The Newt and Demon

6.44 - Duels and Mage Cores

There was once a thriving city in the endless crater. Jan stood at the edge of that crater, following the line drawn for him by his skill. Rain poured overhead, pooling in spots near the edge of the hole before falling down the edge like an endless waterfall. The pool that had collected in the bottom was vast, soon to be an impressive lake if the rainfall continued. He found a seat on a rock, looking down at the shattered mask of Twist. It would be easy to pull the trigger now. But that was an act that would provide no closure.

The masked elf stirred eventually. Pushing himself to a seated position and casting aside his broken mask. The scarred features of an aging warrior greeted him. Twist nodded, rubbing his head as though the fall had only given him a bump.

“How long have you been waiting for this?” Jan asked, gesturing with his revolver.

“Not as long as you would think,” Twist said, rolling his shoulders. He checked his hips, finding his weapons there.

“We thought you were on our side, you know. Thought you were one of us. Should’ve never trusted an alien.”

Twist scoffed, looking up to the sky above. A bolt of lightning streaked across the clouds as the rain ran down his face. “Does it even matter? You won. There. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No. I want to know why you joined Death’s side. Why did you open the Gate?”

Twist released a heavy sigh, falling back into the mud. “Because I thought my people could survive. A hope that we wouldn’t become fuel for this transition.”

Jan leaned in, training the revolver on the elf. “You don’t listen. You’ve never listened. That’s what we stopped, you idiot. We put a pause on the whole damn thing. That’s why we’re here!”

“Why would I lie?”

“Well, the Gates helped, didn’t they? Your friends were in trouble, and you helped them. That should make us even.”

“It doesn’t and you know that. What you brought to Earth cannot be forgiven. None of this would have happened if you didn’t.” Jan considered if he wanted a fair fight or not. There was something within Twist that could be redeemed, but he was too damn angry. If the elf did nothing back then, they could have been spared sixty-thousand years of shit for this world. That deserved a little blood. “Come on. Just like the old days.”

“A duel?” Twist asked, scoffing. “I can’t believe you’re going to try setting terms.”

“Yeah, a duel. Like I said, I think your people are somewhere. Maybe the queue they were talking about. We can talk about it after you’re full of holes.” Jan rose to his feet, preparing to fire. Twist was always fast. He tightened his grip on his other weapon. That Throk guy was a genius. “Ready?”

“Fine. Ready…” Twist vanished. Jan pulled the trigger on the modified sawnoff he held in his coat, facing backwards. The elf went flying back from the force of the magically enhanced weapon.

“Same old tricks,” Jan said, stalking toward Twist. “You gotta work on that, buddy.”

Twist groaned, rising to a seated position. The pellets hadn’t pierced his skin. But it must have hurt. He growled, launching himself toward Jan with his weapons sweeping out.

“The first tier should be almost the same.” Theo quaffed a Health Potion, the burns on his forearm fading in an instant.

Salire blinked from the ground, her face covered in soot. “Throk isn’t going to be happy we blew his equipment up.”

“We can afford to scrap ten old stills.” Theo kicked at the pile of Drogramathi Iron. “Small-scale tests are going to work best for now. That might just be the key.”

“It wouldn’t make the first step pressurization, would it?”

[Wisdom of the Soul]

It is impossible to conclude what the Tero’gal Alchemy Core would want for a first stage of distillation. More than likely, your focus should be on controlling variables before or during the distillation process.

“My magic cheating pop-up said we should control variables before or during.” Theo shrugged, not completely sure what it wanted him to do.

“Perhaps we can use something to draw out the impurities beforehand?”

Theo thought about that for a moment. His Drogramath Distillery Specialty changed to Tero’gal Distillery Specialty, and the description changed with it. If only perfection was accepted during the process, she might have been right. But he found it hard to reprogram his thought process. He had been using Drogramath’s alchemy since he arrived, and had only entertained the other forms of alchemy to distribute recipes to others.

“When you’re creating a salve with the standard form of alchemy, you create and bind a paste with the reagent. Let’s move forward assuming our reagents are twice as volatile, and our skills won’t help us.”

“Worth a shot,” Salire said, withdrawing ingredients from her inventory.

For the first test, they added more iron shavings than they needed. The resulting explosion was less impressive than the last, so they tried it again. This time, they used hunks of iron, rather than shavings. Ground Spiny Swamp Thistle Root went into the still with Purified Water and an equal chunk of iron. The idea was to use the iron as a gathering agent, rather than a catalyst. When this also caused an explosion, the pair took a break for discussion and theories.

Theo listened to the ideas Salire had, but found his attention drawn far in the distance. He felt something, although it was difficult to describe. He dismissed the chill running up his spine, turning back to his work. The working theory was that Tero’gal’s alchemy would be more ‘perfect’ than Drogramath’s version. That meant impurities had to be removed before or during the first phase of distillation.

“Reduce the amount of material going into the still,” Theo said, pushing himself to his feet. He worked a knot out of his back by stretching, tilting his head to either side until he heard a satisfying pop. “We’ll introduce iron at a two-to-one ratio.”

“Think it’ll work?”

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Theo kicked the remnants of Throk’s old still, searching until he found what he was looking for. He picked up the chunk of iron, holding it out for Salire to see. “Chunks of crystalized impurities gathered on the iron.”

Salire pursed her lips, her nose almost pressing against the iron as she looked at it. “What about a bunch of small iron balls, instead of one big one? More surface area, maybe?”

“That’s worth a shot. This might lead to problems, but I have a feeling this might work. We just need to find a bunch of…” Theo trailed off, watching as Salire withdrew exactly what they needed from her inventory.

“From an unrelated project,” Salire said, waving him away. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Suddenly, I’m more worried.”

If Theo and Salire were right, this would be the biggest roadblock for their new form of alchemy. It would produce a lot of alchemical waste, and the yields would be quite small. Whatever essence they could squeeze from the stills would be a tenth of what they could produce before. But the alchemist always had a problem with the amount of potions they were cranking out. Perhaps this was the system’s way of hamstringing the process, removing an unfair advantage Drogramath had on the world.

When the still exploded the next time, Theo got more insight than he had expected. Salire ran to get one of the junior artificers to make adjustments to their remaining stills. Theo flicked the man a silver coin when he was done, going over the change. The floor for the heat had been lowered significantly. It could go as low as a gentle heat, barely above room temperature, while only going as high as before. His thoughts were of a slow heating. A ‘perfect’ heating.

“It isn’t exploding,” Salire said, hiding behind a tree.

The mixture contained iron balls in ratio of ten-to-one to the mashed reagent. The water was still at a one-to-one ratio with the reagent, but the quantity was minimal. Five units for this first test. Theo started the heat at just below the ambient temperature around them, which was decently hot, even with the Season of Fire fading.

“This is the boring part,” Theo said, kneeling to check the gauges on the artifice. He had it set to increase the heat over the next five hours, finally boiling at the end of that time. “You’re following, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I like it.” Salire sighed. “Our Drogramath power stabilized the mixture before. Now we have to rely on skill.”

Theo laughed to himself. They had all the tools and experience they needed to figure this out. Both had an intimate understanding of Drogramath’s alchemy. They had crafted countless potions, worked the stills for days at a time, allowing them to understand the inner workings of the art. This might have been a different process, but it was close enough. The alchemist himself had run into a problem with alchemical waste while learning how pressurization worked. This was an adjacent problem he was certain he could solve.

“The theory is simple. We need to throw out all concepts of imperfection. Anything that would result in a less pure run has to go. In theory, we could run a batch of perfect reagents from the wild. Except those are extremely rare.”

“Makes sense,” Salire said, still unwilling to come out from behind the tree. “I think.”

It didn’t have to make sense. They just had to keep trying until something worked. The longer they tried different things, the more they could narrow down what the exact problem was. Thanks to Throk’s artifices, they didn’t need to watch the still as it worked. Salire headed off to take stock of their potion supply, issuing an order to the town to ration them for now. Theo left the notes to her, since he had no interest in it. He enjoyed the end result of the book, just not the work that went into it.

Theo took his break from alchemy to take care of something else that was important. Both his governance and Toru’aun cores were important to daily life. He didn’t use his Toru’aun Mage’s Core often, but when he did the applications were important. With her power fading in the core by the day, he needed to take care of it. While he was at it, he would fix up his governance core. Although there was likely to be almost no changes to that one. Hopefully.

Theo made his way to the temple, finding more people than ever praying there. He assumed the altar and got to work on his cores, starting with his Drogramath Governance Core. This one seemed the most willing to change of all the others he had worked with. It accepted the power from Tero’gal, evolving without an issue. When the message appeared, there were almost no changes on the core itself besides the name. The only skill that evolved was the Order From Chaos skill, which changed to something slightly better.

[Subtle Stockpiles]

Tero’gal Governance Skill

Epic

Creates a Consumable Stockpile within the nation’s storage. Those with permission may grant others access to this stockpile, allowing them to withdraw designated consumables from the stockpile while within the nation.

Effect:

A Consumable is added to your Kingdom Core.

While it was unclear what the system considered a consumable, this was an upgrade. Because potions were absolutely a consumable, this just added more things they could toss in that storage. The alchemist moved on, working on evolving his mage core. This one was less willing to change. When it did, the entire class changed. Theo wiped his brow after the message appeared, feeling something within him change on a fundamental level.

“This is gonna be a lot of reading,” Theo muttered to himself, pulling the class core up.

[Tero’gal Mage’s Core]

Unique

Mage Core

Bound

4 Slots

Level 29 (93%)

A mage core given to the followers of Tero’gal. This time of magecraft finds its roots in the Illusion Mage class, adding elements of reactive wards based on alchemy principles. Willpower may be woven into your spells, increasing their effectiveness.

Innate Skills:

[Sensitive Weaving]

Effect:

[Ward Mastery]

[Willpower-Fueled Ward Propagation]

[Sympathetic Effects]

[Intuitive Nodes]

The only skill that hadn’t experienced a change was Intuitive Nodes, since that was a Tero’gal skill already. Looking back on it, Theo should have realized this was the way forward for him. When all his skills began showing up related to Tero’gal, he should have noticed he was soaking up a lot of the energy from his old realm. He went down the line, looking at how every skill had changed.

[Ward Mastery]

Tero’gal Mage Skill

Legendary

Subverts the nature of your wards, allowing you greater access to effects and the ability to place them on any item, person, monster, surface, etc.

Effect:

When casting your warding spells, you may apply them to anything.

Understanding the property of an alchemy effect allows you to add that effect to a ward.

This skill had evolved from Surface Application, and the change was welcome. It was less specialized in the description, but Theo doubted the effect would be much different. The restrictions on the length his wards would last on various surfaces was gone. It made direct mentions to alchemy this time, which might allow him access to more powerful effects.

[Willpower-Fueled Ward Propagation]

Tero’gal Demon Mage Skill

Rare

Infuse your wards with willpower, creating a feedback loop.

Effect:

Increases the length of your wards based on willpower.

The change here was simple. Instead of fueling his wards to last longer in general, he now fed them his willpower. Which meant his wards would last forever. This evolution was an upgrade no matter how he looked at it.

[Sympathetic Effects]

Tero’gal Demon Mage Skill

Epic

Allows the user to link the effects of their spells.

Effect:

Your spells can now be linked to work together. This operates outside of the spell crafting system, and must be done by an ad hoc basis.

Linked spells will produce new effects, increased durations, instability, etc.

This skill had evolved from the Linked Wards skill, which had previously allowed him to connect two wards. Now he could connect two spells, not just wards. That brought something up in Theo’s mind. This core wasn’t focused on just wards. It had a specialty in wards, but if the descriptions were accurate, he could now cast spells like a normal mage. Perhaps a mage fueled by willpower, rather than hard work and study, but a mage nonetheless. The alchemist had a sudden need to cast a bunch of overpowered spells.

“Perhaps best if I move somewhere safe,” Theo said, looking around at the people praying in the temple. “Can’t just go exploding the temple.”