body, something he had already been a practical savant of in comparison to his Slime peers.

He had to be self-aware, too. I didn’t go into the village often, save to purchase new supplies from Aksal, since my nutritional needs were easily maintained on Slime broth and Slime jelly. I had survived on cheap instant ramen for years as a student, that eating the same thing for a month didn’t faze me in the slightest.

Still, during the occasions when science demanded that I interact with the natives of this world, I had noticed people looking at me with bewilderment, because of the Slime perched atop my head, on my shoulders, or in my arms, something that no one here ever saw the point of. Slimes were stupid, after all, and weren’t even of any value as pets. Slime-bro was hiding away from sight, likely because he was psychologically aware of what was happening around him, and realised that he was drawing others’ attention.

Slime-bro was different. He was no ordinary Slime.

I smiled to myself, lightly pushing down on a slight bit of Slime-bro that bulged out from beneath my shirt. He was an odd little Slime… but he was a good friend.

I placed the two tubes into the pouch I kept my expenses in, double-checking that they were tightly sealed. Even though I knew that the application of heat was required for their reaction to take place, a certain healthy paranoia still demanded that I take all the necessary precautions. People had been killed from chemical reactions gone wrong despite being in full protective equipment and working behind a fume hood before.

Pro-tip: don’t mix up incompatible wastes when disposing them. The video shown to everyone prior to starting lab work in that one particular safety briefing was scary.

With that, sparing another moment to check that Slime-bro was comfortable, I stepped out of the laboratory

-o-o-o-

“Welcome to Aksal’s Alchemical Supplies, emporium of all your Alchemical – what, you again?”

I grinned at Aksal, who seemed amused at my arrival, interrupting his standard greeting. “Good day to you too.”

“Eric, friend! My favourite customer!” he boomed, a wide smile plastered on his face. “Come in, come in. It’s been awhile!”

“It’s only been a week, Aksal –“

“Bah! A week is too long between fellow practitioners of our crafts! How are your experiments going?”

Ah, experiments. Our understanding of the term differed slightly. Experiments weren’t the the same as what I knew them to be back on Earth. Here, skills seemed to form the middle-ground between what already existed in nature and the final product that would be generated by the craftsman, but there was a fundamental bit in the middle lacking that made translation of knowledge from one thing to another near-impossible.

[Alchemists] could use their skills to vaguely get a notion of the value of a certain reagent in terms of its effects when used in brewing, but not exactly what things or why things could go together. Worse, from what I understood, their class skills sometimes took hold, but at other times the value of a reagent might remain utterly blank to them. Occasionally, if they possessed inherent alchemical value, it may miraculously be revealed to the [Alchemist] as they gained levels. Their ‘experimentation’ simply went with mixing and matching their chosen substances, without increasing their knowledge regarding their reagents in discrete steps.

Potions either worked, or they didn’t, but no one really knew exactly why. There was no unifying theory. They had skills to learn the value of something, but it wasn’t the most consistent across reagents. They could intuit to some extent – but they couldn’t go deeper than that.

Likewise, [Artificers] carved their arcane patterns and infused them with mana to prime their created devices for specific functions, without knowing exactly what any of that meant. In terms of potency of the created objects, levels were all that mattered to craftsmen here – the higher the level, the more potent goods they could create, provided they had access to the required materials.

It annoyed me, if I was being honest. Why was magic so imprecise? Why were skills so set in stone, with little flexibility in how they were executed? Why work sometimes, but not others? Why was there something like a voice in their head telling them what they could or could not do?

Regardless, those were thoughts to consider for another time, even though my repeated musings over the past weeks hadn't advanced them any further. There were more important matters at present.

“It’s kind of why I came in, actually,” I said, glancing around, pushing forward with my agenda. “I’ve got something I wanted to discuss.”

In a quiet village like this, there weren’t many adventurers about, and so traffic was fairly limited in his shop. From what I observed in previous dealings with him, his customer base was more in line with farmers seeking to purchase alchemical fertilisers, that would give bumper crops. It caught my interest initially, but my distaste of plant physiology led me away from pursuing that line of inquiry. More than likely, it behaved in a similar way to my [Bio-acceleration: Tissue Culture] skill, increasing crop growth by the interaction between magic and biology, if my theorised model of the workings of magic was accurate.

“What is it this time – tubes? Flasks? Stirrer? Plates?” Already, Aksal was moving toward the cabinet that held those supplies. “Honestly, lad, I still don’t get why you keep buying these things. You’re not an [Alchemist]; why do you even need these?”

Aksal knew my class. He even knew my origins as being someone summoned from another world, having been curious about why anyone would possibly need as many pieces of laboratory equipment as I had accumulated over the past weeks. It wasn’t a grand secret that I was a [Biologist]… unlike certain other isekais.

“Ah, I’m not here for that kind of business,” I said sheepishly. “See, I was hoping to suggest a little business proposal between us.”

Abruptly, his good nature faded, and Aksal’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. I wasn’t surprised – he’d been earning some decent coin selling me extra equipment he didn’t need, but listening to the ideas of some otherworlder who’d been in this place only a month was another matter altogether.

“A proposal, you say?” he intoned dangerously, mixed with intrigue, lightly tapping on the wooden counter. “Hmm… go on…”

“Before that, though, there was something I wanted to confirm.” I stared him in the eyes. “Alchemists only use the oils distilled from Fire Eel flesh to make Fire Oil, correct? You can’t find anything else of value?”

He was silent for several moments. “You’re asking for a trade secret of my class there, friend,” he said slowly, idly pacing around behind the counter, but his eyes were watchful of mine. “Why do you ask?”

I was unperturbed. It’d be the equivalent of someone asking a pharmaceutical company just what the exact process underlying the creation of a specific drug was, before the patent even expired. I could understand his reluctance to tell me that.

Still, I believed that he would be very interested in what I had to offer.

“What if I told you I found something else in Fire Eels that could be made into a powerful tool?” I spoke. They didn’t have bombs, from what I understood, so I thought about the next best analogy. “Think about… a [Fireball], only created alchemically.”

He snorted. “I’d say you’re full of crap, friend.” He raised a brow, leaning closer. Though his face was expressionless, still studying me intently, there was now just the slightest trace of curiosity. “You’re what, a [Biologist]? You know, I haven’t asked you until now, but what archetype is that class even part of?”

Opportunity! Archetypes were something that people of this world seemed to accept as fact, but my admittedly limited reading hadn’t made mention of that. Tycelius, back at the audience chamber in Everach City itself, had questioned whether I was part of the [Mage] archetype.

“Archetype?”

He laughed. “Playing dumb with me, eh lad? Trying to get me to lower down my guard? I’ll tell you, laddie, it won’t work on smart old Aksal –“ Abruptly, seeing that I wasn’t pretending in the slightest, surprise crossed his face. “Wait – you actually don’t know?”

I nodded.

“What do those people over in the capital think they’re doing?!” he scoffed loudly. “They summon over the hero of legend and don’t tell him about archetypes?”

“They might have told Shinya that, actually,” I said, mulling over the thought. “He did stay in the palace for a few more days before setting off together with his party.”

It might have been my fault as well. I’d been so eager to set off on studying the local biology, that I’d pressured Tycelius and his team of subordinates to make the arrangements for me to settle down where my laboratory currently was. Perhaps that sort of basic introduction to this world of Vergence had completely slipped their mind amidst all that mess.

“Shinya the Hero… [Sword Saint], or so I hear? Heard he’s already making a name for himself putting down some bandits over by Thaylen Village,” he mused, then shook his head. “Well, it doesn’t matter. A’ight, listen up, kid – for the sake of your continued patronage, it’s time for your favourite [Alchemist] Aksal to educate you in the customs of Vergence.”

I ignored the term he chose to refer to me, even though I was already in my mid-twenties. Aksal beckoned for me to sit by the stool on the other end of the counter, and I obliged.

“You know about classes, right?” I nodded slowly, and Aksal continued. “Well, no matter what your class is exactly, they fall under five broad archetypes. You know about the Five Deities?”

I heard that term before during my initial introduction to this world, and later obtained more clarity from my brief reading. “Od, the Father; Sylar, the Child; Gale, the Mother; Nyx, the Unseen; and Alariel, the Huntress.”

“You know that at least,” he said, nodding approvingly. “The Five Deities bless us with our classes, praised be their names. Regardless of the exact wording, whether you be a [Sword Saint], [Trueshot], or [Terrorstrike], your class falls into one of five broad archetypes: [Warrior], [Mage], [Priest], [Rogue], and [Archer], in the order you spoke of their blessed names.”

“And an [Alchemist] would be… a [Mage], I’m guessing?”

“Indeed,” he said. “Like all [Mages], I have access to the skills given to everyone from our archetype – [Magic Missile], [Blink], and so on. With our specialised classes – [Alchemist], in my case –“

He paused momentarily, before sighing. “Eh… I suppose I could tell you this, since it’s useless to you – I gain skills like [Appraise Reagent] and [Infuse Mana], the key skills required for the brewing process, and why no one else can make alchemical products like an [Alchemist]… but you already know about [Appraise Reagent], of course. A [Pyromancer], on the other hand, would get something like [Flamestrike] at a certain level.

"It goes deeper, yet. A rare few [Alchemists] might be even more specialised, becoming [Potioneers], who can make potions I can only dream about. I trump over them in alchemical oils, though, and let's just try and see them make my Aksal Special Alchemical Fertiliser, guaranteed to double your harvest!"

He laughed heartily, but I barely paid any attention to him, distracted as I was with considering what I had learnt.

That explained some things, but glossed over so much more. I had already expected [Alchemists] and [Artificers] to be related to [Mages], since they relied so heavily on application of magic to achieve their tasks. Why were a select few allowed to transition from [Alchemist] to [Potioneer]? What governed that step?

Furthermore, from what I knew about myself, people gained skills as they levelled up, but…

“In that case, what about those who don’t fall into any of those five categories?” I challenged. “Surely not everyone will end up wanting to be part of combat? What about… [Chefs], or [Porters], or classes like that?”

“And that’s the blessing of the Five, isn’t it?” Aksal flashed a knowing smile. “Going by your example, no matter your archetype, you can still end up as a [Chef]. Someone from the [Warrior] archetype could gain skills as they level up to continue working without tiring easily, while someone from the [Archer] archetype could detect quality ingredients, or poisons… you get my point?”

I frowned.

It didn’t make sense. There was still something missing, here.

My current hypothesis was that skills, being driven by mana, altered biology and gave a resultant output. Why would magic, if it was sapient, give people in the same set profession vastly different skills?

And if it wasn’t sentient, then why were skills caged in such discrete boxes? Why were the effects so set in stone and specific? Why were skills granted only at discrete levels? How did levels even factor into the whole nature of magic?

Could these archetypes be due to some kind of genetic factor? But no, with how classes were omnipresent in Vergence, even if they were linked to bloodlines there should be enough crossings over the generations to result in a practically equal amount of each archetypical code, if that hypothesis were true.

All were questions that I had no answer for, but ones that were critical to having a formal understanding of just what magic was, or at the very least how it interacted with biological life.

“It’s impossible for someone originally from the [Warrior] archetype to learn to perform what a [Chef] from the [Archer] archetype could do?”

“Indeed,” Aksal said. “The blessings of the Deities are determined at the time of awakening, lad. Occasionally, you hear about people who fall into two archetypes – [Magic Knight], [White Mage], and so on… but they’re still locked into the skills of those archetypes. Don’t worry too much about them, kid. Most of them are nobility who hold the blood of Heroes past.”

A form of hybrid vigour? That seemed a plausible notion, if blood of other races truly ran deeper within the nobles who intermingled with their summoned heroes. That raised interesting questions regarding the differences in how magic interacted with biological life between different species.

Still, were their Five Deities truly real? Did they have a physical influence on this world?

“The Five Deities – you can feel them?”

“Ehh,” Aksal said, shrugging. “I mean – technically no, but how else could you explain our classes other than by the good work of the Five? Who else but them could guide the hand of the [Artificer] creating these arcane braziers here? Who else could guide the [Cleric’s] magic to heal the wounds of the injured?”

“Mmm.” I made a non-committal noise, bringing that line of inquiry to a halt. Personally – I still didn’t fully believe either way whether the Deities were real or unreal. Were they a part of the magic of this world, or something separate? Biology, magic, Deities, levels, and classes… they all interacted together in some intrinsic way, but with the information I had I couldn’t refine my theory any further.

Still, something nagged at me. There was something fundamentally lacking in my theories, but I just couldn’t see what it was. Regardless, I changed the topic of the conversation, going to the reason as to why I had gone to Aksal’s in the first place.

“Like I said, I’ve found something interesting from Fire Eels,” I said, placing my pouch on the table, and withdrawing the two test tubes holding each of the products of the two exocrine glands. Aksal glanced at it curiously. “If I may give a little demonstration?”

“Please,” he said, gesturing to one side, a gleam of interest in his eyes.

“Ah… it would probably be safer to do this outdoors,” I said, betraying no expectations. There were certain standards of showmanship to adhere to. “May I?”

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment any further. With that, he led me through the backdoor of the shop, to a little outdoor garden where he grew all sorts of plants with alchemical value.

I wasn’t stupid enough to use the two compounds at the same concentration they were at yesterday. There wasn’t a need to blow up another test tube. So long as there was an explosion, and perhaps enough heat to melt the base of the test tube, it would be good enough for a demonstration. As such, with the five-fold diluted samples, I decanted a similar volume as I had taken of each product yesterday into a third test tube, gently swirling to mix the solutions.

“This is from the Fire Eel, you say?” Aksal asked, leaning over to peer at the concoction. “Hmm… it’s not an oil extract, that’s for sure. This has something to do with your class?”

“In a way,” I deflected, stifling a smile. “If I may borrow your burner?”

He waved impatiently, going back into the store for a moment, before returning with the device. Taking it in my hands, I turned on the flame powered by the mana-stone placed within the device. “Enjoy.”

With that, holding the tube in a pair of long tongs, I let the Fire Eel’s magica-biochemistry do the talking.

As sparks flew, an explosion sounded, and glass melted away, I was struck by the thought that the nomenclature for the subject field could use a little refining. A name with eight syllables was a little too wordy.

Seconds later, smoke trailing from the burned test tube, I finally looked over at Aksal, who was at a loss for words.

“I… you…” he stammered, eyes wide. “What was that?!”

“The great mysteries of the Fire Eel,” I replied, dancing around the question. I knew it would get on his nerves, and I needed to gain the upper hand in this little trade deal. “Now, then, Aksal… how about I start talking about this business idea of mine?”

“You…” He tried to stare me down, but his eyes kept flicking back toward the still-smoking piece of glassware. “How?! That was not an alchemical product! Not a potion, nor an oil, nothing!”

Victory.

“Tit for tat, my dear favourite [Alchemist],” I said, nonchalantly waving the tongs about, tutting mischievously. “In my world, we’d call what I’ll be proposing a scientific collaboration.”

“A collaboration?”

“That’s right!”

I grinned. He was fully invested now, and I knew I had him. All the times I visited his store, I knew he’d been on the verge of straight-out questioning me what I was doing with those supplies, and then when I bought the Fire Eels from him, he’d been tangibly close to bursting. This was the final nail in the coffin.

In my admittedly short time in a research lab, I’d learnt through observing the postdocs and principal investigators that the best way to pave a scientific collaboration with another research group forward was to entice them with some interesting data, leave the best bits out, lure a promise of some great scientific discovery made possible only by collaboration, before telling them just what it was both parties stood to gain. What I’d done was no different.

“What do you mean?” he spoke with a low tone, eyes narrowed.

“You have knowledge that I want, Aksal,” I said patiently. “See, I could reverse-engineer an alchemical potion, perhaps by fractionating it through distillation, and sieving through all the resultant fractions and residues left, but that’s far too time consuming. I’m a busy man, my friend. You understand, yes?”

“Reverse-engineer – what are you talking about?” He stepped forward. “You’re saying you’re an [Alchemist] too?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I prefer the term –“

Abruptly, there was the sound of a door slamming open coming from inside the store, interrupting me just as I was about to get to the good part.

“Aksal! AKSAL!”

“Wha –“ He spun around at the shrill scream, pausing for just a fraction of a second, before dashing in. “You’re… Prisca? What are you doing here? Didn’t the crop fertilisers get delivered yesterday?”

I wasn’t sure what to do. Hesitantly, I waited outside, listening to their conversation.

“Aksal! Thank the Five! Please, I need your help! Arlett, she – you’re an [Alchemist], you’re the only one who can help her! Please!”

“Help – slow down, Prisca! What do you mean?”

“It’s Arlett – the [Clerics] can’t help her – but you’ve got potions! Please, save her!”

“What do you –“ Abruptly, Aksal hissed loudly, interrupting himself. “By the Great Deities! Prisca – what were you thinking?!”

I frowned. Aksal had gone from worried, to panicked, to full-on desperate at this point. Just as I was about to cross the threshold, I caught sight of his eyes, noting how wide with fear they were.

“NO! Don’t come any closer, lad!”

Caught by the suddenness of his actions and the sheer authority in his voice, I automatically did as I was told, pausing abruptly mid-step. Inside the store, I now saw a woman in the dressings of everyday villagers, looking to be in her mid-thirties, cradling an infant in her arms, equally as desperate as Aksal was. Prisca and Arlett, I inferred.

“Why?”

“It’s the Curse.” His words bore a heavy weight and raw emotion to them. On his face, his expression was grim. “The Blighted Curse… Prisca, why? Why would you come here?”

Blighted Curse?

“I couldn’t just leave her to die!” she forced out between sobs. “The [Clerics] can’t do a thing about it, and if anyone knew, they’d – they’d –“

“Just what is this Blighted Curse?”

Aksal was silent for several moments, before he looked at me with resignation. “A curse even the [Clerics] cannot cure, lad,” he said. “It comes and goes in waves, sweeping death across the lands. If even a single person is found to have it… they, and everyone around them, would have to be put away for the good of everyone else. [Alchemists] cannot do a thing about it. You know this, Prisca.”

What? That sounded like –

“Now you know, lad,” he said grimly, mistaking my silence for terror. “You haven’t come close to us yet. You need to leave; tell the rest what happened here. Me, Prisca, and Arlett… we’re –“

“This Curse,” I interrupted, staring at him intently. “Describe it. How do you know that Arlett has it?”

“She bears the Mark,” he said. From where I was standing, I couldn’t very clearly see the child. “The angry spots on her skin, the red wrath of the Five Divines… it has to be the Blighted Curse.”

I wasn’t a native of Vergence, and I didn’t know what the distinguishing factors were between a curse, malady, affliction, or a dozen other terms that frequented fantasy literature. It didn’t matter.

What I knew was that there was altered biology going on here; a pathological state, be it magical or mundane. And from what few experiments I already carried out, it seemed that the entire concept of magic was far less whimsical and supernatural than I’d originally thought it to be, even if the means by which it was expressed in skills were frustrating.

I wasn’t a trained clinician, but in my time as a medical student, I knew the right way to proceed. There were standard elements to clinical history taking, and no student in the field would ever forget the trusty mnemonic. I wasn’t a good student, but even I could do at least that much.

SOCRATES.

Site. “Where exactly are these marks?”

“They – all over her body,” he said, eyes wide with surprise, although I didn’t see what he was surprised at. It didn’t matter.

“Any particular pattern? More on her face, on her trunk, anything like that?”

A pause. The woman shifted in the corner of the room, inspecting her child.

“There – there’s more on her face, and then her arms and legs, and then her body,” the woman said, not yet regaining her composure.

A centrifugal pattern. Warning bells rang in my mind, but I pressed on.

Onset. “When did you first notice this?”

“J – just today, when I was going to wash her.”

Just today... that means there's still time.

Character. Radiation. I knew them both already.

Associations. “Did you notice anything else? Now, or some time back; anything you can think of?”

She hesitated for a moment. “She’d been feeling warm about two weeks back… and she – she just felt a little off –“

Common nonspecific malaise.

Time course. Exacerbating/relieving factors. Severity. They weren’t quite applicable to this case, but regardless, I suspected that I already knew what it was.

I stepped inside the room.

“What are you doing?”

“Show me,” I said, stepping over to the child, ignoring Aksal’s indignant shout.

“I – who are you?”

Still, she held out the infant in her arms, and just by looking at her face, it was pretty clear what it was.

The characteristic rash and macules matched the disease I had in mind, having seen the symptomatic markings in pictures within just about every introductory textbook on immunology, virology, and general medicine back on Earth. Whether this was the same variant of that pathogen, or some other magically-altered strain, it didn’t matter. Principles had to remain constant, despite the presence of magic.

Still, I needed confirmation.

In a proper clinical setting, the definitive test would probably be repeated PCR-based detection methods of the pathological cause, and possibly accompanied by a pathogen antigen screen. I didn’t have that.

I had [Bio-Analysis]. It was a roundabout way of confirming the causative pathogen, but it would work. Wordlessly, I activated it, asking a few simple questions to obtain the observations I needed.

One: Is the genetic material RNA or DNA? Single stranded or double-stranded?

Two: What is the size of the viral genome?

Three: Are there virions in the nucleus?

Double-stranded DNA. In the range of 200 kilo base-pairs. Considering human infection, the only possible virus families were Poxviridae and Herpesviridae.

No, the virions replicated fully in the cytoplasm. That excluded Herpesviruses, since they migrated to the nucleus for replication, and new viral capsids assembled there. With the sight beyond sight of [Bio-Analysis], I saw the cytoplasmic sites where the virus replicated, technically given the term Guarnieri bodies.

In other words… this was smallpox, which matched the symptomatic centrifugal distribution of the vesicles and rash, or something closely related enough. It was almost definitely a member of the Poxviridae family.

There were no pustules yet, merely macules and papules, which meant it was still early in symptomatic infection. And considering what Prisca said... it sounded to me like this variant of smallpox had infection kinetics that was noticeably longer than what Earth's had, even if it eventually led to the same mortality. Post-exposure prophylaxis by vaccination could work well in that case, as it had for rabies.

I smiled.

Before I was a [Biologist], I was an immunologist. Of the viruses that infected humans, Poxviruses were remarkably more susceptible to control by vaccination, due to the specifics within the nature of the viral life cycle.

When Edward Jenner developed his vaccine in 1796, he had used the related Vaccinia virus, or cowpox. Cross-reactivity between the related strains meant that the immune response to Vaccinia virus would also target the causative virus of smallpox, Variola virus.

I didn’t have Vaccinia virus at hand, but the fields of virology and molecular biology had evolved leaps and bounds since Jenner’s time. His methods paled in comparison to what people today could achieve.

I had the ability to greatly accelerate tissue culture, and though I didn’t know the exact mechanics required for generation of a vaccine, I knew the theory well enough. With what I had available, I could make a live attenuated vaccine through serial passage. Normally, the process would take time… but I had [Bio-Acceleration: Tissue Culture].

There were many questions this raised about the limits of magic. Why couldn’t the [Clerics] cure it? If my magic could directly interface with the virions in the infected cells, what was it about this virus that made it so that a [Cleric’s] skills were utterly ineffective? What exactly was it that occurred when a [Cleric] healed someone? Why work under some conditions, but not others?

All excellent questions, and all of which would help further refine my understanding of the ways in which biology and magic interacted. For now, though, I had a more important matter to attend to.

“Slime-bro,” I said, nudging him slightly, and he peeked out from under my shirt, having somehow remained entirely still throughout the entire time we were outside. The two observers gasped, but I didn’t really care about them right now. “How would you like to eradicate smallpox once more?”

On the plus side, once I was done with what I wanted to do, I suspected that Aksal would be much more willing to share some of his closely-guarded secrets of alchemy with me.