Chapter 388: The Deal Pt.24
Looking at the time Lake decided to go ahead and head to work with Doul now even though it was a bit early just to make sure he wasn't late. Walking out of his room Lake saw the hallway was empty like it had been every time he used it since getting back and started to wonder when the other people that used to live here would get back.
He wouldn't be too surprised if Nia had died because she had been in the Metal Domain and the guilds had been destroyed but Solomon the person who used to be his neighbor still wasn't back. He guessed this would be a good question for Lucas when they went out tomorrow to hunt down a journal.
He also hadn't seen Millie since coming back and that was odd because he used to see her in the halls all the time. This was probably because she was busy but there was also a chance she had moved where she lived to be closer to the kitchen which meant he would never see her by chance and needed to go say hi if he wanted to see how the restaurant plan was coming along.
He was still dreaming of the day that he could go to any town to fill up on good food instead of having to come all the way back to the guild each time because he was getting tired of running through the wilderness of the Holy Domain every few days. Thinking this reminded him he needed to look into teleportation at some point because if he put the right stuff into Inner Vault there was a chance he could instantly travel wherever he wanted.
He knew finding these things was probably going to be hard though so this was also a good thing to ask Lucas about tomorrow while they were running through the wilderness of the Holy Domain.
Getting to the stairs, Lake cast Fly and made it to the Master Lab within a few minutes. He had made sure to move slowly so he wouldn't get there too early that he wouldn't be able to get in but that didn't seem to be a problem he would have because when he tried his badge at the door to the Master lab it opened.
The only obstacle he met was when he got to the curtain that blocked the machine he had Doul would be working on from sight as it was still closed with no one around it. Lake had kind of expected to see some servants or something around even if Doul wasn't here quite yet but he guessed there was a chance Doul didn't have any that he let work on the machine.
It was too bad if that was actually true because Lake had wanted to ask someone who might be a bit closer to his level of understanding about what they were trying to accomplish to see if Doul was actually crazy like how everyone else around him thought. He guessed he would just have to find this out himself through the results of the experiment today.
Around ten minutes after he arrived Doul and one other person walked towards him and he could Tell Doul was happy he was already here by the way the man started to smile as he opened the curtain. "Detris clean out the machine while Lake and I get the ingredients ready."
Lake took the few seconds they had before either of these things started to give the servant Detris a small wave as a greeting since they had met earlier when he had been in the library. "Alright I'll let you get all the powders into the water in each of the cylinders when they're clean but for now let's just weigh out the right amount of each one."
They finished with the piles of powder before Detris cleaned out the machine but the difference in time was only a few minutes so before long everything was set up and they were ready to run the first test. "Alright I wont be upset with you if we fail every attempt today so don't worry about the first try."
Lake felt confident in completing the potion loop in just a few tries but just in case he was wrong he pretended that Doul's words made him calm down a bit before saying. "Alright I'm ready." After he said this Doul activated the heat under the cylinders and the liquid inside started to be pushed through the giant pipe loop gaining a bit of each ingredient at the end. Lake let this happen for a while just watching what the machine did until he felt it would be a good opportunity to help.
Instead of trying to control everything that was happening inside of the pipe, Lake just used Poison Control to keep the poison inside going the right speed long past when it had failed yesterday. "Oh it looks like we passed the furthest it's made it up till now. Forty or so more cycles and it should be done."
Lake didn't have anything to say to Doul at this time so he just kept going until the chain was about to be completed. "You said the poison will be draining into the fourth cylinder at the end. Is there anything I need to do or does the machine just do that part itself?" Lake still didn't understand how a chain of effects in the shape of a circle was supposed to drain itself out of a loop without breaking itself in some way so he felt asking now was better than just watching what happened.
"It will do it when the pipe's completely filled, don't worry and just keep the speed stable even as it's happening." Doing as he had been told Lake saw with Mana Vision that as soon as the two ends met and combined that a hole for the liquid to drain out of opened. After a few seconds the fourth cylinder was mostly filled and the pipe was empty but the fact the two ends of the liquid had split as it was draining made him feel wherever they had just done was pointless.
"Lake you're immune to poison, correct?" Lake just nodded his head without correcting Doul before pointing and asking. "Is it ok that the two ends split while it was draining or does that mess up the poison in some way?"
"What do you mean?" Lake didn't know how he could put the question in a more understandable way so he just said. "The shape was important for this poison because you were trying to use the same ingredients multiple times but the shape fell apart when it drained."
"Oh I see what you are saying. Let me ask you this what happens when you pour the final product into two bottles? Does the effect fall apart because it's been split up or do you get two potions that do the same thing?"
"You get two potions that do the same thing?" Lake could kind of see where this was going but he had thought they were trying to do something that didn't count as regular brewing so he thought maybe the rules should be different this time. "That right, do you know why?"
Lake actually didn't understand why alchemy worked the way it did at all and just assumed it was because the gods wanted it to be easy for those that had the job so he just shook his head and said. "I don't."
"Ok well it's a pretty simple explanation, the shapes we see when brewing items are real but they kind of don't exist does that make sense. Like they're kind of like the lines of a formation, how it looks a certain way but its effect does not have any real contention to how it seems." This statement made it clear why the other people here thought Doul was crazy but Lake kind of got what he was saying and was nodding the entire time until Doul tried to finish his explanation by saying. "The shape only tells you if the effect is stable or not the actual effect exists in the catalyst which can be split into many parts without any damage being done to the potion."
That part made perfect sense and Lake understood Doul was saying that as soon as they were done with brewing the chain and it became stable the entire potion had gained the effect they had been trying to make so it splitting as it drained no longer mattered. "Alright it's good that you get it, would you like to take a sip of the final product to see if it actually worked or should we just have an appraiser come."
Lake was fine with either of these options but instead of picking one he just said. "I'm an Appraiser, just let me do it." Hearing his answer Doul looked a bit sad and Lake felt it was because the man wanted him to drink some of the poison but Lake had learned that it was not a good idea to drink poison just because he could.
"Ok do you need me to bottle it or can you just appraise all of it inside the cylinder?" Thinking this over, Lake said. "Get a bottle out please, it will be easier if it's smaller." His ability to appraise items was a bit over the top so if he looked at the details of the potion now he was going to get a lot of stuff on the machine it was inside of as well and it would take him a while to compile all the useful information.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢