Written in the Cards Part 8

Ted glanced up as Victoria and Elena arrived carrying a box of notebooks. "Please tell me you found an introduction to Alchemy book in the shop, some of these recipes don't make sense."

"What part doesn't make sense?" Elena asked as she set the box of alchemy notebooks that they'd looted from the alchemy shop in the mirror on the table next to Mist.

"The spiral drawings," Ted admitted as he gestured at the recipe he was trying to decipher. "Some of them have numbers and some of them don't and some of them are flipped."

Elena glanced at the page to make sure he was talking about what she thought he was. "Those are spirals. If you want to be technical, the ones facing left are called sinister spirals or sin spirals and the ones facing right are proper spirals or just spirals. They're basically the same as the rod symbol except it means that you need to push mana into the brew while stirring. You move the stirring rod to the right with a proper spiral and to the left with a sin spiral. If they have a number after it that means you stir that many times unless it's a number and an hourglass then you stir for that many minutes while pushing mana into the cauldron."

"Is that true for the rod design?" Mist asked, having seen the numbers on one of the recipes he'd looked at.

"Same concept, the rod just swaps direction," Elena explained.

"How much mana are you supposed to push into the cauldron?" Ted asked.

"That depends on the potion or the elixir that you're trying to make and the alchemist," Elena admitted. "We don't have a standard unit of mana because the effectiveness changes depending on your cards so you have to sort of feel the change."

Ted rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "So much for perfectly duplicating potions."

Elena shrugged. "If you get enough practice or the right cards, you should be able to get all of your potions pretty close or close enough that the basic detection plate can't tell the difference."

"You're trying not to scream in frustration, aren't you?" Victoria asked with amusement, thinking about her chemistry class and some of the instructions that weren't as good at their job as they should be.

"Yeah," Ted admitted. "I'm used to dealing with recipes that always have the same result if you follow them correctly."

Elena chuckled. "In theory, you'd get the exact same result if you could use the same exact ingredients, made sure that your tools and containers were perfectly clean and used the exact same mana, the problem is that you'd need an extremely accurate detection plate to check the differences and most alchemists don't care or can't afford the equipment they'd need."

"Too busy trying to turn lead into gold?" Ted asked.

Elena smiled as she realized that her cards might actually let her make a profit by turning lead into gold. "That might be worth testing."

"Wait, are you saying you can turn lead into gold?" Victoria asked thoughtfully.

"Most halfway decent alchemists can turn lead into gold, the recipe isn't particularly hard and it's well known, the problem is that the ingredients are worth more than the gold which means it's generally not worth it when you could just make elixirs and sell them. You'd also get hunted down and killed by the guild if you tried to acquire enough of the ingredients to matter."

"Lovely," Ted muttered.

Elena shrugged. "To be fair to the guild, if they didn't and the nobles found out, the nobles would do their best to kill or imprison every single alchemist they could get their hands on."

"What makes the nobles so dangerous?" Victoria asked, trying to understand the world.

"They have enough gold and power to buy the best equipment and cards in the realm or at least the best that comes up for auction or goes through the shops. It's hard to fight against knights that can shrug off every fireball or explosive potion you toss at them like it's water. They don't have a lot of knights on that level but they have enough to make fighting them a problem. Of course the various guilds have combat monsters of their own which makes everything a mess and is basically the only reason the nobles haven't crushed the guilds."

"Fun," Ted muttered. "So, getting back to alchemy, does it require a bloodline or just training and mana?"

Elena shook her head. "Some of the more complicated recipes are nearly impossible to make without cards that boost your alchemy but the recipes are probably incomplete or crap which means the cards are magically compensating for faulty knowledge or components that aren't quite good enough. It's also possible that having the right cards aligns your mana in a certain way, it's hard to say."

"Does the shop have enough equipment to get started?" Ted asked hopefully.

"We'll have to scrounge up some vials as the goblins broke the empty ones in the lab and clean the stirring rods but the cauldrons are durable enough that the goblins weren't able to damage them which means we can try some of the less complicated potions if you want."

"That would be great," Ted replied, curious how well his chemistry knowledge translated to alchemy.

"Before you get distracted making potions, does the direction you stir actually matter?" Mist asked Elena.

Elena shrugged. "I've read a couple of books that claim up one page and down another that it matters and other books that claim that it doesn't matter as long as you're consistent in the direction. I've also seen recipes that tell you to stir one way then the other. Mom says that it can matter if you're pushing mana into the brew against the way it was stirred but that isn't always the case so it probably has something to do with the specific ingredients of the potion you're working on."

"And how fast some of them have dissolved," Ted mused. "We're going to need some extra journals and some pens, can you make a pen dungeon?" he asked Mist.

Mist turned his head to look at Victoria. "Do you feel up to shooting ink blots or gremlins so we can pick up more pens?"

"Sure," Victoria agreed. "It beats hauling the dead goblins out of the shop and dumping their bodies in the woods, why can't they vanish like video game characters?"

"Bad luck or good luck considering we can probably use some of them for parts," Mist replied as he stood up, wanting a break from trying to read the handwritten alchemy journals and tossing mana at Beth and Elena's cards.

"Video game characters?" Elena asked.

"Give me a minute and I'll show you," Ted told her as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket so he could show her one of the games that he'd downloaded, figuring that would be the easiest way to explain what he meant.

"Best of luck," Mist told Ted as he stood up, knowing Elena would have plenty of questions.

"Let's find Sarah, she has a four in one pen that I want to copy," Victoria suggested.

"Sounds good," Mist agreed as he headed for the mirror to the farm where Sarah was probably working on making something or exploring the house with Beth and Azara.

0o0o0

"I still think we could have stopped for a pint," Derrick grumbled as they walked up the trail to the Henderson farm.

"I get it, you want to shit yourself to death because some jackass didn't wash his hands or because they used arsenic for flavor, but I'm not willing to step into a bar that might have a bunch of the mayor's flunkies for a drink of questionable quality," Molly argued.

Derrick glanced at the busty redhead, fairly sure she was joking about the arsenic bit. "The alcohol would kill the bacteria and no one uses arsenic for drinks."

"No one sane but even the nice part of town smelled like a latrine on a hot day, I don't trust them to actually wash the mugs or to know how to make something worth drinking," Molly argued.

"They can't be that bad," Derrick argued.

"They're not, they wipe them out with a rag every week," Phil offered.

Derrick glanced at the apprentice smith, wondering if he was joking and had the best poker face he'd ever seen or if he was actually serious. "On reflection, you might have a point," he admitted, trying to remember how much alcohol you needed before you didn't have to worry about bacteria since he wasn't sure how well they'd actually boiled the water.

"Take the win," Molly replied as she glanced at the group of six teenagers that had decided to come with them. "The plan went off without a hitch and we got two extra alchemists and an extra smith that wants their cards awakened."

"That's because getting your cards awakened costs fifty silver unless the town pays for it and the mayor is a cheap bastard so that's never going to happen," the female alchemist apprentice complained.

"At least your master doesn't blame you when he makes a mistake," Ralph complained, looking forward to leaving town and never having to see the bastard again.

"No, we just get charged when we make mistakes on recipes and we don't get a cut of the profit when we make the potions correctly, but it could be worse," Franklin admitted, fairly sure he would have already poisoned the smith if he had to put up with his shit.

Ralph turned his attention toward the people sitting around the picnic table. "I'm just glad that I'll never have to see Torin again."

"Dealer willing," Phil muttered, hoping he got decent cards so he wouldn't get stuck being an assistant smith the rest of his life.

"Hey guys!" Vivian called out as she waved at the group.

"Vivian," Selena replied with a smile as she checked her friend out, fairly sure she'd gotten more attractive since the last time she'd seen her. "Is it just me or has Vivian gotten more attractive?" she asked in a whisper as they made their way over.

"It's not just you," Franklin admitted, wondering how much of a boost to allure she'd picked up from her cards, because he found his gaze drifting back to the redhead despite the fact that there were a lot of interesting things to take in, like the floating mirrors and the people wearing strange clothes.

Mist looked up from the book on light magic that he'd been trying to decipher and focused on the bellows that Molly was carrying for a couple of seconds then focused on the collection of teenagers, curious about the extra people. "Any trouble?"

"No, it was a piece of cake," Molly replied with a grin as they walked over. "The boys were more than happy to let me have the bellows since it saved them a trip to the dump. We picked up the extra alchemists at the shop with Franklin and Franklin knew the other smith apprentice."

Franklin pulled his attention away from Vivian and focused on Mist. "I hope that's not a problem."

"Not in the slightest," Mist replied as Molly handed him the damaged bellows. 'I should probably see if Lisa or Beth has a repair spell before I use it to make a mirror.'

Vivian glanced at the cards floating over Ralph's head. 'General boost to strength and endurance, five percent reduction in crafting time on his better card and a weak strength boost and a sure grip quality on his other card. Is that because he's not particularly motivated or is that just because of bad luck and the fact that he's not the sharpest knife in the bunch?'

She glanced at Phil's cards, not particularly surprised that they weren't much better as Torin wasn't a particularly good teacher from what she'd heard. She checked Jack's cards. 'Good boost to all physical scores and a twenty percent reduction in crafting time and a training boost for smithing skills along with a boost to stamina, disease resistance and running speed on his other card that probably came from a bloodline. Is that because of luck or because his master is a better teacher?'

"How exactly does this work?" Jack asked.

"We can give you two extra cards, one of which is sort of cursed. I want the cursed cards and you can keep the other three, free of charge," Mist offered. "My ability generally gives people better cards than most awakeners as well so it's a pretty good deal."

"I'm good with that," Jack agreed, not seeing a reason to object to getting an extra card when the only cost was that he wouldn't get both extra cards the man could give him. "It's not like I would have gotten three normally."

"Deal," Selena agreed, not seeing a flaw in Jack's logic.

"Same," the rest agreed before he changed the deal.

Vivian quickly gave everyone in the group a third card then gave Jack a cursed card with the Crone's Durability and the Eldritch Professor of Legendary Conjuration on it, figuring it might be a nice card for Sarah. She barely resisted squealing when she read the card's details. 'Damn, even if Mist can't boost it, that's fantastic.'

Mist turned his attention to the teenager with four cards and checked the forth card. 'Amazing magic, excellent physical abilities, twenty magic using slime girls that have the summoner's skill with smithing and she can still spend mana to teach them spells and conjure the shirt and underwear. It also picked up Disease Immunity in addition to the rest of the crone's various immunities and a twenty percent reduction in crafting time for crafting projects. Curse, their eyes glow with green flames for five minutes if the user lies. That's not as bad as it could be.'

Mist pulled his attention off the card he was planning on giving Sarah and started working on boosting the rest of Jack's cards, wanting to make sure everyone got a good deal.

0o0o0

"This might be the best first attempt I've ever seen," Elena admitted as she examined the bottle of blue liquid that Ted had just finished brewing.

"To be fair, this isn't the first time I've followed a set of instructions in a lab," Ted told her, relieved that his experience in a chemistry lab wasn't wasted when it came to alchemy. "The hardest part was finding the ingredients and reading the author's handwriting."

Elena laughed. "I'd like to say it gets easier, but every shop has their own system for organizing their ingredients."

"Lovely," Ted muttered. "How are you supposed to find anything?"

"Most shopkeepers keep an inventory or organize the shop in a way that lets them find things," Elena replied with a shrug. "Some of them are lucky enough to have a card that lets them keep track of everything in their shop."

"That would be nice," Ted mused as he worked on bottling the rest of the potion in the cauldron, wishing he had a funnel with a spigot so that it would be easier to fill the bottles.

Elena grinned. "One of my father's cards lets him keep track of everything in the shop and alerts him if anyone tries to steal anything."

"Are there cards to get better deals?" Ted asked.

Elena shook her head. "Not that I know of. There are always stories of people getting cheated by merchants but that's generally because the merchant has a lot of practice making deals or because they stacked allure to the point that they were charming enough to talk a noble into anonymously donating to charity."

"Is that legal?" Ted asked as he put a cork in the potion bottle.

"Stacking allure is legal by the letter of the law, the nobles have too many cards that boost allure to actually ban the cards. Of course, if you're not a noble and you make a nuisance of yourself, you'll probably end up on a watch list or in a ditch."

Ted set the filled bottle on the table then grabbed an empty bottle and the funnel. "Is there a reason they don't just ban the cards for commoners?"

"They can't. I don't know the exact specifics, but the crown signed a magical contract with the Awakener's guild a couple of centuries ago. The nobles aren't allowed to ban any card unless they ban the card for everyone in the country and that's not going to happen for several reasons, the main one being that most nobility cards boost allure. The other problem is that any banned cards have to be given to the Awakener's guild and it falls to the nobles to cover the price for the cards, which means that they'd basically drain their coffers as allure cards are generally expensive and the guild would sell the cards to another country."

"Have the nobles actually banned any cards?" Ted asked, wondering how long it would take before people found out that the king was dead.

Elena scowled as she thought about some of the ancient plagues that had ravaged the world before the guild stepped up. "Any cards that cause spread sickness."

"That tracks," Ted agreed as Victoria quietly stepped into the back room.

Victoria smiled when she realized that they were done brewing which meant she could probably interrupt them without causing something to explode. "Mist managed to create a couple of useful alchemy cards, you should come see once you're done bottling everything."

"Go ahead, I'll finish up," Ted suggested.

"Have fun," Elena told him as she headed for the door, curious what type of cards he'd managed to create.

0o0o0

"This feels more like an asylum than a school," Eric complained as he made his way down the abandoned hallway, trying to ignore the flickering lights that made the ink gremlins a lot harder to see than they should have been.

"It's certainly creepy," Derrick agreed as he glanced at the ceiling, trying to make sure the little monsters weren't crawling around on the ceiling. "At least we don't have to worry about them cutting our throats."

"So far." Eric swung the metal pipe he was using as a club when something jumped at him from the shadows. He started at the black, red, blue and green splatter on the wall then reached down and picked up the four colors in one pen that had dropped when he'd splattered the ink gremlin. "Do you think the boss will drop a pen with more colors?"

"The gremlins are weak enough that I'm not sure they even have a boss," Derrick replied as he tightened his grip on the tennis racket that he'd picked up from the lost and found when he'd realized that trying to hit the nimble and fast moving critters with his shotgun was an exercise in frustration.

"The goblins had a boss, right?" Eric asked as he eyed the tipped over paint can resting against the wall as they walked closer, fairly sure he'd just seen it move.

"The goblins were more dangerous and I'm not actually sure the goblin that was mixing things in the back room was actually a boss," Derrick mused as he stepped to the side and swatted the ink gremlin that had jumped out of the paint can and lunged for his face. "I shot him a couple of times before he could start tossing potions at me, though once was probably enough," he admitted as he picked up the pen that the gremlin dropped when he died.

"Maybe we should have let Lisa enchant the pen first," Eric mused as they continued walking down the hallway.

"No thanks, I don't need the bastards jumping at me with box cutters or teleporting," Derrick complained.

"Fair," Eric admitted. "How long do you think it will take for the nobles to track us down?"

"I don't know," Derrick admitted. "We're not exactly doing ourselves any favors by running around in modern clothes but describing something you don't recognize when you only saw it for less than a minute isn't actually all that easy. I doubt they have trained sketch artists which means we might be reasonably safe, or maybe the crown already has a group of hunters heading in our direction."

"This sucks," Eric grumbled. "If we had to get dropped into an Isekai world, why couldn't we get dropped into a world that needed us to have sex with a bunch of hot girls because a plague wiped most of the men out?"

Derrick laughed. "That sounds like the start of a hentai."

"And I’m okay with that," Eric said as they headed toward what looked like a gym. He stopped when he reached the door and saw hundreds of gremlins in the gym and a larger inkblot gremlin with wild blue hair, red eyes and green socks standing in the middle of the gym. "This is going to be messy."

"Yep," Derrick agreed with a smirk, rather happy that they hadn't gone for something more difficult because he had a lot of frustration to blow off after dealing with the town's stench and worrying about the nobles and lots of easy to kill targets would be great stress relief.