Reincarnator RB Dragons, ch 43

When Kevin asked Alariel for an autograph, she didn't react to the request gracefully or act as if it was a regular occurrence, like he’d expected. Instead, she chuckled, and when Kevin asked what she found humorous, she simply shrugged. She didn't question why Kevin asked her to make the signature "Lydia" in a copy of the book that Alariel apparently wrote thirty years ago, either.

After that brief interaction, the great mage disappeared to some other part of her tower, leaving Kevin with a signed book and a few unasked questions. Finally, after pondering for some time, he remembered what she had said to him during their first meeting.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t really stopped to think about it again before now.

Alariel said she’d been watching him for a while, almost immediately as soon as he arrived at Clearmine! For some reason, that line hadn't really registered properly. Kevin began to wonder what it was about himself that had caught the mage's attention in the first place.

He started running down the list of everything that might make him special because that was most likely to have gotten Alarielle's attention.

Was I polymorphed?  No. He hadn't been polymorphed when he first came into the city, and he couldn't use magic, so he deduced that her earlier attention had to be for one of three reasons: either he carried something from his parents’...like, their will, or maybe something they’d given him had some sort of aura he couldn’t detect.  That didn’t make sense, though.  She hadn’t felt dragons on him until she met him.

Hmmm.  Perhaps she’d felt the changes he’d started acquiring from eating monsters.  Maybe.

Or maybe she’d detected something following him as a result of the encounter with the ork cultists.

He was not actually a dragon, so he wasn’t sure what else it could be.  

But what was it about me that was so interesting?  Whatever it was, maybe he set off a perimeter of the city, or wards. Maybe a silent alarm? Kevin didn't know how much Alariel really knew or how sensitive her magic was. What he did know now, after thinking about it carefully, was that she had to be aware of Lydia's existence.  Maybe that’s why she’d reacted so amused about the autograph.

Kevin wondered how many times a young polymorphed dragon had harassed Alariel. Probably a lot, he thought.

Shaking his head, he got back to work.

Today he was working on a Mindfire Potion, a tricky one to create.  All brain-targeted potions were difficult to work with because they usually had several extra steps and required a high level of purity.

The most common organs that potions targeted were the brain, the heart, the liver, and the lungs.

Kevin’s education was taking place at breakneck speed.  He was pleased to find that some of his powers synergized in a way that let him consume and memorize information much faster than during any of his previous lives.

One of the first things he’d learned about Alchemy, and one of the more surprising, was that potions usually didn’t even reach the stomach before being absorbed.  The process was called Direct Alchemical Infusion.  This was why a person could drink any number of potions and never actually get physically full…although most people could still only tolerate a certain number of potions at once, no matter what kind.

Heart-targeted alchemical infusion potions usually affected emotions or life.  Health potions, healing potions, and valor potions were all examples.

Liver alchemical infusion potions were meant to impact the body.  Strength potions, endurance potions, and even the first potion Kevin ever made–a hair growth portion–were all liver-oriented Alchemy.

Potions that were created with alchemical infusion aimed at the brain usually carried effects of the mental realm or magic.  Mana potions, or potions to increase focus were all brain-targeted.  The Mindfire Potion enhanced mental acuity and improved concentration, for instance.  It was a popular potion for the nobility and traders who could afford it.

Alchemical infusion that target the lungs were perhaps the most commonly misunderstood.  They were potions that created effects around the person who drank the potions, or created external effects. One example would be a hard layer of armor lying atop the skin.  These types of potions could also add physical effects to the drinker that didn’t exist before–like breathing underwater.

It was easy to mistake lung potions for liver potions and vice versa, at least some of them.

Kevin worked on the Mindfire Potion, carefully measuring out powders, using drops of liquid reagents–this potion even called for a drop of vodka!--and simmering the various ingredients at precise temperatures after preparing them properly.  Even though he was focusing on what he was doing, he could also think about other things.  Part of his mind wandered.

He thought about the mysterious diary, or journal he’d gotten from the ruins quest with the Mountain Fingers.  He almost had the entire thing translated now.  One  area in particular had fully snared his attention.  He was lucky that the book truly did include information on potions that Kevin was pretty sure didn’t exist today.

The problem was, most of them were far outside of his skill level, none of them actually seemed complete, and some even called for ingredients that he’d never even heard of before.  Kevin felt a little guilty for not sharing this with Alariel, but she’d clearly stated what she wanted Kevin to do, and what kind of payment she wanted from him.  A potion, not a book.

At least that’s how he rationalized it to himself.

Part of Kevin was still tempted to hand over the book, but he knew that was sort of selfish of him.  The book represented power, but also responsibility.  It was a burden.  He knew Alariel well enough now to know that she would not steal from him.  She’d feel obligated to give him something equal in exchange, and he wasn’t even sure what such a thing would be.

Maybe a full-blown, long term apprenticeship?  But that might not even be enough.  And Kevin had less than a year to reach the goblin, then dark elf country and start actually doing his job as a diplomat.  On top of that, he was not a human mage fan like his cousin.  It seemed silly to follow around Alariel for years when he could just ask his parents for any Alchemy books in the world that had copies and weren’t single tomes or national treasures.

Even in that case, his parents might be able to get them for him, though.

When did I become a trust fund baby? He thought and snorted.

Kevin wished he knew who’d written the ancient journal.  It might provide context.  At the very least, he knew they were brilliant and were likely some well-known figure in the winds of time.  Whether anyone remembered them now, he couldn’t guess.

But they had an absolute genius for Alchemy.

One potion in particular in the book, one that was unfinished, was his best bet to actually complete.  It only had one or two steps missing before the author of the book had apparently gotten bored or sidetracked and moved on.  Unlike other recipes, this one used ingredients he could actually procure from the “common” storeroom in Alarielle’s tower.  The fact it was not finished made Kevin’s job harder, but it was also lucky in a way.  He still had some ethics.  He didn’t want to scam Alariel or his cousin by just copying a potion someone else made before.

Not only that, the names for the potions were weird in the book.  The nature of the language itself and the person who wrote it made translation difficult. It could be possible to make a potion from the book, expecting it would be new to Alariel, and then find out it was super common.  That would be bad.

He really didn’t think that would happen, not after learning everything he had so far about alchemy and seeing how radically different the recipes in the book were from anything he’d seen so far.  But either way, he had two reasons to complete the unfinished potion–honesty and materials.

When Kevin finished with his newest batch of potions, he set them carefully off the side.  As usual, he wouldn't be taking them with him when he left.  So much for a trust fund kid, he thought with an eye roll.

Since he’d gotten done faster than he’d expected, he started working on one of his Alchemy side projects: cola. 

It had been a long time, more than a single lifetime since he’d had a good cola.  The carbonation was easy, especially in a world with magic like this one.  But the actual taste…that had been eluding him for more than a week now.

Even though he was making a drink, or trying to, using Alchemical equipment was actually helpful.  It gave him a high degree of control and exact measurements which made notes easier to take.  Of course, making a soft drink was not like a potion.  There was no alchemical infusion.  It would just go to the stomach like any other–

Kevin suddenly stood up as it felt like lightning shot through his brain.  “It couldn’t be that simple, could it?”  His heart actually sped up and he started furiously writing ideas on a piece of paper.