Published at 16th of February 2024 2:23 pm

Chapter 2.2 Workaholic

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The battle lasted until sunset. The myconids, as Kris named the gorilla-like fungus beasts, retreated as the sun dipped over the horizon. Since the creatures attacked from afar, staying behind hills, Nox struggled to snipe them with Ratra’s Bow. He missed more often than he hit, and his abilities felt wasted on the hordes of smaller creatures attacking the first line. He continued assisting the healers after dusk until his hands demanded a break.

Instead of resting like the others, Nox returned to the mobile laboratory they had set up next to the Wedge. The vessel stood on the other side of the camp, between the last line of defenses and Baron Edelweiss' castle town.

Besides Ernest's feeding vats and cots, they set up three brewing stations: wo focused solely on healing pills and the sterilizing concoction. Nox had yet to come up with a name for it and believed it would sell for decent coin once he returned to university. It was cheap to produce and would appeal to all economic groups. He ensured concoctions in both were cooking well before turning to the final workstation.

Michelle had assisted with the sterilizing solution's recipe, and her name would go on the patent too. However, the second creation was all Nox's. He wasn't sure whether it would work but had high hopes.

The myconids had proven resistant to most poisons and sterilization drugs. Their physiology let them shed injured or burning parts of their body and regrow them swiftly. Captured specimens had displayed the ability to regrow organs too. They were almost perfect dungeon soldiers. Limited resources in Terrastalia kept their sizes manageable and numbers few. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case in the baron's fertile lands. The frequent rains, dead plant matter, and carcasses in the surrounding woodland had only accelerated their population's growth. Kris and the local lord saw no method of defeating the beasts besides scorching the earth. Nox had three days to find an alternative before the Ignis Blooms arrived for incendiary bombs.

Nox only had one idea to deal with the myconid threat. He got it from the recipes necessary for his ascension to adept alchemist. Sentient Synapse Slayer had made Professor Akash Das famous. Its invention won him the coveted position of Woodson University's Head of Alchemy, and also paid for his bi-annual trips to the Southern Continent.

Most boss-class monsters in high-end adept and higher dungeons had incredible healing capabilities. They could recover most body parts besides their brain. Sentient Synapse Slayer ensured their nervous system didn't recover. If injected into the spine, it could cause half, if not all, of their limbs to fail. Parties would need to get past their thick hides and whatever armor they had—natural or not. However, it gave them a chance at victory.

While the myconids were almost all fungus, they still had a nervous system that helped their odd stem-like brains control their giant bodies. It was well protected by the surrounding tissue and recovered from all damage swiftly. Professor Das's creation only disabled them temporarily. So, Nox took it upon himself to create a new recipe using the brews base concept.

The Flamesplitter Nox got from the asura rift proved invaluable in the experimental brew. Unlike Sentient Synapse Slayer, his creation didn't use lightning essence. It relied on flame instead. The original potion created a living blob of slime which carries semi-stable lightning essence. The arrificial organism traveled along the nerves, destroying connections and disrupting the signals sent through the nerves.

The myconids had the means to expel such an entity from their system. Nox hoped they wouldn't have the same ability if the slime burnt all tissue that assaulted it. The creature wouldn't live as long as Professor Das's creation. However, if Nox's plan worked, it wouldn't need to.

Observations suggested that the myconids opted to shed body parts with heavily damaged nerves. They preferred growing fresh limbs with fresh connections ro their brain stem. It put them out of the fight for a few minutes but proved a decent deterrent. Nox theorized they lacked the ability to repair complex nerve structures. Therefore, if his creation inflicted sufficient damage to the nerve column, the giant myconids would turn into immobile behemoths. Then the baron’s men could safely gather them in a secure location—perhaps a giant pit—before incinerating them. Valuable fields and peasant homes wouldn't be lost to the blaze.

Before starting his work, Nox sterilized his hands, forearms, and the Artisan’s Arm. The station had secured samples of living myconid tissue and several variants of the Synapse Slayer Solution. They were primarily living gelatinous blobs with hollow pockets for the lightning essence. The same wouldn't work with fire since pockets carries limited oxygen and the heat would damage the slimes integrity. Nox needed to successfully bond the artificial organism with fire essence. All public records claimed no alchemist had figured out the process. Nox believed he was close enought to become the first to make the breakthrough. In order to patent the process, he needed accurate records and contaminants would taint all results.

Nox’s latest base felt promising. It was far more viscous than Professor Das’s creation, and the essence-less version moved and acted far too slowly. The resulting sentient slime moved like a slug, making it unsuitable for a delver’s needs. However, combat in the open world lacked a dungeon’s hazards. There were no repair or self-resetting traps, and powerful Dungeon Lords wouldn’t change the topography to make life harder for war mages and ordinary soldiers. They had the option of safely hunkering down, waiting for the brew to take effect.

The flamespitter had recovered its charge. Nox conjured a slowing barrier followed by another with his signature Crystalize Essence spell. When he fired the artifact through it, the two oval layers converted all the fire essence in the flame tongue into essence glass. He kept the device going until the mana banks ran out. It took a couple of minutes. He had tinkered with the spell script, sacrificing range and duration for output. Nox had no plans to use the device in battle.

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While preparing for the coming semester, Nox skimmed a couple of artificing theory books to bolster his mostly practical knowledge. He had also heard artificers mention arcane interference before but not followed up on the phrase.

All artifacts project arcane fields. The more powerful the device and the greater its mana source, the stronger the waves it emits. When fields overlap, we get arcane interference. Minor arcane interference isn't too big an issue. Your artifact might occasionally falter. Its power levels and capabilities might fluctuate. However, when you have too many instances of interference, the chances of mana overload get too high. And no one wants the devices they count on to overload.

Nox had only witnessed the aftermath of mana overload once in his lifetime. One of Queen Mercer's advisors gifted his firstborn several artifacts the day he returned from Woodson University as a licensed war mage. When the young man announced a demonstration, the production houses warned him about the risks of wielding all simultaneously. He ignored them.

All was good for the first handful of minutes. Then the audience observed visible instances of arcane interference. Everyone asked the young mage to stop. A member of the royal guard rushed past the defensive wards to stop him. It was too late. Mana overload caused the devices to explode. First, only a wrist-mounted frost artifact went off. It froze the man's entire arm into a solid block of ice. The audience thought it wasn't the worst. Foolishness cost the war mage only one limb. Unfortunately, the explosion caused a chain reaction. He exploded. The royal guardsman also died in the miniature magic maelstrom.

Since Nox already carried Ratra's Bow and Artisan's Arm, he didn't want to take many risks. He hoped to have the Horn of Spirit Calling inspected and would keep it on his person. His runic knowledge wasn't good enough to modify its spellform, anyway.

"Focus," Nox whispered. Exhaustion had his mind wandering. He considered having a stamina pill and another sip of his cocktail. They'd ease the tiredness and keep him going for longer. However, there was also the risk of getting no sleep once he went to bed and then crashing the following day.

Shaping compressed the essence into a sphere. Nox’s mastery over the related planet had improved significantly during their travels. He mostly used it for alchemy and had learned to increase its scope. Even though he called his conjurations essence glass, they were crystals. As a result, they fared better under pressure. The volume of fire essence was too large to fit inside the cauldron, and Nox needed all of it.

First, Nox raised the base’s temperature, preparing it for the quantity of essence it was about to receive. The viscosity made stirring a challenge. Nox needed the Artisan’s Arm to handle the essence, so he had no choice but to use elbow grease. His tired muscles complained, and his head throbbed. Using Shaping to compress essence proved more taxing because of the exhaustion. Nox had planned on dedicating his first moon to creating vials or arrows. Now, he wondered whether crystal compression would serve a better function. It would reduce the mana cost and mental strain of the process significantly, and he foresaw uses of products of the spell in combat, too.

Beads of sweat gathered across Nox’s brow and trickled down his face as he pushed himself. A stinging pain attached to the back of his eyes as the minutes dragged on and the sphere of crystallized fire essence shrank. It cracked several times and threatened to destabilize, but Nox instantly patched the damage. When the Shaping spell finally gave up, the Artisan’s Arm held a polished sphere no bigger than his fist. It looked like a giant ruby with embers glowing within.

“That’s beautiful,” Annabelle commented.

Nox hadn’t heard her come in. He tried smiling at her, but his muscles no longer cooperated. Instead, his knees wobbled before giving out under him. Fortunately, his arms had enough strength to grab the workbench. Annabelle zipped to his side and gave him additional support. He had brewed a Tincture of Sigil Awakening for her a week ago. Her speed had grown significantly since.

“You need to stop,” she told him. “Eat dinner. Wash, and let's go to bed. You’ll be no good to anyone if you die of exhaustion.”

“I’m fine,” Nox said. “This iteration might be the one. Let me finish and test it. Then we can go to bed.”

“When was the last time you slept a full night?” Annabelle helped him onto a stool and held Nox’s face between her hands. Despite his exhaustion he couldn’t help but feel amused when she glared into his eyes. He found the way her skin crinkled between the eyebrows adorable. “You keep working late and taking your brews to stay awake. Then sleep four hours and get back to it. I notice when you come to bed after me and then leave at the first light of dawn. This is unsustainable. You’re done for today.”

“Can I just do one more thing?” Nox asked. “Please? The base is at the perfect temperature. Let me just add the essence and hold it in a Slow field—”

“You can use the ward Kris made for you,” she interrupted him. “Dip into your stash of mana gems if you have to, but you’re coming to bed.”

“Fine.” Nox sighed.

Unlike Nox, Annabelle had taken an interest in wardcraft. After witnessing Kris’s ability to detect and defuse them, the young noblewoman thought it essential to round out her skills as a divination support mage. She and the professor had worked tirelessly to apply several wards around the Wedge and the laboratory. The cauldrons around his personal workstation used a couple to adopt his Slow or Crystallize Essence spells. The projected fields were small and weak but would keep going as long as they had power sources. Because of the cost of mana gems, Nox used them sparingly.

The Artisan’s Arm carefully lowered the essence glass sphere into the cauldron. Essence Master, his newest ability from the last evolution of Sigil of the Artisan, gave him the ability to destabilize the solidified arcane energy without introducing lightning to the mixture. He immediately triggered the Slow field, hoping to slow down the process of the breakdown. Nox hoped the density would ensure the outer crust would revert to the natural stage first before stimulating change to the subsequent layers. Nox needed the change to occur as slowly as possible to maximize the bonding time between the living transparent sludge and the arcane energies.

“That should do it,” Nox said, putting out the burner under the cauldron. “I would’ve loved to maintain the Slow field and observe the bonding process personally—”

“Instead, you’re going to wash up, eat, and come to bed. You’re too much of a workaholic, Nox. There will be other means to deal with the myconids, Nox. It’s not all on your shoulders.”

Nox agreed with her. However, he foresaw great profits if he completed the concoction before the other means arrived. Flame Slime Brew would make him rich and famous.

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