Chapter 119: Why Is It So Complicated Pt.2
After Nancom dumped the dirt like mixture that they were apparently going to use as the catalyst. Lake saw Master Nancom start to throw new powders. Lake could tell he wasn't just throwing them in haphazardly like he did either. There was some fancy technique he was using to get the powder to fall in very specific places, and Lake was pretty sure he was using mana to do it.
It was something most people that had any skills could probably do, and if he ever wanted to learn how to use Alchemy to make non-poisonous things he would probably have to do it as well. He didn't really need to ever learn how to make non-poisonous things though because of Poison Taster.
If he wanted to make a health potion he could just make a poison that dealt damage to health and drink it instead. He didn't really like Alchemy enough to ever waste his time getting good at making regular potions just cause, he would need an actual reason.
After Nancom added three powders in his fancy throwing style Lake saw him start to mix the dirt around once again in a fancy technique. Lake guessed this was how normal people would control the speed of any reactions they didn't want to get out of control. He could see how much superior his skill was to this technique though.
At this speed it would probably take an hour to finish with there still being more ingredients that had yet to be added. Lake could now see what Lucas wanted from him. If Lake was to take control of the reactions he could probably speed it up without there being a chance of it getting out of control.
Lake had already known this was what he was here for but did not understand how much of a difference he would be making. Master Nancom didn't want him to help yet though just watch, and figure out where he could help in the future. Lake was expecting there to be a conversation at the end where Nancom asked him what he thought he could help with.
This meant Lake needed to do his best not to let his mind wander, so he could give a satisfactory answer. It wasn't going to be easy though with how little was happening moment to moment.
After some time Master Nancom finally added more powders to which Lake was excited about at first until he saw how they had been added. It was the fancy throwing technique again meaning he was in for another round of slow stirring. Doing his best to focus as the stirring started, Lake finally saw something new.
It was subtle but the color of the mixture was definitely starting to move towards being more green than the dark muddy red color that reminded him of clay that it had been. As Lake was watching, a sudden thought came to his mind. Why was Nancom making such a strong poison that used so many ingredients to kill off an army.
The quantity was correct, you would need a lot, but most of the army would be weak, meaning Nancom could save a lot of time by making lots of an extremely simple poison. Lake was sure there was a good reason he would come to find out as he worked with Nancom because Lucas wouldn't have sent him to work with someone who was wasting the guilds time and resources.
After some time Lake saw Nancom grab the last few powders he had prepared in advance. Lake was pretty sure this would be the last step because Nancom would have gotten everything he was going to need before he started. "Step back." Lake hadn't expected Nancom to say anything to him, so it took him a second to actually do what he had been told.
After he got back away from where Nancom was working Lake saw he finally added the last few powders but he didn't try to stir it and instead moved towards a huge glass dome that had been next to them the entire time. Lake hadn't thought anything of it though because there were huge things on the floor all over the Lab.
Seeing Nancom lift the glass dome, and place it on top of the vat he had been brewing in, Lake didn't know what to expect. His best guess was there would be some form of toxic gas released and Nancom didn't want to fill the lab, but Lake didn't think that was what the dome was for because he knew they had purifying crystals that cleaned the toxins out of the air, so it wouldn't hurt anyone or anything.
"You can get close and watch now that the top is on." Lake stepped forward, so he could actually look down into the vat. All he saw was the same green mud substance with some loose powder loosely thrown to cover the top. Unsure he looked towards Master Nancom to see he was looking into the vat as though he was waiting for something to happen.
Taking that to mean it could happen at any moment, Lake looked back to see where the powder on the top was slowly changing not in color but in depth. It seemed the powder was starting to slowly sink down into the mixture. This made sense if the powders were reacting with something that was in there already because there was an attraction that happened between two ingredients when they started to bind together.
That attraction was partially what you were fighting against when you were trying to slow a reaction down but most of the time it was really weak especially when you just put the ingredient on top and didn't stir it in at all. After a while Lake saw what seemed to be a bubble pushing up because there was a bulge starting to rise out of the dirt.
This was weird because the vat wasn't on heat so it shouldn't be boiling. Right when he was about to ask if everything was alright because he thought the reaction might be out of control and was about to blow the poison apart, Lake saw a small green sprout shoot out of the ground.
A few seconds later he saw another than another after that, soon there were nine. When there were no more that came up from the dirt, that had just been confirmed as dirt, he guessed nine was all there was going to be. After a few seconds Lake could tell these nine sprouts were growing much faster than he thought was possible, and they were all over three feet tall before a minute had passed.
Lake could see the plants were starting to develop some features such as leaves and branches and then they all started to develop buds on the ends of their branches. "Seems the fire sprout is underdeveloped." Lake looked at the plant that had red buds assuming that would be the one that would be fire.
Seeing it only had three buds compared to the four or five the other plants had, Lake assumed he had guessed right. "It's still within tolerance, but I'll need to readjust the amounts of every ingredient we will be adding before we do another run." Lake remembered that this was a new recipe that Nancom had made himself and it seemed he was still working on it but only small tweaks here and there.
After a while Lake saw the flowers were starting to open and got his face real close to the glass to try and get a better look when a glob of brown liquid came flying towards his face. Pulling his face back from the sudden attack Lake saw the liquid hit the glass, and slowly slide down until it hit the dirt.
Once it made contact with the dirt, Lake saw smoke rise and heard a sizzling sound. Only one thing came to mind, Acid. He guessed this was the acid part of the name he had been told earlier, Nine Element Acid, oh and the nine element part would probably be the nine different colored plants.
After the fist glob of acid that had hit the glass right in front of him it wasn't long before all different colored acids were being shot towards the glass in front of him and Nancom. It seemed the plants understood they were supposed to target living things, but not the concept of glass.
After a while the amount of smoke that was rising from the acid meeting the dirt the plants were growing from made it impossible to see the plants any more. The only way he could still tell they even existed was the amount of acid being shot towards the glass, but after a few minutes it too stopped.
This made Lake wonder if they had somehow dissolved even themselves with the acid they had been spitting. He would think that they would be immune to their own acid but then he remembered that there had been nine different types of acid and that had probably been why they had been susceptible.
Once all the acid had run down off the glass Nancom started to lift the top off. Lake moved back to let the smoke pass without touching him, and saw all of it was being sucked upwards towards the closest of the purifying crystals.
Once all the smoke was cleared Lake moved forward to get a good look at what was left. Nothing but a dark pool of liquid was left in the vat. "This was a good run, after we dilute this we will have about twenty vats this size filled with poison." Lake still had a lot of questions but this answered why Nancom was making such strong poison, he planned to dilute it.
This was actually them making twenty vats of poison, not just one, so Lake could actually see it as a huge time saver that allowed them to still have a strong product as an end result. Now for the next question. "Master, where did the plants come from?" He had never seen any seeds that weren't ground into a fine powder being added so he wanted to see if there had been another source he hadn't known about.
"I can see why you would be confused even though you were the one to add the seeds. Nisysis is an extremely tenacious plant and its seeds can survive even being ground into a fine powder. They also absorbed the elemental energies that we added with the various monster parts we mixed, well you saw, just know if you ever come across Nisysis in the wild you should turn back."
Lake was starting to see Nancom wasn't the type to waste his time explaining things to others and it was too bad. He was very interested in what he had just seen and wondered if this might be Nancom's specialty within the guild. It seemed he would have to figure that out on his own because it seemed Nancom had already gotten back to work on tweaking the recipe.
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