Brewing Bad (Fantasy Isekai Light LitRPG)

The following evening, as Lucas and Heisenburgle prepared for their third test, with a higher charge and a lower viscosity poison, they discussed the ball and their target's reaction to his presence. The gnome was skeptical of his interpretation of events, but entirely unconcerned.

"If she doesn't play along, then we can simply ambush her at one of the country parties she attends and force the issue," Heisenburgle answered, examining the reinforced breach latches on his weapon.

"That would get a lot of innocent people killed," Lucas balked. "I think we can get her alone."

"I doubt that many people at those parties qualify as innocent," the gnome mused as they stepped back to a safe distance. "They might well serve as useful camouflage. We have picked a canny, powerful foe. She'd have a much harder time figuring out what was about to happen with music and conversation drowning out her senses."

"I'm not so sure we can just throw away people's lives like that," Lucas sighed. "Sure, they're assholes, but you can't just spray into a crowd like that. It's wrong."

"What's that? Spray and pray?" the gnome scowled as he shoved cotton into his large ears for the test. "My boy, though this test might involve that, your poison would be ineffective in that manner. This is about charging!"

At his word, Heisenburgle lowered his arm, and the nervous attendant pulled the trigger. This time, his hand didn't get mangled, but a giant gout of ugly fluid erupted from the weapon. It sprayed their poison-analog across the barn in a great gray-green spray.

If it were the real thing, it would have injected gallons of toxic sludge into their target's bloodstream, which would theoretically be enough to kill her. Lucas turned to high five the gnome, but he only looked at the outstretched hand with disdain.

"You're supposed to—" Lucas started.

"I'm very well aware of your 'high-fives,'" Heisenburgle spat, "But we are at least two tests away from anything that requires celebratory toasts and gestures."

"Two tests?" Lucas asked. "That water lizards and what? You're not saying you want me to go out and slay an entirely separate dragon first, right?"

That was enough to make Heisenburgle chuckle dryly as he checked the slime spray patterns and made a few notes about the velocities involved on his notepad.

"As amusing an idea as that would be," he nodded ruefully. "You are unlikely to survive even one attempt at dragon slaying, let alone two, so I think that would be excessive."

"So then your other test is…" Lucas answered, gesturing for the gnome to keep going.

"A side of beef!" Heisenburgle cackled. "Before we waste a valuable test specimen, we must ensure that back pressure has been resolved."

That much at least made sense to Lucas. The gnome could be infuriating when it came to his dogmatic views on alchemy, but at times like this, he could be utterly reasonable.

Lucas left him alone and returned to his own experiments. As he did, though, he thought about everything that the gnome had said. He thought about the long odds and exploding sides of beef. He even thought about how they might use steel pipes to create a sort of organ gun that would pelt her with musket balls or grapeshot or whatever it was called.

More than anything, though, he thought about how he might distract her, because the gnome had made a good point. He hadn't thought to bring a band to his showdown, but it honestly wasn't a bad idea. Some scented candles or cologne might be important as well, after all, who knew what scent might give him away. Would she be more likely to smell his fear or the poison he'd made from a plant she was probably very well aware of? It was hard to say, but it was definitely not a hazard he could afford to overlook any more than her scales or her teeth.

"Thinking about this like a date is not okay," he grumbled to himself as he continued to work on his current alchemical project: completing his Divine Potential achievement. He didn't know what it did, but the fact that it was there, and he was close, made him want it.

He could already make physical potions that made him outlandishly strong, and his talents allowed him to drink six potions a day. So, in theory, he should be able to make a potion for each attribute, drink them all, and max things out just long enough for it to count. Unfortunately, reality was a little harder than that.

Even setting aside the cryptic sentence that promised, "The reward for this will vary based on which attributes are prioritized," getting everything to an average of thirty was devilishly hard.

Currently, he had an Endurance of fourteen, an Intelligence of fourteen, an Agility of thirteen, a Strength of eleven, and an appearance and Soul of ten, which averaged out to twelve. That was enough to put him at above average, but it was less than halfway to the goal. For any normal person, the achievement was impossible. It was probably just there to taunt him, but Lucas saw it as a challenge.

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His three most important potions raised his Endurance by 24, Agility by 21, and his strength by 20. Those were big numbers, and with Empowered alchemy, or some careful formulation, he might even be able to push them a bit higher. Unfortunately, they also collectively lowered other attributes by seven, providing a net gain of only 58 attribute points, which was enough to bring his average to 21. While that was impressive, it was a far cry from where he needed to be.

That was doubly true because of how much weaker the mental potions seemed to be. Oh, there were some strong ingredients, but they seemed less than safe, and Lucas was unwilling to use ghostly leftovers that all but promised to fry his brain.

So, while Heisenburgle set up the next test, he worked on finding better ways to make intelligence and soul potions. Appearance was probably the easiest of the three, but the very concept of making himself prettier assaulted his sensibilities on some level. Crafting makeup to sell to rich women might have been fine, but making it for his own use? Lucas wasn't sure he'd ever stop laughing at that particular joke.

Unlikely to survive slaying one dragon. Those words haunted him for the next couple of evenings as he slowly reformulated each recipe, one at a time, to increase its power and reduce undesirable side effects.

Improved Elixir of the Earth Hardened Body (1 dose): +25 Endurance (enduring). Duration: 5 minutes. +25% more damage from air-aligned attacks.

Improved Elixir of Divine Grace (1 dose): +23 Agility (flowing), +4 poison (inflaming). Duration: 5 minutes. Imbibing this potion causes sleeplessness for twelve to twenty-four hours.

Improved Monstrous potion of Greater Strength (1 dose): +24 Strength (inhuman). Imbiber is filled with monstrous rage.

While Lucas didn't like the side effects of his new strength potion formulation, it was acceptable, at least for this test, as long as he did it somewhere isolated and away from the glassware. What was more concerning was that some of these potions would bring his stats up as high as 39, which was well beyond the 36 that his current achievement said was safe, which seemed like a bit much.

Still, none of that stopped him from working on the second half of his plan after he watched Heisenburgle blow a hole through a cow carcass with a poisonous water cannon a few days later. He still wouldn't accept Lucas' congratulations, then, though, vowing that "After I have slain a water lizard, I will accept your well-deserved praise, but not before!"

The haughtiness of that comment was enough to make Lucas want to never want to praise the gnome again, but he held his tongue and quipped, "Sounds fun. They can write a book about you. The tiniest dragon slayer."

"You don't think I can do it?" Heisenburgle asked, puffing up his chest. I'll have you know that I was quite a ruffian in my youth. "I used to ride a war dog and go on goblin hunts with my older brothers. I was quite formidable. I'm surprised you don't see how much of that experience has found its way into my creations?"

Lucas suppressed a laugh at the image of Heisenburgle as a young man. He didn't even dare try to imagine him mounted atop a large dog. Instead, he just said, "I didn't even know war dogs were a thing."

"Typical human chauvinism," the gnome sighed. "Just because you can't ride the animal, you think it can't be ridden." He went on at length, explaining the fine art of canine cavalry, but by that point, Lucas had already tuned him out. He supposed he could craft some kind of growth potion to make a dog larger, but even if he did, he doubted he'd want to ride one.

Instead, he just returned to his potion crafting and began to address his remaining attributes one at a time. Intelligence was the easiest of those that remained since he'd actually done some work on that front.

It wasn't so hard. In an afternoon, he'd worked through several increasingly powerful iterations of the stuff and found something that was useful. He then used his Empowered Alchemy to tone down the worst of its negative traits.

While it had more side effects than he'd like, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Prince's drug of choice. Just thinking about those withdrawals made Lucas' skin crawl.

I wonder how differently I'll see the world when I'm twice as smart as normal? He asked himself. Really, he should probably do a wide range of experiments on just this one aspect of himself. He'd probably think of whole new ways to kill Skylara like this.

Still, for now, he resisted. Lucas had a goal, and that goal was to open a door marked impossible on his system and see what lay on the other side.

Improved Elixir of Swift Thought (1 dose) - Intelligence 12 (Quick Thinking), essence -3 (Distant), endurance -1 (insubstantial), poison 3 (slow acting), euphoria -1 (pensive). Duration: 5 minutes. Imbiber may experience paranoia or confabulation. Mildly addictive.

After that, he worked on his soul potion again. This one he'd made once before, even if he didn't have the balls to actually drink it and find out what expanding his soul felt like. Still, he was able to make a slightly stronger version that seemed less likely to possess him with a little effort.

Improved Elixir of Haunting Epiphany (1 dose): 9 Soul (Unchained), 3 poison (wasting), 1 intelligence (keen), -1 endurance (dying). Duration: 5 minutes. Those who imbibe this elixir may vividly hallucinate about past lives for up to an hour.

By Heisenburgle's standards, nine would have been a fairly substantial boost. Lucas, though, was unimpressed. It was only a third of the amount he was jacking his endurance by. That meant that he somehow needed to more than double his appearance to hit the mark, which was far more than anything he'd ever made along those lines before.

Christ, why did it have to be thirty that I have to aim for? He asked himself as he did some quick math. If it were twenty-eight, I'd be there already.

The answer, of course, was obvious. Attributes of thirty across the board represented a huge amount of investment, even from someone who managed to get to level 100 with a ton of achievements and other advantages. Lucas was short-circuiting it entirely with his abilities, and the closer he got to achieving his goal, the less sure he was that it was a good idea to do so.