I had a good reason for not participating in the labyrinth’s construction.
I really had wanted to join the kobolds and dwarves in digging up the underground. In fact, it was killing me, not getting to be part of the team! I’d told Barry to at least be sure to call me if they hit bedrock, or a particularly large boulder, but I had to dry my tears and give up my hopes of joining in the fun. You see, I had to make the potions we’d be using to bait hunters into challenging the labyrinth in the first place.
“Hmm. The fundamentals of alchemy are much the same as the fundamentals of cooking. Combine a few ingredients and cook them, and you can end up with something very different. There are rules to the changes things undergo, but the talent, condition, and fortitude of the alchemist have a huge impact on the quality of the end product. Moreover, the rules aren’t all that clear, or even completely deterministic in alchemy, which makes things even more difficult. It’s like I’m going through online guides for a game and they’re giving me conflicting info.”
It wasn’t all that efficient for me to mix everything myself, so I’d been thinking about teaching the girls how to help me make magic potions. But even though I knew the basic recipe, I felt like I wouldn’t do a good job of explaining the process of making them, so I’d ordered an alchemy book from Tundra. The author was a labyrinth manager who’d undertaken a great deal of field research.
The Essentials of Practical Alchemy (312 Pages) == 650,000 DL
Seller: Manager, Labyrinth #16
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I’d found many cookbook-style books, with detailed recipes and sketches of materials, and a few describing where to forage for certain plants, but I’d hardly found any talking about the theoretical foundations. Perhaps there weren’t a lot of scholarly types among the labyrinth managers. The textbook had no reviews yet, but I figured I didn’t have much to lose, so I bought it anyway. It turned out to be surprisingly detailed, but unfortunately, the best I could say for it was that it presented its concepts in a logical manner. A lot of the time, it was simply too complicated for me, not to mention poorly written, and I had to reread most passages a few times to really get it. Not the best book ever.
“This book says it’s only got the essentials, but it has university-level terminology in math, physics, and chemistry all over the place. Plus, you’re supposed to be well acquainted with alchemy systems in fantasy games, and have a basic understanding of cooking techniques and a knack for cooking in the first place, otherwise you won’t be able to appreciate the book. Talk about gatekeeping.”
I’d played a lot of niche games in my time, so fortunately I did meet the minimum qualifications to read the book, but still, I felt like the author could’ve at least made an attempt at appealing to a mainstream audience.
I’d seen books like this in games before, like in this one foreign MMORPG called The Eldest Scrolls, which had been marketed as being extremely realistic. Game worlds worked under different fundamental laws than the real world, so players always had to be informed just what you could and couldn’t do. So the developers in that game had introduced scholar NPCs who sent you on quests to unearth old arcane books detailing the knowledge you’d need. It was a great game, if you had a lot of curiosity and enjoyed the thrill of exploration. You could only make one character, though. So if you chose a magician for example, you were sent as a student under some mentor, and from then on your primary goal was basically to be recognized as an independent player. I made the mistake of choosing a wizard initially, assuming it was like any other game where you could make a bunch of characters. The harsh requirements for reaching the endgame just made me want to do even better, so I traveled from one old wizard to another, becoming a disciple of anyone who would teach me. They sent me to libraries sprinkled across the world, where I read books both sanctioned and forbidden, doing anything in my quest to become a full wizard. I was adept in healing magic and offensive magic, a true master of my craft, and by the end the foreign players had dubbed me Mr. Monk, thanks to my diligence in grinding out those books.
I hung out in both the Japanese community, which had barely thirty players, and one other in-game community called “Black Magic Theorists.” I still talked to most of the gamers I met in that crazy place, and we even played together sometimes. Masochistic difficulty was a surefire recipe for building friendship. The game was deemed too hardcore for people to play in a foreign language, so they’d even localized it to Japanese, but it only got about 3,000 people playing it across the world, so splitting up servers was kind of pointless. If you were Japanese and wanted to play the game, you were better off importing an international copy. The game was still alive, and there were still active forums centered around it to this day.
You know, if I was able to decipher that damn game and become a wizard, maybe I could simplify this book so it was more friendly for newbies?
“Jeez, it’s like four percent as long as it used to be. Did I cut too much?”
I’d tried my hand at simplifying the three-hundred-page mammoth of a book, summarizing all the important parts in handwritten notes, and it turned out to be only twelve pages.
“This thing really does go beyond the essentials. I think I’ll just teach alchemy to Ann the same way I would a new dinner recipe. Personally, I think it’s better to learn to make stuff through trial and error.”
When I read through my notes, I realized what I’d written was best described as the theoretical foundations underpinning how alchemy worked. Well, now I could see why there were so few books on alchemical theory. Still, no biggie. I was sure the inhabitants of this world would figure this stuff out for themselves sooner or later.
“Hey Ann, wanna learn how to make magic potions?”
“Sure!”
I prepared the equipment for Ann to use and began teaching her how to make the magic potions we’d be giving out as prizes.
“Aoi, what shall I do?”
“Oh, hey Mary. Um, you should probably do some training, or maybe help out with the construction to get some exercise. I’ll be counting on you once the labyrinth is up and running, so I can’t have you getting rusty on me.”
“Absolutely! I’ll go for a run outside at once!”
Mary left her stuff in the cabin and went right out for a jog.
“Mary’s not gonna study with us?”
Ann sadly watched as Mary disappeared into the distance.
“Everyone has their role to play. There are some things only we can do, and some things only Mary can do.”
I felt a twinge of guilt. The truth was, I wanted to teach Mary as well, but that book was right when it said you needed at least some talent for cooking to do alchemy. Mary was still a complete novice who burned everything she tried to make. It would’ve been cruel to force her to try something this complicated until she’d had some more time under Ann’s wing.
Ann and I practiced mixing, and by the time the labyrinth was almost completed, she could reliably make Grade 9 and Grade 10 potions every time. The difference in level between our work must have had something to do with that fortitude stat the guide had mentioned. It was unclear to me how much Mary had improved during her cooking lessons with Ann. Whenever I saw Mary’s handiwork lurking in a corner of the table, I would frown and think how teaching Mary to cook was perhaps the only thing I had yet to see Ann complete with flying colors.