Chapter 28: Passive Majicka

“No medicinal tea leaves? None?”

“For the third time, Arthur, that's not a thing.” The restaurant supply store manager was doing his best to stay calm in the face of Arthur's worry-driven disbelief. “There's medicine, and there's tea. The best I can do for you are some brews that are supposed to help you sleep.”

“Do they?”

“Anything does if you think it does, and it doesn't have pep. But really? Probably not.”

“Dammit. There must be something.”

“Not that I know of. At least not here. If you really want to try, there are alchemist supply stores. They might be able to help you, but I don't know. It seems like if it were that easy, someone would have done it by now.”

—

Ten minutes later, Arthur was out of breath in a new store, one filled with cauldrons, odd tools, and the best-quality glassware Arthur had seen anywhere in this world.

“Whoa now. Slow down,” the wind elemental behind the counter said. “There are lots of things you could break, running in here like that. What's the hurry?”

“I want to buy… leaves, I guess. Leaves that are medicine, or used to make medicine?”

“For someone? Son, if you’re here to pick up someone's order, you are going to have to squeeze more information out of them than that.”

“No, look.” Arthur flicked over a heavily censored version of his screen. “I'm a teamaker. I have a sick kid at my house. She has medicine for now, I just… I want her to have something for when she wakes up.”

“And you think boiling some leaves will make medicine that does that?” The wind elemental leaned forward. “You do know, of course, that this is insane?”

“I don't, actually. I'm an offworlder.”

“Ah, got it. Yes, that would explain some of the insanity.”

“It's not possible? To make medicinal tea, I mean.”

“Well, it's unlikely. Alchemy is… complex. Most ingredients are meant to be refined, mixed with adjuvants that make them work better, and enhanced through various skills, via stats and majicka. Boiling them just isn't enough.”

“Well, I want to try,” Arthur said. “Money is no object.”

“Oh, I think you will find it is. But… child, you say?”

“A sick child. An owl. A cute, angry owl who doesn't want help but desperately needs it.”

“Oof, I surrender.” The wind elemental ducked over to a shelf, pulling a few boxes out. “These are your best bet. A variety of leaf-based regents. Petals and the like. We sell them to beginner alchemists, so they can work through a bunch of ingredients to push their skills forward. Take this, boil it, and see if it turns into something.”

“How will I know if they work?” Arthur put up his hands defensively as the wind elemental huffed in frustration. “I know, I know. I just don't have any way of knowing if what I make is medicine. Do you sell appraisal rods? Efficacy scrys?”

“If we did, you couldn't afford them. Don't worry, kid. If you make this work, I suspect you won't have to guess at it. The system will let you know.”

—

Luckily, the medicine the owl had taken was a sedative, and Arthur didn't disturb Lily one bit as he dragged all his equipment out to the yard. Soon enough, the yard was a mess of heat sources and pots crammed on every flat surface available, overflowing onto stones, garden borders, and just about every other place where something could be safely balanced.

It was like getting his primary class skill all over again. He was mixing various medicinal and teas leaves together, boiling them for varying lengths of time, messing with concentrations, and generally just manipulating as many variables as he could.

One of the big differences between Earth and the Demon World was how primitive the latter's technology ladder was when the system didn't interfere with its skill-enhancing cheats. Sans system skills and the same amount of experience, a blacksmith on Earth would easily best their Demon World counterpart. To the extent people could do amazing things, it was because they knew how to do things in the context of their skills, squeezing the most benefit out of the system as possible.

That meant, in a lot of ways, the Demon World was more advanced, almost to the point of being post-scarcity. But they had major gaps in their knowledge for things that the system wasn't participating in, like finding the medicinal value in leaves.

And for Arthur, it didn't matter that with the system they could make pills that would close wounds in seconds. It only mattered that it couldn’t cure a common cold the same way that Advil or Tylenol could.

He knew that some of the leaves must have medicinal qualities. Some teas were caffeinated, a type of medicine all its own, one that had real, measurable effects. There just had to be some of the same effects hiding out in other ingredients, waiting to be found. It was just a matter of finding them.

And yet nothing was clicking. Lily was still asleep, but she wouldn't be forever. That was great, unless you were also trying to make her something comforting for when she woke up, something that would make her feel cared for. Something that, Arthur realized with a shock, he hoped would make her stay.

“No progress yet?” Ella came out to the yard, carrying a sandwich and a glass of milk for Arthur, who accepted them gratefully.

“Not yet. It's looking more and more like the alchemy shop guy might be right.” Arthur almost dropped his sandwich as Ella put one of his test-batch samples close to her face, looking like she might be taking a drink. Luckily, she saw his shock and pulled back at the last moment.

“Bad idea?” she said.

“Very bad. I have no idea what the dosages on any of these things are supposed to be. I'm guessing more of them are poison than aren't.”

“Well, it smells like it is, anyway. I wouldn't worry so much. I doubt anyone is going to drink anything that smells this much like floor cleaner voluntarily.”

“You know what I don't get? How this doesn't exist already.” Arthur tore a bite out of the sandwich, swallowing the chunk without chewing. “You have people enhancing stones to make things hot. You have blacksmiths who can make armor that doesn't weigh anything.”

“They don’t weigh much, but they still have weight. Everything has to weigh something.”

“Okay but when it's something like this, nobody has ever done it.”

“Who is to say?” Ella walked over and leaned against the back fence. “Maybe someone figured it out and it just didn't work well. Or had downsides. Lots of people have dead-end skills on their status screen, Arthur. Not everything works.”

“We had teas with medicinal effects on Earth.” While that was probably true, Arthur realized he had never really drunk any of them. They were in the realm of the kind of medicine he didn't try. “Or at least I'm pretty sure we did. It almost has to work, even if the system doesn't want it to.”

“Well, maybe. But consider that the leaves you bought could also be used with Alchemy, which does work. They could be potions. Or pills. Or infusions, or salves, or any number of things which do work, often very well.”

“So this is a waste?” Arthur asked, looking at his nearly-empty regent boxes. “I should have just saved the trouble and materials?”

“Nobody is saying that,” Ella said. “We don't have an unlimited supply, but a few low-level regents aren't going to create a medicine shortage all by themselves. Anything really rare wouldn't be in those boxes to begin with.”

“It's still a waste, then. Just smaller.”

“Arthur, has anyone ever told you that you are a downer?” Milo said, poking his head out of his workshop. “Fatalist, I think the word is. Everything is bad all the time for ol' Arthur. That's not what Ella's saying. She's saying, nobody has ever made this work before. That's it.”

“Point taken. Sorry, Ella.”

“Don't apologize to me.” Ella bonked him lightly on his forehead. “I think it's cute how much you want to help that little girl. Milo, I re-command you to remain friends with this nice boy who does nice things and makes beverages.”

“Done.” Milo took the cup of milk from Arthur's hands, took a swig, and handed it back. “But both of you are missing the point, here.”

“How so?” Arthur was all ears.

“You whine, she reassures you, because that's who you are and that's what you need. But I remember the old Arthur. Last week's Arthur, who didn't know what a system screen was. Remember that guy?”

“The one who stared at our beaks all the time?” Ella asked. “I like this one better.”

“Hey, I was new. We didn't have bird-folk on Earth, okay? Cut me some slack.”

Milo smelled some of Arthur's probably-poison tea and grimaced. “The point is, yes, that guy. Arthur has a class but it's easy to forget he's only been here for a bit. And I'm willing to bet he's missed something big, something nobody else would have missed.”

“What?” Ella looked interested. “You’re right, of course, but what?”

Milo walked over to his mother and whispered a sentence or two, low enough that Arthur couldn't hear it.

“There's no way. Even he knows that much.”

“He doesn't. Guaranteed. If he did know, he's forgotten.”

“Care to clue me in, guys? I'm the first to admit I don't know much, but I'm sort of working on a clock here.”

“It's something really simple, Arthur. Remember what Spiny told you, that one day? What he thought might get him a special achievement?”

“Majicka. The thing that makes stuff work better.”

“Yup, that. And it really does work by itself. But do you think it works entirely by itself? Do you think that once my passive majicka and skills are high enough, my daggers will be the same as everyone else's at the same level?”

“I can sense the answer is no.”

“Damn right. My daggers will be different. Not necessarily much different, not necessarily better, but different. Because I’ll tell them to be different. I'll want different things from them and I'll focus on making sure that happens. With Majicka, partially.”

“How?”

“By trying, Arthur. Whatever the system is, it's not mean. It exists to help people meet their goals. To survive. To thrive.”

“It’s just focused trying, I guess. Directed wanting. Or something like that.” Ella paused for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I don't think I can explain it.”

“You don't have to because he hasn't tried it at all. Arthur, I command you as your surrogate brother friend to stop forgetting you live in a world with both a system and magic, and to try again. Do you think you can handle that?”

Arthur picked up a kettle, dumping the contents in a bucket so they wouldn't kill the grass. “I don't think I like your tone, you iron-jockey bird-man. But yeah. I think I can give that a shot.”