“Well, you know, Ilmarinen. I just thought I could… use a break from blacksmithing. I’ve been doing a lot of it lately so I’d like to work on some of my other Talents. I’m only a level 1 Adept Alchemist after all.” Giving him a pleading look, he glares.

“What’s yer Adept Blacksmith level, lad?” Arms on his hips, his gaze bores into me.

Clearing my throat, I try to not fall apart under his criticism. “Um… 3…”

“3. Yer level 3 and ye want a break.” His face is full of disappointment.

“Well, I’ve been doing tons of blacksmithing for so long now, it’s been forever since I did some alchemy. It’s not like I hate making weapons, it’s fun, but I just need to swap what I’m doing from time to time.”

“...I suppose I’m letting me own preferences leak on te me perception of ye, lad. Fine, ye may take a break from blacksmithing, I need te teach the bubbly lass enchanting anyway.” He grumbles slightly under his breath.

“Well, I’ll get back to blacksmithing soon enough, but today is an alchemy day. Besides, I have slime now!” Holding up the bottles of slime, I smile at Ilmarinen.

He sighs. “Whatever ye want, lad.”

“Well, actually, I figured there’s one more thing for me to try. You think I can make a Palemetal slime?” Walking over to the slime pen to try and make it into a food pellet, I prepare a water blade.

“Ye can try, but I’ve never ranched slimes.” Ilmarinen shrugs.

“Well, let’s see!” Cutting into my hand, I press it to the slot and let the blood flow in.

Substance outside of parameters detected, cleansing food slot.

My blood sprays back out of the slot, coating me in it. Blinking a few times, I clean it off of myself with Hemomancy and store it in my blood bottle.

Colt looks somewhat grossed out but also laughs. Ilmarinen just shakes his head and walks away.

“Think I could try feeding it directly to the slime?”

Colt considers for a moment. “Well, the food slot couldn’t process it so I guess you could try.”

“Sounds good to me, come here, Pui!” Picking up the slime, I offer it the bottle with my blood. It engulfs the bottle faster than I expected. Seeing as Pui is somewhat transparent and grey, I can see inside it.

The blood inside the bottle slowly integrates into the slime of Pui, getting me excited. Pui then begins to violently vibrate before all of the blood spews out of the slime, cleansing it back to its original pale grey, if a little smaller.

“Oh no, I’m sorry Pui, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” The glass bottle is still inside Pui, so I take out a new bottle and use Hemomancy to store all of my blood inside it. It’s a little mixed with slime now but I figure that’ll just add to the potions.

Pui ejects the glass bottle and begins to push it around the pen. “Colt, is Pui… playing with that bottle?”

A tendril slaps the bottle lightly, causing it to skate across the slippery surface of the pen and bump into Helen. She slaps the bottle back towards Pui.

“I… I think they are. Oh god, have our slimes been incredibly bored this whole time? I’m sorry, little guys!” Colt pets one of the slimes and it nuzzles into his hand.

“I wonder if the book as anything about this.” Taking it out of my hold and leafing through it, I find a page on slime toys. “Oh, yup. It’s farther to the back, but slimes have very primitive minds and they like toys. It keeps them from growing up violent though, so we should probably give them some.”

“Well, what does the book say they like?” Colt spins the bottle around in circles, causing the slimes in that pen to gather around it.

“Basically, anything they can just slap around I guess. So maybe we can make them a glass ball or something? I don’t want it to be something they can absorb and take on the aspect of.”

“Won’t they break that?”

“Nah, I can enchant it. Think you can make a few? Or show me how?”

“Oh, sure.” Colt settles into an explanation of how he learned to control Geomancy in a way to create crystalline structures for glass, including everything he learned from my boots, the crystalline steps, for increased speed and efficiency.

Practicing for a bit, I get how it’s done, it’s simply a small adaptation to how the mana flows for Geomancy and some slight shifts in the Runic Matrix. Colt is already at work making various shapes out of glass.

Following his example, I create not only a few glass balls for the slimes, but other random shapes, such as a top. Applying some durability enchantments to all of them, we put them into the pens and the slimes immediately gather around them to play.

Level up! For learning more about your slimes and creating toys to keep them passive and entertained, your Talent: Fledgling Slime Rancher has reached (5/50)!

For reaching your first Talent milestone in Fledgling Slime Rancher, you have been rewarded applicable stat points to Endurance, Dexterity, Charisma, Insight and + 30 XP. In addition, you have been granted the Perk: Slime-Treated Skin.

‘What? Perks.’

Perks:

Slime-Treated Skin

Description: Your skin is silky smooth as if you’ve treated it with slime, which is commonly used as a skincare product. As an added benefit, you can treat your skin with various slimes to gain temporary passive buffs dependent on the type of slime used. Charisma increased by 1. +1 Charisma per level up.

Rubbing my arm, I relish in how pleasant it is. “Oh my god, Colt, feel my arm!”

“What? Why?” He reaches over and feels it. “Oh my god, it’s so smooth! Why?”

“I got to level 5 in Fledgling Slime Rancher, the Perk I got is Slime-Treated Skin. I think the smooth skin is just a passive effect of it, but apparently, I can apply slimes to my skin to get different effects out of them.”

“Oh, well that seems good then. Holy shit, this feels so smooth, I want this Perk!” He continues to rub my arm.

“I wonder what happens if I…” Feeding Kane more water, I take some of the water-slime that sloughs off and apply it to my skin.

Water-Slime applied: Water affinity slightly increased for 1 minute.

“Oh, neat. The water-slime increases my water affinity for 1 minute. It’s only a slight benefit but that’s still cool.” Holding up my hand, it’s just slightly less costly, and a little easier to create water.

“Huh. Cool. Well, Pasivier is probably getting impatient. I told him I’d meet him out in the back yard this morning.” Colt stands up and stretches.

“Alright, I should get to this alchemy now anyway. Bye, slimes, have fun with your new toys!” Waving to the slimes as I walk out of the room, I smile as I watch them play.

Heading into the alchemy room, I inhale deeply, enjoying the mix of magical scents coming off of the various plants in the room.

Waving at Lil P, he stares at me for a moment before going back to care for some sweetkiss chimes.

‘First things first, I have all this new slime to work with. I should make some stock for the shop. I have a feeling that healing and mana potions are going to be some of our top sellers.’

Boiling some water by using my magic to do so quickly, I grab more vitaleaf and convert it into healing aspect crystals.

Using my bottle of Palemetal Blood, I add a drop to the first healing potion I make. The light that comes off the potion when it finishes is brighter than I’ve seen before. Checking it, I’m shocked by the improvements to the potion’s strength.

This healing potion heals 984 HP and has 6 doses. The doses are from the slime I assume, but I figure I’ll try different ratios.

After making the next two potions and experimenting with the amounts of slime I use, I find a good ratio that doesn’t use up too much on any single potion but increases the dosage count by 3.

In the end, most of the potions restore around 1000 to 1100 HP and have 6 doses. My bottle stock is pretty low after making all of the potions, so I sit on the floor and begin the process of forming more bottles with Geomancy.

Once I make one, I find that I have a blueprint for it with Schematic Mind, which makes the process of creating duplicates that much easier. Even the stoppers for the bottles are made of glass, I just add a low-strength grip enchantment to make it not come out too easily.

The only difficult part is settling down to use Pranic Breathing and Meditation to regenerate mana when it gets low, which is often as creating materials is quite mana consumptive.

Adreanell pops her head in the door to say hi at one point, but sees that I’m in the midst of all this work and steps out, saying that she’ll be spending the day practicing with Ilmarinen and using my forge.

Shrugging, I turn back to my work after saying bye to her.

Setting up a simple durability enchantment with Rapid Inscription, I add it to all of the new bottles I’ve made, keeping my stock up.

Once the slime bottle runs out, I decide that’s enough healing potions for now. The vitaleaf plots both inside and outside are looking quite sparse too. Lil P is giving me what I think is a stink eye.

‘Just you wait until I’m done with the magetongue.’

With my knowledge from making healing potions, I’m able to make more mana potions overall as I don’t waste any slime early on by mimicking the same ratios as before.

Level up! Due to experimentation with potion ratios and addition of a powerful new catalyst, your Talent: Adept Alchemist has reached (2/50)!

Glancing out the window, it’s hard to tell what time of day it is exactly, but it still seems bright out. Though it must be afternoon as I’ve been at this for a while.

Happy with what should be a good initial potion stock for the shop, Colt will probably contribute later too, I decide to make some more complex ones.

Stocking myself up on swiftness, guidance, levitation, and resonation aspects, I get to work making several iterations of my flight potion, using some of the neutral slime to increase the dosage count a little and a drop of my blood from the bottle to increase the power.

My first try ends up only being 4 minutes 15 seconds of flight but it has 4 doses overall, which is less time per individual dose than the last I made, but more time overall. Too much neutral slime probably, maybe not enough blood.

During my second attempt, I get curious about something based on some old potion-making hunches. Creating a small stone bowl and implement, I find myself holding a pestle and mortar.

Taking the resonation crystal first, as I have plenty of it just in case this doesn’t work, I attempt to crush up the crystal into a fine dust.

Crack

‘Oops.’

The crystal chips settle on the ground as I break through the stone bowl. Gathering it all up with some Aeromancy, I dump the debris into the trash network for deconstruction.

Creating another bowl, I enchant both it and the implement to hopefully keep them durable enough.

This time, I crush up a resonation crystal quite easily. A quick Inspect shows that it’s aspect crystal dust now, but it has the same trait and quality as its previous state.

Crushing up the rest of the ingredients for the flight potion, I use less of the neutral slime, just enough for what I hope will boost up the dose count but not cut into the potion effect too much and add a slightly larger drop of blood.

While stirring, I keep my mental visualizations on the sensation of flight from the one time I tried the potion, just in case it will help.

To my surprise, the potion comes out high quality. It’s 4 doses of 7 minutes even.

‘Hm, crushing up the aspect crystals must have released the effects better.’

Level up! Due to learning more about the process of potion-making, your Talent: Adept Alchemist has reached (3/50)!

‘I missed leveling up this Talent, it’s good to be back.’ Smiling, I turn back to my work.

Making a few more flight potions to sell instead of for personal use, all but one set of the swiftness, levitation, and guidance crystals are used up.

‘I can’t resist, flight it too fun.’

“Magnum Opus.”

The somewhat familiar rush of inspiration and clarity floods my brain and I get to work crushing up everything. It’s far easier for me to know that I’m crushing each piece into a truly fine dust. My control is much greater.

Even the method I add the slime to the pan is different as I mix it up with the aspect crystal dust and Palemetal Blood before adding it into the boiling water. Hoping I’ll remember this after Magnum Opus ends, as it can be mentally taxing to some extents, I file the memory away for later.

Stirring the ingredients in slowly, not simply adding it all in at once, I finally finish the potion in a flash of light.

Its color is significantly richer and it simply looks more powerful than previous potions I’ve made. A soft silky gold glow emanates from the liquid. Cooling it with some Thermomancy, I pour it into a bottle and Inspect it.

Flight Potion

Quality: Excellent

Traits: Flight

Description: This potion grants the Skill: Flight for the duration of its effect. This skill will require mana scaling with the weight of the individual and anything they carry with them. The components of this potion are highly synergistic, creating an overall enhanced effect. Duration: 12 minutes 35 seconds. Doses: 5

“Holy shit!” Doubling-checking the duration and doses, I make sure my eyes aren’t deceiving me. “That’s over an hour of flight!”

‘...I think I’ll be keeping this one for myself.’ Storing it away in my hold, I consider my next move.

The Hermes’ Sandal plot grows too slowly, so I can’t get any more swiftness or guidance for now.

Taking out incendiary, springlimb, and resonation aspects, I try to repeat some of the processes I did with Magnum Opus, but my memory of that moment is weirdly fuzzy. Fortunately, I do at least remember to mix the crystal dust with the slime and blood.

Mixing it up is a relatively quick process and the resulting potion is glowing a dangerous orange. Cooling and pouring it, Inspect the result.

Boomstep Potion

Quality: Medium

Traits: Explosive Steps

Description: This potion grants explosive moments, allowing the user to generate detonations that are non-harmful to them by pushing off of surfaces with their legs. The components of this potion are highly synergistic, creating an overall enhanced effect. Duration: 5 minutes 18 seconds. Doses: 4

‘Huh. Cool. This seems neat, if perhaps a little destructive. Sounds like a great thing to sell so I don’t have to deal with it!’

Storing it away, I decide to only make the one for now. Who knows if it will sell well or not and I’d rather not waste time if I don’t need to.

‘Well, I haven’t made any poisons yet, so let’s see what happens if I just make a burning poison with no other additions.’

Mixing the aspect crystal of burning poison with a resonation crystal, I figure I shouldn’t waste good slime on my first attempt at poison. I figure it can’t hurt to add some Palemetal Blood though, so I add it directly rather than the stuff mixed with Pui’s slime by cutting my finger and letting a drop fall into the mixture.

The poison ends up being a swirl of purple and orange, bands of each color somehow not mixing with each other. With extreme care, I cool the poison and pour it into a bottle, realizing afterward that I probably should have used a separate pan for poison.

‘Oh well. Inspect.’

Burning Poison

Quality: Medium

Traits: Burning Poison

Description: Poison that causes a severe burning sensation throughout the body, spreading from the area of injection/infiltration. This poison has been refined through the process of alchemy and will decrease HP at a rate of 12 HP per second. Duration of the poison is dependent on the physiology of the affected target.

‘Huh, no dosage? Guess poisons work differently than potions. Makes sense though, only some comes on and off weapons every time it’s used.’

Level up! Due to exploring the more harmful sides of alchemy by creating poison, your Talent: Adept Alchemist has reached (4/50)!

‘Well I’m certainly not going to test this poison on myself. Guess I’ll just give it to Becky or sell it.’

Making two more bottles of the poison, I work on improving how I make it each time and manage to bring up the damage by 1 point per second with each iteration. Seeing as there’s no dosage, I see no reason to add slime as it would likely just lower the damage for no reason.

‘A poison slime sounds like a bad idea simply because I’d need a separate pen for it and those are expensive.’

Curious about something, I take my last burning poison crystal and mix it with a nutrition crystal. The resulting poison comes out a yellowy orange and has quite an acrid scent to it.

Calorie Burning Poison

Quality: Medium

Traits: Calorie Burner

Description: Poison that forces the target’s body to metabolize fat and carbohydrate stores within the body at a rapid rate. Prolonged exposure will cause extreme deficits to the physical stamina of the recipient until they can replenish these stores. Duration of the poison is dependent on the physiology of the affected target.

‘Wow, I made every infomercial’s dream diet pill. I can’t imagine that much sudden metabolism won’t have detrimental effects on the person overall either.’

Level up! Due to combining aspects that create a uniquely functioning poison, your Talent: Adept Alchemist has reached (5/50)!

For reaching your first Talent milestone in Adept Alchemist, you have been awarded applicable stat points to Dexterity, Intelligence, Attunement, Insight and + 30 XP. In addition, you have been awarded one Perk Point! Perk Points can be only spent on a Perk that came from the associated Talent.

‘Oh, huh, guess I should decide what Perk to spend that on then.’

The options are pretty sparse, but not really a hard decision overall. Catalytic blood is part of Spellbound Physique, so that’s not an option. Gift of Prosperity, Magnum Opus, and Porcine Nose are the only options left.

Magnum Opus is somewhat tempting due to how powerful it can be, but the upgrade might not even affect the quality, it might just let me use Magnum Opus twice a day or something.

Gift of Prosperity is a fusion Perk, so that’s basically upgrading three Perks at once, and it will be useful too. My hope is more aspect crystals from a single conversion.

Checking over the description on the Perk again, I realize a feature of it I’ve been neglecting: Empowering ingredients. I can probably power up aspect crystals with mana to make them even stronger.

And, Porcine Nose… it’s nice and all but I don’t really see it as being the one I need to spend a point on.

With my decision made, I apply the Perk Point to Gift of Prosperity. It doesn’t feel much different once applying it as this Perk doesn’t really affect my body at all nor my performance in the craft, it’s all active or passive effects.

Cutting off a bit of the Medusa’s Grasp with some water, I focus my mana into the piece without touching it while activating Gift of Prosperity. Focusing as best as I can on the ideas of grasping and paralysis, it’s more difficult as I don’t have much to relate to on the latter.

All of the grasping crystals come out high quality and surprisingly the paralysis ones do as well. ‘The Perk upgrade probably saved me there and I’m just not far enough along to make the grasping ones excellent. I’m glad to see that it makes three crystals now instead of two.’

Turning back to my work area, I clean out the pan with some rapidly spinning Hydromancy and on a hunch, engrave “Poison Pan” on to the metal and handle with some Metallomancy.

“We’ll just keep this one as the dedicated poison pan… Just in case.”

Crushing the paralysis crystal with a resonation crystal, I decide to see what a basic paralysis poison will do. Empowering it with mana and catalyzing it with my blood, the dust glows slightly before I pour it in.

The brew finishes in a flash of light and a small splash from a popping bubble lands on my arm. “Oh fuck.”

Only a small numbness spreads from the point of contact on my skin.

‘Hm, not that strong then, huh? Well, I suppose my exposure was just surface contact and quite minimal.’

Pouring out the bland, desaturated brown colored liquid into a bottle after cooling it, I Inspect the brew.

Paralysis Poison

Quality: Medium

Traits: Paralysis

Description: Poison that causes numbing paralysis by inhibiting nervous function. Duration and effectiveness of the poison are dependent on the physiology of the affected target.

‘I wonder if I dilute this enough if I could make an effective anesthetic.’

Deciding to follow that idea, I make two more of the poisons and set a mental reminder to dilute them later and experiment.

Noticing the fleetchutes in the room, I create some stamina restoration crystals and look to my hold for experiment ideas.

While brainstorming, I make some stamina potions, just empowering the crystals and adding a drop of the slime and blood mix to each as I don’t know if these will be as popular. We have plenty of fleetchute anyway, so I can always make more later.

Figuring out what I want to try, I take aspect crystals of stamina restoration, strengthening, and resonation, crushing them up and adding them into the water after empowering them with mana to increase their effects and mixing a drop of my blood into the crystalline dust.

The resulting potion is dark reddish-brown and has a strangely energetic feel coming from the liquid. Pouring it into a bottle, I Inspect it.

Adrenaline Potion

Quality: Medium

Traits: Adrenaline Boost

Description: This potion grants a large boost of adrenaline, allowing one to go beyond the limits of their physical stamina for the duration of this potion. Warning: Extreme exhaustion may occur after use of this potion. The components of this potion are highly synergistic, creating an overall enhanced effect. Duration: 6 minutes 53 seconds. Doses: 3

Level up! Due to creating a potion with both positive effects and negative side effects, your Talent: Adept Alchemist has reached (6/50)!

‘Ooo, that one sounds useful. I think I’ll keep the best one of these I end up making for myself.’

Doing just that, I end up keeping an 8 minute 17 second 4 dose one that I used some neutral slime on.

The slime is all gone now, so I’ll have to make do without it until I can stock up on more.

Stretching, I look out the window and realize the day has flown by once more. The last hints of sunlight are turning the clouds in the sky golden.

Feeling fairly accomplished, I clean up after myself, wave goodbye to a very grumpy gardening golem, and head out to find Colt.

He’s out in the backyard with Pasivier, both of them Levitating various objects with an outstretched hand.

“Hey, Colt! Telekinesis?”

“No, it’s super precise Aeromancy.” He gives me a deadpan face before breaking out into a grin.

“You asshole.” Laughing, I walk up to them before hitting directly into an invisible wall. “Funny.”

Activating Storm’s Rage, I crash my aura into the wall, shattering it instantly, causing Colt to frown.

“That’s cheating.” He puts on a fake pout.

“So is using psychic mind powers.”

“Actually, Lucas, it’s a distinct application of mana-” Pasivier cuts into the conversation but Colt, seemingly fed up with hearing that explanation, talks over him.

“So! How about I make us some dinner! Wanna join, Pasivier? You can show Lucas some Telekinesis. I’m sure he’d love to hear your explanation once I’m busy making lots of loud noises in the kitchen.” He lays a hand on both of our backs, walking us towards the house.

“I suppose so, Colt. Lucas, I shall instruct you in the arts of Telekinesis. It’s a very refined art common amongst the Fae many years ago…” He drones on, really embellishing the magic more than necessary, so I end up tuning him out a bit.

Finally, we arrive inside, Adreanell and Ilmarinen aren’t in the house. We sit down at the table in the common room upstairs, chatting about Telekinesis. Pasivier explains and shows some examples of the mana flow required for Telekinesis, it’s quite a direct application of the mind through mana.

“So it is magic psychic powers!”

He facepalms. “Colt said the same thing all day. I am telling you it is an ancient and refined art…”

“Yes, yes. I get it. Very fancy. But it’s still psychic powers.”

He sighs. “How does that cephalopod deal with you?”

“Well. Aside from when I massively disappoint him with stone anvils or breaks from blacksmithing.” Smiling at him, he groans.

Colt comes out with food finally, saving me from more conversation with Pasivier as I can stuff my face instead.

Pasivier has both Colt and me practice eating with just Telekinesis, which I finally gain with food as the motivator.

Congratulations Lucas Creo! For empowering mana with the force of your mind, you have gained the Skill: Telekinesis!

“I did it! I can finally eat!” Getting a bit too excited, I end up firing a fork into the back of my throat and Pasivier teleports it out after.

Massaging my throat, I thank him, much to his chagrin. The night continues on pleasantly with me being much more careful with my Telekinesis, but still enjoying the somewhat taxing sensation of controlling an object with my mind and mana.

Pasivier thanks Colt for the dinner and me for the “ahem, entertainment” which sounds quite forced coming from him.

Both of us fall asleep fairly quickly, ready to start our next day after an hour or two of sleep.