《Darkness Rising》Chapter 9: Alchemy and Poison

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Ciar waited patiently while making small talk with Luna. He found her easy to talk to, despite hardly knowing her. Perhaps it was because both of them had unique appearances, but they seemed naturally drawn to each other. The same could not be said for the rest of the class. The pair remained isolated in the corner while all the other students sat away from them. Three minutes after the class was supposed to start, a disheveled woman with glasses hurried into the room. Placing a large pile of books on the front table, she turned toward the class, quickly running her hand down her clothes, smoothing them.

"Hello class, sorry I am late, I had to make a quick trip to gather materials." She says as she motions toward the books. She shifts nervously, her jade green horns bobbing back and forth. "I am Miss Janiva, your instructor for Basic Alchemy. Now we better get started, seeing as we are already behind. First, everyone needs to partner up, we do our experiments in pairs."

The class glanced around at each other. Some had already met a few of their classmates, but most were complete strangers. The students slowly began to separate into groups. Girls mostly chose girl partners and boys chose boy partners. Like earlier, nobody approached Ciar and Luna. Glancing at each other, the pair smiled.

"I guess were partners." Ciar said, slightly excited.

"It seems that way, just don't blow something up, if you can do that in here."

"No promises."

Ciar glanced around, and realized they were one of only two pairs consisting of both a male and a female. He assumed this was due to the average age of the students in the room. At 12-13 years of age, most had yet to get to the point in their lives where they were more attracted to the opposite sex than opposed to it. Ciar was fine with this. He knew he and Luna stood out from the others already, so being one of the few multi-sex pairs would not be anything special. The teacher cleared her throat, once again addressing the class.

"Now, I am going to assume none of you have experience with alchemy, so I wills start from the beginning. Alchemy is the art of creating potions of all kinds through the use of mana, magical plants, and magic stones. The correct mixture can produce astounding effects. For example," she pulled a small glass bottle out from a drawer in her desk, "this small bottle is powerful enough to make me invisible for 8 hours. Of course, I will not be demonstrating this, but you get my point. Now, I am a believer in doing, not telling." She pressed her hands on a mana sensor that was on her desk. The floor of the room shifted, and similarly to Basic Weapons Training, tables rose from the round in front of each pair of students. On each table was a variety of plants and stones. The plants ranged from spikey, black needles to glowing, soft leaves. The stones were anywhere from 5 millimeters to 3 centimeters in size, and glowed a variety of different colors. A magic circle was inscribed in the center of the table, and inside of it was a single glass bottle.

"On each of your lab tables is a variety of low grade alchemy materials. In the center of your table is an Alchemy Circle and a bottle. Place the ingredients in the bottle, then infuse the circle with mana. The circle will initiate the process, blending the ingredients into a potion. Be careful, as some reactions are unstable and violent. Do not worry about using all the materials, the school has thousands of these." With those words, she sat down at her desk, propped her legs up on the top, selected a book from the pile she brought in, and began to read.

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"Well," Ciar said hesitantly, "Shall we star-" He was cut off by the plink of a magic stone being dropped in the bottle. Luna then grabbed a seemingly random assortment of plants from the table and began to strip them of certain parts. She pulled a few needles from a spiky plant before she crushed them, releasing the smaller pieces into the bottle. Then, she stripped a dark purple leaf of all but its midrib and veins before placing them into the bottle. Then, grabbing a cork from beside the bottle, she closed it. Luna then placed her hands on either side of the circle and frowned. The circle began to glow. Steam began to form inside the bottle as the ingredients began to melt. A pure black liquid was slowly forming inside the bottle. When about half the bottle was full of liquid the steam disappeared, retreating back into the liquid. Relaxing, Luna leaned back into her chair, a smile on her face.

"Wha-what did you just do?" Ciar asked, dumbfounded by her actions and apparent success.

"Oh....I just made a poison. It's not lethal, but will cause sluggishness and shuts down some cognitive functions."

"You know how to do alchemy? How?"

"Like I said before, my mother always wanted me to help people with my soul magic. Well, it's not just with soul magic. She taught me how to do alchemy. My family was rich enough to get an alchemy circle inscribed in our basement. My mother purchased the materials and taught me how to perform basic alchemy. Sometimes you have to make poisons to use as a sedative, so I learned a few things. Soul Magic healing isn't exactly painless..." She said, a hint of bitterness in her voice. Realizing she did not particularly like that she had been forced to learn alchemy, Ciar tried his best to cheer her up.

"I think it is incredible you already know how to do something like this, Luna. I think I'm really lucky to have you as a partner. You're going to have to teach me a few things though. I'm taking poisons next hour, so having a headstart would be good." He said, leaning closer to her and emphasizing her name. It seemed to have the desired effect, as Luna slowly raised her gaze to look at him.

"You really want me to teach you? I mean, your in here at age 8, so you must be pretty impressive. Do you really need me to teach you?"

"Oh come on! I'm eight, and I come from the Communia district, I didn't even know what an alchemy circle was till 5 minutes ago. You are clearly good at this Luna, and I want you to teach me."

"Al-alright. Well...we need to start with the ingredients. The stone I used was called a dark stone. It's black in appearance and holds the element of darkness. It is used for debuff potions and some cloaking potions." As she spoke, her voice slowly began to grow more confident. "The needles come from a poisonous plant called Vesper. In great quantities, the poison in the needles can paralyze someone. You put in a small amount to give the slowing effect of the poison. The leaf was from a Memrior Tree. The Lamina of the leaf causes memory loss in big enough doses, while the midrib and veins cause the brain to shut down some of its functions, especially those pertaining to feeling pain. You leave out the Lamina in order to avoid the memory loss, obviously, and place the midrib and veins in. When you apply mana to the circle, it activates and breaks down the plants and stone. They mix together and form a sedative that can be used to dull pain and slow reactions to pain." Finished with her explanation, she looked expectantly at Ciar.

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"Wow....you know a lot. So, do you have the alchemy skill? Seeing as you know how to do it."

"Yes, its three skills actually. An alchemy skill that boosts all potion effects by a smaller percentage and increases your ability to strip ingredients, a poison skill that boosts effectiveness of poisons, and a potions skill that boosts potion effectiveness. I have all three of these skills."

"Impressive. Do you mind if I try? I want to learn the poison and alchemy skill." Ciar said. To his surprise, Luna laughed.

"You can try, but don't expect to learn the skill. It took me a few weeks of alchemy before I learned the Basic Alchemy skill."

Ciar just smiled at her and reached for bottle. He poured the contents into a basin sitting at the edge of the table before placing the bottle back in the circle. The circle glowed briefly and the inside of the bottle cleaned itself. Not pausing to wonder how it occured, he quickly grabbed the final dark stone and placed it in the bottle. Then, he grabbed a few Vesper needles and crushed them into the bottle. Then, much slower than Luna, stripped the Memrior leaf down to its midrib and veins. With all the ingredients in the bottle, he placed the cork back on and put his hands on either side of the circle, just as Luna had done. He poured Void Power into the circle, and it began to glow. The process inside the bottle repeated itself, and Ciar was met with a set of notifications that confirmed his success.

Poison Created: Weak Slow Poison

+Slows target when it enters their bloodsteam

+Dulls the target's ability to feel pain

Skill Gained: Basic Alchemy (lvl 1)

You have the basic ability to perform Alchemy.

+2% power to all potions and poisons

+You can strip ingredients 5% faster

Skill Gained: Basic Poisons (lvl 1)

You have the basic ability to create poisons.

+5% more power to all created poisons

Ciar smiled, leaned back, and mumbled, "Got em'".

Luna's eyebrows shot up, and she sat forward, her face full of shock. "You got what? You got the skills, just like that? That's impossible, that is literally impossible!"

Ciar smiled sheepishly at her, "Well, I have a skill that lets me learn things much faster....."

"What? That is so not fair. You just learn skills that easily! No no no, I have never heard of a Fellite having a skill like that. How did you get it?"

"I'm afraid I cannot tell you that yet." Ciar said, shutting himself off to her pleading. If she knew that he was a Primordial Oblivion, she would likely hate him. His Progenitor had been responsible for the mutation that caused the Fellites to emerge, as well as the splitting of the world. Minutes later, the period ended and Luna left the class. She was taking basic potions, which was next door. Ciar remained seated, waiting for the next class to start. Miss Janiva taught both Basic Alchemy and Basic Poisons, though from her philosophy of do not tell, he was not quite sure if she truly taught anything. Before class started, the table in front of him suddenly shifted back into the ground, disappearing from sight as the ground closed above it.

Basic Poisons started the same way as Basic Alchemy. Miss Janiva told the class to experiment, summoned the tables, now freshly stocked with new stones and ingredients, and went back to reading her book. In Basic Poisons, the students did not choose partners. Each student had their own work table and set of ingredients. Ciar spent the rest of class replicating the Slow Poison until he ran out of ingredients. He then decided to experiment with other ingredients, but had no luck. The class was not without fruit though, as he was greeted with two messages just before his Vesper needles and Memrior leaves ran out.

Basic Alchemy has reached (lvl 2)

You have the basic ability to perform Alchemy.

+4% power to all potions and poisons

+You can strip ingredients 10% faster

Basic Poisons has reached (lvl 2)

You have the basic ability to create poisons.

+10% more power to all created poisons

Content with his progress, Ciar exited the building and went to his 8th class of the day, Basic Enchanting. The class was taught by Sir Medwards, a clean shaven, older man with pure white hair. He spent the entire class talking about the history of enchanting and how to perform it. Ciar ignored the history part, but paid close attention to the explanation on how enchanting works. What he gathered from the lecture was that to enchant something, you had to have a stone of that particular element. Since stones with Time, Space, Gravity, and Reality 'elements' were extremely rare, items with enchantments in these fields were extremely valuable. Ciar briefly thought about the Endo, the double bladed sword from Basic Technological Weapons. It has several gravity enchantments on it, and even had mana strengthening and sharpening enchantments on it. The stones for the final two were also extremely rare. For the first time, Ciar truly had a real appreciation for the value of the weapon.

In order to enchant the weapon, the enchanted draws the essence out of the stone, and funnels it through their body, mixing it with their mana before pushing it into the object. The enchanter than uses his mana to manipulate the essence into doing what he desires. If the enchanter does not have enough mana to perform the enchantment and properly control the essence, it will react violently, often destroying both the stone and the weapon. As a result, complicated enchantments were much harder to do and were coveted by almost everyone. To put multiple enchantments on the same weapon, they had to be layered on top of each other. The essence of the second enchantment would have to blanket the first enchantment, but not infringe upon it. Doing this, along with manipulating the essence to perform the required enchantment, required a level of control and skill almost none possessed. Multi-enchantment weapons were some of the most valuable weapons in the world. Ciar left the class excited to enchant his own armor and weapons, while also holding a new appreciation for the creator of the Endo.

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