Brewing Bad Ch. 162-163

Ch. 162 - Dialing it In (part 3)

The following evening, as Lucas and Heisenburgle prepared for their third test, with a higher charge and a lower viscosity poison, they discussed the ball and their target’s reaction to his presence. The gnome was skeptical of his interpretation of events, but entirely unconcerned. 

“If she doesn’t play along, then we can simply ambush her at one of the country parties she attends and force the issue,” Heisenburgle answered, examining the reinforced breach latches on his weapon. 

“That would get a lot of innocent people killed,” Lucas balked. “I think we can get her alone.”

“I doubt that many people at those parties qualify as innocent,” the gnome mused as they stepped back to a safe distance. “They might well serve as useful camouflage. We have picked a canny, powerful foe. She’d have a much harder time figuring out what was about to happen with music and conversation drowning out her senses.”

“I’m not so sure we can just throw away people’s lives like that,” Lucas sighed. “Sure, they’re assholes, but you can’t just spray into a crowd like that. It’s wrong.”

“What's that? Spray and pray?” the gnome scowled as he shoved cotton into his large ears for the test. “My boy, though this test might involve that, your poison would be ineffective in that manner. This is about charging!”

At his word, Heisenburgle lowered his arm, and the nervous attendant pulled the trigger. This time, his hand didn’t get mangled, but a giant gout of ugly fluid erupted from the weapon. It sprayed their poison-analog across the barn in a great gray-green spray.

If it were the real thing, it would have injected gallons of toxic sludge into their target’s bloodstream, which would theoretically be enough to kill her. Lucas turned to high five the gnome, but he only looked at the outstretched hand with disdain.

“You’re supposed to—” Lucas started. 

“I’m very well aware of your ‘high-fives,’” Heisenburgle spat, “But we are at least two tests away from anything that requires celebratory toasts and gestures.”

“Two tests?” Lucas asked. “That water lizards and what? You’re not saying you want me to go out and slay an entirely separate dragon first, right?”

That was enough to make Heisenburgle chuckle dryly as he checked the slime spray patterns and made a few notes about the velocities involved on his notepad. 

“As amusing an idea as that would be,” he nodded ruefully. “You are unlikely to survive even one attempt at dragon slaying, let alone two, so I think that would be excessive.”

“So then your other test is…” Lucas answered, gesturing for the gnome to keep going.

“A side of beef!” Heisenburgle cackled. “Before we waste a valuable test specimen, we must ensure that back pressure has been resolved.”

That much at least made sense to Lucas. The gnome could be infuriating when it came to his dogmatic views on alchemy, but at times like this, he could be utterly reasonable. 

Lucas left him alone and returned to his own experiments. As he did, though, he thought about everything that the gnome had said. He thought about the long odds and exploding sides of beef. He even thought about how they might use steel pipes to create a sort of organ gun that would pelt her with musket balls or grapeshot or whatever it was called. 

More than anything, though, he thought about how he might distract her, because the gnome had made a good point. He hadn’t thought to bring a band to his showdown, but it honestly wasn’t a bad idea. Some scented candles or cologne might be important as well, after all, who knew what scent might give him away. Would she be more likely to smell his fear or the poison he’d made from a plant she was probably very well aware of? It was hard to say, but it was definitely not a hazard he could afford to overlook any more than her scales or her teeth. 

“Thinking about this like a date is not okay,” he grumbled to himself as he continued to work on his current alchemical project: completing his Divine Potential achievement. He didn’t know what it did, but the fact that it was there, and he was close, made him want it. 

He could already make physical potions that made him outlandishly strong, and his talents allowed him to drink six potions a day. So, in theory, he should be able to make a potion for each attribute, drink them all, and max things out just long enough for it to count. Unfortunately, reality was a little harder than that. 

Even setting aside the cryptic sentence that promised, “The reward for this will vary based on which attributes are prioritized,” getting everything to an average of thirty was devilishly hard.

Currently, he had an Endurance of fourteen, an Intelligence of fourteen, an Agility of thirteen, a Strength of eleven, and an appearance and Soul of ten, which averaged out to twelve. That was enough to put him at above average, but it was less than halfway to the goal. For any normal person, the achievement was impossible. It was probably just there to taunt him, but Lucas saw it as a challenge.

His three most important potions raised his Endurance by 24, Agility by 21, and his strength by 20. Those were big numbers, and with Empowered alchemy, or some careful formulation, he might even be able to push them a bit higher. Unfortunately, they also collectively lowered other attributes by seven, providing a net gain of only 58 attribute points, which was enough to bring his average to 21. While that was impressive, it was a far cry from where he needed to be.

That was doubly true because of how much weaker the mental potions seemed to be. Oh, there were some strong ingredients, but they seemed less than safe, and Lucas was unwilling to use ghostly leftovers that all but promised to fry his brain. 

So, while Heisenburgle set up the next test, he worked on finding better ways to make intelligence and soul potions. Appearance was probably the easiest of the three, but the very concept of making himself prettier assaulted his sensibilities on some level. Crafting makeup to sell to rich women might have been fine, but making it for his own use? Lucas wasn’t sure he’d ever stop laughing at that particular joke. 

Unlikely to survive slaying one dragon. Those words haunted him for the next couple of evenings as he slowly reformulated each recipe, one at a time, to increase its power and reduce undesirable side effects. 

Improved Elixir of the Earth Hardened Body (1 dose): +25 Endurance (enduring). Duration: 5 minutes. +25% more damage from air-aligned attacks. 

Improved Elixir of Divine Grace (1 dose): +23 Agility (flowing), +4 poison (inflaming). Duration: 5 minutes. Imbibing this potion causes sleeplessness for twelve to twenty-four hours. 

Improved Monstrous potion of Greater Strength (1 dose): +24 Strength (inhuman). Imbiber is filled with monstrous rage.  

While Lucas didn’t like the side effects of his new strength potion formulation, it was acceptable, at least for this test, as long as he did it somewhere isolated and away from the glassware. What was more concerning was that some of these potions would bring his stats up as high as 39, which was well beyond the 36 that his current achievement said was safe, which seemed like a bit much. 

Still, none of that stopped him from working on the second half of his plan after he watched Heisenburgle blow a hole through a cow carcass with a poisonous water cannon a few days later. He still wouldn’t accept Lucas’ congratulations, then, though, vowing that “After I have slain a water lizard, I will accept your well-deserved praise, but not before!”

The haughtiness of that comment was enough to make Lucas want to never want to praise the gnome again, but he held his tongue and quipped, “Sounds fun. They can write a book about you. The tiniest dragon slayer.”

“You don’t think I can do it?” Heisenburgle asked, puffing up his chest. I’ll have you know that I was quite a ruffian in my youth. “I used to ride a war dog and go on goblin hunts with my older brothers. I was quite formidable. I’m surprised you don’t see how much of that experience has found its way into my creations?”

Lucas suppressed a laugh at the image of Heisenburgle as a young man. He didn’t even dare try to imagine him mounted atop a large dog. Instead, he just said, “I didn’t even know war dogs were a thing.”

“Typical human chauvinism,” the gnome sighed. “Just because you can’t ride the animal, you think it can’t be ridden.” He went on at length, explaining the fine art of canine cavalry, but by that point, Lucas had already tuned him out. He supposed he could craft some kind of growth potion to make a dog larger, but even if he did, he doubted he’d want to ride one. 

Instead, he just returned to his potion crafting and began to address his remaining attributes one at a time. Intelligence was the easiest of those that remained since he’d actually done some work on that front. 

It wasn’t so hard. In an afternoon, he’d worked through several increasingly powerful iterations of the stuff and found something that was useful. He then used his Empowered Alchemy to tone down the worst of its negative traits. 

While it had more side effects than he’d like, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the Prince’s drug of choice. Just thinking about those withdrawals made Lucas’ skin crawl. 

I wonder how differently I’ll see the world when I’m twice as smart as normal? He asked himself. Really, he should probably do a wide range of experiments on just this one aspect of himself. He'd probably think of whole new ways to kill Skylara like this. 

Still, for now, he resisted. Lucas had a goal, and that goal was to open a door marked impossible on his system and see what lay on the other side.

Improved Elixir of Swift Thought (1 dose) - Intelligence 12 (Quick Thinking), essence -3 (Distant), endurance -1 (insubstantial), poison 3 (slow acting), euphoria -1 (pensive). Duration: 5 minutes. Imbiber may experience paranoia or confabulation. Mildly addictive.

After that, he worked on his soul potion again. This one he’d made once before, even if he didn’t have the balls to actually drink it and find out what expanding his soul felt like. Still, he was able to make a slightly stronger version that seemed less likely to possess him with a little effort. 

Improved Elixir of Haunting Epiphany (1 dose): 9 Soul (Unchained), 3 poison (wasting), 1 intelligence (keen), -1 endurance (dying). Duration: 5 minutes. Those who imbibe this elixir may vividly hallucinate about past lives for up to an hour.  

By Heisenburgle’s standards, nine would have been a fairly substantial boost. Lucas, though, was unimpressed. It was only a third of the amount he was jacking his endurance by. That meant that he somehow needed to more than double his appearance to hit the mark, which was far more than anything he’d ever made along those lines before. 

Christ, why did it have to be thirty that I have to aim for? He asked himself as he did some quick math. If it were twenty-eight, I’d be there already. 

The answer, of course, was obvious. Attributes of thirty across the board represented a huge amount of investment, even from someone who managed to get to level 100 with a ton of achievements and other advantages. Lucas was short-circuiting it entirely with his abilities, and the closer he got to achieving his goal, the sure he was that it was a good idea to do so. 

Ch. 163 - A Real Test

Lucas was still working on his final potion when Heisenburgle announced that they’d be conducting their first real test the following evening. So far, the most he’d achieved was a +4 appearance cologne that smelled foul. It wasn’t even as strong as the +5 perfume he’d made the previous year for Danaria. 

While that was disappointing, it was also easy to explain. As well stocked as the laboratories at Black Gate might be, they weren’t built around beauty products.

Danaria. Just that word was enough to make him miss her. She’d visited him as a tiny sparrow twice in the last couple of weeks, and he’d told her that things were going well, but he’d left out the specifics because she didn’t need to be burdened with that. 

It wasn’t the same, though. He’d proposed. She’d accepted, and he’d put a ring on her finger. Their relationship had been comically chaste this whole time, but now he couldn’t even kiss her or hold her hand. Hell, he couldn’t even see her, and for as long as it took to remove the dark shadow that was Skylara from over the two of them, things would stay that way.

Lucas didn’t let that get to him often, but sometimes, he didn’t have a choice. Still, instead of dwelling on it, he read more of Heisenburgle’s books on advanced cosmetology. He’d only leafed through them the first time for experience gains; this time, he was looking for actual tips on how he could make a beauty potion worth having, since all the topical formulations he was trying seemed so weak. 

It was during one of those eye-strainingly dull research sessions that Heisenburgle announced that he’d be the one to do it. That had caught Lucas off guard. He’d thought sure that when the gnome had mentioned that in passing the last time, it had been a royal we sort of thing, or a slip of the tongue, but he actually seemed serious. 

“You?” Lucas asked skeptically. “Like, you personally? Not a hireling or an assistant, but you? You’re the one pulling the trigger with your own hand?”

The gnome glowered at him. At first, Lucas thought he might not dignify the statement with a response, but eventually he added, “I plan to use my lance with your poison, along with the Hyperquadabulator.” Heisenburgle answered matter-of-factly. “It seems a shame to have made such a wonder but to use it so rarely.”

Lucas supposed that made sense. If they were going to try slaying a tiny dragon, then why not try doing it with a tiny knight? 

“If I am not involved in the process, then Thrzealwick might accuse me of not honoring my agreements,” Heisenburgle grumbled. 

That’s fair, Lucas decided. The gnome had never been completely clear on what their arrangement was, but it seemed to be more than ‘If Skylara dies, your wish will be granted.’ Lucas was curious, but as long as the alchemist continued to help him in his endeavor, he didn’t really care what their deal was; it wasn’t really any of his business. It’s not like he’d been entirely forthright with Heisenburgle either. 

Since the gnome was doing everything, all he had to do was supply the gunpowder and the poison, then join the small caravan of wagons that would take all of the needed equipment to where they’d conduct the test. 

For his part, Lucas made the poison only half as powerful as the formulation he’d made for the actual dragon. It was still nasty stuff, but it was much weaker than the real deal. He did that because he wanted to plan for the worst. If the diluted stuff wasn’t enough to kill the draconic equivalent of a crocodile, then he had to go back to the drawing board, because a red wyrm would certainly be more than twice as hard to kill. 

Due to the sensitive nature of the tests, Heisenburgle conducted them with a minimum amount of personnel. In the dead of night, all the gear and animals were loaded up and taken to a fog-shrouded moor several miles away from the keep.

Then the eighteen-foot-long, half-ton lizard was coaxed from its cage and chained to the ground with two large anchors, making it clear that this would be a slaughter, and not an actual fight. That was the hardest part of the whole thing. The giant beast fought and struggled, but it had been fed a chilling compound before all of this, making its movement weaker and more sluggish than they would have otherwise been.  

Lucas thought that was a little unsporting, but given that Heisenburgle was over a century old and less than a hundred pounds, a little unsporting was probably the bare minimum requirement for this. Lucas resisted the urge to tease him about how the Ice Troll had been a more worthy opponent as he watched the alchemist gear up while the few men he’d brought along began lighting the area with dozens of torches. 

“What’s with the hoses?” Lucas asked. 

“Those are for the cooling solution in the armor,” the gnome answered. Mounting a second engine to circulate the fluid would be unwieldy.  So, the horse's three-cylinder engine does that as it moves the mount forward.”

Any number of objections went through Lucas’ mind in that moment. You’ll be stuck to the damn thing if something happens. It seems a little restrictive. Why do you need to worry about cooling for a monster that doesn’t breathe fire?

In the end, he went with the last one, and the gnome retorted, “Just because it’s not going to breathe fire doesn’t mean we shouldn’t test the feature! You can’t expect the insulation to do all the work.”

Lucas had a few problems with that response, but before he could respond, the gnome put on his helmet and then screwed it around twice, locking it into place. After that, any messages had to be shouted. So, instead of bothering, Lucas just gave him two thumbs up and stepped back. 

A couple of minutes later, after some shouted instructions, the gnome pulled the starter cord on his mechanical horse, revving the engine to life with a high-pitched whine that sounded more like a weed whacker than the motorcycle he’d been expecting. 

The thing made a couple of slow exploratory steps, and then shuddered to a halt as the gnome fidgeted with the leavers on the back of its neck, marking the first time he’d seen the Hyperquadabulator move. It was also the first time he’d seen Heisenburgle in armor, and Lucas took a moment to take all of that in, because if this was a sight he never wanted to forget.

The whole thing looked quite ridiculous. It was a three-foot man on a four-foot horse wielding a six-foot lance. The whole thing looked like a toy, and yet somehow, it was still menacing. 

Then, suddenly, that toy sprang to life, and Hesienburgle raced around the yard in a long loop to get the speed right. As he did so, Lucas wondered whether he was wearing the armor to protect himself from the lance or if he did it to look the part of a dragon slayer. He didn’t believe the coolant testing excuse for a second. However, before he could decide, Heisenburgle turned and charged the tethered beast, bringing his lance down to a killing position. 

As the metal knight moved forward with ever-increasing speed, the tension mounted, and Lucas found himself gripping the moderately strong endurance potion he’d brought ever tighter. He’d brought that and an agility potion, and was ready to chug them and charge into the fray at a moment’s notice if something went amiss. 

He told himself that was because he couldn’t afford to lose Heisenburgle, but really, somewhere along the way, he’d actually started to like the old crank. Seeing him in battle like this made him much more sympathetic to Lucas. Still, the idea of the gnome eating shit as his mechanical horse picked up speed seemed quite high as well, and he wanted to be ready in case something terrible happened. 

It almost did, too. The water lizard roared and reared up on its hind legs as much as the iron collar around its neck would let it. Then Heisenburgle struck the thing's center mass, burying his lance more than two feet inside it before he pulled the trigger. 

As the weapon fired, the gnome released it, which was the right move. It had found its target, and he wasn’t nearly as strong as his mechanical horse’s ever-growing momentum. 

That was the good news. Lucas heard the muffled report of the weapon, even over the giant lizard thing’s painful scratch, and he saw its abdomen bulge briefly as it was filled with exhaust gases and poison. The bad news was that as it flailed in pain, it lashed out with its vestigial wings, striking Heisenburgle, and knocking him from the saddle of his mount. That wouldn’t have been so bad except that the thing kept moving for several seconds afterward, dragging him fifty feet through the mud before the Hyperquadabulator finally began to slow. 

Lucas didn’t worry about that too much. Once he’d seen that the old gnome was going to be okay, he focused on the lizard. It didn’t make it thirty seconds. Its struggles faded almost from that first instant, and by the time Heisenburgle was back on his feet, and the men he’d brought with him were rushing over to check on him, the creature lay still. 

In fact, it was so still that Lucas had no trouble approaching it, and poking it with his sword. The monster didn’t react to that, or even to getting stabbed, and when Lucas pulled the lance free, there was almost no blood. That was another good sign, considering that he expected his blood to act as a hyperclotting agent. 

By the time Heisenburgle had returned to his side, Lucas had popped an endurance and a strength potion and was hacking away at the thing to perform a biopsy. “Did it work?” Heisenburgle asked as he approached the thing.

“It did,” Lucas nodded. “It worked fuckin’ perfectly.”

He and the gnome stood there, examining the remarkably bloodless exposed wound track. It was easy to see where the lance had gone in, but it was where the poison had gone that had done the real damage. On its own, the strike wouldn’t have been enough. Even the detonation and air injection from the vent gases probably wouldn’t have killed the beast. The poison, though, well, it was easy to see the healthy pink tissue that hadn’t been soaked in the stuff and compare it to the black and blue organs that had.

The two of them debated and discussed the results for the better part of an hour before the alchemist ordered the corpse burned, and everyone started packing things away. They didn't need to, though. Lucas had his dragon killer. He was sure of it. Now he just needed to figure out how to get her alone to minimize the damage and then catch her off guard so that they could live to tell the tale.