Dorian flipped through a thick leatherbound, stroking his chin as he scanned the pages. None of these were quite right. All too weak or too slow. To create the kind of potion that’d get Kaya literally back on her feet, he’d need explosion: fast, big, powerful. That needed both potent ingredients and a few sacrifices that orthodox alchemists might raise eyebrows at.

The Multiversal Standard of Alchemy stretched far and wide, but the traditional order had funny ideas about ethics. They were grafted onto the society of the Realms, after all; however low those narcissistic pondscum might stoop in private, in public they needed a palatable image. No untoward experimentation it was. That left it to the true bleeding-edge innovators, the exiled, so-called Black Alchemists who wouldn’t let such pesky barriers as ‘moral codes’ get in the way, to push the bounds of Alchemy.

It was frowned upon, for instance, to create elixirs which harmed the user. Those veered too close to ‘poison’ territory, and the stuck-ups on the council would never condone such a thing. But the greatest power never came without some sacrifice on the user’s part. Even with all his technical know-how, there was only so much he could do when condensing with lingering Profound qi. To perform this fast healing he’d either need a very strong herb or another big power source.

Thumbing through the pages, he looked for his answer. Only after a few minutes of flipping did he find what he was looking for. His eyes lit up.

Luckily this society’s idea of ethics was much more lenient. Such considerations were much less prevalent when most of the collective headspace here went to “Ah! Run away from that big toothy Spirit Beast trying to eat me!” or some similar variant. It might’ve been different in the Oases, which he gathered were walled human strongholds. But out here, outside of outright murder or severe disfiguration Alchemists didn’t limit themselves to their inventions.

“Devil’s Promise…” whispered Dorian, scanning the ingredients. That was the name of the elixir. It likely came from poor radical sod who’d likely lived in some hole-in-the-ground, traveling with a Tribe much like this one, before succumbing to any number of tragedies and disappearing from the annals of history. But not before leaving behind this one critical sheet.

It promised an elixir which granted the user a sharp uptick in qi circulation, for a price: the sacrifice of a tenth of their lifespan.

All in all, it was a very stupid elixir. The benefits granted would’ve been recouped by a week’s worth of normal cycling anyways; the extraction of life was hilariously out-of-proportion. But it did offer him one critical insight. As he imagined the interacting components, the aspects layered atop one another, a lock clicked open in his mind: an explosion of memory. A mechanic which had lain dormant resurfacing.

“What luck?” said Dorian with a grin, spreading it out against the workbench tabletop. Sure, Kaya didn’t need extra qi circulation, and sure, this elixir was stupidly wasteful, but those things could all be fixed. The idea was what he was after: converting life force into fungible energy. It was the basis of most blood magic. Blood magic, he imagined, was as foreign to this realm as safety standards. Or showering.

He grabbed for his cauldrons and rods. At this point he was used to the chronic lack of safety equipment; with high-level brews in the Upper Realms he’d have been clad head-to-toe in resistant gear. The Alchemists here, on the other hand, didn’t so much as carry gloves; they seemed to take a ‘go with the flow’ approach with losing key body parts. Hu, Dorian noticed, had two conspicuous nobs where his ring and pinky fingers should’ve been on his right hand.

It usually would’ve been no issue, but this brew demanded particular attention. The ingredients yearned for release. If he wasn’t careful he might lose more than a few fingers. And the sun was setting… he frowned. Commencement couldn’t be more than a few hours away. He’d need to work fast. He didn’t have much time.

Hu was out doing whatever it was—probably chatting up some cook from a nearby tribe or shilling out exorbitant fees for meaningless curiosities—but to make sure he’d be undisturbed Dorian drew a curtain across his workstation in the back. This was his ‘Do Not Disturb At Risk of Big Explosion’ signal. Even Hu, who was wild cannon in spirit and cannonball in shape, knew not to disturb him in this state.

Rubbing his hands, he got to work.

It was easy when brewing to settle into familiar rhythms. Dorian liked to think of it less as an Alchemist ordering the ingredients and the energies to do his bidding than as a relationship, a revolving give-and-take. The neophyte Alchemist controlled; the master persuaded. It always turned out better to move with the powers of the universe than to try to forcibly bend them to his will. And sure enough, as he sank deeper into that meditative alchemical trance, the world moved with him.

His world became a palette of soft colors, dimming to darker ones, then angry ones, energies clashing against one another as he added more in. A line of sweat was already starting to form on his brow. A few weeks ago there was no way he’d have been ready for this brew; even prior to getting his Bone this would’ve been an impossibility. But there was no understating how much a grappling-based bloodline aided the influence he had over qi. He felt every tug of power in an instant; every point where more qi was needed hit him in the space of a heartbeat and he responded in kind. The world and all its contents faded around him. There was only him and the brew: Alchemy at its purest. For these few moments all of him was lost to the task. His mind sparked ten thoughts a second but none seemed out of place. Everything merged to a perfect sum. A state of flow.

The seconds melted to minutes, maybe hours. Here it was impossible to tell; even time had been discarded to the background of his mind. All he knew was that unlike most brews nowadays it took a great deal out of him. It felt like a chunk of his soul hard been carved off—in a good way. By the time he was finished he was drenched in more water than a Rust Tribe family drank in a day, but he was grinning. Satisfied. He stared down at the creation.

It was a vortex of red in the flask. It did not glow. It did not pulse. It did not shine. There was no hum of power to it, no remarkable undercurrent which marked it out as a liquid of distilled power. It looked less like an elixir than a vial of inert dark blood. It felt the same way too; it lay there like a flask of gunpowder.

This was an elixir of a different sort. It needed a fire to burn; and when it latched on it’d burn bright indeed. He tapped it with a hand and frowned. He was not given to mistakes, especially in Alchemy, but as he stared down at those muddy waters a feeling like apprenehsion settled into his gut, coiling. Ideally he’d love to test this on a subject, but there was just no time nor supply.

With luck, she wouldn’t even feel it. With luck it’d take life from her like aging always did: silently, painlessly, utterly. Gathering it up, he breathed out. The task was done. The world outside trickled back in, the sounds of people milling outside, new smells tickling his nose. There were more here than when he’d entered his mental cocoon. He snatched up the flask and made for the tent flaps, and set eyes on the gathered tribes of the Festival.

There were too many to count. There must’ve been thousands, of all garbs and power levels and amounts and tones, all camped around the central geyser. For a moment he was disoriented. Somewhere, hiding in this mass of flesh, were his competition. It was clear even from cursory inspection that these fighters were of a whole different tier from the runt in Rust Tribe’s training programs. To Dorian’s right tattooed youth walked by flanked by a cadre of lackeys, his mid-Vigor Realm cultivation base flared nakedly. Pridefully. By the way he was stink-eyeing the youths in other grounds, he too seemed on a mission to size up the rest of the Tribes.

Then he caught Dorian’s eye. Oops.

“What are you looking at, shrimp?” snarled the man. Dorian knew his type instantly. This was someone looking to start trouble. Someone who wanted to flex his status. Establish himself at the top of the hierarchies early.

In other words, a moron.

“Me?” said Dorian, scratching his head. “Oh! I was simply admiring your markings, sir!” He gave them another once-over, eyes widening. “They feel so powerful! And they look so well-made! It must’ve taken ages!”

“Hmph,” said the man, his lip curling up. It wouldn’t have been possible to arrange the muscles on his face into a more smug smirk. “As a matter of fact, they did. Bet you’ve never seen runes like this in your dust life, have you?” His smugness morphed to undisguised disgust as he scanned Dorian’s body. “What wyrm’s hole did you crawl out of?”

“Rust Tribe, sir,” sighed Dorian, bowing his head. You’re not getting a rise out of me. Try the next moron over, maybe? He gave the man’s clothing a yearning once-over. “I wish I coulda been born into a Tribe like yours…” he wrinkled his nose. “All I do here is chuck out wastewater all day.” He sloshed around the dim elixir; he’d seen one of them eyeing it. No repeats of Kuruk and Pu. “It’s miserable work…”

“Wastewater?” The man’s nose wrinkled, waving a hand. “Eugh!”

Not ten seconds later he was on his way to harass someone else. Nice.

Shrugging, Dorian kept on his way to the medics’ tents. It was time to give Kaya a gift.

Well, he thought it was a gift. It could very well be the opposite, depending on how she took it.

***

“It’s done,” he said as he pulled aside the entrance flap.

Kaya bolted upright, then winced at the sudden movement. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Hmm?”

“I’ve made it,” he whispered. He looked at the elixir with clear doubt. He exaggerated a hesitation. “Listen, sis. This is pretty experimental. I can’t be sure what’ll happen if you—“

“Shut up,” said Kaya. She snatched it, gave it a squint, thought about it for about a half-second, and downed it all in a gulp.

“Thanks, lil’ bro,” she said, smiling. She gave him a hearty pat.

“H-hold on,” she said. Her blinks were labored. “I’m so tired… all of a—“ Her slurred words cut out.

Her eyes sealed shut and she collapsed in a heap. She was out like a snuffed torch.

Dorian instantly checked her for a pulse. Still there—just sleeping. Then he stood, rubbing his chin. She’d be fine. There was qi at work in her, working a slow circuit around her body. Just how well it’d work out remained to be seen.

He crossed his arms as he thought. Sure, this would take a chunk out of her lifespan; maybe a few years. But the gains in lifespan she’d make from cultivation, and especially the resources she stood to gain at the Festival, vastly outstripped the sacrifice. Or maybe he was just pointlessly justifying it to himself. He put a forceful stop to that line of thought.

Setting all that mental clutter aside—her health wouldn’t be the only positive to come out of this. In a sense he was glad she’d opened him up to this way of thinking.

Was he really optimizing the run—taking full advantage of all he had?

This body was strong, but not optimal yet. Not by far. The path of body cultivation contained upgrades far beyond this. Qi cultivating, too, rose to far higher strata. His talent was likely the highest in Rust Tribe, but could he claim the highest in all the desert? All the world? Likely not. His bloodline was only a hasty extract from one Prime Bone, after all; there was much more purity to go. Talent to be claimed.

He scratched his chin. What was his lifespan, estimated? Two hundred years?

Perhaps it was time to make use of all his resources.