Chapter 90

I move to a room in the castle, one the various leaders had decided to prior to meet up and plan out our next siege. I am the last to arrive, everyone else has apparently been waiting for a couple minutes. Most people from the last meeting are present, with the exception of the head trainer.

“Took you long enough, did you at least figure out something useful?” Cath

“Yes, but not immediately useful.” Jack

“Better than nothing I suppose.” Cath

“If the two of you are done blabbering we can get down to business.” Johanna

“Right, the next city i propose we take is Melin, though it is less a city and more a stronghold.” Jack

“Why? After our recent victory Melin will be on high alert, the same tactics won’t work again.” Dragoon

“Melin is always on alert, it is a military stronghold built to be a safe haven for local nobility, assassinating the leadership wouldn’t work well anyway. It will definitely be more difficult this time, while the average individual strength of the soldiers is a bit lower, the organization is much better, too the point that even if all that was left was the grunts they could organise themselves well enough to put up a decent fight.” Jack

“Again, why? Why don’t we just take another city first?” Dragoon

“A couple reasons, one is they probably aren’t expecting us to strike them first, another is that it will provide an excellent place to siege the nearby cities. Of course it is entirely likely that those same cities will just give up without a fight if we capture it, avoiding pointless losses.” Jack

This seems to satisfy everyone in the room.

“So how exactly should we go about taking the city?” Asmodeus

“Simple siege tactics is what i would do, we would take too many losses if we had to directly fight them, so let's starve them out.” Cath

“They are no doubt well prepared for a siege, they probably have years worth of rations fit for nobles, so decades for a common soldier.” Uncle

“Nothing we can’t remove from the equation with various means. I’m sure you have some bottled plague somewhere, and i do believe explosives would be useful in this endeavour.” Cath

“I have plenty of both those things, any alchemist worth their salt, both figuratively and literally has some of those laying around.” Uncle

“And that's not all, manipulating the weather would make many of their men just miserable, in addition to destroying some supplies.” Cath

“Ok, but how do you propose we deal with their mages just conjuring food and other essentials?” Jack

“I can make the whole city into a dead zone, they won’t have enough mana to make many supplies, though i won’t be available for much of anything while i do that.” Asmodeus

“That, is actually extremely helpful, though it will make manipulating the weather a lot harder it is more than worth that. What do you need arranged to do that?” Cath

“Gems, the more the better, i can’t store that much mana in my body so i am going to need something to store the overflow in.” Asmodeus

“Would dead dungeon cores work?” Cath

“You're asking me if the single best mana battery i know of would ‘work’ as a place to store excess mana.” Asmodeus

“Sorry, stupid question” Cath

We continue to plan and banter back and forth for most the rest of the day, and we manage to develop a rather impressive plan if i do say so myself.

That evening Johanna and i sneak off to an unused room, and have some alone time together, with both of us leaving satisfied in the morning

During breakfast uncle showed up, handing me a potion before rambling on about something, i’m assuming the potion, went perfectly. It took me about ten minutes to calm him down enough to explain what exactly he was talking about.

“The stuff you gave me earlier, i made a potion out of it, well a batch of potions” Uncle

“I am assuming this is one of them.” Jack

“Yes, it damned well is. I have never made a finer batch of potions. Everything that could have gone right did, regardless of if it was due to chance or my own skill, everything went right.” Uncle

“Ok, but what does it do? It has to do something good.” Jack

“Yes, it does something amazing, it permanently increases a single random stat by a pretty significant amount.” Uncle

“By how much?” Jack

“How the fuck am i supposed to know how you scale your stats? Identify it yourself. For me that one would increase a stat by about five.” Uncle

It took me a couple attempts but eventually i manage to identify it through the system.

Potion of stat enchancing permenently increases one random stat by 10.2 points

seems i don't have the skills or stats required to get an idea about it's history from the system.

"This is actually really amazing, you made this with the toxins i gave you?" Jack

"yes, actually made a batch of ten potions, i could have made more but the effects would have droped sharply." Uncle

"I'm assuming this is one of the better made ones" Jack

"second best actually, saving the best for my son when he is strong enough to drink it without accidentily killing himself, i mean i could ask for your help with that but i would like to avoid turning him into an undead against his will." Uncle

"i would do the same myself" Jack

"of course my lovely wife and i drank the third and fourth most potent, which had barly any difrence between them. I have no idea what to do with the other six yet" Uncle

"personally i would give them too my closest friends, family, and allies, you could get a lot of money for them, but no where near what their worth, and money is obtained easily enough for an alchemist of your calliber." Jack

"yes, but who? you have some opinion on that, right?" Uncle

"i do, but i think you should make that choice yourself, if i remeber you correctly, this is one of your greatest achivements as an alchemist right?" Jack

"even if i had all the same materials i couldn't replicate this, potions that provide a perment boost like this are always an accident. yeah a skilled alchemist can improve the chances but at most to ten percent, and even then they aren't this great." Uncle

"then chose for yourself, you have certainly earned it" Jack

"so, can you at least tell me how you got that stuff, i know you can't get more but maybe i can." Uncle

"sure, i made it, inside my body. basicly just a bunch of gunk left over from increasing my posion resistence that was left to refine inside my body for years." Jack

"that is, i think i can work with that. hmm, undead won't work, i could probably get some easily made if i use some local gobins, but it will be low quality at best. hmm, using stronger creatures would be best, maybe gladitorial slaves? yes i think i'll go with that. tell me, how did you get it out of your body?" Uncle

"while meditating i tried to force it out of my body, afterwards i woke up covered in the stuff. Also my clothes burned up somewhere during that, no idea what happened with that." Jack

"that would explain many of the impurities i found while refining it. this makes things a little more difficult, i'll definitly have to use gladatorial slaves then, goblins won't cut it." Uncle

i leave Uncle to his planning before finally drinking the potion myself.

You have gained 10.2 points in book smarts.

'i was hoping for somthing more useful, but this could come in handy i guess.' Jack

checking my stats i now have 12.3 points in book smarts. taking a deep breath i meet up with some of the leadership, it's time to work out some details of our planned assult.

end chapter 90