The Newt and Demon

“He just gets a little confused when he’s scared,” Sarisa said, patting Rowan on the shoulder.

It was more like Rowan had an existential crisis for almost no reason. But Theo had nodded at Sarisa’s words, putting her brother’s mind at ease when he was assured everything would be just fine. There were some seriously big implications from this kind of potion-craft, and the alchemist was eager to see what would work. But when he went through the portal at the town’s square, he realized how inaccessible Xol’sa would be today. The man seemed to get busier by the day.

Theo then tried to approach Zarali, who was even busier trying to keep all the space elves alive. Apparently, the shock of having their souls reforged after being infused with void energy was almost too much. It took everything the healers had to keep them going. But at least they could now take the task in shifts, giving each the occasional break.

But this left the alchemist with no other option. Despite his most sincere objections, he had to turn to books. Which meant he had to read through pages of nonsense to find the information he wanted. With a sigh, he left the crypt—infirmary—under the temple and headed for the lab. There he dug through the endless storage crates which seemed to multiply by the day to find a book he had been given by Xol’sa.

“This brings back some memories,” Theo muttered, cracking it open. Thanks to his enhanced memory, he could still remember Axpashi. The language used by most mages in the world was a direct link to the magical world. When spoken in the right order, with intent, and the correct class these words could produce spells. One could also form these words as magical arrays in their soul, producing similar effects.

With the idea of combining a random magical property with an essence that worked with suffuse, Theo flipped through the book and found a few basic mage spells to test. He might have learned Axpashi, but he had spent almost no time understanding how the underlying magical theory worked.

“Should be easy enough… Right?” Theo asked, scratching his head as he leaned over the book in his lab.

Salire edged over, poking her head around him as he looked over the book. She cleared her throat. “Don’t do that in the lab.”

“Do what?”

Theo looked up from his book, narrowing his eyes at her. “I wasn’t gonna.”

Salire pointed a finger at the door. “Out. I know that look.”

Theo grumbled, but secretly smiled to himself. He had fully intended to try casting a small fireball in the lab. But he left, heading out to one of the many empty fields around the lab. He found one with few dead trees. It wouldn’t go over well if he caught the town on fire. Then he got to work on forming his first spell.

The theory was simple enough. All he needed to do was form the right spellwords in the right arrangement, and a spell would happen. Easy enough in theory, but in practice it was much more difficult. The alchemist looked between the image he had conjured of his soul, and the textbook. After some adjustment, he had a basic spell array formed. He flooded the arrangement with mana and held his hand out.

A small flame appeared in Theo’s hand, flickering and almost dying against the slight breeze that blew through the town. He added more mana to the spell until it became stable, then invoked the rest of the spell. A small ball of fire lumbered forward, losing momentum and falling to the ground. He watched as it fizzled out after a few seconds. It might have seemed like a failure, but the fundamentals were there. And there was an infinite arrangement of spellword arrangements he could form.

“Which one are we gonna do first?” Theo asked, rubbing his hands together. He felt the excitement building in his chest as he flipped through the book. Eventually, he found something overly ambitious. “Come on. Why not, right?”

Theo cleared out his essence infusion artifice, dumping a few units of Dexterity Essence into the essence side of the contraption. He then held his hand over the mana side and focused. The array he wanted to infuse into his mana was more complicated than the last one he had done. With the Imbued Lesser Reforge Soul Potion he had created, he had only used a full concept instead of an array. Properties from reagents came as concepts, while the arrays came as completed spells. The spell he had selected was in the support category, and had a few more parts than he was comfortable casting.

Despite these challenges, Theo successfully infused the mana with this spell. It dripped into the container, settling in and crackling with flashing purple energy. The best part of all was that it didn’t explode. The charged mana sat there, bubbling slightly but otherwise not exploding.

“Cool,” Theo said, shutting both containers and clicking the artifice on. It got to work, and he stood behind a conjured shield as it mixed the two vaporized liquids.

As expected, the interaction between the two elements was more explosive than the first. Small strikes from the bottled lightning lashed against the side of the container. It was fortunate that Throk built these things to last. The first drops of the new potion fell into the flask, swirling with a bright purple color. It might’ve been the most colorful potion Theo had ever crafted. Bits of that same lightning raced just under the surface, as though he had literally bottled purple lightning.

Just as with last time, it took about an hour for the two-unit mixture to brew completely. Theo found it hard to wait until the mixture was done brewing, but he managed. Once it was done, he approached with caution and observed with his future-sight. As he inspected the potion, he had a better understanding of how this system worked.

[Infused Lesser Dexterity Potion]

[Potion] [Infused Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 98%

Drink to gain the swiftness of the wind.

Infusion Array:

[Gale’s Speed]

Effect:

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

+20 Dexterity for 1 hour.

Increase movement speed by 25% while out of combat.

“That’s a weird potion,” Theo said, nodding to himself.

It wasn’t a bad potion, but it was weird. It had infused the power of a spell called Gale’s Speed into the Lesser Dexterity Potion. When cast by a support mage, this spell would’ve increased a person’s run speed while out of combat and given a minor Dexterity boost. When combined with the standard dexterity potion, this both increased the amount of Dexterity it granted, and gave the speed bonus.

“Neat.”

Before returning his findings to the lab, Theo reproduced the technique, taking physical notes to share. He made the same kind of potion, but instead used a strength-based buff applied to a strength potion. He inspected the resulting potion.

[Infused Lesser Strength Potion]

[Potion] [Infused Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 98%

Drink to gain the strength of the earth.

Infusion Array:

[Earth’s Might]

Effect:

+20 Strength for 1 hour.

Increase force from strikes by 25%.

"Also neat," Theo said, nodding at the potion.

With the confidence that he could reproduce this process, Theo headed back to the lab. The day was wearing thin, but his excitement for the new alchemic method was overwhelming. He was happy that Salire was still working on the third floor, finishing up a run of potions. The alchemist extended one of the two potions he had just crafted, smiling all the while.

"What is this?" she asked, holding the potion out with knitted brows. "What is an infused potion?"

Theo handed over the notes he had taken, and felt giddy as she read them. When she was done, he explained the process verbally, which excited her just as much.

"What is this? A new way to handle suffuse potions?” Salire asked, reading over the instructions once again. You can imbue any spell array into the potions."

"I think there's a limit to the complexity of the array, and it has a lot to do with the skill of the person as a mage. But the two pieces also have to fit together, just like the suffuse potion."

"I've heard of some pretty complex spells," Salire said, shaking her head. "So I can't really imagine the kind of crazy things you can make with this. Does this replace the third-tier process? No, it's more like a side process. Just as you said. How many more of these are we going to discover?"

Progression through alchemy sometimes did this. As they ascended through the tiers, the path forward wasn't always a straight line, but sometimes one that led to the side. This allowed Theo to create more powerful potions by combining other elements. While Theo wasn't completely sure of the capabilities of infused potions, he was excited to see how far he could take them.

“I know Xol’sa is a good mage, but I don't think I would put him on the level of an archmage. And the only archmage I know is on the moon."

"Why don't you just go get that archmage?" Salire asked.

"Because Uharis is a jerk, and I don't like him," Theo said. "He had a chance for redemption and blew it. Maybe one day I'll pluck him from the moon, but I was thinking it would be funny if he stayed there during the entire reset."

"Just remind me not to get on your bad side, I'd rather not live on the moon.”

Theo helped Celia finish her brewing for the day. They then flipped through the only magic book he had, discussing which spells would synergize with which potions. If one dug deep enough into spellwork, they would find a spell array for almost anything. But the alchemist's instincts told him that not every spell would suit his purposes. He could tell that simply by feeling.

"This has a lot of potential to do some extremely evil things," Salire said, jabbing her finger into the page. "Could you imagine getting into this?"

Theo nodded. He could imagine getting into necromancy because he had already accidentally done so. There were whole classes of magic that the book warned about: necromancy and death magic, along with some combinations of common elements that would produce devastating effects. He had no intention of brewing potions with this, not unless he really needed to, but that drone questioned his ability to do it. The arrays for these were incredibly complex, and while he might have been able to form them in his soul, transferring them to his mana might be a problem. This was a topic of discussion between him and Salire.

Despite not growing up in Broken Tusk, she had many half-ogre instincts. They often believe the ends justify the means, and a few war-crime potions would be great to have on hand. Theo cited more of a marshal's point of view, favoring retaliation ‌at the time of attack. But he couldn't deny that some half-ogre preparedness lurked within him. Broken Tusk was still standing, and preparation was a large part of that. Just because they had giant rail guns on the walls didn't mean they planned on bombing everyone around them. They were defensive measures.

"I think we'll get the most out of this by targeting enhancement spells," Theo said. "Although there are a few fire-based spells that might really give our bombs some kick."

"We should do a potion with this spell," Salire said, jamming her finger into the page.

Wizards of the world broke their spells into tears, just like alchemy, but it didn't seem to follow the same pattern. The estimated spell she pointed to was meant for people between levels 30 and 50. It was a haste spell that made a person faster, not just physically. It also made their thinking faster. I've never seen a pure haste potion and thought it would be very interesting.

"We could brew one if you didn't mind," Theo said. "Staying up a bit late tonight. Tresk might be upset with me, but I'm sure we could get Rowan and Sarisa to cater it, kind of like an event."

Sarisa, of course, stepped out from the shadows. "Yeah, what do you guys want for dinner?" she asked, smacking her lips. "I'm getting hungry."

"Just whatever you feel like whipping up," Theo said. "You can bring it to the field outside of the lab, just to the northeast. That's where I have the still set up."

"You got it, boss," Sarisa said, stepping back into the shadows and vanishing.

The duo grabbed everything they would need to create a new potion based on this haste spell. After all that discussion, Theo finally got to show her how the process worked in person. She watched as he prepared the mana side of things, focusing on the spell array for the haste spell. It was more complicated than the ones he had used before, but it wasn't outside his skill range. The array would have been far more difficult to form if he didn't have a perfect memory. For the base of the potion, they decided to use something fairly standard.

The issue with the haste spell was that it needed to bind to a potion with a movement aspect. They had plenty of Retreat Potions. So, why not?

Standing back, Theo felt that the mixture was good. As the vaporized mana blended with the vaporized potion, they mixed, creating a green mixture that lingered in the air before being sucked into the condenser coil. Sarissa and Rowan returned sometime later with tables. They piled food onto them and then produced a bunch of chairs. After a while, Tresk and Alex also returned, barely saying anything and grabbing food. Eventually, Tresk dumped a bunch of level 40 monster cores onto the ground before the alchemist.

"We have a shared inventory," Theo said, giving Tresk a flat look. She simply shrugged.

When the potion was done, Theo pulled it up for inspection. This was one of his favorite potions because it provided many escape options during combat.

[Infused Lesser Retreat Potion]

[Potion] [Infused Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 98%

One second after drinking, the imbiber will teleport backwards to a safe location. They will then get the [Lesser Haste] effect.

Infusion Array:

[Haste]Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Effect:

Teleport backwards to a safe location.

Gain the [Lesser Haste] effect, increasing movement, reaction, and thinking speed.

“Hey, can I get about a thousand of those?” Tresk asked.