This story illustrates how scientific understanding can democratize access to power and knowledge that was previously controlled by a privileged few. The protagonist, a modern chemist, applies scientific principles like controlled release technology, molecular purification, and systematic experimentation to improve upon ancient alchemical formulas. His innovations allow ordinary people to acquire permanent skills that were previously only available through divine gifts or birthright, fundamentally challenging the existing power structure. The narrative demonstrates that scientific knowledge, when combined with creative problem-solving and ethical decision-making, can transform society by making powerful abilities accessible to all rather than being monopolized by those with special connections or privileges.
He Touched an Ancient Cauldron and Fell Into the Past, Where His Potions Gave Godly Powers追加:
Alchemists were burned at the stake for something that doesn't exist. Kai knew this for a fact. Six years of synthesizing compounds had taught him that no cauldron could brew a miracle.
And then his hand passed through the museum glass and he found himself inside a legend 3 days before the Inquisition arrived.
But let's go back a couple of minutes.
Kai Wester stands in front of display case number 17 in an empty museum.
Tuesday, 3:00 in the afternoon. The curator is dozing at the entrance. The label reads, "Ventor's cauldron.
Ourelis's last alchemist, executed by burning in 1247."
Kai smirks. The bronze cauldron on a velvet cushion looks like it belongs at a flea market. He pulls out his phone to take a picture of the sign. The phone slips. Kai jerks to catch it. His palm hits the glass. The glass is cold, then hot, then there is no glass. His fingers touch the bronze and everything goes dark. The smell returns first. Sulfur, wormwood, something sour and acrid. Kai opens his eyes. Above him is a low ceiling with beams blackened by soot, stone beneath his back. Next to him is that very cauldron. Only the bronze shines like new, and a dark liquid gurgles inside.
Kai sits up. His head is spinning.
Around him is a bench, a counter, shelves lined with jars, bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. 47 jars. The chemist's mind counts them on its own. On the counter is a scroll. Kai unrolls the brittle yellow paper. The letters are unfamiliar, but he understands every word.
And here, logic breaks down for the first time. Ventor writes that the shop now belongs to Kai, that the cauldron has bound them together, that there is no turning back until Kai brews the potion that Ventor himself did not have time to make. A potion that grants a permanent skill forever.
Kai peaks into the cauldron. The liquid freezes. The surface is smooth as a mirror and text appears on it. White letters on a black surface. Cool. An alchemist of the forbidden age.
Ventor's knowledge is loading. 10% available. The Inquisition is searching for the shop. 72 hours until discovery.
Kai recoils, leans in again. The text is still there. He breathes on the surface.
The letters blur and reform. The cauldron acts as a screen. His brain refuses to believe it. His eyes see it.
3 days. In 3 days, someone will come and find him. And judging by how Venador ended things, it won't be a friendly visit.
Kai looks around. 15 paces long, 10 wide. The door is boarded up from the outside. The windows are boarded up.
He's locked in a dead alchemist's workshop in 1247.
No money, no weapons, no skills. Just a headful of organic chemistry, 47 jars of ingredients, and a cauldron that functions as a mass spectrometer in a bronze casing.
In his lab, there was a fume hood and three levels of security. Here, there's a hole in the ceiling and a bat hanging in the corner, watching him with one eye. The conditions are roughly equal.
Kai grabs the jars one by one. As soon as he picks up a jar, the cauldron hums softly and a name floats to the surface.
Minotaur's horn. Moon salt collected during a full moon. Salamander blood good for another 4 days. Fairy bones.
Dust from a gargoyle's wings. None of this exists in his world. All of it sits here on the shelves. Kai mentally asks the cauldron what he can brew. The surface ripples. Potion of heightened senses. Enhanced hearing and vision for 4 hours. Moons salt. Night moth extract.
Dew from a weaver spider's web. Low difficulty. The recipe is laid out like in a cookbook. Heat. Add salt. Wait for it to dissolve. Pour in the extract.
Stir. Add the dew. Cool. But Kai grasps the main point. Proportions. The ventor worked by eye, roughly this much on the tip of a knife. But Kai has been working with precise dosages for 6 years. The difference between medicine and poison is a matter of milligs. He'll do better.
The side effects are listed in small print on the recipe. Headache, nausea, disorientation.
In his world, such a safety profile would be deemed unacceptable.
Kai lays out the ingredients, sniffs each one, rubs them between his fingers.
The moons salt is pure, fine crystals without impurities. The moth extract smells of violets and acetone. Dew from the spiderweb gives it an opolescent sheen, a protein-based colloidal solution. Kai knows what to do with these. The fire under the cauldron flares up the moment he places his hand on the rim. He doesn't pull it back.
There's no time to be scared. Instead of a pipet, a wooden spoon that he measures out with a knife. Instead of a thermometer, his own palm. Instead of a timer, a mental count. The potion changes color three times. Transparent turns blue. Blue turns silvery. Silvery fades to colorless with an opolescent sheen. The cauldron delivers the result.
The quality is excellent. No side effects. Duration: 6 hours instead of four. Kai exhales. He optimized a medieval recipe in 40 minutes. He pours the potion into three vials. Three doses, 12 gold pieces each, 36 if a buyer can be found. Kai looks at the vials, at the boarded up door, at the cauldron, at the bat. The bat yawns. He studied molecules for 6 years. Now molecules must save his life. One task remains to get out of the boarded up shop before the Inquisition enters it.
Kai stood in front of the boarded up door and thought the boards were nailed on the outside, sturdy, thick. The nails driven deep with bare hands can't handle it. He looked the shop one time. Behind the counter there a box with tools, venadator, tongs, mortar, pestle, two knives, iron rod that is an elbow for stirring. Kai took rod. He walked to the door. He stuck the end through the between the boards and pressed down. The wood creaked. The first board gave way to third attempt, the second on the fifth. Kai broke out in a sweat. His hands had grown to pipets and not to iron rods. The third board he peeled from meat and a nail scratched across the palm. Blood. Kai wrapped his hand with a rag from the shelf and continued.
20 20 minutes the door was free. He pushed it and into face hit. A side street narrow, dirty. The walls of the kids on both sides rose so high that the sky was just a strip. The pavement made rough stone. The stench from sewage ditch. Kai went out and squinted. The air was different, thick, alive, without impurities, exhaust, exhaust that he inhaled every day. Instead, that manure and smoke and something sweet from the bakery somewhere far away. He took a step, a second. The pavement was wet under my feet. The alley led onto a larger. Kai stopped at the corner and looked. people. Dozens people. Clothes made coarse fabric, leather apron, raincoats with hoods, wagons, horses.
The boy was a goose with a stick across the pavement. A woman was carrying a basket of bread on her head. No one didn't look at Kaa. He glanced at himself. His clothes, jeans, sneakers, gray t-shirt with the boar. It looked like crazy or a foreigner or like both at once. Kai returned to shop. On the shelves on jars, he found a bundle with clothes, a shirt, pants made coarse canvas, leather apron. Apparently, Ventor left in this. Kai changed clothes. The shirt was too big. The pants were too short. The apron fit like a glove. He looked at himself in reflection of the war. a skinny guy with dark circles under his off in baggy shirt. It'll do as an apprentice.
Kai hid his clothes under the counter.
The phone was dead. The screen didn't respond. He shoved it under there, too.
Then he took a single vial of potion and went out. He needed a customer. He needed money. He needed information about how this city worked and who the Inquisition was and where it was based.
The street led to the market square. Kai walked and looked around. Orelles was a big city. Two and threetory houses, signs above the doors. A blacksmith, a baker, a furrier. Kai counted his steps and turns. He memorized the route. After four turns, he came out onto the square and stopped. large, noisy rows of shops, the shouts of hawkers, the smell of roasted meat and fresh leather. And in the center of the square stood a pillar, wooden, blackened, its base lined with brushwood. Kai realized what it was. A pillar for burnings. Alchemists were burned on it. Ventor had been burned on it. And in 70 hours, they could burn him on it. Kai turned away and walked along the market stalls. He needed to find the right buyer, not a guard, not a merchant. Someone who understood the value of what lay in the vial. Someone who needed what the gods had denied. He found her an hour later, or rather, she found him. Kai was standing by the tavern wall, trying to figure out the menu by the smells coming from the kitchen when someone's fingers touched his belt. He reacted without thinking.
He grabbed the hand. A slender wrist. A girl, young, dark hair tied in a bun, eyes gray and quick. She flinched. Kai held on. She kicked him in the shin. Kai didn't let go. She stopped struggling and looked at him with an expression that clearly said she was weighing her chances of breaking his nose. Kai said there was nothing to steal from him, that he didn't have a single coin, that he was new in town. She said she could tell that his shirt was stolen, that his hands were too clean for a laborer and too soft for a nobleman, and that he smelled of sulfur.
Kai let go of her wrist. He asked if sulfur smelled bad. She replied that alchemists smelled of sulfur and alchemists get burned and that she didn't care because she was a thief, not a snitch. Her name was Mera Cole, 25 years old, a thief and a middleman. She stole wallets and sold information and had never once turned a client over to the Inquisition.
Kai took out a vial. Meera looked at it.
She asked what it was. Kai explained, "A potion to sharpen the senses. Hearing like a cat's vision like a hawks. 6 hours. No side effects." Meera laughed.
She said he was either a charlatan or a dead man and that there wasn't much difference. Kai offered her a taste for free. The first dose on the house. Meera looked at him for a long time. Then she took the vial, opened it, sniffed it, winced, took a sip. A small one, a cautious one. Kai counted the seconds.
At the 12th second, Meera blinked. At the 15th, her pupils dilated. At the 20th, she turned her head toward the tavern and froze. Then she looked at Kai. She said she could hear the tavern owner counting coins on the second floor. 34 silver coins, two gold, one counterfeit, and that behind the wall in the alley, a rat was gnawing on a bone, and that a woman three houses down had a crying child. Meera took another sip.
Her eyes changed, not just gray, silver.
She looked at Kai as if she could see every pore on his face. She said she wanted five more of those flasks. Kai replied that it cost money. 12 gold pieces per flask. Meera whistled. She said she didn't have that kind of money, but she had something better. Clients.
People who need things that don't exist in this world. She knew a mercenary whom the gods had denied a skill at birth. 32 years old and not a single gift. He would pay any price for what others received for free. Kai listened, his brain calculated.
Meera was the perfect sales channel, a middleman with a network of contacts, a person on the street, eyes and ears he didn't have. He offered her 15% of every sale. Meera haggled for 3 minutes, agreed to 15, said she steals wallets, not the future. They returned to the alley. Kai showed her the shop. Meera looked around. She touched the jars. She sniffed the air. She looked at the cauldron. She asked why he was staring at the pot. Kai replied that this pot was smarter than half of his university.
Meera didn't understand the word university. Kai said it was a place where people paid money to learn things that wouldn't be useful later. Meera nodded and said it was like a temple.
Kai laughed for the first time all day.
Meera left an hour later with two vials, one for the unskilled mercenary, one to show other potential customers.
Kai was left alone in the shop. He looked at the cauldron. The text on the surface had changed. Ventor's knowledge 12%. Time until detection 61 hours. 12% instead of 10. The knowledge was loading slowly, but it was loading. Kai sat down on the floor next to the cauldron. He placed his hand on its warm side. The cauldron hummed quietly like a computer in standby mode. 61 hours. He had two potions to sell, one thief among his allies, and 12% of the knowledge of a man who had been burned at the stake.
Kai closed his eyes. Through the wall, he could hear water dripping somewhere, steady, even like a countdown timer.
Meera returned to the morning, not alone. The her followed a man. Broad broad shoulders, taller kaya on a head, the scar across left eyebrow to cheekbone, hands as a blacksmith, leather chest over a shirt, sword on belt. He entered the thee and stopped.
He looked at the shelves, a kettle, ka in baggy shirt, and along his face it clear that he was. Meera said that it was wolf stone, 32 years old, mercenary, no skill. Kai looked at him. Wolf looked at response a heavy gaze of a man who has been too often. Wolf spoke first. He said that Meera had shown him a vial that he had as she hears a whisper through three walls. What? He doesn't believe in alchemy because that alchemists are charlatans but that does believes me because that she never once has lied in 5 years and so he didn't not for intense sensations. He needs strength. Kai asked why. Wolf was silent, then said that he works as a mercenary 12 years. What takes takes that others don't take. What fights better than people with skills, but without the skill, it the ceiling is the middle. His is hired when there's money for the best. They pay half as much.
They look down down. He wanted a loan at a in life to go out on fight and know that he isn't any worse. Kai listened.
In voice wolf there was anger. There's something else. Fatigue.
12 years of fatigue from that that the world decided to him to for to be. Kai turned toward the cauldron. He leaned toward surface mentally asked about the potion of power. The text appeared.
Titans of the Titan. Divine power on one hour. Main ingredient the horn. Recipe venator. Duration: 15 minutes. Side effects: convulsions and muscle tears.
Kai frowned. 15 minutes and convulsions.
That was unacceptable. He read the formula more carefully. The problem was instabilization.
Venator did not control the decay active substance. The molecules were too quickly and the release of energy was unevenly. Peak load in the first minutes and collapse at the end. How? As if as someone had adrenaline without measuring the dosage. Kai knew how. Fix. Fix it.
In his world, there were prolonged forms of the drugs. Slow release. Controlled disintegration.
Need a matrix that would hold the active substance and release it gradually. He looked at the shelves. Resin from the world tree. He took the jar. The cauldron hummed. He examined the composition. a complex polymer structure, high viscosity, thermal stability. This could work as a matrix.
If the resin were heated to a certain temperature, it would soften and absorb the active substance from the minur's horn. As it cooled, it would seal it in.
Inside the body, body heat would slowly dissolve the matrix and release the substance evenly.
Not 15 minutes of peak load. An hour of steady power.
Kai explained to Wolf that he needed time. Two hours. Wolf nodded, sat down on the floor against the wall, placed his sword on his knees, closed his eyes.
Meera remained standing by the counter watching.
Kai began to work. First, the minur's horn, dense, heavy, dark gray with red veins. The cauldron displayed the molecular composition, and Kai almost whistled. The structure resembled steroid compounds, but with elements that didn't exist in his periodic table.
The fourth element in the chain had no analoges. Magic, or something this world called magic, which Kai couldn't yet explain. He ground the horn in a mortar, fine powder, uniform. Then he turned to the resin of the world tree. He heated the cauldron. He placed a piece of resin on the edge. It began to soften at a temperature Kai estimated to be 120°.
Slowly, thick, stretching in strands. He added the horn powder to the softened resin and began stirring with an iron rod. Slowly, counting the turns, 12 turns clockwise. The resin darkened. It turned almost black, then red, then gold. Kai added water, clean water from a clay jug in the corner. The temperature dropped. The resin began to release its substance into the solution, but slowly, controlled, exactly as he had calculated. The potion boiled for 40 minutes. Kai didn't leave the cauldron.
He stirred. He counted. He monitored the color and viscosity.
Meera was silent. Wolf dozed against the wall. A bat in the corner turned its head and watched the process with its other eye. When the potion cooled, the cauldron revealed the result. The elixir of Titan. Excellent quality. Divine power. Duration 1 hour. Side effects.
Mild muscle fatigue after the effect wears off. Kai reread it. 1 hour instead of 15 minutes. Mild fatigue instead of convulsions and muscle tears. He had quadrupled the duration and eliminated all serious side effects. Venador had spent years on this formula. Kai improved it in 2 hours. Not because he was smarter, because he knew what Ventor couldn't have known. Pharmaccoinetics, controlled release. A principle that wouldn't be invented for another 700 years.
Kai poured the potion into a vial. One dose. There were still two Minotaur horns left. He handed the vial to Wolf.
Wolf opened his eyes, stood up, took the vial, looked at the golden liquid inside, asked what would happen. Kai answered, "Divine power for one hour. He would be able to break down a stone wall with his bare hands, lift a horse, bend a sword, then a slight fatigue, like after a long run, and that's it." Wolf looked at the vial, then at Kai. He asked how much. Kai said 30 gold pieces.
It was a test. The actual price in the ventor catalog was 600, but Kai didn't need just one client. He needed an ally.
Wolf took out his wallet, counted out 30 coins, placed them on the counter, then drank the potion in one gulp. Nothing happened for the first 5 seconds. On the sixth, Wolf straightened up. On the 10th, his shoulders spread. Not physically, but something had changed in the way he stood as if gravity had become lighter for him. At the 15th second, Wolf looked at his hands. He clenched his fist, unclenched it, clenched it again. He turned toward the shop wall, a stone wall two bricks thick, and he struck it. Without swinging, he just jabbed his fist. The wall cracked. It didn't shatter. It cracked. The crack ran from the point of impact to the ceiling. Dust rained down from the beams. A bat in the corner fluttered frantically. Meera jumped back toward the door. Wolf stood and looked at his fist. There wasn't a scratch on it. He turned to Kai and Kai saw an expression on his face he hadn't expected to see on the face of a 32-year-old mercenary with a scar across half his face.
Wolf swallowed, averted his eyes, then looked again, said quietly that Kai had given him for 30 gold pieces what the gods had denied him at birth, that he owed him more than his life, that he owed him self-respect.
Kai replied that he didn't need a debt.
He needed a man to cover the shop. Wolf nodded once, briefly, like an oath.
Meera stood by the door and looked at the crack in the wall. Then at Kai, she asked what else he could brew. Kai looked at the cauldron. The surface displayed new text. Ventor's knowledge 14% time until detection. 49 hours. 49 hours. And somewhere in this city, Inquisitor Tess Marrow was searching for a shop that smelled of sulfur.
Kai replied to Meera. He said he could brew enough to give them problems they hadn't even suspected yet.
Meera smirked. She said problems were her specialty. Wolf remained silent. He stood by the wall, clenching and unclenching his fist, getting used to the sensation he'd been waiting 32 years for. 40 90 hours. Kai stood by the boiler and looked at numbers. Then stopped look and started work. He needed to more potions, more customers, more gold. Gold is walls, doors, locks, security, time. He welded two two doses of of from the remaining horn of the minur, then four doses of of heightened senses. I worked all night. I slept for hours for the floor next to the boiler, huddled cheek to warm bronze.
Mr. came at and found him in this position. She said that he is hugging the potty. Kai replied, "No opening his that the pot the only who would hear understands him." Meera brought food, bread, cheese, a piece of dried meat, and the news. After overnight, she found three potential clients. The first was a hunter, head hunter, head hunter by named Gray. He needed had potion of to track the target that was hiding in city for week. The second was merchant from the guild. He needs do something for the negotiations. something that will give an advantage. The third was an anonymous order. The note without name. I need titans of the titan 20 doses. Price is important. Kai read the note. 20 doses and had had two ready. The verd of the minotaur left. 20 doses meant 20 horns which had to be somewhere be in the where alchemy was heresy.
Meera said that she knew the supplier.
The old herbalist on outskirts Ourelis sells ingredients from the floor.
Charges expensive. Doesn't ask questions. Kai sent her to the herbalist with 10 gold from those 30 that paid wolf. Meera left. Kai was the first client. Gray came in an hour. Short, muscular. He moved like a cat. Two knives on his and one one on his boot.
Kai noticed the third in that as Gray put his foot slightly to the side.
The chemist got used to to observe minor details. Gray looked over the counter with glance. Exits, corners, shadows, professional assessment of space. Then I looked at Ka and asked, "Is it it works?" Kai gave him a vial. Gray drank it. 10 10 seconds froze. He turned his head. I listened. He said that he could feet of a behind three walls. a man, an elderly man, judging by the wheezing the lungs. Then he said that he could see a crack in stone in across closed window across the boards through a crack in half a finger. Gray put on the counter 15 gold coins. He said that he'd 15 for five glasses and left quietly. Just it it was second. The client arrived around noon. a merchant, portly red-faced, an expensive dublet, a gold chain around his neck. He introduced himself as Darren Fox, a member of the merchants guild. He said he had negotiations in 3 days with a supplier from the Eastern Provinces, that the supplier was a crook and was trying to double the price, that Darren needed an advantage.
Kai thought for a moment. The cauldron showed voice of the siren in his catalog.
persuasion for 30 minutes. Everything you say sounds like the truth, but his knowledge was only at 14%.
The recipe for voice of the siren required at least 30. It wasn't available yet. Kai looked at the available recipes. There was something simpler. The clear mind potion.
Accelerated thinking for 2 hours.
Information processing three times faster. Improved memory.
The ingredients were on the shelves.
Silver lotus pollen, owl's eye extract, morning dew distillate. Kai offered Darren the clear mind potion. He explained that he wouldn't be trying to persuade his conversation partner. He would think three times faster, spot lies through micro expressions, memorize every number, calculate his moves.
Darren listened. His little eyes sparkled. He asked how much. Kai said 40 gold pieces. Darren didn't haggle. He put down the money. He said he'd come for the potion tomorrow morning and that if it worked, Kai would get a regular customer with a fat wallet. Darren left.
Kai counted the money. 55 gold pieces for the morning, plus 30 from Wolf, minus 10 sent with Meera, 75 gold pieces in the till. He began brewing the clear mind potion. The process was more delicate than with the Titan elixir. The silver lotus pollen was unstable. The cauldron displayed its molecular structure, and Kai saw the problem immediately. A neuroactive compound. It affected synaptic transmission. In his world, the closest analoges were neutropics, but an order of magnitude more powerful. Ventor's problem lay in purification. The owl's eye extract contained impurities that competed with the active substance for the same receptors. The result was unpredictable.
Sometimes mental clarity, sometimes a headache, sometimes hallucinations.
Kai removed the impurities. The method was simple. Selective extraction.
Different substances dissolve at different temperatures. He heated the extract to 60°.
The impurities precipitated out. The active ingredient remained in solution.
His professor would have fainted at the sight of these ingredients, but the principles of chemistry worked here just as they did in the 21st century. The molecules obeyed the same laws. The potion turned out clear with a slight golden tint. The cauldron showed the result. The quality was excellent.
Duration, 3 hours instead of two. No side effects.
Kai divided it into four doses. One for Darren, three for sale. Meera returned by evening without the ingredients, with a bruise under her eye, and with information worth more than any minur's horn. The herbalist was dead. His shop on the outskirts had been burned down two days ago. The Inquisition Meera had learned the details from the neighbors. Inquisitor Tess Marrow personally led the raid. She took all the ingredients, sealed off the ruins, interrogated everyone in the area. She was looking for the herbalists connections to other suppliers of banned substances. Kai listened and felt a chill rise from his stomach to his throat.
Tess Marrow, the sense of sin skill, a professional who had burned 14 alchemists.
She wasn't some abstract threat on a timer. She was a real person who two days ago had burned down a shop five blocks away from him. Meera said the bruise wasn't from the raid. One of Tessa's henchmen had been questioning people at the market too insistently.
Meera had been eavesdropping. She'd been spotted. She'd had to flee across the roof and had landed awkwardly face first into a shutter. Kai asked what exactly they'd been asking. Meera answered.
They'd been asking about the smell of sulfur, about strange newcomers in town, about anyone selling vials of liquid.
Kai looked at the cauldron. 41 hours until discovery. Tess was looking for him, specifically him. Maybe she didn't know who he was, didn't know where, but she knew someone was brewing potions in Orelles, and she was narrowing the search. Kai sat down on the floor. 75 gold pieces, six readymade potions, one mercenary with divine power for an hour, one thief with a black eye, and 41 hours until the bonfire.
He needed a plan, not just to brew and sell. He needed to hide the shop so that Tess Marrow would walk right past it. He looked at the catalog, flipped through the recipes, and stopped at one. Silver mist phase shift. The object becomes intangible for 20 minutes. Passes through walls. In Ventor's recipe, the probability of getting stuck inside a wall was 50%. But Kay didn't need to pass through walls. He needed the wall to pass through those searching behind it. He needed the entrance to the shop to become invisible. A door that looks like a wall. A wall you can't touch because your hand passes right through it, yet your eye sees stone.
The recipe required 20% knowledge. He had 14, but his knowledge was growing by the hour. Kai pressed his palm against the cauldron. The warm bronze hummed.
Somewhere deep within the liquid, symbols flickered.
Ventor's formulas loaded into his head like files on a slow connection.
He had to wait until he reached 20%. And he had a plan. Kai didn't sleep. He sat by the boiler and waited. Every hour he leaned towards surface and checked the numbers. 15% 16 17 formulas Ventor manifested in his mind as photographs in a tank. At first faint outlines, then the details, then sharpness. He began to see connections between the ingredients of Kai had noticed before. Moons salt was not just a crystal. It was a catalyst. She amplified the effect of active substance in four times if he added to the right moment. Venador knew that. But did didn't why. Kai didn't why. Crystal lattice of the salt dissolves dissolution, released ions which were incorporated into the potions and altered their confirmation.
discovered active centers. They created the molecule accessible for receptors.
In his world, it was called alossteric modulation.
Here, it was called lunar magic. At dawn, the cauldron showed 18%.
Kai stood up. He stretched his neck. His cracked. He's 26 and body was itself like an old man. Two days on on the floor, food two times a day. continuous operation in university at the day he although he could make coffee here was coffee coffee coffee they will be delivered to Europe in 300 years Kai added this to list of to I I missed Mera came with food and a new bruise this this time on forearm she said that was looking an alternative supplier for ingredients and found one the black in the district smugglers ingredients from the sea Prices three times higher than usual. But the horn of the minotaur is there. 20 of them. 8 8 gold for peace.
160 gold pieces. Atkaya had 70. They're enough. Meera said that the smugglers take a deposit. Half now half upon receipt. 80 gold pieces. All the same wasn't enough. Kai looked at his supplies. Four doses of of mind. Three potions of heightened senses, two doses of the of Titan. If sell all at full price, he will better the amount. But then he will give to Darren the potion and stay without supply. And this is safety net. Insurance is life. Kai made a decision. He gave Meera 75 gold coins.
All that was. He said, "Find the missing five." Meera looked at him. She asked where she find five gold coins. Kai said that she a thief. Meera smiled. She replied that she steals wallets and not trust and what five gold will find in an hour. She left. Kai stayed without money without food. At nine jars, potions and 3070 clocks before the bonfire. He continued, "Wait." Darren Fox arrived exactly as promised. Morning. Kai gave him potion of mind. Darren paid 40 gold pieces. Kai immediately set aside 30 for Meera for the second half payment to the smugglers. 10 kept for for food and contingencies expenses. Then came Mir.
He took three doses of the potion of emotion. I paid 36. Kai put and this money. 30 on horns. Six for life. By noon, the boiler showed 19%. 1%.
Kai walked along the green from the corner to corner. Four steps to one side, four in the other. Mouse bat in the corner. She watched him, turning her head. Kai called her dean because she looked at him with the same silent disapproval as the dean of the chemistry department did when Kai was late for morning seminars.
19 and a half. The formulas for silver mist were emerging at the edge of his consciousness. He saw the general idea but not the details. Phase shift, a change in the state of matter without a change in temperature. In his world, that would be a violation of thermodynamics.
Here it was a recipe on the cauldron's page. 20%. The text appeared clearly.
Silver mist. A phase shift for 20 minutes. The object becomes permeable.
Ingredients: Moonstone dust. Mist essence gathered before dawn. Phase serpent scales. Kai checked the shelves.
The moonstone dust was there. Jar number 31. The mist essence was there. Jar number 12. Faze snake scales. Jar number 44.
Four scales remained at the bottom, each the size of a pinky fingernail, thin, translucent, shimmering like an oil slick. The cauldron displayed the molecular composition of the scales, and Kai froze. It was impossible. The molecule's structure existed in two states simultaneously, like Schroinger's cat. The molecule was both solid and gaseous at the same time.
quantum superp position at the molecular level, visible to the naked eye. His professor wouldn't have fainted. His professor would have quit his profession. Kai set to work. Ventor's recipe called for dissolving the scales in mist essence and adding moonstone dust. Simple, crude. A 50/50 chance the object would get stuck in the wall because the phase shift was uneven. One part of the body passed through matter while the other remained solid. Kai saw the reason. The scales weren't dissolving completely. Larger fragments retained their superp position while smaller ones lost it upon contact with the essence. The solution was elementary. Don't dissolve the scales whole. Grind them into a uniform powder.
Every particle the same size. Identical behavior. a uniform phase shift throughout the entire volume. Kai ground the scales in a mortar for a long time thoroughly until the powder became so fine that it rose into the air with his breath and shimmerred. The air in the workshop became visible for a second.
Then the powder settled. Kai poured it into the cauldron. He added the mist essence, moonstone dust. He heated it.
The potion didn't change color. It changed state. The liquid turned into gas and back into liquid. It pulsed. It breathed. After 30 minutes, the cauldron showed the result. Silver mist.
Excellent quality. 0% chance of getting stuck. Duration 30 minutes instead of 20. Kai exhaled. 0%.
He had eliminated the main side effect completely. But he didn't need to walk through walls. He needed to apply the potion to a door to make the entrance invisible. He reread the description.
The potion affected the object to which it was applied. A person drank it and became transparent. But what if he applied it to a wall? The wall would become transparent. Visually, it would remain in place, but a hand would pass right through it. Tess Marrow would come into the alley. She would see the wall, a solid stone wall with no door. She would walk on. Kai stepped out into the alley. He looked at the shop door, wooden, old, conspicuous.
He needed to brick it up, fill it with stone, and then apply the potion to the masonry. The stone would remain visible, but become permeable. His own people would pass through. Strangers wouldn't figure it out. Kai went back inside. He needed a mason or wolf. Wolf arrived an hour after Meera found him in the mercenary quarter. The Titan elixir's effect had long since worn off, but Wolf still moved differently, more confidently, like a man who knows what he's capable of. Kai explained the plan.
Wolf listened, nodded, left, and returned 2 hours later with a cart of stones. Didn't ask where he got them.
Kai didn't ask. Wolf bricked up the doorway in 40 minutes. The masonry was rough but solid. From the outside, the alley looked like a dead end. Two walls and not a single door. Kai applied silver mist to the fresh masonry. The stones absorbed the liquid. For a second, they became translucent, then gray and solid looking again. Kai held out his hand. His fingers passed through the stone as if through mist. a chill on his skin, a tingling sensation and he was standing on the outside. Wolf looked at the wall at Kai on the other side of the wall that looked like a wall but wasn't one. He shook his head, said he hadn't seen anything like it in 32 years. Meera returned in the evening with confirmation from the smugglers.
The horns would be here in 2 days. She walked through the wall and stumbled in surprise. She cursed. Said he should have warned her. Then she touched the stone from the inside. Her hand passed right through it. Meera pulled her hand back. She touched it again. She laughed.
She said that Kai was crazy. Kai looked at the cauldron. 21% 35 hours until detection. But there was nothing to detect now. The alley led to a dead end. The wall was a wall. The shop had vanished. Kai sat down on the floor. For the first time in 3 days, the tension eased. Not completely, but enough for his hands to stop shaking. He was alive. The shop was hidden. There were customers. The minotaur's horns were coming. Now he had to take the next step. Stop surviving and start building.
35 hours had passed. Nothing happened.
Kai stood by the wall and listened.
Silence. The alley was empty. The timer on surface. The boiler flashed and disappeared. Instead, at a new line.
Detection is deferred. Masking is active. Next check in 14 days. Kai exhaled so deeply that it my head. 14 days. 2 weeks. A whole eternity by compared to 3 days. He sat on the floor and sat there 10 minutes just staring at the ceiling. The dean was in corner uphead and slept. Meera came with the horns of the minotaur. 20 of them each is a palm. Dark gray with red veins.
Smugglers didn't didn't. Kai checked every boiler. Boiler clean. No impurities. More powerful those that remained from venador.
Meera explained that these horns from the southern islands where the minotaurs are larger and more vicious. Kai started work 20 doses of the of the titan anonymous order. He worked 12 hours straight. The process was well established. Grinding the horn preparation the dye from resin worldwood controlled release. Each dose is identical the previous one standardization.
In his world, it was called proper industrial practice. Here, it a revolution.
Venador brewed a potion as a unique work of art. Kai brewed a series, identical, predictable. Each glass yielded exactly one hour of divine power and exactly zero side effects.
To morning, 20 glasses were in a row on the counter. Golden liquid in each one, the same level, the same shade.
Meera looked at Ro and said that it beautiful. Kai said that it chemistry.
Meera took the vials. She returned after 4 hours with a bag. In bag there 400 gold coins. 20 doses of 20 gold pieces.
Kai set a price. Lower the list price.
600 gold per a dose was was greed. 20 was a strategy. anonymous client had was returned. Kai asked Meera who it was.
Meera shook her head. She said that the went through three intermediaries. She had only the last one. A young guy in uniform. City guard.
Kai paused to think. City guard. 20 doses of potion. Someone was arming the squad. That was not his business for now. He counted the money. 400 gold plus the balance from previous sales. 416 gold coins, more than the average resident Orelis earned in a year. Kai made a list. He needed equipment. Not wooden spoons and clay bowls, real instruments, glass flasks, measuring vessels, filters, scales. He described to Meera what he needed. Meera listened with the expression of someone who doesn't understand half the words but remembers everything.
She left. She returned two days later with half the list. The glass blower in the market square made flasks according to Kai's description. Rough, uneven, but functional. The apothecary sold him measuring vessels and filter cloth. Kai held his first flask in his hands, crooked, with air bubbles in the glass, but it was a flask. His flask in his laboratory. He felt at home for the first time in a week. Ventor's knowledge had reached 25%.
New recipes were discovered every day. A regeneration potion, wound healing 10 times faster. A chameleon potion changing one's appearance for 6 hours. A stone skin potion. Resistance to physical damage for 40 minutes. Every recipe contained ventor's mistakes. And everyone Kai could improve. Ventor's regeneration was painful. The tissues healed, but the nerve endings burned like fire. Kai added an analesic component from silver willow bark to the formula. Ventor's chameleon potion produced a random appearance. Kai stabilized the process and added the ability to set parameters.
Ventor's stone skin limited mobility.
Kai altered the structure of the protective layer, making it elastic. The number of clients was growing. Gray came every 3 days for the potion of emotions.
Darren won the negotiations with the supplier and returned with an order for 10 doses of the potion of clear mind for his entire trading office. New faces appeared. A huntress from the northern forests with broken ribs that hadn't healed for 2 months. The regeneration potion mended them overnight. a diplomat from the embassy of the eastern provinces who needed to change his appearance for the duration of secret negotiations.
A bodyguard for the city magistrate who needed stone skin for the duration of a public procession.
Everyone paid. Everyone returned.
Everyone brought someone else. Meera kept track. Kai gave her a separate journal. She recorded clients by the names they chose for themselves. No real names. Raven, fox, grey lady, blacksmith.
Meera gave herself the code name feather. Kai asked why. She said that a feather is light and inconspicuous, and that a feather can sign a death warrant. Kai kept a second journal, alchemical symbols on some pages, chemical formulas on the others. Meera peaked in and asked what language it was. Kai replied that it was one that hadn't been invented yet. Meera shrugged and said it was strange but useful. By the end of the second week, there were more than 2,000 gold pieces in the till.
Kai spent carefully. Ingredients, equipment, food, Mera's pay, a small stipen for Wolf to guard the alley. Wolf came every evening and sat at the entrance to the alley until dawn without the elixir, just sitting there with a sword on his lap. Kai asked why he was doing this without being paid in potions. Wolf replied that some debts aren't measured in gold. Ventor's knowledge had reached 30%.
And Kai saw the recipe for the siren's voice. Persuasion for 30 minutes.
Everything you say sounds like the truth. Highly addictive. The last two words were underlined in Ventor's formula. Highly addictive.
Kai read the recipe three times. The problem was serious. The active ingredient affected the listener's dopamine receptors, not the speakers, the listeners. The siren's voice didn't make the words true. It caused the listener to derive pleasure from agreement, chemical pleasure, like a drug. The listener agreed because agreeing felt good, and wanted to hear more. Venader knew this. A note in the recipe said that two of his clients had returned a week later, not for a new dose for themselves. They wanted the person who had received the voice to speak to them again. They had become addicted to someone else's voice. Kai set the recipe aside. It was a weapon, not a tool. A weapon that turned people into addicts.
He could improve it. Remove the addiction. Create pure persuasion without the side effect of drug dependence.
But was it worth it? Kai thought about it all day. By evening, he had decided yes, it was worth it. Persuasion without addiction is a tool of diplomacy, not enslavement. A knife can kill. A knife can slice bread. The difference isn't in the knife. The difference is in the hand. He reworked the formula, removed the dopamine component, replaced it with an oxytocin analog from moon jasmine extract. Trust instead of pleasure. The listener won't become addicted. They'll simply be inclined toward the speaker, open to dialogue, ready to listen. The decision remains with the listener. Free will remains intact. The cauldron showed results. The siren's voice modified.
Persuasion for 40 minutes. No addiction.
Kai poured the potion. Four doses. The price is 2,000 gold per dose in the ventor catalog. Kai set the price at 500. Meera looked at the vials of pale blue liquid. She asked what it was. Kai explained. Meera was silent for a moment. Then she said she knew who needed it and that they were dangerous people.
Kai asked how dangerous. Meera replied, "The palace." A client turned out to be not the person Kai expected. Meera brought him at night. Through the wall, a man entered and stopped in the middle of the shop, a dark coat with a hood, gloves, not a single exposed patch of skin. He took his and Kai saw a woman about 40, delicate features, a strand in black hair, eyes dark and alert. She introduced herself as Lero Wayne, the adviser to the court Orelis.
Kai didn't know what meant adviser at the court. Meera then explained, "The third person in the country after the king and chancellor."
Lra Wayne came not for voice of the siren. She came to watch at the man who brews potions skills. She used to around the shop. She hid the jars. I read the labels. I asked questions. Precise questions. How does effect last? What is percentage failure rate? Are any side effects? Does is addictive? Kai replied.
Lero was listening. No once did interrupted. Not once did doubted it.
She talked with him as in an equal. This was unfamiliar. In this world, the alchemist stood below a blacksmith. The liar ignored ignored. After 30 minutes, she asked the question. She asked if if Kai brew a potion that will the skill permanent.
Kai answered honestly, "Not mitt, but it is on it." Lyra nodded. She said she would buy four doses of Siren's voice and that she would soon be holding negotiations that would determine the fate of the eastern provinces. That thousands of lives depended on whether she said the right words to the right people. Kai handed over four vials. Lyra placed a small bag on the counter. 2,000 gold pieces. Kai opened his mouth. He had quoted 500 per dose. Lyra paid the ventor's list price. She looked at him and said she wasn't paying for the potion. She was paying for silence. Kai shut his mouth. Lyra left. A cloak, a hood, gloves, through the wall, and into the night. Meera looked at the bag of gold and said that they now had a problem they didn't have before. Kai asked what it was. Meera replied, "When the palace knows about you, the pantheon will soon find out, too. The nine gods of Orelis, the very ones who bestowed skills at birth, the very ones whose monopoly Kai was destroying with every vial sold."
Kai sat down on the floor. 4,000 gold pieces in the cash register. 12 regular customers. The shop hidden behind an invisible wall. And he had just sold potions to a third ranking official of the state who would go into negotiations armed with his chemistry. And if the negotiations succeeded, someone would inevitably ask how. And the thread would stretch to the alley, to the wall that isn't a wall to him. Kai looked at the cauldron. 32%.
Formulas were unlocking one after another. Somewhere deep within Ventor's data array, something enormous was flickering. A recipe for a permanent skill. Encrypted, fragmented.
Kai saw it out of the corner of his mind like a figure behind frosted glass.
Huge, complex, requiring ingredients that weren't in a single jar on the shelves. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he realized he'd slept for 3 hours. Meera had covered him with a blanket. A bowl of porridge stood on the counter. A note lay nearby.
Three new clients are waiting tomorrow.
One of them is not human. Kai reread the last sentence. One of them is not human.
He arrived the next day. Meera was right. He walked through the wall and filled half the shop. He was as tall as the doorway, broad skin with a golden sheen, eyes without pupils, pure white gold.
He was dressed like a human. A dublet, boots, a cloak. But he wasn't human.
Every movement was too fluid, too precise, like a mechanism encased in skin. He called himself the avatar of Valkur, the god of war, one of the nine.
Kai stood behind the counter and looked at the creature that represented a god.
His hands didn't tremble. This surprised him. Maybe because he had already been living for 2 weeks in a world where minotaars were suppliers of ingredients and phase snakes shed their skin, leaving behind scales.
The god of war was simply the next item on the list of the impossible.
The avatar spoke in an even voice without inflection.
Valkur knew about the shop. He knew about the skill potions. He knew that someone was selling what only gods could grant. Valkur wasn't angry. Valkur was interested. The avatar said that Valkor was at odds with the other gods of the pantheon. That he needed an army stronger than the other eight. That the Titan elixir in the hands of his guard would tip the balance of power. He proposed a deal, an exclusive contract.
Kai would brew potions only for Valkor.
Valkur would protect the shop from the Inquisition and the other gods. 100,000 gold pieces up front. Kai listened.
100,000 gold pieces. Protection from the Inquisition. Protection from the gods.
It sounded like the solution to all his problems.
And it smelled like a trap.
Kai asked for time to think it over. The Avatar nodded, said Kai had seven days, and left. Through the wall, a golden glow in the alley and silence. Meera sat in the corner, pale. She said she'd seen avatars before at city festivals, but never at arms length, and that she didn't like his eyes. Kai replied that he didn't like the offer. Exclusivity meant slavery. beautiful, golden, but slavery. He hadn't traveled back in time to become a weapons supplier for a god.
But to refuse the god of war meant becoming his enemy. Kai sat down by the cauldron. He needed a plan, a real one.
Not survival, not trade, a strategy.
He leaned toward the surface and for the first time asked the cauldron not about recipes. He asked about Venador, who he was, why he was killed, what he knew that made the gods send the Inquisition after him. The surface rippled for a long time, a minute, two, then text, but not white as usual. Red. Venador knew the truth. Skills are not a gift from the gods. Skills are chemistry, molecular structures built into the body at birth. The gods didn't create skills.
The gods took the formulas from the one who created them. From the 10th god, the god of alchemy who was killed by the other nine. Kai recoiled. The 10th god killed. His formulas stolen, divided among the nine. The monopoly on skills is built on murder and lies.
The cauldron displayed another line. The 10th god's body has not been destroyed.
It is hidden beneath the great temple of Orelis. The final formula lies in his blood. The formula for a permanent skill.
Kai sat on the floor and stared at the red letters. Ventor died trying to get to that blood. Kai now knew why, and he knew that Valkur knew, too. The god of war didn't want the potion. He wanted the formula. A monopoly in one set of hands instead of nine. Seven days to respond. Kai closed his eyes. When he opened them, the cauldron showed 33%.
7 days. Kai spent the first two pondering options. Go ahead. The deal.
Valkura meant safety and gold. And a cage. God of war will a monopoly on potions. The rest eight gods will unite against him. War. Kai will find in the epicenter. Not as a player, as a resource. To refuse meant war of another kind, a personal one. Valkura does dozen rejections. The avatar will return, but not with a proposal.
The third option appeared in the third day. Kai was sitting by the boiler and was rereading the red text about the 10th god when in the shop a man whose he had expected short thin shaven head brown cassich girdled with a rope sandals on bare bare monk he entered through the wall and even didn't surprised he stopped I looked around I looked at ka introduced myself as brother Emmerick 40 years old servant of the temple custodian of the library.
Kai became wary. The temple that very under which the body of the slain god Emmer said that had come not from the pantheon came on my own. That's that 20 years has been books at library of the day and 20 years has been questions for which no one answers. Answer. Why are distributed unevenly? Why are some are born without skills? Why formulas, skills anywhere are recorded if the gods are generous? Emerch said that he had heard about the shop. No, from Meera, not from clients, from books. In the library, he found a reference to Ventor, not as a heretic, as a scholar. A 300 years old described an alchemist who claimed that skills can be synthesized.
The entry was marked as destroyed, but Emer found a copy walled up in the myth of the basement.
Kai listened. Emmerick didn't know a fanatic. He was a traitor. He was a doubter. A man who believed 20 years and then found a crack in the foundation of the ant and could stop picking at it.
Emmerick suggested a trade. He gives Kai access to the temple library, all the archives, all the basements, all the walled up rooms. Kai gives Emer the truth. What skills really are. Kai agreed without hesitation. The temple library is a map. A map of the building beneath which lies the body of the 10th god. A map to the formula for a permanent skill. Emerch left and returned the following night with a tube. Inside were copies of the temple's blueprints. Emerch had drawn them from memory for 12 hours. Kai spread the blueprints out on the counter. The great temple of Orurelis, six floors above ground. Three below. The lower levels are off limits to everyone except the high priest. Guards at every passageway.
Magical seals on the doors. Emerch pointed to a spot on the plan, the lowest level. A chamber with no entrance, walls 5 m thick. On the map, it was marked with a single word. Ark.
Emer said that in 20 years, he had never once seen anyone go in there or come out. He didn't know what was inside. Kai knew the body of the 10th god. Kai studied the plans for two days. He counted, he measured, he mapped out roots. Three underground levels. Each was guarded. The first level was a repository of relics. The guards changed every 4 hours. Two at the entrance, two inside. The second level was an archive of forbidden texts. One door, a magical seal. No entry without a key. The third level is the ark. Walls without doors, 5 m of stone, and somewhere behind them lies the very thing for which Venador died. The silver mist could carry him through the walls. But 5 m, 30 minutes of potions effect. Would it be enough?
Kai calculated. Speed of passing through matter, density of the stone, length of the path. just barely. 30 minutes to pass through 5 meters of stone one way.
The potion wouldn't last for the return trip. He needed a second dose inside the ark or another way back. Kai looked at the cauldron. 36%, new recipes, new possibilities.
But none solved the problem of 5 m of stone. He worked on both fronts. By day he brewed potions for clients. By night, he studied plans and formulas. The number of clients grew to 15, then 18.
Rumors spread through Orelles like smoke. No one knew where the shop was.
Everyone knew it existed. On the fifth day of the seven given by Valkur, what Kai feared happened. Wolf arrived with news. Rumors at the palace. Someone had used the voice of the siren at the reception for the eastern ambassadors.
The negotiations went brilliantly. Too brilliantly. The eastern ambassadors agreed to all the terms in half an hour.
Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of Ourelis diplomacy.
Questions? An investigation.
Quiet for now. But someone is already looking for the source. Kai clenched his teeth. Lyra Vain, court adviser. She used the potion during official negotiations in public in front of witnesses. The modified voice of the siren wasn't addictive, but it worked and it was noticeable. The thread began to unravel. On the sixth day, Emmerick arrived pale. His hands were shaking. He said there was an alarm at the temple.
The high priest had convened a council.
One of the gods had sensed a disturbance, not a physical one, metaphysical.
Someone had used a skill they shouldn't have had. The gods sensed every skill in the city. Every skill they had bestowed at birth was marked, like a signature.
Kai's potions granted skills without a signature, pure, unmarked. To the gods, it was like hearing a voice in an empty room, a voice that shouldn't be there.
Kai realized the scale of the problem.
Not the Inquisition, not the palace, the gods. The nine living gods who sensed every one of his potions as an interference in their own network. Every vial sold was a signal. He went live every time a client drank his potion.
Until now, the signals had been weak, isolated, a potion of the senses, a potion of clear mind, trifles. But the voice of the siren used at the diplomatic reception was a scream.
There was one day left until Valkyr's reply. Kai gathered everyone. Meera, Wolf, Emmer, four people in a small shop behind an invisible wall. He told them everything about the 10th god, about the body beneath the temple, about the formula in the blood, about how skills are chemistry and gods are usurpers.
Wolf listened in silence. His face didn't change. 32 years without a skill.
He had always known the system was unjust. Now he learned it was also built on lies. Meera cursed quietly and creatively. Emer sat on the floor staring into space. 20 years of faith crumbled in 5 minutes. Kai laid out a plan. He wouldn't accept Valkor's deal, nor would he refuse it. He would propose a counterdeal, not an exclusive, a partnership, a limited supply of potions in exchange for one thing. Access to the temple. Valkor is a god. He can enter places a mortal cannot. He can guide Kai through the first two levels to the wall of the ark. Beyond that lies the silver mist. Valkor won't know why. Kai will say he needs ingredients from the ark for a permanent skill recipe, which technically would be true. The blood of the 10th god is the ingredient. Meera said it was madness. Wolf said he was coming. Emer paused and said he would draw a detailed map of the lower levels based on the records he'd seen in the forbidden archive. Kai looked at them. A thief, a mercenary without a skill, a monk who lost his faith, and a chemist from the future.
against the nine gods. The odds were about the same as for his thesis. His adviser had also said it was madness.
Kai defended it with flying colors.
Avatar Valkura entered the on seventh day exactly at dawn. Golden eyes without pupils, motionless face. He stood at the counter and waited. Kai stood across from him. Between them a kettle, warm humming. Kai began to speak. He said that he accept the exclusive Avatar didn't didn't Kai continued he said that proposed a partnership limited supply of of Titan for the Valkur 30 doses per month price negotiable in exchange Kai asks one thing access to the great temple once time on one night. The avatar remained silent 10 seconds then asked why. Kai answered. Ingredients rare, impossible to get in any way, required for the formula, formulas for skill. When the word permanent changed in golden eyes, not expression, avatars did have expressions, light, eyes became brighter for a fraction of Valkur, for his avatar heard a word that wanted here. permanent skill, permanent for the army.
Avatar said that Valkur will consider the proposal and left. Kai exhaled. The first part is done. Now to wait, wait.
He could. That's why he worked.
Knowledge. Venador reached 30 38%. Each new percent opened a layer, layer, layer. The formulas became more complex, deeper. Ventor was was just alchemist.
He was a genius. 40 years of research built into system which struck Kaya with its scale. Ventor tried to a complete map of all possible skills. I classified them. I broke into categories. Physical, mental, elemental, spatial, temporal.
Each category had a basic formula.
Variations were modifications of the bass. The power of the Titan was a modification of the formula of the physical amplification.
Voice of the siren was a modification of the formula of effect. Silver fog was a modification of the basic spatial shift formula. Venador saw the system, but he didn't have time to finish the map. He was burned at the stake in his 40th year of work. Kai picked up where the dead alchemist left off with one advantage.
He understood why the formulas worked.
He saw the molecular logic. He could predict the result before brewing.
Venador worked by trial and error. Kai worked by molecular modeling in his head without a computer, but with six years of training. He began keeping a third journal, a skill map, basic formulas and their modifications.
A tree of possibilities. Each branch was a new potion. Meera brought news from the street. Orelles was in an uproar.
Rumors about a shop selling skills in vials were spreading faster than Kai could control. People were whispering in the market. They were discussing it in the taverns. Someone called him the apothecary. The name stuck. the apothecary from the dead end alley.
Meera said it was bad. Rumors attract attention. Kai said it was inevitable.
20 customers, dozens of potions sold.
Every customer told at least one person.
They told others. The information spread exponentially. He couldn't stop it even if he wanted to. Wolf came with more news, worse news. The Inquisition was active again. Tess Marrow had been given a new assignment, not to look for the shop, to look for customers. The logic was simple. If you can't find the source, you have to find those who use the product. Interrogate them, trace the chain back. Wolf had learned this from a former colleague who worked as an informant on the border of the mercenary quarter. Tess started in the port district. She went from tavern to tavern. She talked to people. Her skill, sense of sin, allowed her to sense when a person was lying. Not the lie itself, the scent. The physical scent the body emits when lying. Micro changes in the composition of sweat. Kai froze when he heard that description. Tess Marrow's skill worked like a chromatograph, a gas analyzer for the human body. She literally sniffed out the truth. It's impossible to lie against a skill like that. You can only stay silent or tell the truth. Kai thought it over. If Tess found one of the clients and asked where the shop was, the client wouldn't be able to lie. He would either tell the truth or stay silent. And silence itself is an answer to someone with Tess's skill. He needed to protect the clients or make sure they didn't know the answer to the question. Kai looked at the shop's layout. Clients entered through the wall in the alley. They knew the alley. They knew the wall. If Tess asked, they wouldn't be able to lie. He had to change the system. Kai called Meera. He explained, "From this day forward, no client would come to the shop. All transactions would go through intermediaries, three levels." The client contacts Meera. Meera passes the order through a messenger boy. The boy leaves a note at an agreed upon location. Kai picks up the note, prepares the potion, leaves it at another agreed upon location. The boy picks it up, passes it to Meera. Meera passes it to the client. Three links. No one knows the entire chain. The client knows only Meera. Meera knows only the exchange point. The boy knows two points but doesn't know what he's carrying.
Even if Tess catches someone in the chain, the trail will be broken. Meera listened. She nodded. She said it was similar to how smugglers operate. Kai replied that it was like how a cell membrane works. Each element lets through only a specific type of information.
Meera didn't understand, but she did as he said. The system was launched in two days. Gray didn't object. Darren grumbled, but agreed. The other clients accepted the new rules. Security in exchange for inconvenience, a fair price. On the fourth day after the conversation with the Avatar, Valker sent a reply. Not through the Avatar, through a dream. Kai was sleeping on the floor next to the cauldron and had a dream in which he was standing on top of a mountain. A man stood nearby, huge in black armor, a face like stone, eyes like molten gold. Valker, the god of war, spoke plainly and without embellishment. The partnership is accepted. 30 doses of the Titan elixir per month. The price is 10,000 gold per batch. In exchange, one night beneath the temple. Valker will disable the guards on the lower levels. He will neutralize the seals. He'll give 4 hours from midnight to 4 in the morning. In 10 days, the full moon, the only night when the other gods are busy with the renewal ritual and aren't watching the temple.
Valkor said one more thing. He said he knows why Kai needs the ark, that he doesn't care, that he needs results, a permanent skill for his army, and that if Kai betrays him, his next sleep will be his last.
Kai woke up in a cold sweat. His shirt was stuck to his back. The cauldron hummed ominously. Text flashed on the screen. 40% and falling. The contract with Valkur is active. 10 days until the operation.
Kai stood up. He washed his face with water from a jug. His hands were shaking. Not from fear, from the scale of it all. In 10 days, he would enter the great temple's dungeon. He would pass through 5 m of stone and find himself in the room where the body of the slain god lay. He needed a team. He needed a plan down to the last second.
And he needed to brew 30 doses of the Titan elixir in 10 days. Six years in the lab had taught him one thing. A deadline is not a threat. A deadline is structure.
Kai picked up a notebook and began writing the plan. 10 days. Kai broke them into hours. The first 5 days production, 30 doses of Titan, six doses per day. Each required 2 hours of work, 12 hours per day at boiler, the rest, sleep, and food. Meera provided the ingredients, the horns of the minotaur, resin of the tree. Smugglers raised the price. Kai didn't pay without bargain.
Not time to skimp. The second five days preparation for surgery. Kai worked as a machine. Grinding, heating, matrice, dissolution, temperature, temperature control, filling. Each beaker is identical. We remembered every movement.
On third day, he brewed potions with closed eyes. On fourth, could talk with Meera and not get from track. On fifth day, 30 jars stood on the counter, three rows by 10, golden, the same, like cartridges in a magazine.
Meera organized the transfer. Avatar Valkur took the vials personally. He came at night. He examined each one, opened one. I sniffed it, put it back, left the chest.
10 10 gold pieces heavy myrr could lift it. Wolf carried it to corner of the where Kai had a hiding place in the floor. The money did matter. What matter only the full moon in 5 days. Kai laid out plans of the temple on the counter. Emer brought an updated version more detailed. He spent a week in restricted archive of the underground level copying records in the light. a single candle risked his life.
Every time when the guard passed by, he hid papers under his cassic. New plans revealed a ventilation lower levels, narrow channels in the walls, too narrow for a person. But there was one anomaly on the map. The ventilation shaft on the third underground level widened in one spot near the ark. The widening was wide enough for a thin person to squeeze through. Kai looked at himself. Thin, definitely. Two weeks on bread and porridge had contributed to that. But the duct led only to the ark's outer wall, not inside. 5 m of stone remained a problem. Silver missed. 30 minutes of effect. Speed of passage through stone.
Kai did the math. 5 m of dense granite, not brick, not limestone, granite.
density 2,700 kg per cubic meter. The phase shift slowed proportionally to the material's density. In brick, he would have passed through 5 m in 10 minutes.
In granite, in 25.
5 minutes remained inside the ark. 5 minutes to find the body, to take a blood sample, and get out. He couldn't get out. He needed a second dose of silver mist inside. But there was only enough phase serpent scales left for one dose. One. Meera had searched the entire city for scales. The smugglers didn't have any. The black market didn't have any. Faze serpents lived in the mountains 300 m from Orelis. Delivery would take a month. Kai had 5 days. He sat by the cauldron and thought. The cauldron read 42%. Ventor's formulas swirled in his head. And among them, something flashed. Not a recipe, a note, a personal entry by Ventor. Venador had written that Faze snakes shed their skin once a year. The scales had to be fresh.
Old ones lose their properties within a month. But there was an alternative. A phase snake's saliva possessed the same properties as the scales, only 10 times weaker. He would need 10 times as much.
Kai reread it. Saliva 10 times weaker, useless. He had neither the saliva nor a 10-fold supply. But the entry continued.
Venador experimented with the concentration of the saliva. Evaporation yielded a three-fold increase.
Distillation yielded a five-fold increase. Ventor stopped at five-fold and noted that it wasn't enough. Kai didn't stop. a five-fold concentration through distillation.
Ventor had used simple distillation, one cycle. Kai knew about fractional distillation, multi-stage.
Each cycle increased the concentration.
Three cycles would yield a 15-fold increase, more than the scale. But that required the saliva of a phase snake, which was also missing. Kai looked at jar number 44, empty where the scales had once lain. There was something at the bottom of the jar. He tilted the jar. A drop glinted in the light, small, viscous, shimmering.
Saliva.
The snake had been kept in this jar. It had left saliva on the glass. A single drop. Kai scooped up the drop with the tip of a knife. He placed it in the smallest flask of those made by the glass blower. The drop weighed less than a gram. At 15 times magnification, that would be enough for a single dose.
Barely. He began the distillation.
Fractional distillation in a medieval laboratory without a thermometer, no vacuum, no condenser.
Kai assembled a condenser from two flasks and a copper tube that Wolf had brought from the blacksmith. primitive, rough, but it worked. The first cycle took four hours. The drop had shrunk by half, but the concentration had tripled.
The second cycle took 3 hours. The drop became almost invisible. Kai worked on it under a magnifying glass he'd haggled for from a watch maker. The third cycle took 2 hours. A micro drop remained at the end, shimmering, pulsating, alive.
The cauldron confirmed it. The concentration was 16 times higher than the original, enough for a single dose of silver mist. Kai brewed the potion, moonstone dust, the essence of mist, saliva concentrate instead of scales.
The process took an hour. The result, silver mist, high quality, not as excellent as with scales, but sufficient. Phase shift, 25 minutes.
Probability of getting stuck, 2%. Not zero, 2%. Kai stared at the number, a 2% chance that he would get stuck inside 5 m of granite forever in the stone, fully conscious. 2%.
He placed the vial next to the first one. Two doses, one for entry, one for exit. For entry, excellent quality, 0% risk. for exit. High quality 2%.
Kai looked at the ceiling. The dean was asleep. Meera sat against the wall and said nothing. She had heard about the 2%.
Kai had said that in his world, 2% was an acceptable risk for an experimental procedure. Meera had asked what an experimental procedure was. Kai had replied that it was when you do something for the first time and hope it won't be the last. Full moon in two days. Kai took out a journal. He opened the page with the operation plan.
Midnight. Valkor disables the guards and the seals. Wolf and Meera stay outside.
Cover. Kai enters through the main entrance and descends to the first underground level. Through the ventilation shaft to the third. Silver mist. 5 m of granite. The ark. The body of the 10th god. A blood sample. The second silver mist back through the granite 2%. The ventilation shaft up.
Exit by 4 in the morning. Kai closed the journal. He looked at the vials, at the cauldron, at his hands, the hands of a chemist, not a warrior, not a thief, not a hero. In two days, these hands were to touch the body of a dead god. Kai lay down on the floor. He closed his eyes.
He fell asleep instantly. His body knew there would be nowhere to sleep for the next two days. Full moon. Kai stood at the entrance to Great Temple and looked up. Six stories of white stone spires stretching into night sky. The hung right above the central dome, huge, yellow, so close that it seemed you could touch. The city was asleep. The streets were empty. The ritual of renewal began an hour ago.
Eight gods gathered in the heavenly hall on the floor of the temple. Valkur the ninth. He was there. And at the same time here, Kai felt his presence like warmth on the back of my neck. Like a gaze whose you, you but you know that it is there. Wolf stood in shadow by the wall. The sword is drawn. His is calm.
He drank the elixir of the Titan 10 minutes ago. One hour of divine power.
If anything goes wrong, right, Wolf will be line of defense. Meera disappeared into the alley across the street. The potion of heightened senses. She heard every rustle within a radius 200 m. If a guard appears, Kai finds out a minute before that. As they reached the the door, Emmerick was waiting inside. He entered through service entrance 2 hours ago. At the they were allowed be in the temple for prayer. No one will ask why brother Emer is praying in the hall and not in the living room. Kai entered. The head hall of the dome was huge. The columns were as a tree. The ceiling so high that it moving in the darkness.
Candles along the walls cast a dim light. It smelled incense and something ancient. Stone that absorbed prayers for centuries.
Kai walked quickly. He running. Running draws attention.
Footsteps on the stone floor echoed, echoed. He counted the turns. The first left, second to the right, stairs down.
Emerch was waiting by the door for the basement level. The door was open. Seal on it faded, flickering, but it burned.
Valkor held his word. They went down.
The first underground level, the core of relics, long corridor, niches in the walls. In each, something glistened and shimmerred. Kai didn't look. Not the time. No guards, empty posts. Kai and Emmer passed through the store room in 4 minutes. The staircase to the second level. The archive of forbidden texts. A door with a seal, also inactive. Inside, shelves from floor to ceiling, scrolls, books, stone tablets, thousands of texts the gods deemed dangerous.
Emer lingered. His eyes darted across the shelves. For 20 years, he had dreamed of reading what was kept here.
Kai touched his shoulder. Emer nodded.
Later, if there is a later, the staircase to the third level. It was darker here, colder. The walls were damp. The ceiling was low. Kai lit the torch that Emmerick had prepared in advance. The flame illuminated the corridor that led to a dead end.
A wall, smooth, no door, no crack, 5 m of granite. Behind it, the ark. Kai found a ventilation shaft, a narrow opening in the wall 2 m up. Emerch gave him a lift. Kai squeezed inside. His shoulders pressed against the stone on both sides. Darkness, dust, the smell of centuries. He crawled slowly on his elbows and knees. The duct curved twice.
Kai thought he was stuck. Twice he forced his way through, scraping the skin off his shoulders. 15 minutes later, the shaft widened. Kai could get down on all fours, then stand up straight. The widening Emerick had mentioned a small chamber, a ventilation control panel, and a wall. That very one. 5 m of granite between him and the ark. Kai took out the first vial. Silver mist, excellent quality, 0% risk. He drank it in one gulp. The taste was like a breath of winter air. A chill ran through his body from his throat to his fingertips. Kai looked at his hand. It was still there. It looked normal. He held it out toward the wall. His fingers sank into the stone like into water.
Cold, heavy water. He felt the density of the granite. Pressure from all sides, but he passed right through it. Kai stepped into the wall. The darkness became absolute. He couldn't see a thing. He felt only the pressure of the stone around him, as if he were swimming in concrete. Every step took effort, not physical, mental. His brain screamed that this was impossible, that he was inside the stone, that he would die. Kai counted his steps. 1 meter, 2, 3. The pressure was mounting. The stone was getting denser, or so it seemed. 4 m. It was hard to breathe. Not because there was no air. Air isn't needed in a phase shift. Because panic was squeezing his chest. 5 m. Kai emerged. Light hit his eyes. Not from a torch, not from a candle. A blue glow, soft, pulsating, like a heartbeat. The ark, a round room, walls, ceiling, and floor made of the same granite, 10 paces in diameter, and in the center, a sarcophagus, stone, simple, unadorned, without inscriptions.
Kai approached. The lid of the sarcophagus was translucent like frosted glass, and through it he saw a body, human at first glance. A man, young or eternally young, pale blue skin. That's where the light was coming from. The body glowed quietly, steadily, like a lamp. Eyes closed. His hands were folded across his chest. His face bore an expression of peace, not death, peace.
The 10th god, the god of alchemy, killed by his own brothers and sisters for wanting to give the formulas to the people. Kai stood and watched. The seconds ticked away. 20 minutes remained from the first dose. 25 minutes for the return journey through the stone. 5 minutes. He lifted the lid. Heavy. But in the phase shift, his hands passed through the edge and the lid gave way.
The body lay in the sarcophagus. Kai leaned over. His hands were shaking, not from fear, from realization. He was a chemist from the 21st century, standing before the body of a god in the crypt of a medieval temple and about to draw blood from him. He didn't have a syringe. He had a knife, a small one, the very same one from Ventor's box.
Kai made an incision on the god's arm, a shallow one, careful, and the blood flowed. Golden, thick, glowing, alive.
The god had been dead for a thousand years. His blood was alive. Kai collected the blood in a vial. 3 milliliters, four, five. The vial was half full. Enough. He closed the lid of the sarcophagus. He looked at the god's face one last time and froze. The god's eyes were open, blue, bright, staring straight at Kai. The god's lips moved.
No sound, just movement. A single word.
Kai read his lips. Finish. The eyes closed. The glow dimmed. The god was asleep again. Or he was dead or something in between. Kai stood with his heart pounding and a vial of golden blood in his hand. 15 minutes since the first dose. Time. He took out the second vial. 2%. His hands weren't shaking.
Strange. He had just seen a dead god open his eyes. His hands should have been shaking. They weren't. Kai drank.
Cold. A step into the wall. Darkness.
Pressure. Counting. 1 meter, two, three.
At the fourth meter, he felt resistance.
The stone grew denser or the potion was wearing off. 2%. Kai didn't stop. He pushed forward. His body passed through the granite, but more slowly, like through honey. 4 and 1/2 m. The resistance grew. Kai clenched his teeth and took a step. The last one. He tumbled out of the wall into the ventilation chamber, fell to his knees.
The vial of blood in his hand, intact.
He was breathing fast, deeply. The air had never tasted so good. The phase shift ended a second after he emerged from the stone. 1 second. He had traversed 5 m of granite with a margin of 1 second. 2% had decided to be on his side tonight. Kai returned to the shop at dirty ragged with skin on shoulders from ventilation duct and with a glass of blood in in her pocket. Myrr was waiting by the entrance. She looked at him. I asked anything. She poured some water. Kai drank it, then some more, then sat on floor and took out a jar. He sat in front of the cauldron. Golden liquid shimmerred in the dam of which was breaking through the cracks in the boards of the dam. The boiler hummed louder than usual. The surface went rippled. The text appeared and disappeared. It flickered as if the system was rebooting. Then it stabilized.
Blood of the 10th god. God of alchemy.
The name Teros contains a basic matrix of all skills. The complete code unencrypted.
Kai read it over. The complete code. all skills. Every skill that existed in this world, every skill the gods bestowed at birth, the entire system in a single vial.
Kai leaned toward the cauldron and mentally asked to see the structure. The surface filled with formulas, hundreds, thousands. They flowed like a river. Kai couldn't read that fast, but the cauldron was loading them directly into his memory through his hand resting on the bronze side.
He felt the information entering his head. Not words, not images, structures, molecular architectures of incredible complexity.
Every skill was a complex of hundreds of molecules working together, like a biochemical computer, like an organism within an organism. And Teros had created them all. One god, one alchemist, thousands of skills. Kai sat by the cauldron for 4 hours. When he stood up, Ventor's knowledge read 50%.
But that no longer mattered. Teros's blood contained something Venador's formulas lacked, the final element, the binding agent, the thing that made the skill permanent. Venador called it an anchor, a molecule that embedded itself in the DNA forever. It altered the genetic code. It made the skill a part of the body, not a temporary effect, a permanent trait. Kai understood why Venador hadn't been able to finish the work. The anchor required Teros's blood, not a substitute, not an analog, specifically his blood, specifically his molecules.
The nine gods didn't kill Tarot simply out of envy. They eliminated the anchor's sole source. Without it, skills could only be distributed at birth through a ritual, controlled, monopolized.
With Teros's blood, anyone could acquire a skill at any age forever.
Kai looked at the vial. 5 milliliters. A single dose of the anchor required 1/10enth of a milliliter. 50 doses. 50 people who would gain a permanent skill.
After that, the blood would run out and returning to the ark would be impossible.
Valker would block access as soon as he got his share. Or maybe not. If Kai gave him what he promised, the problem lay elsewhere in the choice. 50 doses to whom. Valk wanted an army. Lravain wanted diplomacy. Wolf wanted self-respect.
And Kai wanted skills to stop being a privilege. He thought for two days, didn't sleep, didn't eat, paced the shop from corner to corner. Meera brought food and took it away untouched. Wolf stood by the entrance and said nothing.
Emmerick sat in the corner reading Ventor's notes, which Kai had given him to translate. On the third day, Kai gathered everyone. He explained 50 doses. He wouldn't give them all to Valkor and he wouldn't sell them one by one. He would take 5 milliliters and divide them up like this. 10 doses for Valkor, part of the contract, enough so the god wouldn't start a war. 10 doses for sale to clients who deserve it. Wolf is first on the list. He'll seal 20 doses and hide them. A reserve insurance in case something goes wrong. And he'll spend 10 doses on research. He'll try to synthesize an anchor without Teros's blood. If it works, the source will become endless. Any person, any skill forever.
Meera said he's crazy. Wolf said he's just. Emmerick said he's doing what Teros wanted. Kai began his work. The first dose of a permanent skill for Wolf. The ingredients for the basic skill potion. A minotaur's horn for physical strength. resin from the world tree for stabilization, moons salt as a catalyst, and 1/10enth of a milll of golden blood, the anchor.
The brewing process took 6 hours. The most complex synthesis of Kai's life.
The temperature regime changed 12 times.
The order of adding the ingredients was critical. The anchor was added last at exactly 52°.
No more, no less.
Kai measured the temperature by the viscosity of the liquid. Six years of training, an eye like a thermometer. The potion changed color seven times. The final color was gold. Like the blood of Teros, like the eyes of the Avatar Valk, like coins in a hiding place under the floor. The cauldron showed the result. A potion of permanent skill. Divine power.
Permanent. Excellent quality, no side effects, irreversible.
Kai stared at the word, irreversible, forever. He held in his hands what Venador had died for, what the nine gods had killed the 10th for. What Kai had walked through 5 m of granite with a 1- second margin for freedom in a vial.
Wolf stood at the counter. He looked at the golden liquid. His hands did not tremble. His face was calm. Kai held out the vial, said it was forever. Divine power permanently. No timer. No side effects. Wolf took the vial, looked Kai in the eyes, asked how much. Kai answered, "Nothing. The first dose is free for 32 years without the skill."
Wolf didn't answer. He drank, closed his eyes, opened them, and Kai saw that something had changed. Not in Wolf's body, in his eyes. Depth, calm, a confidence that didn't depend on the potion because the potion would never run out. Wolf clenched his fist, unclenched it, quietly, without fanfare, just checking. Then he turned and walked out through an invisible wall into the night. Meera watched him go, then at Kai. She asked if she could, too. Kai replied that she could, but first they had to decide which skill. Once and for all, it's forever. Meera thought for a moment. For the first time, Kai saw her lost in thought.
Rumors exploded within a week. Wolf stone mercenary without skill now had a skill permanent not temporary not potion for now forever he didn't hide it he could and didn't didn't at the courtyard in the guild he lifted a stone block weighing ton and held it on outstretched arms while the rest mercenaries stopped count the seconds 30 22 years without practice now the skill was there and the orelis about This Meera chose heightened sensations constant.
Kai scolded her on the third day after wolf. Meera drank. She froze then she smiled. She said that she could have a rat on the other end the is gnawing grain. Kai replied that it's unlikely that to the other end. Meera said that it matter. What matters that she can hears the world all of it in its entirety. And it is beautiful. Kai cooked 10 doses for Valkura. Various skills, strength, speed, stone skin, regeneration.
Valkur received his share of the contract. The avatar picked up the vials in person. He examined each one. He nodded. He said Valkor was satisfied.
Buy. Kai sold four doses to clients.
Gray gained permanent heightened senses.
He paid 3,000 gold pieces without haggling. Darren Fox gained a permanently clear mind, 5,000. The huntress from the north gained permanent regeneration, 2,000. The magistrate's bodyguard gained stone skin, 4,000.
Six doses remained for sale, 20 in reserve, 10 for research, and 35% of the golden blood had already been spent. Kai was working on synthesizing the anchor every night. He analyzed the molecular structure through the cauldron. He tried to find a replacement for Teros's blood, something that could embed the skill into DNA without the divine component.
So far, it hadn't worked. The anchor molecule was too complex, too specific, like a key to a lock that no longer exists.
Ventor's knowledge had reached 60%. then 70. With every percentage point, Kai saw deeper. Venador had spent the last 10 years of his life on the same task, synthesizing the anchor without the god's blood, and he hadn't made it in time either. But he left notes, directions, ideas he hadn't tested. Kai tested them one by one. The problem was in the fourth element, the very one that didn't exist in the periodic table. the element from the blood of a god. Without it, the anchor didn't work. Without it, the skill remained temporary.
Kai was looking for a workaround. The world around the shop was changing.
Orelles was buzzing. Permanent skills.
People who were born without a gift now had one. Bought, chosen, their own. Not the one the gods assigned. Their own.
People weren't whispering in the market square anymore. They were speaking out loud. The apothecary from the dead end alley gives skills, real ones, forever.
The line of people waiting would stretch from the shop to the palace if anyone knew where the shop was. Meera filtered them. Only the verified only through a chain of intermediaries, only after payment. Prices had risen. 3,000 510 people paid. Kai didn't rejoice in the money. He counted the doses. Every vial sold depleted the supply of a non-renewable resource. The pantheon reacted on the 12th day. Not the Valks, the other eight. The high priest announced in the temple that a new form of heresy had emerged. Someone was handing out skills, bypassing the gods.
It was blasphemy, sacrilege, the punishment, the stake. The Inquisition was granted expanded powers. Tess Marrow received a squad of 20 fighters with skills, real ones, bestowed by the gods.
They began combing through the city, block by block, house by house. Tess used the scent of sin at full power.
Anyone who smelled of potions was dragged off for questioning. Meera came with the news, white as a sheet. She said they'd caught one of the middlemen, a young messenger, 14 years old. They'd interrogated him for 3 hours. He knew nothing. He only knew the dropoff point.
Tess sensed he wasn't lying. She let him go. But the dropoff point was now guarded by two Inquisition fighters. The chain had been compromised.
Kai rebuilt the system overnight. New dropoff points, new roots, new middlemen. Each knew only their own section. The cell membrane had grown thicker. But the problem ran deeper than logistics. Tess Marrow wasn't looking for a shop. She was looking for clients.
People with permanent skills and no divine mark. And she found them. Gray vanished from the city the day after the Inquisition began its raids. A professional. He sensed the danger before anyone else. Darren Fox couldn't just vanish. Business, family, reputation. He came to Kai at night through the wall. His hands were shaking. He said Tess Marrow had been at the merchants guild asking questions, sniffing around. She hadn't found anything yet, but she'd be back. Kai looked at him and thought. A permanent skill can't be hidden. It's part of the body, part of your DNA.
Tess wasn't sniffing potions. She was sniffing the absence of a mark. Divine skills smelled of the gods. Kai's skills smelled of nothing. To Tess, it was like a hole in the fabric of the world. A void where a signature should be. Kai thought for three days. On the fourth, he found a solution. Not perfect, temporary, but it worked. If the problem was the absence of a mark, he needed to add a mark, a fake one. Kai studied the structure of the divine signature through the cauldron. Every skill granted by the gods carried a molecular mark, a unique one, like a watermark.
Nine different marks for nine gods. Kai couldn't reproduce a specific god's mark, but he could create noise.
molecular noise that masked the absence of a mark, like static on the radio.
Tess would sniff and sense not emptiness, but an indistinct signal, as if the mark were there, but damaged or blurred. This wouldn't arouse suspicion.
Skills sometimes faded with age. The signatures were fading. Kai brewed a masking potion overnight. Simple. One dose a week, enough to create molecular noise around the skill. He handed it out to the clients. Darren took the first dose and exhaled. He said that Kai had saved his life for the second time. Kai replied that he hadn't saved a life but a business. Darren laughed nervously, but he laughed. The Inquisition kept searching. Tess Marrow didn't give up, but now she was sniffing thin air. Kai's clients smelled right. Blurred, but right. Tess sensed something was off, but she couldn't prove it. Three months had passed. Kai stood on shop that no longer know was a shop. It was a laboratory. The walls were covered diagrams, three journals on the counter, alchemical symbols, chemical formulas, skill of skills. Boiler hummed constantly.
Knowledge ventor reached 90%.
10% remained encrypted, the last block.
Venador sealed it separately for that who reaches to the end. Kai has almost the the end. Synthesis of the without blood terosa remained impossible. The fourth element, the divine component. It cannot be reproduced from earthly ingredients. Kai tried everything. Every combination, every approach, fractional distillation, molecular recombination, catalytic synthesis, none. Fourth element existed only in the blood of the gods. From 50 doses, 18 20 in reserve, minus two spent on unsuccessful experiments, 18. Of the 10 research units, three remained. Seven were used for synthesis attempts. Each one failed. Each one brought him closer to understanding, but not to a result.
Valkur sent an avatar with a new demand.
Another 30 doses of permanent skills, not temporary ones, permanent ones for the elite guard. Kai replied that he couldn't. Resources were limited. The Avatar said that Valkor was dissatisfied.
Kai replied that a god's dissatisfaction didn't create molecules out of nothing.
The Avatar left. Kai knew this was a problem. Valkor had received 10 doses and wanted more. The god of war was not used to hearing the word no. Meera brought news from the city. The pantheon had split. Valkor was openly in conflict with the other eight. He had what they did not. Soldiers with permanent skills.
10 fighters, each worth hundreds. The other gods demanded explanations. Valkur remained silent. The tension grew.
Emerch arrived with news from the temple. The high priest had convened an emergency council. The gods were quarreling. For the first time in 300 years, the reason? Unmarked skills, permanent ones, impossible without divine intervention.
One of the gods was helping a heretic.
Suspicion fell on Valkur. Valkor denied it. Seven gods didn't believe him. One god of wisdom remained silent. War between the gods was a matter of weeks.
Kai sat in the shop and looked at the 18 vials in the hiding place. He was beginning to understand what he had done. 26 years old, a chemist, a posttock, a man who wanted to brew potions and sell freedom in a bottle.
And he started a religious war. Meera said the war would happen with or without him, that the gods had always quarreled, that he had simply given people a choice. Kai replied that choice was good. War over choice was bad. Meera shrugged and said that every good thing in history began with a bad war.
Kai didn't argue. Instead, he returned to the cauldron. 90% of Ventor's knowledge. 10% remained locked away. Kai pushed the system every day. The cauldron resisted. The final block demanded something. Not time, not knowledge, something else. Kai didn't understand what. He spent the night rereading Ventor's notes. Personal ones, not formulas. thoughts, doubts, fears.
Venador wrote about Teros, about the god who wanted to give the formulas to the people. Teros believed that skills belonged to everyone, that a monopoly was a prison, that every person has the right to choose who to be. Venador stole the formulas from Teros's blood a year before his execution. He worked alone in this very workshop. He brewed. He experimented. He wrote. He knew the Inquisition was close. He knew time was short. Ventor's last entry was brief.
I'm not afraid of the stake. I'm afraid the formulas will die with me. The cauldron will preserve them. Someone will come. Someone will finish.
Kai sat on the floor and looked at those words. Venador didn't know that 700 years would pass. He didn't know that a chemist would come from a world where gods had become myths. He didn't know that his cauldron would end up in a museum behind glass. He simply believed that someone would come. Kai placed his hand on the cauldron. The warm bronze hummed and 90% became 91. Then two, three, five. The lock opened. Not from time, from intention.
Venador sealed the last 10% for whoever would understand why all this. Not for a scientist, not for a merchant, for the air. The formulas poured out in a torrent. Kai clutched his head. Too much, too fast, like a fire hose to the face. He saw everything. Ventor's entire system, all 40 years, every experiment, every failure, every breakthrough. And at the very bottom, at the very end, the final formula. The formula Ventor had found the day before his arrest. The one he hadn't had time to test. The one he'd scribbled into the cauldron with trembling hands while they were pounding on the door. The synthesis of the fourth element without the blood of the gods from three ingredients. Lunar salt purified to the absolute. Not a single impurity. Resin from the world tree aged for a hundred years. A century old resin. And the third ingredient, the alchemist's blood, not a gods, a humans, who had absorbed Venador's knowledge to 100%.
Whose blood had changed, whose DNA had absorbed the formulas, who had become an ingredient himself.
Kai looked at the formula, then at his hands, then at the cauldron. The cauldron showed 100% and a new line.
Class updated. Forbidden synthesizer.
The carrier's blood is ready for use.
Kai laughed quietly, then louder, then fell silent. Ventor had found the answer. Not in the ingredients. In the alchemist himself. The man who had absorbed all of Ventor's knowledge was becoming the living fourth element. His blood replaced the blood of the god. Not identical, but sufficient. An anchor made of human blood, weaker than the divine, but functional. Kai took out a knife. He made an incision on his finger. A drop of blood fell into the cauldron. The liquid flared up. Not fire, light, golden, like Teros's blood.
For a single second, then it went out.
The cauldron showed the result. The fourth element, synthesized, high quality. The anchor is functional. The skill is permanent. Limit: One dose per day. More blood is dangerous for the bearer. One dose per day. 365 doses a year. Endlessly as long as the alchemist lives. Kai sat on the floor with a cut finger and watched the golden glow in the cauldron. He had become the source, not a god, a man, a chemist from the 21st century who had fallen into the past and become a living formula.
Tess Marrow found a bench at it dawn.
Kai wasn't surprised. He expected it.
Three months of hiding, three months of molecular noise, three months of deception of right nose in Orurelis. But Tess was a professional. She didn't sniff. she was thinking and figured out the alley by the grid of exceptions. All deadend streets in the city on the map, all verified, all except one. Alley by ventors, ventors, which according to the documents of the Inquisition was erased a year ago. Tess came alone, without the squad, without weapons. She walked through the wall, even did slow down as if she knew. Kai stood by the cauldron.
Mero was sitting in corner. Wolf stood by the wall, hand on sword. Tess Marrow, 30, 38 years old, short, thin, short hair, hair with gray streaks, face without expression. Eyes are empty as the sky before the rain.
14 alchemists were burned under her supervision. She looked at the bench on shelves at the boiler on Ka and she on floor. She just sat down without invitation without threats. Wolf tensed up. Kai raised his hand. Wait. Tess spoke up quiet evenly without emotion.
She said that she had been forbidden potions for years. What is skill sense of smell of not from the gods? It drank, drank it. When she was 18, she found a jar among the the alchemist whose herself had had to the Inquisition, the first of 14. I drank out of out of curiosity.
The skill manifested within minute, temporary. At 6 hours, she had another, a glass, and another, and more. 20 years. Every 3day, a new dose. Without a dose, the habit weakens. Without a dose at just person. Without skill, her career in inquisition will end. Without a career, it her. Tess looked at Ka. She said that she needed a hit. Without potion, the Inquisition will notice that her skill is gone. Without her, her will be first. The Inquisitor drinking forbidden potions. The irony that will end in a bonfire.
Kai listened. Meera looked at Tess with an expression that was hard to read. Not hate, not pity, something more complex, understanding.
Kai asked why she had to him, but not just found another source of potions.
Tess replied, "That's that the other alchemists are dead. All 14. She killed her only source with her own. And that's because she had about constant skills forever without doses every 3day without fear that tomorrow a glass won't come.
Kai was silent for a minute then said that he could do better can do forever.
The sense of of sin, constant, her own, not stolen, not temporary, but it needs something in return. Not money, not silence.
Tess asked what? Kai replied access to the temple again. No, in ark deeper. In the archive of banned texts on second level, there are entries about Teros, about the 10th god. Notes that may contain a way to break the monopoly once and for all. Not 50 doses, not one dose per day, for everyone forever.
Tess looked at him, gray eyes, 20 years on herbs, 20 years of lies, 14 bonfires on her conscience. She asked what he wanted find. Kai replied, "The body of God." Tess didn't blinked. She asked which one. Kai said, "Teros, god of alchemy, killed by the others nine. the one whose blood he had used for mastering skills that who wanted to give formulas to the people. Tess was silent for a long time. Then she asked why he a body if blood already there. Kai explained the blood is running out. His own blood is but one dose a day. That's not enough. Too little for that that he had in mind. Teros developed skills. All skills. His body held not just blood. It held the matrix, the code. If Kai can copy the matrix and transfer it to boiler, then the boiler will be a generator. Any skill for any person, no restrictions. Tess asked, "Does understands that this means what the gods will be needed, that Pantheon will collapse, that the world will change."
Kai replied that yes, understood.
Tess stood up. She wiped her on her raincoat. She said that she would get it to the temple through three days at night. 3A through only the inquisition right to the second level past the guards past seals past the gods.
And what does needs a a steady practice to that as they go? Because that if everything goes as as she wants to have sense of forever, but not until the next missed glass.
Kai brewed a potion for Tess in that same day. The odd of sin constant. Tess drank. She closed her eyes, opened them.
She took in, and for the first time in the conversation, her face changed. No smile, not tears. Relief.
20 years of fear are over in one swallow. After three days, they entered the the temple. Tess led the way. Kai followed. Secret passage of the Inquisition began in the basement of the house across from the temple. A narrow tunnel, damp, dark. I walked straight into the word of the underground level.
Kai didn't go any lower. The ark did need he was archive entries about Teros.
Emmerick was waiting inside. He had spent a month cataloging the archive. He knew where what was located. He kaya to the section which called forbidden history. Scrolls, dozens, hundreds, records by eyewitnesses of events from ago. The murder of Teros.
Kai read for about hours. Emer translated ancient dialects. Tess stood at the entrance and sniffed the air with her new constant skill. Clean. No one.
Kai found it he and the scroll without a number. The data by the priest who was present at the murder of Teros. Teros did resist. He knew that he would be killed. He was preparing for day before his. He did something. He had a copy of the matrix is into his body in own cauldron bronze cauldron which he took his last disciple who later ended up to Venador who then turned out in museum which then drew Kai. Kai dropped the scroll. The matrix was in Cauldron all the days from the day. Boiler doesn't just kept Ventor's Ventor. He kept the original source. Teros, the complete matrix of all skills. Generator infinite. Kai didn't see him because that didn't was ready. Knowledge on 1% class forbidden synthesizer. Blood alchemist as the fourth element.
Everything. This was keys. The day was in the boiler always.
Kai returned to the shop running out of breath with scraped arms from the tunnel. I fell to his in front of the boiler. He placed both palms on the bronze and asked not in my mind out loud for the first time. He said that ready that he knows that understands why Teros created skills not for the gods for people. What venadator died for this?
That Kai is to live for this. The boiler began to hum. No, as usual, louder.
Deeper. The sound came from the floor, from the walls, from the air. The bench was shaking. The jars clinkedked on shelves. Meera jumped for the wall. Wolf drew his sword. Tess squinted. The surface of the in cauldron flashed golden, bright, blinding.
Kai didn't took his eyes. Text huge across the surface. The matrix teros activated. The boiler is a generator of skills. Restriction removed. Any skill to any to a person all the time. A demand. Blood of the forbidden synthesizer. One drop per dose. Kai looked. One drop. Not dose. A drop. From one drop of a cauldron could produce 10 doses of continuous skill. From 10 drops, a 100. The human body contains about five lers of blood. Kai didn't bother counting. The number didn't matter. What mattered was that the source had become endless. As long as he was alive, the cauldron worked. As long as the cauldron worked, anyone could gain a skill. Kai stood up. He looked at Meera, at Wolf, at Tess, at Emer who entered behind them out of breath and pale. Four people in a small shop behind an invisible wall. A thief with constant emotions, a mercenary with constant strength, an inquisitor with a constant sense of smell, a monk without faith, and a chemist from the future whose blood had become the key to freedom. Kai said they had a problem. a big one.
Valkur would find out. The Pantheon would find out. Everyone will find out.
And everyone will want to control the cauldron or destroy it. Wolf said he wouldn't let them. Meera said she would hide it. Tess said she would lead the Inquisition down a false trail. Emmerick said he would tell the truth. If you're interested in the continuation and how this mana ends, the final part of the story is already available on Patreon and the link is in the description and pinned comment.
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