Chapter 43: Leveling

“As a general rule, We don’t let anybody into our storehouse. And we certainly don’t let non alchemists in. I’m sorry, sir. That’s something money won’t change.”

Arthur didn’t have a lot of funds, but he would have spent them all to get to the back of this shop, if only to expose Food Scientist to as many ingredients as he could and level it. There was also an outside chance that it would react to something in the storehouse itself, and point in him a good direction for his tea-making. He had hoped the alchemy shops would have a laid-back attitude toward the idea, but things were a bit harder than he expected.

“I won’t touch anything, I promise. And I won’t…”

“Sorry. This is a firm no.”

Arthur’s shoulders slumped. This was the biggest alchemy store in town, and supposedly the best. Any other shop would have a lower chance of having what he needed. But at least there were other shops to check. He nodded to the deer or elk demon, whichever it was, and walked towards the entrance to the shop.

“Wait,” a bigger, older voice said. Arthur turned to see what appeared to be his first ape-demon.

All demons had vaguely human features, even if it was a stretch to see them that way. Elementals were even closer. Besides the fur, the combination of already human-like features and the general slant of demons looking humanoid made this person as close to looking like him as anyone in this world ever had.

“Why do you want to look? It can’t be much help to your cooking. None of these ingredients were selected for taste.”

“It’s… important. It’s not just about making tea. It’s about making a certain kind of tea. For a friend.”

“Tell me more.” The old ape-man’s face softened a bit. “Tell me everything.”

Arthur dumped it all on the ape. After a few moments, he realized he was babbling a bit, but he didn’t stop. He told him about his medicinal tea and his entire class, not hesitating to send the uncensored version of his status screen to back up what he was saying. He told the ape about Mizu, and the insect bite, and had just moved on to how sad she looked laid up in bed. Finally, the ape held up his hand, signalling for Arthur to stop.

“That’s quite enough. Young man, you should have mentioned that a life was at stake.” He turned to the deer-elk-man and tossed him a key. “Take him back. Show him everything. I’ll mind the front.”

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble,” Arthur said.

“Young man, I own this shop. Nobody can get me in trouble here except my wife, and as far as I know, I haven’t done anything to anger her today. Yet.” He laughed at his own joke, then waved them off. “Go. I hope you find what you are looking for.”

The storehouse was underground. It was a remarkably large stone-lined cellar, full of shelves filled to bursting with various bins, bottles, and boxes filled with alchemical regents. Arthur’s eyes bugged out at the sheer size of it all.

“We bought the rights to several cellars from the owners of the surrounding buildings,” the deer said. “Not cheap, as I understand it. But it does give us the room we need. So, where do you want to start?”

Arthur shrugged his shoulders. “It’s sort of a needle in a haystack search, honestly.”

“Neat phrase. I’ll remember that. But if you don’t know what you are looking for, start there. Everything on that side of the cellar is durable regents, the kind we can store without sealing them up. I’ll be here if you need me.”

Arthur got to work, examining each box, basket, and envelope in turn. Where it seemed helpful, he even smelled them. As he did, he focused on his purpose, hoping Food Scientist would get the hint and point him in the right direction. But after an hour, he was coming up blank. Most of the ingredients caused no response. The rare few that did produced the mental equivalent of a ‘danger, poison’ label. It was even worse once he got to the bottled things.

“About done?” the deer asked. Arthur sighed quietly to himself. He couldn’t blame the guy for wanting to get back to work, and it was looking more and like this whole idea was going to be a bust.

“Yeah, it’s looking like there’s nothing here that will help. Not yet, at least.”

The deer packed up his things, leading him back to the stairs. And then, just as Arthur began to climb them, Food Scientist twitched. There was something about the stairs that mattered.

No, not the stairs. Something under them.

Arthur hopped down, following the sense until he found a big, open barrel of a green-blue powder. Despite looking like the most poisonous thing possible, his skill was assuring him it was exactly what he needed, in some way or another.

“What is this?”

“That? It’s stabilizing powder. It’s an adjuvant.”

“I don’t know that word.” Arthur was getting close enough to the powder that he was afraid he’d sneeze and ruin it. He backed off to hear the deer’s answer better.

“Adjuvants are… filler that does things. Not completely inert, not the active ingredient. They make things work better. This particular powder is for stabilizing different mixtures. It locks in potency and keeps it from fading.”

“What’s it made out of?”

The deer shrugged. “Some plant, somewhere. It’s not a local product. It gets shipped in.”

“It’s expensive?”

“Oh, no, not at all. People buy it by the barrel.”

A few minutes later, Arthur arrived at the front counter with a few pounds of the powder bagged up, ready to pay. The ape waved him off.

“No, no. If that’s all you need, it’s on the house. Just tell me how this all went when it’s over. You have a fascinating class.” He stood up creakily from the stool behind the counter, giving way to the deer. “And I’ll look in on this friend of yours if I find a moment. It sounds likely I can’t do anything, but you never know.”

—

Finding Karbo was a more complex problem than Arthur wanted at the moment. The infernal was like the manifestation of good-natured chaos. He went where he wanted, when he wanted, and kept no schedule.

As Arthur neared the square and his mouth started watering from the food smells there, he found the solution to that problem. If there was one constant with Karbo, it’d be how much he liked meat. After that, it only took Arthur a few minutes to find the big guy, chewing away happily at what appeared to be several pounds of meat.

“Arthur!” Karbo waved him over, separating out what looked like a full steak from his pile of meat, slapping it on a piece of bread, and handing it to him. “How are things going with the boba shop?”

“Okay enough. But that’s on hold for a few days. Bigger problems.”

“Oh?” Karbo arched one of his massive eyebrows. “How so?”

“You know Mizu?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Water elemental. My age. About this high.” Arthur held up his hand to what he considered to be the best height.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve seen her around with you kids. Pretty.”

“Yes. Anyway. She’s been bitten by some kind of insect.”

That got Karbo’s attention. “Outside the dungeon?”

“Yes. And underground, I think. Something the wards are supposed to keep away but didn’t.”

“That’s a bad one. For a crafter class with crafter vitality, bad news. Most don’t end up getting ahead of the game.” Realizing what he was saying, Karbo winced. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault. I’m trying to find ways I can, you know, help.”

“Your tea!” Karbo said. “That would her an edge, wouldn’t it. You bring her any yet?”

“I haven’t managed to make any that will help yet. Hopefully tonight. But I’ve been reading a lot today, trying to get a lead on how to approach this, and one of the ways is venom.”

“More of it?”

“Processed venom. On my world, we made anti-venom out of venom. By injecting it into an animal and then extracting any resistances that the animal develops.”

“Gross.”

“Yes, but I’m hoping to not have to do that here in magic-demon-land. The problem being that I need sort of a lot of venom, and the alchemist I went to didn’t have it.”

“So you want to hunt some up?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Deal. Absolutely. Two conditions, though.” Karbo reached into his bag and grabbed a small dagger, much finer and lighter than the one Arthur had used before. “I’m not allowed to bring people into the dungeon who aren’t hunting. No tourists. It’s an actual law, with a few exceptions for people like Eito. Which means you’re taking some risk.”

Arthur held the alien-feeling dagger for a few moments, then decided. “Got it. That’s fine.”

“And the second thing is, you have to be okay with going to the poison floor. It’s the only way to get this done quick. If you wanted scary-looking monsters, that’s also where you go. It’s all stuff designed to look like it might poison you. Which looks, well, frightening.”

“Okay, what’s the condition?”

“Just that you don’t wet yourself and you see it through.”

“Done.”

—

Karbo took another five minutes to eat what looked like ten thousand calories worth of meat, then grabbed Arthur and sprinted to a dungeon. Not The Dungeon as Arthur had come to think of the only one he had ever been to, but rather some relatively anonymous dungeon much further away from the city. This one didn’t have a casing built around it at all.

“Too far from the city to do much good. There are a couple sensor spells set up, and nobody would come this way normally. You can tell where it is because I put those rocks down.”

Arthur and Karbo walked up to the big ring of massive boulders Karbo called rocks, and he could see why Karbo had thought they’d be enough warning. The place looked like the gods had been playing marbles in it, or the beginnings of a castle-building project for a particularly large giant.

“Got that dagger?”

“I do.”

“I’ll be alongside you, so you should only ever have one monster to deal with, tops, but you have to be fighting one pretty regularly if we’re going to follow the spirit of the law. And if things get rough, I should be able to cut in and save you. Should being the operative word there. Nobody is truly safe in a dungeon. You might get hurt.” Karbo reached up and scratched the base of one of his horns. “That’s part of the fun for me, but I feel like I have to check again. You’re okay with all that?”

“Yeah.” Arthur thrust and swung the dagger a few times, getting a feel for it. “Let’s go kill some monsters.”