Interlude (2) from book 2

And here is the second interlude from book 2 - Nexus Runner - Rampage

Ruby clapped her hands together a couple times to announce herself outside of a Base Camp tent standing in a long row of similar tents. No answer. She had to clap a couple more times before she finally caught the attention of the tent’s inhabitant.

“Oh! Come, come in,” came the breathless woman’s voice.

Smiling, Ruby pushed aside the tent flap and stepped inside the spacious tent. Unlike the simple, if cozy main room in her own tent, this one was packed to overflowing with tables and shelves groaning under the weight of a seemingly endless assortment of materials, piled in a chaotic clutter. Ruby had learned to tread carefully to avoid accidentally triggering an avalanche.

Boxes of base ingredients were tossed at random among bags full of powders and pieces of every monster anyone had collected so far on the first two stages. Teeth and claws and hides and organs and other parts Ruby didn’t really want to identify were jumbled together.

The tent smelled like a high school chemistry classroom, mixed with the heavy musk of enclosed zoo spaces. It was extremely warm, since over a dozen magical stoves like bunsen burners, placed precariously among the piles of other supplies, were all happily boiling various liquids. Some were clear like water, but most were colored anything from blood red to midnight black, and everything in between. Some boiled happily, while other more viscous materials seemed to creep up the glass sides of the vials holding them over the fire, as if seeking a path to escape the heat.

Standing in the midst of the chaotic scene was a slender, mousy looking woman, about middle-aged with shoulder-length brown hair pulled back from her face with a string. Her clothing was basic and rumpled, and she sported huge glasses, despite the system having corrected normal vision limitations long ago.

“Hello, Anna, how are you?” Ruby asked with a smile.

“Ruby, always a pleasure,” Anna said, scurrying over to give Ruby a quick hug. She smelled of chemicals and potion ingredients and a bit of singed hair.

“I see experiments are going well,” Ruby said, scanning the nearby tables again, trying to pick out familiar items among the chaos.

“One step at a time,” Anna said with a breathless giggle. She might have been a community outreach volunteer back on Earth, but since arriving on Arasha, she’d thrown herself into research and potion making as if finally discovering her true calling.

Ruby extracted a box full of various potions she’d traded with throughout the town. “I have some more samples to work with.”

“You’re a lifesaver, dear,” Anna said, taking the box with eager hands and plopping it down on a haphazard pile of nearby monster parts without bothering to ensure it wouldn’t simply topple off.

Most potion bottles could resist simple falls, but it was a wonder Anna hadn’t managed to blow herself up by accident. More likely, her tent had been upgraded enough to withstand a few small explosions.

“And I have something interesting for you,” Anna continued, hurrying off to what should be the bedroom. She returned seconds later with a potion bottle containing a dark brown liquid. “You’ll want to test this when you’re hungry.”

“Oh?” Ruby asked, taking the bottle and studying it carefully. She loved all of her utility spells, but sometimes did wish she’d chosen Linguasight and gotten the identify ability. Thankfully, Anna was obsessed with labeling things.

Backyard Barbecue Potion. Uncommon. Pour onto a flat surface to produce a random 58 oz beef steak, grilled to medium rare and finished with a tangy barbecue sauce.

“Steak in a bottle? That’s incredible,” Ruby grinned, already thinking about how much Steve would trade in order to get his hands on that one. Once she replicated it a few times, she’d show it to him and see what he could trade in turn. With his clones helping, he was incredibly efficient at finding great deals anywhere in town.

“The result of a bit of nostalgia and a lucky break using some of the many monster parts I acquired from the bulls down on stage 1,” Anna said. “My oven produces great food, but sometimes a girl needs a grilled steak.”

“I agree,” Ruby said, struck by a sudden memory of her father grilling steaks behind their house when they lived in Ireland. It hadn’t been a momentous day, just another Sunday barbecue, but it resonated with her so powerfully, she had to brush away a sudden tear.

She didn’t think about her family often enough these days. She had to be careful, or she could easily get lost in nostalgia and homesickness. Usually she sipped from her memories just enough to bolster her courage and her resolve to keep Earth safe and protect her family.

Ruby pulled the bottle closer and sniffed, hoping for a whiff of freshly-barbecued meat, but smelled nothing. She’d test it more later, and placed it into her inventory. Anna was a wonder. She had not yet unlocked her class, but it would no doubt be something to help her craft even better potions faster. Her first permanent spell allowed her to create new potions, and she’d also gotten an ability to transform things into valid potion ingredients. Those piles of random monster parts and other base items were all being slowly processed into ingredients that she’d soon use to create powerful potions.

Ruby was happy to help gather other potions and ingredients for Anna to use in her research and testing. The effort tied in with her own abilities and her new class. With a bit of luck, Anna might end up with a complementary class. Imagine what they could do then, especially with their mutual goal of finding a way to reverse the curse of lycanthropy?

“How is your work going with the restoration potion?” Ruby asked before Ann could turn back to her work. The woman was a dedicated researcher and experimenter, and seemed to prefer her work to interacting with people. She needed a bit of prodding sometimes to stay engaged in the conversation.

Ann flashed an eager grin. “I’m making great progress, actually. I’m close to getting a stable potion recipe. I also got my hands on a couple werewolf teeth. They’ve proven invaluable and surprisingly effective with my ability. I’ve generated some astonishing potion ingredients that are helping me understand better their lycanthropic curse. It’s fascinating.”

“Scary is more like it,” Ruby said with a shudder.

Fighting monsters was one thing, but werewolves were total nightmares. They could not only rip someone apart, but a single bite could destroy a person, transforming them into a mindless beast of hunger and rage. Antidote potions were all too rare, and that danger of getting turned might pose the single biggest threat to their survival as a people so far.

The fact that Lucas had survived a werewolf transformation and used the experience to only become stronger was mind-boggling. That man seemed to turn every impossible encounter into a springboard for growth. It could be frustrating sometimes.

He’d won lycanthropy as a spell instead of getting cursed by a werewolf bite. That had to be the key to his vastly different experience. Too bad he didn’t have any more uses of the spell. As dangerous as turning again might be for him, studying him in werewolf form could no doubt catapult both hers and Anna’s research miles ahead.

Thinking of Lucas brought with it the temptation to linger on him, but she pushed those thoughts aside. They’d come to a necessary arrangement, and acting like a spanner wasn’t going to help.

Anna said, “They’re absolutely terrifying, certainly, but fascinating nonetheless. I’m still trying to tease out the components of their transformation in hopes of finding ways to reverse it.”

“And I am testing potion mixtures to combat it too, but have not made much progress.”

“No doubt the final solution will be a blending of our two efforts,” Anna said, but her smile faded to a look of frustration. “I feel like I can see the possibilities, and the ingredients I’ve produced might prove perfect for the final counter-curse potion I’ve started developing, but I lack the right catalyst. Between us, we should be able to produce something that I could then combine with my curse breaker potion to produce enough power to overwhelm the curse, but so far it’s only hypothetical.”

“Well, let’s keep working on it,” Ruby said. If they could figure it out, they could save so many.

“In the meantime, I’d like to run another test on your enhanced battle biomorph defenses,” Anna said, pushing her heavy spectacles up her nose.

“Of course. What do you have in mind this time?”

Ruby couldn’t help smiling as she considered her uniquely enhanced utility spell. Using it was strange and wonderful and, well, downright magical.

Every time she used it, power would ripple through her entire body, bringing with it changes to give her a new edge. The first time she’d used it to climb that tree to escape the Rockslide Ogre, the wonder of the new knowledge that had rolled through her mind had almost fatally distracted her.

She’d gained an intuitive understanding of how her body had changed. Not only had her hands toughened and her nails extended into claws that could punch through bark, but her entire body had shifted to maximize her ability to climb trees. Her bare feet had also grown claws, while her skin toughened and the muscles shifted so she could grip surfaces as if her feet were another set of hands.

The battle biomorph transition was even more wondrous. Her skin toughened, covered with breathtaking silver scales. With them, she felt so very tough, nearly impervious, but it wasn’t like she was huddling inside of a thick suit of leather. Every single scale touched her mind like new patches of skin. They rippled as she moved, and through them she felt the world around her even more clearly than normal. The brush of air carried hints of scents she usually failed to smell with her nose. Every touch included layers of sensation impossible for anyone not experiencing it to understand.

Anna had the standard biomorph utility spell, and when Ruby mentioned her upgrade, the potion maker had become obsessed with trying to understand her upgrade. Ruby was fine with that. Testing the limits of her spell had pushed her mastery over it way beyond what she’d managed on her own.

“First, I wish to quantify the benefits against blunt force trauma,” Anna said, producing an enormous mallet. The wooden weapon had a 4 foot haft and a head at least 2 feet in diameter. “Hold still.”

Ruby barely had time to set herself and activate Battle Biomorph. A wave of invigorating power rippled through her body, from her head down to her feet, and every muscle and bone shifted in response. Muscles grew thicker, bones denser, and scales erupted from her skin. Her face prickled slightly as her features became slightly more angular, while her senses sharpened.

Anna slammed the heavy, wooden mallet into Ruby’s chest with impressive force. The mighty blow would have shattered a human back on Earth to pulp. It did knock Ruby back a step, but the force dispersed across her scales like water around a stone and she felt no pain.

“Very impressive,” Anna said as the mallet disappeared, replaced by a clipboard. The lenses of her glasses flashed as she jotted down a few notes with a pencil that had materialized into her hand.

“It didn’t hurt,” Ruby reported, not bothered by Anna’s abrupt attack. When she got focused on a test, the woman couldn’t be bothered with silly social niceties like warnings.

“Interesting.” A few more notes, another flash of her lenses, then the pencil and clipboard disappeared, replaced by a war hammer.

Anna spun it in her hand so the sharpened pick spike at the back of the hammer faced forward. “Now to test a more focused impact point. Can you open your jacket over your stomach to expose your scales?”

“Why not?” Ruby asked as she undid the buckles, then pulled up her blouse to expose her abs and the silver scales covering them.

She’d always kept herself in good shape, but leveling and gaining stats did wonders for the human body. Like most people, she’d transformed into a more perfect physical specimen. Every muscle of her toned abs stood out in perfect detail. It was another not-so-subtle reminder that they had all changed so very much.

Ruby deactivated Battle Biomorph, then triggered it again, this time using the new Potion Integration option, tossing in a full healing potion. Once more her body shifted, silver scales appearing across her skin, but this time they were thicker. She sensed they could take far more damage than usual. Anna took a step to the side and spun her entire body, slamming the point of the warhammer spike into Ruby’s stomach with all her strength. The impact was like getting punched, and drove some of Ruby’s breath out in a grunt.

That was it. No pain as the sharp point bounced off her reinforced scales, barely leaving a scratch. Ruby laughed. That was amazing!

Was that part of how Lucas handled horrific injuries so well? He’d said the werewolf transition had changed his relationship to pain, but the idea still seemed extreme. He was also far stronger and therefore must have a much higher constitution. If she knew attacks would be nullified so much, she’d risk more encounters too.

Still, despite his assurances, sometimes she worried he was losing his grasp on what it meant to be human. They needed Lucas strong, so she could not urge him to slow down or ignore the benefits that were helping to keep him alive, but what would happen if he kept pushing the limits? The thought of Lucas losing himself and descending into a permanent berserker state was absolutely terrifying. She would keep an eye on him and do her best to help him stay grounded.

The hammer disappeared and Anna studied her shiny scales with great interest. The thick lenses of her glasses flashed a couple more times as she poked at them.

“Remarkable. I would have assumed your scales would be more susceptible to piercing impacts.”

“It probably would have been, but I used my new Potion Integration upgrade.” Ruby explained about it and the effects she felt.

“Incredible,” Anna laughed. “We must test the effects of more potions integrating with your utility spell.”

“I was planning on that. I’d be happy for your help.”

So they did. Anna repeatedly attacked Ruby with various weapons while she reactivated her Battle Biomorph, integrating it with different potions. Each one triggered a different effect related to the magic of the potion. The most surprising was when she tried a mana potion. It did little to help against physical attacks, but did dramatically improve defense against magical injuries.

Anna hit her with the same spiked end of the warhammer, but that time she punched through one of the scales and sunk the spike an inch into Ruby’s stomach. That one did hurt, but before she could trigger a healing potion, Anna produced a bottle with the familiar red healing liquid, but also with swirls of white coursing through it.

“What’s that?” Ruby asked.

“One of my new mixtures,” Anna said as she unstoppered the bottle and poured it into the wound.

Ruby’s skin cooled under the soothing current of healing magic, the skin repairing with that faint itching sensation it so often did. In addition to that, a wonderful sense of peace washed through Ruby, making her sigh.

“What was in that one?”

Anna was already jotting down more notes in her clipboard. She spoke without looking up. “A mixture of several substances that produce a general soul-boosting tonic. Helps to restore a small amount of spiritual damage, reduce fears, and fosters a sense of oneness with body and soul.”

“I like it. That was incredibly refreshing. Do you have any more?”

“Just a few.” Anna produced another bottle. Ruby took it, dropped it into her inventory, then activated her newly upgraded Potion Replicate spell.

A second later, she returned the bottle to Anna. “I’ll make a bunch of these and get a batch back to you later.”

“Thank you, Ruby. That new spell of yours saves so much time. Speaking of which, I need to get back to work. I’ll message you when I’m ready for the next round of testing.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Ruby left with a renewed sense of optimism. Everyone focused so much on the fighters and their flashy powers, but it might be people like Anna, working quietly in the background, who could end up making just as big of a difference in saving the lives of their people.