Wish upon the Stars chapter 540

I'd expected the thieves quarter to be underground. I know, I'm  biased because of the WCP, but still, I'd figured it would be somewhere  hidden and secure, where no one would be able to find it. Understanding  or not, the guards had to guard stuff, so keeping a bunch of stolen shit  out in the open would be ridiculous. There was no way they would have  the whole thing in an obvious easily locatable spot.

The  street signs directing us to the 'Merchant's Quarter' were the first and  most obvious indication of how wrong I was. Benny couldn't stop  cackling at the fact that merchants were so synonymous with being stingy  pricks that thieves would use the designation as an all but open  proclamation of their profession, though I was a bit confused.

"What  about the actual merchants?" I asked as we walked. "They can't all be  thieves in disguise." At that point, even Anna cracked up, and I sulked  for five minutes as we walked through the streets, the whole group of  them laughing at my word choice.

"Sorry." Anna gasped.  "It's just not often someone sets up a straight line like that. I  honestly think there were so many possible jokes that it prevented me  from being able to tell one. There are merchants, but they tend to mix  with the thieves pretty seamlessly. Similar mindset."

Entering  the 'merchant's quarter', I was surprised once again. The place was  picturesque, like a little shopping district. Cobblestone streets and  thatched rooves. "Alright." I said as we approached. "We're looking for  Might and Vitality focused elixirs. Where would we go to find that?"

Callie  and I had discussed our needs, and while I preferred to more evenly  disperse my stats, and Callie had her big concentrations in Perception  and Fantasy, we both figured Might would play a solid role in the  battles to come, and Vitality would help us maintain our stamina.  Ranking up would offset a huge amount of the pressure from the planet  and help us return to our more powerful forms (partially at least) but  having a physical edge couldn't hurt.

Anna  made a considering sound. "I'm not sure. There aren't a wealth of  alchemists around. I checked my mirror before we left, and Burton  Stovall seems to be the top pick for most accomplished alchemist in  Saltzburg. At least according to my sources." She pointed down the  street, gesturing to a small, picturesque building with a tiny fence  around its bucolic yard. "It might be a bit pricey though, I hope you  brought enough money."

We  had. In fact, that had been a large portion of the reason we'd decided  not to fill out Jessie and Benny's elixir allotment too. We weren't sure  we'd have enough. A thousand points of stats was nothing to scoff at.  Even for an F-rank assortment of pills it would most likely break the  bank to get enough for the two of us. I was hoping the thirty plus  D-rank chits I had on me would be enough.

Nodding  to her instead of answering, I gestured to Benny. His haggling Skill  had hit Lesser after our negotiations with Camden, though he hadn't  mentioned it until later. That still wasn't anything impressive here,  but it was better than nothing. He, Callie, and I all stepped through  the gate, making our way down the idyllic path of flat stones  interspersed through the path up to the door.

I  pushed it open, going first, and there was a bell-chime as we entered. I  braced myself for some kind of lab or concoction room, but once again  this place failed to live up to expectations. The inside of the room was  open and clean, unsurprisingly bigger on the inside, but besides that  it wasn't anything like I'd expected. Glass tubes filled the walls,  coming down from the ceilings and each filled with a certain kind of  pill.

Solid  colors, stripes, swirling patterns that danced across the surface, there  were so many it made my head spin, all lined up next to each other in a  dizzying display. At the base of each tube was a metal plate with a  slot for a coin, and below it there was a small metal hatch that would  let out one of the pills. Each metal plate had a small, neatly written  label on it.

Behind  us, above the door, lay a sign. 'Help yourself, to buy in bulk,  approach the counter.' A red carpet ran the length of the store, coming  to a stop in front of a small wooden counter, behind which sat a  fidgety, neurotic looking man with square glasses, flipping through a  massive leatherbound book.

Glancing  at Benny and Callie, we heard the others come in behind us, but ignored  them for the moment, walking down the carpet side by side. I tried not  to look at the pills, because the variety was hurting my head. Some of  these were higher rank than I was, but even the F-ranked stuff was in  high concentrations and it seemed to be straining the world around it.  The glass they were behind glittered strangely, and I realized that as  light hit, if I looked VERY closely (something I couldn't do for long)  there were runes in the striations in the glass.

"Don't  look at those." The man said boredly, catching my attention. "They're  warded. The glass is a propreitary cast from a small company on Reigel.  Good security is irreplaceable. I assume, having read the sign, you're  interested in a bulk purchase." He squinted at us behind the glasses,  then his eyes strayed to Anna. "You brought a D-ranker. That's certainly  enough to engender my interest."

Not  for the first time, I wondered who the hell Anna was. Why was a  D-ranker on this planet but not one of the nobility? Why did no one seem  to know she existed? Where had she come from? How did this guy know  what rank she was, when we couldn't tell and I hadn't seen any sign the  Magister noticed her either?

Stepping  up to the counter, Benny smiled at him confidently. "Hello, we' re  looking for a certain combination of elixirs. One thousand, eight  hundred and eight points of Might and Vitality elixir at F-rank. What  will that cost us?" Callie was at ninety one hundred points and I was at  nine thousand ninety two, so we didn't need a full two thousand.

"First  of all." He said flatly. "You can't. Making an F-rank elixir with more  than a hundred points in a stat is prohibitive. You'll see high dosage  pills like that at lower ranks, because the Impact values are so close  it doesn't matter, but past F it becomes prohibitive. I can tell you  came from somewhere with extremely low alchemy standards to even ask  that question."

Benny  faltered, clearly put off by the response. Clearing his throat, he  stood for a moment, not speaking. Finally he sighed. "Alright, can you  tell us how this works then? We need that value in pills, can you give  it to us? In whatever combination?"

He  sighed, removing his glasses and slipping a thin cloth from his pocket  to clean them. "Basically, your average high end F-rank stat elixir will  give you fifty points. In order to make a higher concentration of stats  you need rare F-rank materials, which is prohibitive. It's more cost  effective to take an E-rank stat elixir aimed at F-rankers. They're  tempered specifically to dilute the Impact, and the more powerful base  ingredients allow you to more easily hit the values needed."

Knowing  how Ascendant values worked, I nodded. "The E-rank pills go up to five  hundred points, I take it. The tempering prevents the problems you can  normally get from ingesting pills of too high a rank? I thought one rank  higher was safe?"

"The  higher you go, the bigger the Impact difference rank to rank." He said  matter of factly. "An E-ranker has sixty two Impact to an F-ranker's  thirty two. You CAN take E-ranked pills made normally, but it's a  massive strain. The large difference is why you can get so many more  stats out of them. It's an advanced alchemy technique called conversion.  At lower levels, taking a higher ranked medicine will give you the same  amount of stats. Once you get into the higher ranks conversion pills  become more commonplace."

I  sighed. "Forget the eight points then." I was going to have to grant a  wish to get those. I was reasonably sure I could do eight at once when I  finished taking the pills, I was already able to trade seven. "Eighteen  hundred points then. How mach for those?"

He  pulled out a small jewelers loop, looking through it at the both of us  and frowning. "Two top grade E-rank conversion Might pills, two middle  high Vitality." He said after a moment. "Five hundred and four hundred  points respectively." He glanced over at Anna. "I'm willing to price for  post conversion, assuming I can count on seeing your benefactor again  in the future?" She nodded.

"Twenty  E-rank chits." He said finally. Benny opened his mouth, but the  alchemist just glared at him. "If you try to haggle the price doubles.  If you don't like it you can go buy from the OTHER alchemist who can  reliably source E-ranked pill ingredients in enough numbers to have  extras beyond what the nobles reserve. Spoiler alert, there aren't any.  You MIGHT be able to find enough pills to heap together the points you  want, but they'll gouge you worse than I did."

Benny  shot me an apologetic look, but I just shrugged. Plans didn't always  work out. I passed the twenty E-ranked chits over, grimacing in nearly  physical pain. That was months of work. Elixirs got expensive at higher  rarities. Still, I couldn't help but glance around. "These can't all be  for stats." I said cautiously. "What other kinds of products do you  sell?"

Rolling  his eyes, the man muttered. "Civilians." Under his breath before  gesturing out at the shop. "Alchemy is not exclusively the creation of  stat elixirs, despite what the uneducated might think. There are pills  for stealth, pills to allow you to see certain kinds of energy, pills to  resist cold, or fire, or lightning. Pills that let you protect your  mind from intrusion or temporarily harden your flesh to the consistency  of stone. Almost any ability a person can have can be distilled into a  tincture. There are endless uses for alchemy."

His  tone was proud and excited, and it was easy to tell that Burton Stovall  LOVED what he did. I even considered buying some more pills, they  sounded like they could be damned useful, but I only had ten E-ranked  chits left. I was pretty sure he'd given the pills to us almost as cost  in consideration for Anna shopping here in the future, too, and I  doubted he'd be so nice again.

I  indicated we were finished and he bustled away, coming back with four  pills, two dark red and two emerald green. Callie and I took one of each  color, then bid our goodbyes and turned to leave. As we walked out, I  studied the pills again with new eyes, trying to discern what each one  did beyond the name on the labels, many of which were abstruse and  unhelpful in determining the purpose of a pill.

Alchemy  was an interesting field, even more than I'd considered before. It was  clear to me that I hadn't gotten a good idea of its depths back home,  where techniques like 'conversion' didn't exist. A method of converting  higher Impact to more stats. It reminded me a bit of the way my wishes  worked, where Impact could act as a substitute for other requirements.  Was the alchemist who created the technique on the same level as the  original Wishmaster in terms of talent? Was it another god? Maybe one  that wasn't around anymore?

I  had plenty of questions, but in the end they'd have to wait. We had our  pills now, which meant I was only giving Camden the agreed upon five  wishes today. My last would be used to gather the eight points I'd need  to finish reaching E-rank along with Callie. It was finally time to step  into the same level of power as the strongest on our home planet. I for  one, couldn't wait to see what it was like.