[FREE | Reading Sample] TS - Chapter 1 - Power

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

We're back with more Tabula Smaragdina today, as some of you fine folk have correctly identified the title of the potential-Novel as!

The Reading Samples are intended to last around 3-5 Chapters, so they are quite a bit larger than your average TAS or ND ones, to make sure that I can cover all the bits I want to present in the sample.

Today's chapter is around 7.5k Words long, so about twice as long as a normal TAS/ND chapter.

Enjoy, and don't forget to provide feedback in the discord channel! (#other-novels -> Thread: "Put feedback for TAS in here")

I'm particularly looking for feedback on whether you are interested in a continuation based off of this initial Reading Sample, and specifically what parts got you really interested (if at all).

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To hopefully pre-empt some questions that might come up:

No, this will not replace TAS.

No, this will not replace ND.

No, it will not be a third novel alongside the other two anytime soon, as I'm maxed-out on energy/time capacity for writing with those.

Yes, it is something I'm considering as a third novel for the future, hence the Reading Sample.

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Now, with all that out of the way, I once again ask that you go into this with an open mind and just take it for what it is.

Enjoy!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qvXPr9riBDhKdqacr5M7CmeU6Z56Mk5eDpD4H28lxZk/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 1 - Power

“We got lucky.
We got really, really lucky.

That’s pretty much the conclusion Triss and I came to after today’s lecture on the history of the Convergence.

Or, rather, the Appearance, specifically.

Why do these names have to be so confusing anyway? 

Appearance first, then the Convergence, but we call the whole thing Convergence too…? 

Anyway…

I mean, just imagine it: A whole continent the size of North America—including Canada—suddenly popping into existence in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

Thousands of people gaining Powers out of nowhere all across the planet.

If the Appearance hadn’t come hand in hand with the Vyre ravaging the entire globe all at once… World War Three would have ended civilization as we know it.

But that didn’t happen. Because we got really, really lucky.

Because one billion people died in the first week. 

Antarctica became the staging ground for the Vyre, while every continent, every country, every city, and every village fought for nothing but cold, hard survival.

Because two billion people died in the first month. 

As governments collapsed, civil wars erupted, anarchy reigned, and humanity teetered on the very edge of extinction.

Because three billion people died in the first year.

Until the One World Council finally came together. When the world’s remaining nations were united in a mutual defense pact against the Vyre—strong-armed and forced into cooperation by newly minted Superheroes who’d had enough of global leadership’s failures—and managed to beat back the incursions on every continent as best they could.

Three billion people died. That’s how lucky we got.

Triss—always the pessimist in these things, though she definitely insists on calling herself a realist!—of course argues that without those three billion deaths, the world’s largest governments would never have understood how bad things really were.

That we definitely would’ve gone extinct for real.

She never did have trust in her fellow humans… 

I, on the other hand, like to think they would have figured it out anyway. 

That decency, and the basic human need for society, would’ve carried us through.
That it would’ve beaten out greed, evil, and the urge to control everything.

But… I have to admit that Triss’ realism is probably right this time, for once.

The new class of trillionaires that rose from the ashes of the Convergence—gobbling up every scrap of capital they could, even while the world was still bleeding from the Kaiju Incursions—made that point painfully clear, as much as I hate to admit it.

If we hadn’t gotten lucky…

If three billion people hadn’t died in that first year after the Appearance…

We never would’ve gotten the One World Council.
Never ratified universal laws for Superheroes.
Never gathered the combined strength needed to fight back the Convergence’s Incursions.

So… Triss is right.

We did get lucky.”

—

[Sadie’s Diary, 2029]

======

======

By the time my laughter finally tapered off, I was a sobbing, broken mess on the floor.

The sheer audacity of the fucking universe to grant me a Power that stopped bleeding, after Sadie had bled out in front of me just weeks ago… I couldn’t do anything but be impressed by the sheer gall of it all.

It didn’t make it hurt any less.

“It should have been you.”

Jason’s words rang unbidden through my head. 

The same words I’d been telling myself for weeks now, echoing from the phone’s terrible speakers and shattering the fragile little shell of grief I’d built around myself.

“It should have been you.”

The truest words that had ever been spoken, uttered by an absolute sub-human piece of shit who had never deserved Sadie in the first place.

“It should have been you.”

The words burned a hole straight through my soul, threatening to make me throw up again the longer I let myself dwell on them without distraction.

So I did what I always did best. 

What I had always done best.

I slowly pushed myself up from the floor, tears and vomit smeared across my face, and sat down at my desk. I pulled the notebook closer, picked up the pen, and started writing.

‘I’ve always been great at ignoring real problems for simple, easy distractions… Why bother fixing what’s wrong with me, when I can just distract myself with things that are easier and way more fun…?’

I let my Power guide my hands.

Whatever strange Power the universe’s cruel joke had given me through the Convergence, it needed to be written down—that, I knew instinctively.

And so I wrote. 

I shut my mind off, let my thoughts dissolve, and allowed the Power to flow through me, pushing the words straight into my brain and out through my hands.

The silence, the dull, repetitive motion of writing—it was pure bliss.

Weeks of the same scenes replaying over and over in my head.
Weeks of wondering if things could have been different, if I’d just done something else.
Weeks of begging the universe to give me Sadie back. To take me instead. 

To end this cruel fucking joke of my life.

And for the first time since then—silence. Blissful, real silence.

I couldn’t really tell how long I’d been writing, and I didn’t care. I was just bathing in the blissful silence of my own mind. But at some point, I felt my Power’s steady stream of thoughts slow to a trickle, then stop altogether, as my hand finally went still.

I braced myself for the return of the noise, but… it didn’t come. 

Instead, I was met with a strange kind of focus.

‘Huh…? Alright then… just keep working on what you’re doing for now then, Triss. Don’t think about anything that might make you think about the things you don’t want to think about… Damnit! I’m already doing it.’

I quickly looked down at the paper. It was the closest distraction I had.

[======= Tier 1 Formulae =======]
[Blood Coagulant]
[Alchemist’s Fire]
[Acidic Fluid]
[Cure Wounds]
[Adhesive Liquid]
[Grease]
[Universal Solvent]
[Comprehend Languages]
[Shield]
[Wizened Appearance]
[Youthful Appearance]

[======= Tier 1 Bombs =======]
[Alchemist’s Bomb]

[======= Tier 1 Mutagens =======]
[Striker Mutagen]
[Brawler Mutagen]
[Speedster Mutagen]

I stared at the words for a long moment before leaning back in my chair, the old aluminum creaking under my movement. I ran my left hand through my hair—a nervous tick I’d never really managed to get rid of, no matter how hard I tried, and one that had come back in full force lately; surely for no particular reason at all.

‘So… I’m some kind of Alchemist, judging by the name on the Formulae list and the whole Bombs list…?’

The thought stopped me, and I let out a short chuckle.

‘The fact that I have a fucking “Bombs” list is completely unhinged. What the fuck, Convergence? What do you mean, “Bombs”? What am I supposed to be here, a damn terrorist? Are you actually insane, giving me something like that…?!’

The fact that there were also Mutagens, and a Formulae list that read like a poor man’s spellbook, was just as strange.

‘And don’t even get me started on those fucking reci—formulae. Two eggs and a matchstick make a [Blood Coagulant]? Who came up with this shit…? And what does “vial” even mean? Any random glass thing…?’

As soon as I had the thought, something tugged at my mind. The same strange pull I’d felt when I’d called formulae recipes—but this wasn’t angry. It felt more like guidance.

I held out my right hand, palm up, and followed the instinct my Power nudged me toward.

In the next instant, a glass Vial rested in my palm, like it had always been there.

“Whoa…” I breathed, genuinely stunned by the literal creation of matter from nothing. “That… that doesn’t seem very alchemy-y. What about that whole equivalent exchange thing, Convergence? I can’t just go around creating stuff out of nothing—that’s illegal according to the laws of alchemy in basically every book ever written!”

Naturally, neither the Convergence nor the universe itself bothered to answer my official complaint. But at least I’d put it on record. So when the Alchemy God inevitably came knocking, I could point back to this exact moment and say I’d raised my objections.

With that nonsense out of the way, I took a closer look at the Vial.

At first glance, it seemed pretty standard—cylindrical, tapering into a narrow opening at the top, holding maybe around 200 ml, with a simple quick-release cap I could pop with my thumb. It reminded me of the bottles we used for liquid chemicals in chemistry class, just smaller and completely translucent rather than that weird off-colour brown—but the glass itself felt strangely… sturdy. Way sturdier than something that thin really should have been.

Not that I was a glass-scientist-expert-person or anything; just felt that way to me.

I cupped my chin, thinking about what to do next.

There were a lot of things I probably should have been doing. 

Like cleaning up the two pools of vomit in my room. Or at least washing my face. Or, you know, informing the WHA that I’d just become Powered so I could register as a Hero, so I wasn’t automatically branded a Villain and hunted down to be put in Super-Jail.

All roughly the same level of priority, really.

‘But… I should probably experiment a bit first and figure out how my Powers actually work,’ I thought, tapping my chin with my index finger. ‘Before they start asking me questions and I have no answers. That would be truly embarrassing.’

It definitely wasn’t because I had zero intention of signing up with the WHA after that piece of shit had left Sa—It definitely wasn’t because of that.

Nope. I just wanted to make sure I knew exactly what I’d be signing up with. 

Yeah. That was it. Definitely.

So, experimentation it was.

I wrote everything down in the same notebook—it just felt right.

It took around twenty minutes to get through my initial exploration of what my Power had to offer, not counting actually making any of the things on the list.

My findings were… interesting, to say the least.

First and foremost, I could conjure… create… summon? Up to ten of those Vials. I could actually feel them too—a strange sense of fullness, or the opposite, on a sliding scale depending on how many I’d already made.

I could also produce five Bomb Casings. 

They looked a lot like legally-distinct balls meant to capture creatures of varying power levels and force them into morally and ethically questionable slave fights against each other, just all gray-black in colour. 

They were about palm-sized, which honestly wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected.

‘Really thought for a second the damn Convergence was going to have me lugging around backpack-sized bombs and blowing up whole buildings or some shit like that…’

Wouldn’t have been the first time the Convergence had spat out a Power with practically zero redeeming qualities… 

‘Looking at you, Biohazard. May you rot forever in Super-Jail, you piece of shit.’

But luckily, that didn’t seem to be the case here.

The Bomb Casings were made of some kind of extremely smooth, yet perfectly grippable material, and they could easily split into two connected halves—probably so you could fill them with whatever ingredients the recipes called for.

‘Hey, wait… test, test. Recipes? Recipes for bombs?’ I thought, my eyebrows shooting up. ‘I can say recipes for this stuff just fine, but when I use that word for the Formulae, I get brain-shocked? What the hell is your problem, Power…?’

Finally, I also had two Mutagen Injectors I could produce.

They were easily the most high-tech items of the bunch, looking a lot like auto-injectors. Kind of like epinephrine pens, just made from the same glass as the vials. The injectors were empty like the rest, and needed to be filled with things to provide any benefits.

As for sturdiness, I of course tested that as well.

I couldn’t exactly walk around with a bunch of glass strapped to my body without making sure a single fall wouldn’t shatter everything and send shards straight into my vital organs.

But I had realized quickly that calling them sturdy had been a massive understatement.

With what I had available, they were practically indestructible—as long as I didn’t actually want them to break.

I had tried just about everything. Smashing them against the table. The floor. Jumping on them with my full weight—which admittedly wasn’t much, but still, physics and all that. 

I had even broken out the big guns and used a damn hammer on the Vials.

Nothing had even scratched them.

Which was very, very reassuring. I really preferred not getting shredded by glass I’d conjured myself through some weird, otherworldly Power.

The truly interesting part, though, was that I could will the glass to become more brittle; essentially turning it into normal glass. With a bit of mental focus, I could turn the Vials from practically indestructible into fragile glass that shattered exactly like it looked like it should.

And yes, when I checked that strange internal sense of fullness and emptiness afterward, I had not regained the ability to resummon the destroyed vial. Which… sucked.

Still, I was hoping there was some kind of daily allotment at work. 

I couldn’t feel the overall “bar,” for lack of a better word, having shrunk at all. 

The maximum still felt the same—it was just already used up, even with the one broken Vial.

So… hopefully it would regenerate.

Plenty of Powers worked like that. 

Daily limits, one-time-use aspects that only reset daily at the exact time of someone’s birth, and so on. Some Powers had even weirder schedules, needing full-on rituals or routines just to get their allotment back.

‘Really hoping it’s not one of those,’ I thought with a grimace. ‘They always sounded super fucking annoying to deal with. Definitely hoping for a birthday reset or a simple midnight refresh or something…’

Lastly, I’d also confirmed that the vials either fully regenerated when damaged but not broken, or that they were completely new ones every time I pulled them out.

I’d scratched one, “returned” it to that internal storage I could feel, then summoned it again—and the scratch was gone.

A simple test, but it helped put things into perspective. These things were genuinely magical in some way. As if conjuring them out of thin air and having them be practically indestructible hadn’t already made that obvious enough.

With the initial tests out of the way and everything neatly written down in my notebook—which was probably the first time in my life I’d ever bothered doing that without Sadie breathing down my neck to do so—my attention drifted back to the actual list of Formulae and Recipes.

“Wait a damn second…” I muttered, my eyes widening as something finally clicked, something I really should’ve noticed the moment I wrote the list down. “Tier 1?! Does… does that mean I get more later on…? Am I a fucking Growth-rated Powered…?!”

I just stared at the words in my notebook for a few seconds.

And then, yeah… I felt it.

My Power nudged at me, gently but insistently, whenever I thought about adding more entries. And it wasn’t just Tier 2 and beyond, either. 

Even the idea of writing down more Tier 1 Formulae made something inside me stir.

I couldn’t actually do it yet, for some reason, but I could clearly feel that it would be possible in the future.

“That’s fucking insane…” I whispered, leaning back in my chair and running a hand through my hair.

From what I could tell, I was almost certainly a Crafter-type Powered, given the Formulae, Recipes, and the way my Power seemed to store things for future use.

But a Growth-rated Crafter-type? That was… rare. Extremely rare. 

Almost unheard of.

The only other ones I had ever even heard of were Panacea and the ridiculously named Tech-Lord. And those two were top-of-the-top Heroes. World-famous. 

Practically booked solid, twenty-four seven, without exception, year-round.

“But that might just be survivor bias,” I reminded myself, trying to calm my racing heart. “There are probably tons of Growth-rated Crafter-types out there who never became anything special. Statistically, that makes way more sense.”

Still, the realization was exhilarating.

Exactly what I needed to fuel the next round of experimenting with my Power, if only because it kept my mind away from things I really didn’t want to think about right now.

So, riding that sudden burst of excitement, I rushed out of my room and into the kitchen, grabbed a large tote bag from the rack, and started filling it with all kinds of seemingly random ingredients.

The Recipes for my “alchemy” stuff were beyond strange, but who was I to second-guess the almighty Convergence?

I cleaned out the pantry, raided both fridges, and tossed in a handful of household items for good measure before hurrying back to my room. I did my best to ignore the fact that my parents were quietly watching me from the living room, which had a clear view of the kitchen.

‘I’ll explain later… probably,’ I promised silently.

I wasn’t ready for their questions yet, and I definitely didn’t have answers I was willing to give, nor ones they wanted to hear. Still, I had no doubt that my sudden energy alone had sparked a bit of hope in them. That, and the undoubtedly loud-as-fuck laughter from earlier, when I’d first seen my cosmic joke of a starter Formula.

The walls in our apartment weren’t exactly thick.

‘Hopefully they think I’m doing better,’ I thought with a knot in my chest. ‘I know they’ve been worried sick. I will be better… someday. Probably… Maybe.’

Shaking my head hard to chase away the depressing thoughts, I pulled my focus back to the task at hand: Alchemy.

Naturally, I started with the cosmic joke of a Formula called [Blood Coagulant].

‘Two eggs and a matchstick, plus one of the Vials as the recipe states…’ I read, then froze. ‘Wait, what? Recipe? So I can call it a recipe now? What the hell was that whole Formula thing about earlier, then, Power?’

I shot my notebook the nastiest stink eye I could manage, feeling thoroughly clowned on by the damn Convergence.

‘Alright. Testing, testing… The whole thing is called a Formula. The instructions on how to make it are the recipe. The whole thing is called a Recip—’ I flinched as my brain got lightly shocked. ‘Okay. I get it. No mixing up terms. Words have meaning and all that. Got it.’

Getting back to actually making the Formula, I laid out the two eggs and the single matchstick next to one of the Vials on my desk and then… stared at them.

“Okay… what do I actually do here?” I muttered. “I’m not seriously supposed to crack these into the Vial and stir them with a matchstick or some shit like that, right…?”

That would’ve been a total mess without some kind of funnel.

And some of the recipes listed ingredients that wouldn’t fit into the Vials at all, funnel or not.

So I did what had worked every other time so far: I focused and willed my Power to do its thing.

I felt a pull, and excitement shot through me—it was working!

A moment later, the eggs and matchstick simply vanished without a trace, and the Vial was filled with a thick, red-gray liquid.

“Whoa…” I breathed, carefully picking up the Vial—despite having just proven how ridiculously tough the glass was. 

I couldn’t help it, though. They looked so damn fragile!

I swished it around inside the vial—yep, very viscous—held it up to the light—slightly translucent—and then rested the vial in my open palm.

I focused on it and pushed my will hard.

‘Disappear. Go back to the extradimensional Vial storage… go!’

And… nothing.

The vial stayed exactly where it was, sitting in the center of my hand.

Just to be sure I hadn’t somehow forgotten how this worked in the past three minutes, I sent one of the empty Vials back instead. 

That worked instantly.

“Tsk,” I clicked my tongue. “No easy extradimensional storage for this stuff, huh? That’s going to make hiding it really annoying. Not that my parents ever come into my room, but there’s always a chance...”

My parents—saints that they were—took privacy very seriously. 

They knocked. They waited. They respected it when I asked to be left alone.
They didn’t even enter my room when I wasn’t home. 

They were pretty much the ideal parents in every regard that mattered.

That didn’t mean they wouldn’t one day decide there was something important they needed to do in my room, however—or that the damn smoke alarm wouldn’t start beeping again because of a dead battery—and stumble across a lineup of clearly strange liquids.

Or, you know… Actual fucking Bombs, cause I apparently needed to have access to those as well?!

‘Not that they’re obvious at a glance, looking more like small toy balls than anything else… but still,’ I thought. ‘I’ll have to figure out a way to hide this stuff if I want to keep it around at all.’

At the same time, not keeping any prepared felt like a huge waste of the Crafter side of my Power. What made Crafter-types dangerous in the first place was their ability to stockpile gear over time, storing and building their Power until it was needed.

Something most other archetypes couldn’t even dream of.

A Striker, for example, was pretty much always as strong as they were ever going to be. Which was very, very strong, sure—but they didn’t really have major peaks or valleys to speak of.

A Crafter-type, on the other hand, could easily beat just about any Striker with enough time to prepare an arsenal of crafted items.

Putting that particular issue aside for the moment, one thing was clear: I absolutely needed to test all the Formulae to really understand how they worked. While [Blood Coagulant] was fairly straightforward, something like [Youthful Appearance] was a lot more vague.

Not that I could test that one right now anyway.

‘Missing ingredients for [Comprehend Languages], [Shield], [Youthful Appearance], and [Wizened Appearance]… I’ll need to go shopping for those,’ I noted.

Everything else, though, I’d gotten lucky with. We already had what I needed at home.

Mostly because my dad was both a chef and a collector of all things random.

For [Alchemist’s Fire], for example, I needed around 50 ml of any kind of burnable paste.

Not something most households just had sitting in their pantry.

But since my dad loved cooking big spreads for friends and family, we actually had several tubs of the stuff lying around. The same went for a lot of the other recipes. 

Some of them were also just dirt cheap, like [Blood Coagulant].

[Grease], for instance, only needed 50 grams of butter, 50 ml of any oil, and one Vial.

Pretty much anyone could manage that, really.

So I started making one Vial of every Formula I could, just enjoying the act of using my Power. Each success sent a sharp hit of dopamine through my emotion-starved brain.

I knew immediately how dangerous and addictive this was. 

But honestly? I didn’t give a flying fuck.

I needed this. Badly.

‘Which is exactly how addictions work, isn’t it…?’ I paused, letting the thought sink in. ‘People don’t start using drugs because they think, “Eh, why not.” They start because they need a dopamine hit, and nothing else they can reach gives it to them. That emotional starvation just makes the hit even stronger than normal, throwing the whole emotional system out of balance…’

Which sounded an awful lot like what was happening to me right now.

I eyed the Vial in front of me suspiciously. 

It sat next to a bandage and a tub of hand cream I’d grabbed from my bathroom a minute ago—the recipe for [Cure Wounds], somehow.

It didn’t need the whole tub, obviously, just about 30 grams of the stuff. Any hand cream would do. But I wasn’t about to carefully measure that out and then put the rest away again. The Power seemed to just take what it needed from whatever container I used, so there was no reason not to be lazy about it.

‘Am I getting myself addicted to using my Power right now…?’

That was the real question.

But honestly, if I was thinking about it this much, then I clearly wasn’t in danger. Right? I knew what I was doing and how it could affect me. 

I knew the risks. That meant I could avoid them. 

Logic beat emotions every time. Obviously.

In other words, I was just built different from all the other addicts.

Addiction? Nah, I’d win through sheer facts and logic.

I nodded to myself, finding the thought oddly comforting in my bruised mental state.

‘Still… probably smart to keep an eye on things and not go overboard, just in case,’ I mentally added with yet another nod. Just to be safe.

So, anyway, I finished all the Vials and lined them up neatly in front of me, arranged in a pretty, almost rainbow-like pattern that was very pleasing to look at.

Each Formula’s liquid had its own unique color and viscosity.

With all seven ready to go, the next step was testing them, to actually understand what the hell they even did. The descriptions were helpful, sure, but what really mattered was how they actually behaved in real life.

First, I set aside [Alchemist’s Fire] and [Acidic Fluid]. 

Those sounded like a terrible idea to test inside my room—or anywhere near the apartment in general.

‘I’ll go out later and try those in an alley or something,’ I decided. ‘No need to accidentally burn the place down. That’s how fledgling Villains get caught all the time. Not that I am one, obviously. I just haven’t registered with the WHA yet. Which… okay, technically that does make me a Villain, but only because I haven’t gotten around to it.’

I also set aside [Blood Coagulant] and [Cure Wounds], just in case something went wrong while testing the rest and I needed them.

‘God, you’re so damn smart, Triss,’ I thought smugly. ‘Actually thinking things through instead of cutting yourself first, wasting your supplies, and then injuring yourself for real? Genius.’

That left the last three, which seemed to work really well together—or directly against each other, depending on how you wanted to interpret things.

[Adhesive Liquid] did exactly what it claimed. Basically liquid super glue.

[Grease] was the opposite, creating a coating that was “effectively frictionless.”

And finally, [Universal Solvent] got rid of both of them—and pretty much any other unattended liquid. Which, as far as I could tell, meant it wouldn’t do anything if someone drank it, since things like blood inside your body weren’t exactly “unattended.”

I was fairly confident about that, based on what my Power was hinting at.

Still, I was absolutely not going to test it. Just in case I was interpreting things wrongly and [Universal Solvent] just straight-up dissolved every liquid inside my body.

That would be a bit… problematic.

“Hmm,” I mused, staring at the three vials in front of me. “I should probably start with either [Grease] or [Adhesive Liquid], if I’m being smart about this… but man, it’s fucking rancid in here.”

I grabbed [Universal Solvent] instead and popped the vial open.

I carefully sniffed it, then leaned in for a better smell after confirming it didn’t instantly kill me just by existing near my face.

“Huh…? Lemon…?”

There wasn’t a single lemon anywhere in the recipe, which made the fact that it smelled exactly like lemon really weird. But then again, this was bullshit magic from another dimension, so who the fuck knew how it was supposed to work.

I carefully poured a little of it onto the pool of half-dried vomit near my desk and watched in awe as the liquid immediately started to just… erase it. Chunks and all.

The solvent spread far more than it realistically should have, given how little I’d poured, almost completely deleting the bile from the floor. I had to add a bit more to get the last remnants, but even then I’d barely used, what, maybe ten milliliters?

Considering the Vial held around 200ml, that was absurdly effective.

“Wow… I could make a killing selling this shit to cleaning companies,” I muttered, fascinated as the slightly viscous liquid thinned itself out into an incredibly fine film, covering as much of the mess as possible before wiping it from existence.

The craziest part was that even the smell vanished with it, leaving behind nothing but a faint lemony scent.

‘That makes absolutely no fucking sense,’ I thought, shaking my head. ‘That smell should’ve soaked into the whole room by now… but whatever. Convergence bullshit magic, I guess. For all I know, there’s some messed-up god out there getting off on the smell of vomit so they slurped it up and brought it into whatever fucked-up dimension they reside in.’

Using that brief mental detour, I quickly poured some of the [Universal Solvent] onto my bed as well, wiping away the bile and stains there too.

“Just like freshly washed,” I muttered. “This is a game changer for cleaning. Damn.”

I briefly thought about the logistics of selling [Universal Solvent] as a product and… honestly, it wasn’t that bad. The real issue was how much I could actually make.

With just ten Vials—hopefully per day—I could produce around two liters at most, per day.

The ingredients were dirt cheap. 

A: Water. As in, straight from the tap. And B: Liquid soap. Literally any.

That was it. 

Those two somehow combined into the ultimate delete-liquids-and-stains-from-existence [Universal Solvent]. Because, of course, Convergence Powers were complete bullshit.

“Anyway,” I muttered, pulling my focus back to what I was actually supposed to be doing. 

Testing the other two Formulae.

I grabbed [Adhesive Liquid] next and poured a bit onto one of the plastic lids I’d taken from the kitchen during my earlier raid.

It flowed out surprisingly easily.

“I really thought this one would be viscous as fuck, like honey—or worse… but nope. Basically water,” I commented, watching it spread itself across the lid.

Like the [Universal Solvent], the [Adhesive Liquid] spread as if guided by magic, filling the space far faster than its viscosity should theoretically have allowed.

Unlike the solvent, though, it didn’t magically multiply in volume after leaving the Vial.

To coat the whole lid, I had to use about a quarter of the entire Vial to get a solid layer over everything.

‘So there are definitely different levels of efficiency here,’ I noted. ‘Some Formulae do way more than they look like they should, while others behave exactly as expected. Interesting…’

After a few moments, the liquid lost its shine and seemed to harden. When I lightly nudged the lid to see if it would move, I wasn’t surprised at all when it didn’t budge even a millimeter.

The surface didn’t even ripple.

I picked up one of the pens that were always scattered across my desk and carefully poked the surface of the liquid. It felt slightly sticky as the tip went in. 

Then I pulled it back and—

“Whoa, what the fuck.”

I lifted the lid off the desk, with just the tip of the pen stuck in the liquid.

Carefully, I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the lid, making sure not to touch the liquid, and started pulling… and pulling… and pulling. The lid bent back heavily, but the pen tip stayed perfectly anchored, not even twisting or shifting in the slightest.

“Wow. That’s… that’s crazy strong, huh?”

I set the lid on the floor and placed weights on both sides, making sure they didn’t touch the liquid. Then I grabbed my hammer—the same one I’d used to smash the Vial during my earlier tests—and gave the pen a solid whack.

The pen snapped with a quiet but satisfying crack.

The tip, however, stayed exactly where it was.

My eyebrows slowly climbed as I stared at it.

Then I hit the tip again. And again. And again. 

Trying to knock it loose.

“Ha… ha… ha…” I breathed heavily after a couple of all-out swings, staring at the shattered remains of the pen tip, still stuck fast in the liquid, not moved even a millimeter.

“Alright then,” I muttered. “Note to self—do not let this shit spill inside your clothes, or you’ll have to deglove your entire body to get out of them…”

Just to test my earlier theory, I poured a little [Universal Solvent] onto the lid, and within seconds, every last trace of the [Adhesive Liquid] vanished.

‘Perfect. At least I won’t actually have to deglove myself when things go wrong with this thing,’ I thought with a satisfied nod. ‘Just need to make sure I always carry at least one [Universal Solvent] on me... Probably a good idea in general, too, in case I need to clean something while I’m out. This is going to save me so much money on disinfectant-to-go!’

Finally, I picked up the [Grease] Vial and did the same test, pouring it onto the lid.

“Whoa, okay,” I muttered immediately as the liquid practically shot out of the Vial. 

It was so runny it made water look like honey—and there was a lot of it.

Despite trying to be careful, it splashed across the lid and onto the floor around my desk. 

Probably around 100ml, if this were anything but magical bullshit liquid.

The vial itself looked like it had lost maybe ten milliliters at most.

‘This one’s even more efficient than the [Universal Solvent], god damn…’

I waited for the sheen to fade, which only took a few seconds, then grabbed another pen and tried the same test.

Except this time, instead of sinking in, the pen skidded straight across the lid—like the tip was a magnet and the lid was pushing it away with the same polarity. 

It felt like the pen was actively fighting me, refusing to get any grip at all.

Even when I tried to press it down perfectly straight, it just slid off instead of breaking through the layer and touching the lid.

“Holy… that really is ‘practically frictionless,’ just like the description said.”

I started setting up another test with the weights, planning to lock the lid between them and throw things at it. But the moment I stood up from my chair, the world suddenly spun and flipped, my feet finding no purchase at all.

With a loud crash, I hit the floor.

“Ouch—oof—ahh—fuck,” I groaned, sprawled on the floor as pain flared through my side.

Heavy footsteps thundered toward my room almost immediately.

‘Right… that probably doesn’t look great,’ I thought dimly. ‘Raid the pantry, make weird-ass noises, then crash to the floor. Perfect look right there, T.’

A moment later, frantic knocking rattled my door, my parents’ voices overlapping.

“Darling? Everything alright?”
“Teresa? Triss? Are you okay?!”

“I’m fine,” I called back quickly, forcing steadiness into my voice. “I just fell off my damn chair. Everything’s fine! Don’t come in.”

There was a pause. I could almost hear them exchanging looks through the door. 

Then both of them let out relieved breaths, but they didn’t leave right away. 

They lingered, clearly having a silent debate about whether to push the issue.

“I’ll—uh—I’ll join you for dinner today,” I added. The words felt strange in my mouth. 

I hadn’t done so since… Well since everything happened. I had preferred solitude, instead.

On the other side of the door, I heard startled little noises, half-gasps they tried and failed to suppress.

“That’s… that’s really good to hear,” my mom said after a second. “If you need anything, sweetheart, just tell us, okay?”

“I will,” I promised, even as a knot twisted painfully in my stomach.

There were a lot of things I needed.
None of them were things they could give me.

Their footsteps faded alongside their excited whispering, and my room grew quiet again.

I waited for a moment longer, then carefully pushed myself up, moving slowly and deliberately, making damn sure not to put my hands or feet anywhere near the slick [Grease] stains on the floor. 

Once I was steady, I grabbed the [Universal Solvent] and poured a bit over the mess.

The grease vanished instantly.

I let out a breath of relief.

Only then did I notice the blood. 

A thin line of blood ran down my arm, bright against my skin. I’d probably scraped it on the chair when I fell, trying—and failing pretty spectacularly—to catch myself.

A smug smile crept onto my face at the sight.

“You truly are a smart one, Triss,” I murmured, grabbing the [Blood Coagulant] and [Cure Wounds] Vials I’d set aside earlier. “Your foresight, intellect, and boundless genius really know no limits.”

I popped open the [Blood Coagulant] and gingerly poured out a drop of it onto my index finger. The liquid was thick and viscous, like cold honey, as I rubbed it onto the cut.

Two things surprised me immediately.

First, there was no sting at all. None of that sharp, biting pain you usually got when touching an open cut.

Second, the wound scabbed over practically instantly. It was like I was rubbing on a scab already formed, not applying a liquid to a wound.

“Whoa… holy fuck, this thing is strong,” I muttered. “And stupidly efficient too…”

I’d barely used anything—what, maybe five milliliters at most? Literally a single drop. Just enough to coat my fingertip. And it had sealed the entire cut, easily four or five centimeters long.

Anger and frustration surged up out of nowhere, tight and hot in my chest. 

I barely managed to keep myself from simply screaming with all my might.

“If I’d just had this stupid Power a few weeks earlier…” I whispered through clenched teeth. “One Vial would’ve been enough. Just one fucking Vial…”

I felt tears well up in my eyes and shook my head hard to push those thoughts away.

I still had a [Grease] test to finish—which was a way better use of my brain right now.

Refocusing, I tried all kinds of things to get something—anything—to stick to the lid instead of sliding off. But no matter what I did, nothing even hinted at gripping it. 

It was like the surface had become perfectly flat on a molecular level, with absolutely nothing to latch onto.

“Man, engineers would kill for this stuff,” I muttered. “Too bad it only lasts fifteen minutes outside the Vial, like most of the Formulae on the list. I’d make an absolute killing in Credits selling this to industrial firms otherwise...”

There was one last test I could think of on the spot.

I grabbed another pen and dipped its tip into the [Adhesive Liquid] Vial, feeling a spark of satisfaction when I pulled it back out with some of the liquid clinging to it. My on-the-spot theory had been right—the Formulae didn’t react until they left the Vial.

No risk of accidentally setting one off just by sticking something inside.

With the pen prepared, I carefully brought it down onto the [Grease]-coated lid.

To my surprise, it actually worked.

The pen found a bit of grip. Not much, nowhere near the iron hold of pure [Adhesive Liquid], but just enough to be notable. It felt like the two Formulae were fighting for dominance, with the adhesive barely winning out. The surface was still extremely slippery, but at least there was some resistance now when I moved the pen tip around.

“Very cool,” I muttered, tapping my chin with my index finger—and immediately smearing [Blood Coagulant] across it.

“Whoops. Right.”

That was a reminder I still hadn’t actually finished dealing with my wound.

I poured some [Universal Solvent] over the [Grease]-coated lid and the [Adhesive Liquid]-covered pen tip to neutralize both, then onto my index finger and chin to clean off the remaining [Blood Coagulant]. 

After that, I grabbed the [Cure Wounds] Vial.

I dipped a little onto my finger—and watched the liquid get absorbed instantly, like it was soaking into a paper towel.

“Huh…? Maybe not finger-applicable then…”

I applied it directly to the wound instead, carefully pouring the sparkling, crimson liquid from the Vial, making sure to use as little as possible.

Its consistency was about that of apple juice—basically water, just a bit thicker—and the moment it touched the scab, the scab simply… changed.

It morphed into fresh skin.

Watching my own skin regenerate like that was downright freaky. 

The scab was completely consumed in the process, leaving behind nothing. 

Not even the faintest hint of a scar.

“Holy fuck…” I breathed, staring at the spot where the wound had been just seconds ago. “That… that’s really, really strong healing magic.”

And judging by the fact that the Vial had lost maybe fifteen to twenty milliliters at most, it was also surprisingly efficient.

“I… This… This is actually kind of insane.”

Healing Powers were some of the most sought-after abilities on the Hero market.

For obvious reasons.

With the Vyre Foothold constantly threatening the sub-Antarctic ring, random Vyre Incursions popping up all over the planet, and Supervillains running wild in cities on a regular basis, it wasn’t hard to see why healing was more valuable than ever in human history.

‘And this isn’t just any healing Power,’ I realized. ‘This is a healing Crafter-type… just like Panacea’s…’

The implications hit hard. 

I’d been given an absurdly powerful starting Power. That much was undeniable now.

I was nowhere near Panacea’s level, of course. Even a full Vial probably wouldn’t fix something catastrophic, like a completely severed limb—and based on what my Power hinted at, reattaching one was almost certainly off the table.

But still.

This was a Crafting-type healing Power. With a Growth ranking.

And if higher-tier Formulae existed…

‘I… might have actually gotten lucky…?’

Weeks too late, of course, but that thought was about—

My eyes widened as something clicked.

I rushed to my desk, grabbed my notebook, and flipped to a fresh page. 

Then I reached inward, querying the depths of my Power.

I’d never even considered it before. 

But if I was a Growth-rank Crafter-type, and I had healing Formulae… then maybe. 

Just maybe. 

‘No… it doesn’t exist. It never has. There’s no way. Especially not for me, of all people. There’s no way I’d get lucky like that…’ I told myself, almost backing out.

But the devious, acidic poison that was hope had already been dipped into the well that was my heart—tainting the entire supply.

I simply had to ask.
Because maybe… there was a way.

I asked a single question. Not expecting an answer. Not daring to hope—but still clutching that one caustic drop inside me, because that was what hope did best.

The only question that mattered.
The one I’d been too afraid to even dare to think about, because what I was asking of my Power simply did not exist in any Power-set, nor had ever existed before.

But I asked it anyway, for my soul had been poisoned by the most devious trap of them all: 

A drop of foolish hope.

‘How do I bring back Sadie?’

My Power stirred. Slowly at first. Then faster. Deeper. More complex.

The complexity folded in on itself, shattered, then reformed itself again and again.

My breath stocked—the Power didn’t stop churning, like it normally did when something was impossible with what I had been given…!

It… Just… Kept… Stirring.

And then—It actually fucking answered…

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