The Combat Alchemist

When Lukas woke up,the forest was dark and silent, the only sounds came from the breezes that flowed through the forest, rustling branches and bushes. With a yawn, he looked around somewhat blearily. It was strange to wake up in the middle of the night well-rested. He felt like he should still be tired and want to go back to sleep. Instead, it was like he'd slept for twelve hours in the softest bed in the world.

Lukas knew it was a result of his new body not needing to sleep for as long, but it was the first time he'd slept outside since he'd absorbed the Stone of Rebirth. In the cave, glowstones had lit up the entire place constantly, making it hard to truly keep track of time. That was one of the reasons Lukas' sleep schedule had taken a turn. Now that he was back outside, he'd need to find ways to fill the downtime since he didn't need as much sleep.

The answer was fairly obvious to Lukas. It was around two in the morning, letting him know that he'd slept about five hours. It was still late in the night and no beast was active, meaning he'd have to find a way to entertain himself. That was fine because he could just do some alchemy and meditation, something he was hesitant to do during the day when he could be fighting. Now that there was downtime though, Lukas saw no reason not to fill it with other activities. He could've just used the time to relax, but he wanted to feel productive.

With an old-man grunt, Lukas stood from his spot against the tree and stretched before jumping down. Before he got to work, there was something he wanted to do. Channeling his mana, Lukas activated his Lurker of the Shadows ability to see if he could use it at night. He didn't see any reason why it wouldn't, but he wanted to check and see if there was any kind of limitation at night. For all he knew, he couldn't enter darkness—only distinct shadows. It would be a pretty big kick in the pants if that were the case, considering his class name.

Luckily, there didn't seem to be any such restriction on the ability, as Lukas seamlessly melted into the shadows. The forest was a shadowy playground for him at the moment, with even more shadows than during the day. The moon was out though, and Lukas quickly learned that moonlight would throw him out of his ability. That seemed kind of dumb with his class and all, but the ability did need some balance, so Lukas didn't complain too much.

He continued a few more tests as he walked through the shadowy realm, finding that the results matched those from the day. Lukas did find that his mana expenditure was lower, though. He wasn't sure if it was because it was nighttime and an effect of his class, or it was just because darker shadows required less mana to travel through. After stumbling across a small clearing flooded with moonlight, he tested the effect.

It turned out that traveling in lighter shadows closer to a light source cost more mana than moving through the darker corners of the forest. It wasn't much of a discovery, but it would help him decrease his mana usage. He did wonder if moving through darker shadows had any other effects, like making his aura even harder to detect, but he wasn't sure how to test such a thing without someone to test it with.

Lukas continued to mess around with his new ability for a while longer, only stopping when he was satisfied that he had a decent understanding of it and its capabilities. Stepping out of the shadow realm and into the moonlight, Lukas sat himself down against a tree on top of a hill. Getting comfortable, he got ready for a meditation session.

He wasn't close to a new level in either of his classes, but he liked meditating as it helped clear his mind. He sat under the stars, taking in the cool quiet of the night. Closing his eyes, Lukas sank into the meditation, getting lost in it. Hours passed like nothing, seeming only like a few seconds as he sat in quiet contemplation. What he was contemplating he wasn't sure, but he reached out to it with his spiritual senses anyway.

In all honesty, it was the best meditation he'd ever done, like he was truly connecting not only to himself but the whole cosmos. It was unlike anything he'd experienced before. Lukas lost himself in it, allowing himself to become a conduit for the universe in order to better connect to it. At one point, something told him to open his eyes; he tried to ignore the feeling, sure that it would take him out of his meditation. Eventually, he gave in and took a look around. He gazed upon the uncountable stars and the moon in the heavens above, realizing that they were what he'd been pulled into. The infinite.

Lukas continued to watch the heavens avidly, attempting to take in their secrets. He felt like he could glean the shallowest depths of the vastness, and it made him feel insignificant and infinitely small. Most would find this unsettling—being forced to realize how tiny they were could cause an existential crisis. But in Lukas, there was no such thing. If anything, he felt like his soul was bolstered by what he'd seen in the stars above. It gave him meaning, and a goal — one that he hadn't forgotten. One day, he'd leave his mark or die trying, and that was something worth doing.

Eventually, Lukas' mind and spirit settled back in his body as his connection to the sky was cut. It was as though it had nothing left to impart that night, leaving Lukas to let out a low breath as he refocused on the world around him. Glancing about, he felt like he had to anchor himself back in reality after his meditation. He wasn't even sure he could call it that after what he'd just been through. One thing was for certain though, Lukas would be meditating at night whenever he could. It was as if the session had tempered and strengthened his soul somehow, and if he could get even a sliver of that each night, he'd take it.

It took a while for Lukas to settle himself after the wild meditation, but he was eventually clear-minded enough to get started on alchemy. He'd used a fair bit of poison and potions since leaving the cave and wanted to stock up. He didn't want to become someone who went through his entire stock and then had to sit down for weeks on end to rebuild it. Besides, there were still a few more hours before sunrise, so surely he'd be able to replenish his stock while also adding to it.

Whipping out his cauldron, Lukas was ready to get to work but stopped. He was about to add distilled water to the cauldron but just stared at the flask. It was full of water—how much, he wasn't sure—but a single flask had lasted him his entire stay in the cave. He had two more flasks aside from the first, meaning he had a ludicrous amount of water with him.

Nodding, Lukas set the cauldron aside and stood. He moved away from the tree before tipping the flask over his head, and water began pouring over him. The water was cold in the night air, and he didn't have soap or a way to dry himself, but that was better than being extremely dirty and covered in dried blood. He didn't even take off his clothes as the water ran down his body, turning a reddish-brown by the time it spilled onto the forest floor.

Lukas scrubbed himself, eager to get the sweat, grime, and blood off. It had only been about a day since leaving the cave, but he wasn't going to let himself get as nasty as he had been before. Back then, he'd had so many layers of filth covering him that it probably acted as a form of armor.

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A few minutes later, Lukas stood soaking and shivering, but a lot cleaner. In the end, he had taken off his shirt, wringing it out to try and remove as much of the dried blood as possible. The shirt was already in pretty rough shape, with a few holes from the Iopie Adder's fangs and some cuts from other beasts. The pants were much better off, but most beasts and monsters aimed for his chest or head, so they weren't in terrible condition. Both were stained, though—the once-white shirt now a gross brown similar to his pants.

Once he was finished, Lukas actually got to work on alchemy. It was a little tricky since he didn't have the Bunsen-burner-like tool to heat up the distilled water. This meant that he was forced to inject mana into the rune at the bottom of the cauldron. It was a simple rune that heated the contents, but it made things a bit more difficult since it only left him one hand to do things with. When it came time to control the energy within the concoction, things were even worse.

Lukas was forced to split his attention between keeping the mix boiling with one hand while controlling the energy inside with the other. Thankfully, he was decent enough with energy control that he didn't have any failures, but his potions and poison were a bit lacking as a result. He didn't mind, though—it was just something else to overcome and conquer. In the end, it would lead him to be a better alchemist.

For hours, Lukas made a mix of potions and poison, happily taking the time to make what improvements he could. He was halfway through making a health potion when he stopped, feeling something change. He turned his gaze up to the sky and found the first streaks of dawn in the inky blackness of night. Most of the stars had gone, the moon was well on its way to the horizon, and the few clouds were starting to light up with pinks, reds, and oranges.

Lukas quickly finished the health potion before packing up and getting his day started. To the sounds of bestial roars, he began to head roughly east, toward the rising sun. During his travel the previous day, Lukas found that the beasts were getting slightly stronger as he headed that way.

The likelihood of civilization being where the strongest creatures were was quite low in Lukas' opinion, but he wasn't looking for civilization at the moment. He wanted to get a few more levels under his belt before he showed up at a town or village, unwilling to be weak if someone found out he was an outworlder.

That being said, he wasn't going to wait until he got to the next rank. Lukas didn't know how long that would take and didn't know the requirements to move on to iron. Sera had said something about maxing out all his abilities, but Lukas wasn't sure if he needed to do anything else. The goddess wasn't exactly big on giving out information.

So, Lukas went east, looking for stronger enemies and more experience. He didn't travel through the shadows, wanting to preserve some of his mana for later. Due to this, and Lukas' retracted aura, he got into two fights early in the morning, neither of which was of any note.

In both, he used poison and the shadows liberally, trying to get used to the new fighting style. He was still adjusting to the strange sensation that came over him whenever he entered and exited the shadows, earning him a few wounds, but overall he found success in his attempts. It was rough and still needed a lot of work, but Lukas was happy with what he had, even if it meant consuming a couple of health potions.

But, hey, at least he had health potions now.

Come the afternoon, Lukas was confident in his guess that more powerful beasts and monsters lay to the east. He could feel that the ambient magic, or mana, in the area was slightly thicker, leading to stronger creatures. That, and the fact that the roars of fighting beasts were a lot more powerful.

Lukas was looking forward to finding a creature to fight, eager to see what kind of challenge they'd provide. Luckily for him, he didn't have to wait much longer.

As Lukas picked his way through the forest, he felt something twinge his magical senses. He looked in the direction of whatever it was he was feeling, trying to make out what it might be. He had no idea what it was, but he was thoroughly interested. Lukas had only felt something similar while in the cave near the treasures in the central room.

Curious, Lukas headed toward the sensation, wanting to see what it was. He hoped it was something good because it would be the first real natural treasure he'd come across on his own. It would be interesting to find something he could use in his alchemy at some point. If not, then he could always sell it whenever he came across a town.

It took a good ten minutes for him to reach his destination, the feeling in his magical senses growing stronger all the while. Eventually, he came upon a clearing, except it wasn't a normal clearing. It was a depression in the ground, one that looked like a crater. It was fifty meters in diameter and ten meters down in the center. The crater itself was scorched, the dirt that formed it dry and cracked like it hadn't seen moisture in a century. Loose rocks and stones were black with soot and covered in scorch marks.

Down in the center of the crater was a strange lumpy rock the size of a watermelon. It was black with lines of fiery reds and oranges. Even in the spring afternoon heat, wisps of steam rose from the rock. Under the strange thing, the ground was black like obsidian, with lines of actual lava spiderwebbed around it, with it at the center. The thing looked like a lump of magma that had somehow made its way to the surface.

Lukas wondered if the object was actually a natural treasure or just some kind of strange meteor, but his Identify cleared that up.

[Gem of Molten Brimstone (Epic)]

Well, it didn't exactly solve the mystery, but it didn't say "meteor," so Lukas just assumed it was a nifty natural treasure.

Without much thought, Lukas hopped into the crater and made his way down the slope. It was a little steep at first, but it got better the farther he went. The only problem was that as he got closer to the center and the treasure, the air grew a lot hotter. The heat that radiated off the gem was no joke, and by the time Lukas got down to it, he was panting and drenched in sweat.

As Lukas wiped droplets of sweat off the tip of his nose with the back of his hand, he noticed his health had begun to tick down, his stamina even more so. Lukas just wanted to snatch up the gem and put it in his inventory, but he had to make physical contact first. He was concerned that touching the thing would result in his flesh literally melting off his finger.

He was about to try his luck when an earth-shaking roar blasted out from behind him, startling him so badly he nearly jumped out of his own skin. With every point of agility, Lukas whirled around to find an angry beast glaring daggers at him. At first, he thought the thing was mad at him for getting to the treasure first, but judging by the look of it, he'd have to say it was the owner.

It was a large lizard the size of an SUV. It looked like a massive Komodo dragon, only this one had multiple rows of teeth that would put sharks to shame. Its head was different, too—more regal—similar to the drakon he'd found dead on his first day in this world. It had ridged horns that pointed backward along the top of its head. The tail was thin and definitely looked fast, ready to whip around and give Lukas a few good lashings. The beast was a yellow-orange color, like fire, and judging by the steam pouring from its nostrils and mouth, it wielded some form of fire magic.

Lukas quickly identified the newcomer.

Fireborn Drake - lvl 30

Lukas immediately knew he was in trouble when he saw the race and the level. He'd never fought anything so strong before. Then there was the fact it was a drake—a creature similar to a dragon, which itself was known to be extremely hard to kill. He could only hope that all those fantasy stories he'd read were wrong. His only consolation was that the beast didn't appear to have the same plate-like scales as the drakon he'd come across.

Knowing that the coming fight would be a messy one, Lukas did what he had to. He snatched up the gem, tossing it in his inventory.

"Mine no—OW! Shit!" he yelped in pain, the natural treasure having burnt the hell out of his hand.

As Lukas waved his toasted digits, the drake roared in outrage, and his eyes went wide as a wave of flames headed straight for him.