Wasteland Warlords Episode 4: Chapter 8 - The Art of the Brew

Clay shook his head. Surely he hadn’t heard right. It was the lack of sleep and the frustration playing tricks on his ears. Had to be.

“Did you just say the Paths of the Dew were nonsense?”

“And I stand by it!” Diebolt rolled his huge eyes. “Those Brothers of the Dew are so clueless. Oracle of the Deep Mysteries? Ha! More like the Path of Wasting Your Time. You want the mystery summed up in one word?” he asked, voice wavering sarcastically over mystery. “That word is ‘alchemy.’”

“Alchemy?”

“The Dew, Clay Jaeger, it’s the base for all the potions we find in your world.” Diebolt plopped himself into his aging recliner and popped out the footrest. “Code Red for Health, Baja Blast for Magicka, Classic for Stamina—and a thousand variations depending on which additives you use. After the Merge, those same properties carried over.”

Clay put up one hand. “Hang on, back up. You’re telling me you can use soda to make magic potions? Like carbonated sugar-water the same color as toxic waste—that kind of soda?”

“The very same. Just like the various magics, the potions were affected by the comingling of our two worlds. This is a little-known trivia fact, but before the Merge, Mountain Dew was the sole sponsor of all of Hearthworld’s potions. So naturally, after the Merge, it became the base ingredient necessary for brewing. Why do you think those Incants set up shop in the Temple of the Dew in the first place? Lynes, their resident crafter, needed easy access to make their potions, and what easier access than a former Mountain Dew factory?”

“That’s something that always seemed off to me,” Clay said, scratching his jaw. “Lynes was more of a mech-head than a potion maker, right? Did he dual class or something to make the stat potions?”

“Pfft, with a book of Alchemy and a beginner lab set, any idiot can craft potions. In fact.” The frogman kicked his footrest down and hopped out of the chair. “I’m sure I’ve got both lying around here somewhere. I was going to trade them to the Sooq the next time they were in town, but if you’re interested, Clay Jaeger, they just might be the ticket to get you through this ‘meditating on the immortal elixir’ foolishness.”

Diebolt dug through the boxes of carefully filed comics in mylar packaging and movie memorabilia in an overfilled linen closet, coming up with an ancient leatherbound tome and the kind of plastic lab set you got your nieces and nephews last-minute for Christmas.

“Much like in Hearthworld, every player or NPC on Earth is allowed a certain number of profession slots,” the frogman explained offhandedly, as though this wasn’t a huge, game-changing revelation. “Things like brewing, smithing, tailoring, and cooking were staples in Hearthworld, but many more have been added since the Merge. Driving, programming, tattooing, baristaing, these sorts of things. All you need to activate one is the corresponding magical book.” He handed the tome to Clay. “I trust you can read that?”

Clay flipped it open to the first page, expecting to see the symbols and runes of the spellbooks. What he got instead was plain English. Well, plain science-English, anyway, detailing the basics of organic chemistry. Not exactly his favorite class in high school; he’d been more into the lit and language arts side of things. Chemistry had always involved a little too much math for his taste.

He thumbed ahead a couple pages and found a table full of sigils and their scientific components. Only about half of them corresponded to compounds that could be found on Earth. The rest were things he’d never heard of.

Looked like this was where the rubber met the road—or in this case where the magic met the chemistry and became alchemy.

The next page held a series of alchemical equations. Weirdly, Clay felt like he was actually tracking with this stuff. Like a new space had opened up in his brain where this alchemy puzzle piece fit perfectly. When you got down to it, the equations weren’t that different from balancing the chemical equations he’d hated so much in high school, except these were magic and that made them a lot more exciting than figuring out how many Hs and Os he could cram into a carbon chain.

He read on past the equations and landed in the mixtures, solutions, and brewing portion of the book. Sprinkled in amongst the sigils for the different components—all of which he could remember perfectly in spite of having only glanced over that table at the front—were the incongruous words “Mountain Dew” floating there like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl.

His finger slipped along the parchment as he read the instructions. Mountain Dew Code Red plus some Coneflower and Crimson Hale Root—no idea where he was supposed to find that last one—bring to a rolling boil, then strain the health Affinity properties from the alchemic components using a steady and concentrated dose of Magicka. Boom, you had a health potion. Whether it was Modest, Sufficient, or Ultimate depended on what level brewer you were, the quality and rarity of ingredients used, and how much Magicka you had imbued it with. The higher your level, the less Magicka you needed to add to bring your potion up to Ultimate.

[Congratulations! You have learned the Brewing profession! As a human, you only have 3 available profession slots. Are you sure you would like to add Brewing? Yes/No]

“Uh, Diebolt…” Clay pulled his nose out of the book, realizing he’d gotten a little too caught up reading. “How many uses do you get out of a magical profession tome like this?”

“One.”

“I might’ve just used it.”

Diebolt waved a slimy hand. “I’ve already filled my own profession slots, and I’m not looking to save over them. There’s nowhere to go but down from Master Otaku. Besides, with all the extra Squishies you brought, I’ll more than make up the difference in gold. If you’d like the book and the chemistry set, we’ll call it an even trade. Leveling up your Brewing should get those dimwit brothers off your back about the Oracle of Deep Mysteries. After all, you’ll be making things with the Immortal Elixir, and that’s seven and a half times better than sitting around thinking about it.”

Clay raised an eyebrow. “Is it?”

“Numerically, yes,” the frogman said. “Here, try it. I’ve got some Baja Blast around here somewhere. And what’s the other thing you need for a Magicka potion?” he called over his shoulder as he bustled into the kitchen.

Clay turned back to the prompt and hit Yes.

[Congratulations, you have unlocked the Brewing Profession. As a Level 1 Quack, you can brew the most basic concoctions with a fair degree of success. Continue to level up this profession and unlock new titles in order to brew increasingly more difficult mixtures and gain additional benefits!]

He waved away the prompt and quickly thumbed through the book until he found the recipe for Magicka potions. They didn’t get much more basic than that.

“Bronze brier husk and…” He paused at the second ingredient. “No, that can’t be right,” he muttered under his breath. “It says I need Blue Skittles? But it also says I can substitute in any blue chewy candy.” This was without a doubt the craziest discussion he’d had in his life. “Except M&Ms. Apparently, that creates a Lightning Damage poison.” He let out a low whistle. “This stuff is insane. You could make just about anything.”

“Indeed,” Diebolt said, coming back with a withered metallic-looking flower, a bag of chewy candy, and an Attack on Giantcollector’s cup full of blue-green soda. “The bronze brier husks you can find just about anywhere. They’re an invasive weed that was native to Hearthworld, but now you can find them in just about any ditch in LA. They like full sun, poor soil, and don’t need much moisture to grow. And I always keep Skittles on hand. You can’t have a movie marathon without Skittles.”

Following the instructions in the alchemy tome, Clay measured out the Baja Blast, ground the brier husk into a fine dust, then added it and the electric blue Skittles into a round-bottom flask. He carefully attached the flask to a condenser, then heated the whole setup over the chem set’s cheap little Bunsen burner. This was the tricky part, applying the magic without going overboard. It’d be great if every potion he made was at the Ultimate level, but the book warned that using too much of his Magicka at one time would give him a Magicka Hangover.

Clay was already well acquainted with that. He’d spent the last few weeks prior to becoming an Incant throwing around spells out of his weight class, and nearly every time it’d knocked him on his ass. Muscles and bones turning to jelly, heaving up his stomach contents, and getting a splitting migraine was not a price he wanted to pay for what was supposed to be no more than a quick test of his new profession.

He reached out with his senses, adding a small but steady stream of Magicka to the concoction. He could feel a latent power dwelling within both the briar husk and the Skittles. Using his magic like a metaphysical scalpel, he ever so carefully sliced the Affinity energy away from the physical component, which allowed the Baja Blast base to mingle with the two Essences, forming something new.

As the three elements came to a rolling boil, a faint blue raspberry colored steam seeped out of the flask and through the condenser’s coils. He picked a spot near the end of the condenser and wrapped his hand around it. A purple bar appeared in the right corner of his vision, steadily emptying as he fed the condensing droplets of solution more and more of his Magicka.

“That’s it,” Diebolt said, hovering at his side. “Easy does it.”

Cooled and brilliant blue, the sticky, syrupy potion began to drip from the coils and splatter into the waiting beaker. The visual appearance of progress made Clay want to up the amount of Magicka he was adding, as if that would move the process along faster or improve the final product, but he kept that instinct on lockdown. Slow and steady was the key—both to success and to not passing out on Diebolt’s floor.

The last bit of potion slipped through the coils with a hollow sucking sound like somebody slurping the last bit of a Big Gulp through a straw. With a pop, the Bunsen burner shut off, and the beaker turned into a potion bottle, fully stoppered and ready to go. The bright blue solids left behind in the round-bottom flask and the sugary cobalt droplets left in the condenser coils disappeared—evaporating into nothingness in an eyeblink. Pretty handy. Clay had no idea what he could’ve jammed into the thin openings to clean out either one.

Grasping the potion bottle by the neck, Clay inspected its contents.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Modest Magicka Potion

Restores 25 Magicka

Uses: 1

╠═╦╬╧╪

“Hot damn,” Clay whispered, grinning. He had crafted a magical potion. On the other side of the containment wall, something like this would’ve gone for enough cash to buy back their house, his construction business’s heavy equipment, and Alex’s dojo all in one fell swoop.

Eight or ten of these puppies and the whole Jaeger squad would be set for life. No wonder Gearhead and his asshole buddies had gone all evil dictator to get more of them.

Before he could dismiss the item info, more text took its place.

[LEVEL UP!]

[You have 10 undistributed stat points.]

The potion crafting had pushed him over the level threshold. With a thought, he pulled up his character sheet.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Clay Jaeger

Level: 9

Race: Incant

Class: Mystic Fateslinger

Alignment: Wyrd

Exp: 180 Exp; Exp to next level: 6,840

Available Characteristic Points: +10

Health: 195/195

H-Regen/5 Sec: 30

Magick: 472/472

Magick-Regen/5 Sec: 27.6

Stats:

· Strength: 20 (18 + 2 item bonus)

· Constitution: 16 (15 + 1 item bonus)

· Dexterity: 27.5 (24 + 3.5 item bonus)

· Intelligence: 39.22 (37 + 2.22 item bonus)

Characteristics:

· Armor Rating: 85

· Melee Attack Damage: 184.83

· Ranged Attack Damage: 219 (194 + 25 Wyrd Damage item bonus)

· Spell Damage: 225

· Movement Rate: +8.25%

· Critical Hit Chance: 10.5%

· Critical Hit Damage: +63.75%

Active Effects:

· Magick Reserve Regen

· Reptilian Infrared Detection

· +18% Fire Resistance

· +13% Quick Draw Speed, Reload Speed, and Firing Speed

· +39% Wyrd Damage to Voodoo-Aligned Creatures

· +39% Spell Resistance

Mystic Fateslinger Skills:

· Fateslinger

· Infinite Ammo

· Spelled Ammo

· Friendly Fire

Player Special Skills:

· Ranged Weapon Proficiency (Ranged Skill) – Lv. 3

· Firearm Mastery (Ranged Skill) – Lv. 5

· Weapons Specialty: Pistol – Lv. 3

· Cartography (Trade Skill) – Lv. 1

· Weaponsmith (Trade Skill) – Lv. 2

· Brewer (Trade Skill) – Lv. 1

· Discordant Inversion Tribal Tattoos (Voodoo) – Lv. 5

Player Grimoire:

· Sludge Slick – Lv. 2

· Control Lights – Lv. 4

· Beguiling Call – Lv. 3

· Minor Shield of Warding – Lv. 3

· Haphazard Cast – Lv. 1

╠═╦╬╧╪

“You see?” Diebolt said. “It would have taken you exactly seven point five times as long to level by meditating on the Immortal Elixir—and only if you’d had a breakthrough of some sort, which I seriously doubt you would’ve gotten from staring at a can of Mountain Dew. Even if it was MD Classic.”

Clay’s mind was racing a thousand miles a minute. Leveling up by brewing was its own breakthrough, gaining experience and loot that didn’t require him to be in active combat. He could stay holed up in a bunker somewhere, and as long as his ingredients didn’t run out, he could level to his heart’s content. The only limitation would be his Magicka-regen. Which he could now make a potion to boost, assuming he could find… he checked the alchemical equation… Lotus Star Flower.

Clay flipped the book shut and shook the frogman’s slimy hand.

“Diebolt, you’re a lifesaver.” He huffed a grim laugh. “Probably literally.”

The little frogman puffed up happily. “Yes, well, I have been studying these things for most of my existence,” he said modestly. “It’s a pleasure to finally help someone navigate the murky waters of post-Merge magic.”

“I hate to run out on you, but I’ve got to make a stop at the Sooq,” Clay said, loading the book and chem set into his bag. “See if I can convince the guy who sells ingredients to let me go on a midnight shopping spree.”