35 Ch. 26.5- Alchemist's Apprentice

There are so many things that we don't know still, and any discovery or invention receives a huge reward for their contribution to worldwide knowledge. Scientists seem to be the rare exception to the remaining enmity between all of the continental cities for many of the resident's role in participating in world war and as a result, killing their friends and family members.

I'm in the neutral zone as far as foreigners are concerned, it's hard to continue to hate a group of people for something they didn't do themselves. Eric also shares my sentiments and so we contribute to society rather than focusing on our own self-interests by hoarding the knowledge and making money off of it. The amount we gain is pretty sizeable, but having a monopoly on a product would make us even more money.

That isn't really a concern of ours for now, especially since Thomas is a summoner now and can make more than enough for both of us. He was even kind enough to cut down on material costs by providing a bunch of poisonous samples and bodies for me to experiment with. My prized sample is currently the manticore venom that I managed to get a few vials of.

I have to use strong monster hide gloves just to protect myself from an accidental splash on me. One drop on my skin would be more than enough to kill me. It's so potent that just absorbing it through my skin is effective, especially considering that I'm not a summoner with a stronger constitution that would afford me with enough resistance to not instantly die from it.

This was an unexpected boon, and honestly, I would never have been able to get my hands on something so rare and precious. One vial was enough to even make top tier summoners interested, and their concept of money was blown way out of proportion compared to mine. I would be able to live a modest life with no concerns for money, unfortunately, I'm more interested in the potential discoveries I could make with it.

What I'm currently working on is a way to counteract any poison, and all of these poisonous materials are used to test if my antidote will work against them. Most of my poison and venom come from monsters, but there are plants that take on poisonous characteristics after being exposed to a venomous or poisonous monster.

The antidote I had been working on was getting closer to what I had imagined for it, most common poisons would be counteracted by the serum, but the stronger and rarer ones were harder to account for. Not only are the materials hard to find, but they are exceptionally lethal and as a result much harder to counteract while still having the antidote affect other poisons as well.

I wanted it to be able to create a potion that would counteract any poison no matter how strong. The hardest part wasn't counteracting a strong poison, instead, it was far more difficult to make it a general use serum for any poison or venom. There are already all sorts of antidotes for one specific poison, but it's hard to know what you'll encounter in the monster plane.

Adaptability is what would set my serum apart from the others, it would be a huge achievement not only for me, but for Eric as well. He had helped give advice and even helped with implementing my experiments. I only had so many hands, so his help and expertise in chemistry were greatly appreciated.

*Crash*, Speaking of, it seems that Eric has once again done something to break our equipment. I swear, we spend more on replacing glasses and tools than on our materials, granted I got most of my recent supplies courtesy of Tommy.

"Eric, are you alright over there?" I ask him as I turn around from my desk that I had been staring at in thought for the past hour.

The wild-haired man was on the ground with shattered glass all around him, and some mysterious pink liquid on the ground. He slowly pushes himself off of the ground with his spindly arms, and looks up at me with his sleep-deprived eyes. His face was gaunt as usual, each eye seemed to be sandbagged with dark and heavy eyelids from too many all-nighters.

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"Here, let me help you up. It seems like I'm always doing this with you, what would you do without me?" (Mira)

"I honestly don't know, time just passes by while I'm working and when I get up to do something my legs go numb and I fall. Gravity doesn't seem to like me much." (Eric)

*Chuckles* "I guess not. I'm going to head back to my work, are you alright for now?" (Mira)

He waves his hands lazily at me as if shooing a dog and says in a weary voice, "I'm fine, you can go back to your experiments."

I took him at his word and went back to combining a serious of plants, half of which were poisonous, and the others were cures for said poison. I was banking on being able to neutralize a set of poisons and then using the combined matter to neutralize other deadly substances.

Medicine was low-grade poison anyway, so why wouldn't this work. In a way, the serum I was trying to create was like an antivenom that uses the venom as a base to cure the poison.

*Crash*

"Ooops" I mutter as I look towards the mess I accidentally created right after berating Eric for doing the same thing. I knocked over a few restorative plants and a few vials of poison which included some of the manticore venom. Luckily most of the valuable liquid was still locked safely away in a thick and shatterproof container.

I didn't think much of it as I got the broom and materials to handle the potentially deadly spill, at least until I saw a blue lotus-like plant in the middle wither and become darker at the same rate that the dark poison turned a bright blue color.

The change surprised me and since this could be a potential discovery, I wanted to record what exactly had happened and what materials were involve in what ratios.

"It looks like the main catalyst was the ice lotus dunked directly in the puddle, and a few pods from a fragrant wasp flower were on the edges of the puddle. The venom was a mix of 2 drops of manticore venom, Naga venom, and the concentrate from a mixture of hemlock and nightshade." (Mira)

After categorizing the contents and discerning a relatively close ratio of ingredients I got to work attempting to recreate the mixture to see what it would do. The puddle on the floor was contaminated, so it wouldn't be effective to test it, luckily I was pretty good at my job which I had been working for over 2 years.

In a mortar and pestle, I ground up the nightshade and hemlock and strained it into a vial to add to the mixture later. After that was completed, I gathered the required venoms, which were two of the strongest and deadliest known to man currently. 2 drops of the manticore venom were added first before pouring the Naga venom till the combined liquid met the line near the top of the vial like what how the vials had been before falling to the floor.

I recall 4 pods from a fragrant wasp flower being in the mix, so I ground them up for easier dispersal when drank or injected. Last was the ice lotus, I don't know how much is required since the whole thing was added last time. I don't want to waste materials, so I'll just add the lotus petal by petal until the reaction occurs.

Now that all of the ingredients are prepped and ready to be mixed, I start with putting a low temperature under the vial of poison. Too much heat and the venom will be relatively neutralized and as a result ineffective, but not enough and the ingredients wouldn't mix properly.

The candle I was using as a heat source was actually made from the fat of an ice troll, which causes the flame to only be a few degrees above room temperature. It is perfect for the job, but in reality, it is much more inconvenient to use tools like these compared to the equipment and tools from the old era that were banned from this new world.

I hadn't worked with anything related to chemistry or alchemy until the change, but from what I had heard from Eric, our job would have been far easier to do with the equipment and tools that used to exist like centrifuges or even gas burners.

Oh well, no point in crying over the stuff you can't have. We make do with handmade equipment and muscle power, we're fairly similar to apothecaries of old, except our potions or other forms of medicine can actually heal somebody on the brink of death.

*Clink*

"Whew, that was close" I mutter after almost knocking the vial over when I was not paying attention to my work. I get distracted from time to time, but usually, it's not too bad unlike what almost happened, which could have actually killed me.

Trying to get back in the zone and focus for the sake of my experiment and safety, I whisper, "Get it together Mira, focus on the glass full of death and don't knock it over."

It wouldn't matter how thick my gloves are if the vial spilled on another part of me like my legs. Luckily, due to Eric's chemistry background, we maintain the same safety rules that would exist in an actual lab back then. Although with a bit of the manticore venom in there, I'm not so sure how safe I would be even if I managed to follow procedure and wash the splatter off of me.

No risk, no reward though, so I'll venture on in the name of science. I'll make sure to keep as safe as possible though, wouldn't want to leave Tommy alone in this world when he's had it hard enough as is.

Deciding to bite the bullet, I began the careful process of mixing each bit of ingredient and recording exactly what I had done so that I could recreate it if it succeded.

The venom was already heated to the right temperature, so I delicately poured the vial into a beaker. Once that was done, I added the essence of nightshade and hemlock. I added the entire vial, which was the sum of all the liquid within a single plant of each, which honestly wasn't all that much compared to the volume of venom.

The mixture got darker when the plant essence was added, but nothing else had happened so far. As far as I could observe, it was a redox reaction that had occurred between the two, but it may have also been a mixing of colors between the two liquids, it's hard to tell without advanced tools like microscopes.

A redox reaction in simple terms is one of the types of chemical reactions known for having color changes, which I had vaguely heard in high school chemistry class, but was later told in detail about it by Eric during one of his chemistry rants. I swear the man lives, eats, and breathes chemistry, I left the sleep part of that saying out since he never gets enough. The stubborn man always insists on working until he collapses, there was more than one instance of me having to drag his spindly body onto the couch upstairs where he lives.

I had been recording the steps I had taken as I did them, and continued on by adding the crushed pods from a fragrant wasp flower, which had a distinctly stinging yet alluring scent to it. The herb was known to heat up the body and help it rid itself of bacteria and lower grade poisons all by itself. I made sure not to accidentally get a noseful of the stuff as I poured the substance into the extremely dark purple solution.

The reaction was immediate with the color-changing once again into a now burgundy shade of color, and the heat of the vial rising sharply. I nearly panicked at the extreme reaction given by introducing the fire-based herb, but I managed to calm myself down before counteracting the heat change.

The ice lotus was the only thing left and I quickly added half the leaves from an entire flower before the mixture got too hot and rendered the venom ineffective. A sizzling was heard as the reaction cooled down to normal and turned an electric blue color and seemed to settle for the moment.

*Chink* the sound of glass continuing to fracture bit by bit broke my heart. I was alert enough to immediately back up upon hearing that sound. It turned out to be a wise decision as the glass beaker completely broke apart from the short interval heat changes that had occurred within it.

"Dammit all to hell!" I yell at no one in particular and then set about cleaning up both messes that had been made by me today.

My immediate anger subsided as I realized I was now much closer to achieving my ultimate goal, all I needed was time and the perseverance to continue experimenting until the perfect amount of each ingredient was found.

I still didn't know what the mixture did, but I had a feeling it was exactly what I was looking for. I would test out the effects it tomorrow when I come back to the lab and recreate a successful mixture.

My poor lab rats would be subjected to a few necessary evils for the advancement of science. I didn't like to put them through any harm, but it was the only way to discover the effects of our creations without testing them on a human. Testing on people is generally frowned upon, so I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

I couldn't wait to tell Tommy about my successful lead on my multipurpose anti-venom/poison as a result of an accident. He'd probably be ecstatic knowing that he had helped contribute to my success.

I wasn't a foregone conclusion, for now, so I wouldn't get my hopes up too much. I still couldn't help but feel a little happy at this fortunate occurrence, I wasn't the only one for this to happen to since a lot of discoveries that had been made were a result of accidental mixing.

These are thoughts for another time since it was now about dinner time, and I needed to leave and get dinner since I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I guess I was picking up some of Eric's bad habits after spending so much time around him *shudders*.

"Bye Eric, I'm heading out. Be careful and don't do something potentially dangerous without me here to help you please, we don't want a repeat of the fire-salamander explosion incident now do we?" (Mira)

He didn't bother to respond to me, all I saw was a hand raised lazily in acknowledgment of my words. With nothing left to do for me here, for the time being, I went out to find a nice restaurant to tuck into, I was getting a craving for some lobster rolls.

I'd still have plenty of time before Tommy gets home since he was spending time with his new "not girlfriend" as he liked to claim, so I didn't have to worry about rushing while eating. I loved to tease him at every opportunity about his new friend since he was obviously head over heels for the girl.

I just hope she wouldn't get him killed or hurt his feelings. I hadn't met the girl yet, so I was still reserving judgment about her, but I felt like I already knew her since he had been mentioning someone named Alexis constantly.