The two of them debated both options for a while longer, without coming to any clear consensus, before Lucas was too exhausted to continue arguing with him. The most he could get the alchemist to agree to was that he would keep his investigations “surreptitious” until Lucas had recovered, whatever that meant. He also agreed to more rigorous boratory safety practices and the immediate incineration of the toxic byproduct of the water of life.
That st part was Lucas’s favorite part, considering he hadn’t even asked for it. It would make sure no one else thought to try a Potion of Greater Communion in an attempt to follow in his footsteps. That was a battle he expected to fight in a few days or a few weeks when he made his next batch, but now that he’d pnted the seed in Heisenburgle’s mind that the stuff was beyond toxic, the problem had already solved itself.
So, rather than deal with paranoia or politics, he spent the rest of the week in bed, flipping through his retuned system and learning exactly what it was he’d gotten for all of his pain and suffering. The answer turned out to be quite a lot.
Name: Lucas Sharpe Css: Magical Chemist Level: 8
Agility: 13 Endurance: 11 Appearance 7
Intelligence: 14 Strength: 11 Soul: 8
Health: 100% Mana: 100%
Status Effect: Recovering (Death’s Door, 3 days remaining at the current level of care.)
Imbued Equipment: Ring of Vanishing (Fine Quality)
You have unspent points. Please use them to increase your ability scores or gain feats/perks.
Some of his stats had changed, but he didn’t remember exactly how. He was as ugly as he’d been before, but he seemed to remember that his soul was a little higher. What was a lot higher were his advancement points. He now had 35 to spend. That worked out to something like three a level and then some. He wasn’t sure exactly what the rules governing its increase were and made a note to try to figure that out ter before he moved on to other portions of his status that he’d already figured out how to access.
His list of abilities was still fairly short, but he’d only had one before, so any new additions were surprising. Still, past the few he had, there were still hundreds of new options for spending those points on additional options. That list seemed bigger and more complicated than ever.
“Acolyte of Lwyn,” he noted wryly as he browsed through the list of abilities he might pick. He had no intention of taking it, of course, but it still made him chuckle. “That’s funny. I wonder if she ever gave Thrzaelwick the option to pick that.”
Aberrant Chemist (by special dispensation from Thrzaelwick the Great and Industrious!) - Aberrant Chemistry will allow you (and only you!) to use magic-fueled talents to create potions that are not on the approved list, as governed by natural ws.
Deathless - It is much harder to kill you than normal. When your health falls below 10%, it increases temporarily by 300%.
Evaluate Purity - This ability allows you to gauge the purity of any reagent at a gnce for a small amount of mana.
Superior Forager - This feat will let you detect all reagents within a quarter mile to make your task of finding them that much easier. This feat uses mana for the duration that you upkeep it.
Unshakable - Those loyal to you are twice as hard to be bought off or bckmailed by others as they would normally be.
He supposed that he could get magic now. Even high magic only cost 10 points, so he could easily afford it. The question was whether he wanted to learn it. He expected that it would be a pain in the ass, not so different from Thrzaelwick’s interpretation of alchemy, and really, he wasn’t sure it would add any value to his other pursuits.
It was his achievements, though, that had been redone the most. Before, he recalled having half a dozen completed and another half a dozen in progress. There were a lot more than that, now, to the point where he had trouble figuring out exactly which ones had been affected by whatever the Gnomish God had done to his soul.
Alchemical (Chemical):
A Refined Gentleman: Refine 50/50 reagents into at least semipure forms! You gain the ability to [Evaluate purity]!
A (very) refined Gentleman: 67/250 reagents. In progress!
Accomplished forager (common): 112% of common reagents from your region gathered! +10% in all yield of reagents gathered.
Accomplished forager (common)(extended, unconventional): 112%/150% of common reagents from your region gathered. In progress!
Accomplished forager (rare): 87% reagents gathered. In progress!
Alchemical Schor: 10/10 potions successfully created - An excellent start! +10% to the effectiveness of all created alchemical mixtures.
Alchemical Schor, Greater: 50/50 potions successfully created - A true maestro! +10% to the amount of all created alchemical mixtures due to exceptional potencies.
Alchemical Schor, Master: 84/100 potions successfully created - in progress.
Careful Dosages: 37% use solvents to purify toxic reagents.
Celestial Solvents: You have created 1/4 Celestial Solvents. +1 advancement point.
Forbidden Knowledge: You have created 1/7 forbidden potions. +1 advancement point.
Master Alchemist: You have accomplished 3/13 requirements to become a Master Alchemist. In progress.
Naturalist extraordinaire: 32% You have discovered many reagents, solvents, and catalysts, but there are always more to find! In progress!
Perfectionist: 10/10 recipes perfected - You have perfected several easy recipes. Additional levels of quality have been unlocked.
Perfectionist, Serious: 89/100 recipes perfected. In Progress.
Practice makes perfect: 13% Different failed potions created will help you learn what you did wrong that much faster!
Combat:
Dead Man: Die 1/0 times. You have died and lived to tell about it. +2 Endurance, -1 soul. You have gained the ability Deathless.
Fancy Footwork: 44% complete - learn one style of sword fighting.
Murderer: Kill 1/1 humans or demihumans. - You have committed your first murder. +2% to all damage.
Murderer, Killer: Kill 1/10 humans or demihumans. - in progress.
Social:
Cheater: 1/0 - Be intimate with someone besides the woman you love. -10% willpower to resist cheating in the future.
Exceptional Etiquette: 77% learn all of Lordanin’s cultural rules.
Friends in High Pces: Speak with 2/0 gods directly. +2 advancement points.
Happily Ever After: Fall in love with a partner who reciprocates your feelings! +1 to the attribute of your choice.
Nemesis: Gain 3/0 serious enemies that want to see you dead. Increase luck by 3%.
Lifesaver: Save the lives of at least 1/1 person with the use of medicine, magic, or alchemical potions and elixirs made by you. +1 advancement point.
Lifesaver, Greater: Save the lives of at least 10/10 people with the use of medicine, magic, or alchemical potions and elixirs made by you. +3 advancement point.
Lifesaver Legendary: Save the lives of at least 27/100 people with the use of medicine, magic, or alchemical potions and elixirs made by you. In Progress.
Popur: Gain 10/10 allies that are loyal or very loyal to you. Gain Unshakable!
Popur, very: Gain 56/100 allies that are loyal or very loyal to you. In progress.
Rich: Gain at least 100/100 dragons worth of wealth and property. +1 advancement point.
Rich, Very: Gain at least 1,000/1,000 dragons worth of wealth and property. +3 advancement point.
Rich, Extremely: Gain at least 1,247/10,000 dragons worth of wealth and property. In progress!
Smooth Talker: Convince the King, or other people of simir importance, to help you, 7/10. In progress.
All in all, the list was dizzying. Lucas thought it was pretty unfair for the thing to tell him he was a cheater, given how hard he’d tried not to be unfaithful to Danaria, but there was little he could do. That hadn’t been there before either, as he recalled, so it was entirely possible that it was just Thrzaelwick fucking with him.
In the end, only one choice was particurly easy. He used the points granted by his Happily Ever After achievement to increase his soul by 1. That made him feel a bit stronger almost immediately, and it was a balm to his soul to know that some of the damage this experienced had been done was healed by her.
After that, decisions were harder. After reviewing the information on the soul attribute and noting that it was responsible for mental and magical resistances as well as mana and a variety of other effects, he spent another point bringing it to ten. He could certainly justify having at least an average soul.
I feel like I have a pretty great soul! He thought with a smile, though I doubt that Darius and his friends see it that way.
Lucas might have bumped it up even more, just to stick it to them, but he noticed that now that it was at ten, it cost two points to increase instead of one. He looked around at his other attributes and found that they were pretty much the same.
“So if it’s below average, it costs one to raise, but if it’s average or above, it costs two points to raise,” he said to himself. “I guess that makes sense. I wonder if I can increase attributes with more than just magical bullshit and potions. Like - does exercise matter?”
Lucas would have had the answer to that if he’d had access to all of this information back when he was recovering from his owl bear attack. He was weak as shit then. Now, though, there was really no way to say for sure without working out. He still couldn’t see exactly how much health, mana, or experience he had. There were plenty of abilities to increase all of them, though, if he wanted.
Fast Learner would increase the amount of experience he gained from all alchemical activities going forward by 10% for 2 points, Sage’s Blood would increase his mana by 30% for 3 points, and Heroic Toughness or Infatigable would increase his hit points. The first seemed to be able to increase them by 100% for 5 points, while the second option would increase them by 33% for 1 point.
It didn’t seem entirely consistent to him, but then, he’d never pyed these sorts of games before. He was a shooter sort of guy as a kid, and after that, well, he was too busy getting id and getting in trouble to worry about what level a fireball was or whatever.
Still, even with no knowledge of these subjects, what stood out to him most was that he needed to have a pn. There were a million directions he could go, so he needed to choose one and stick with it. It’s like a major in college, he told himself. He’d never been, of course, but his guidance counselor had talked about them a lot before he’d dropped out, in between the speeches on wasting his potential.
Well, in this case, his goal was obvious, at least. He wanted to be a badass alchemist. Compared to that, Skyra’s dangers, the Prince’s machinations, and Heisenburgle’s obsessions meant nothing. So, Lucas spent the better part of the day just reviewing the list with that thought in mind. What would make me a better alchemist, he thought as he reviewed the list.
He completely dismissed anything that was unreted, skipping right by anything that was reted to combat, socializing, or anything like that. He looked at things that were reted to magic or gathering only a little longer before moving past them.
It took him all day, but when he was done, those that remained fell into only a few separate categories. There were only a few that were directly reted to his goal in a way that made it hard to argue there were any other options.
There were some that were helpful but nonspecific that he might get in the future, like Sage Blood. There were others he really wanted, like Preternatural Grace, which increased his speed by +25% for short bursts of time for two points, along with others like Luck of the Damned, which increased his luck by 5% for a point, even though it came at the cost of making unlucky breaks for him much, much worse.
For now, though, he stuck with Empowered Alchemy, Industrial Brewing, Enduring High, and Toxicity Tolerance. Each of them was very specific to what he needed, and at seven points in total, they were an absolute bargain as far as he was concerned. Those choices left him with 27 points to spend in the future once he got a handle on all of this.
Empowered Alchemy - For two points, you can use your mana to imbue potions with essence. This can be used to increase the potency, decrease the side effects, or cause other novel effects.
Enduring High - For one point, potions st twice as long as usual to you, at the cost of slightly increased toxicity (all potions count as having a poison value of 1 higher than they actually are when imbibed by you).
Industrial Brewing - For two points, you may make batches twice as rge as usual with no difficulty. Additionally, bonus yields increase proportionally to the size of the batch brewed.
Precision Indicators - For one point you can see temperatures, viscosities, and other key indicators at a gnce when brewing potions. This requires a small amount of ongoing mana as long as it is in use.
Toxicity Tolerance - For one point, all potions you imbibe are treated as having half their normal poison content.
