Chapter Thirty-Five

The bloody thing wasn’t even a physical key that Harmony could sell. The second time she checked the box it had disappeared, inconveniently into her status as a temporary item. The key linked to her presence in the dungeon was the opposite of going unnoticed.  Part of an achievement challenge banned by both the guild and The Academy for causing too many deaths, it still existed as a well-known urban legend and was recorded in the archives of several societies in Ricort. It was hard to hide when there was a giant door yet to be opened on the fourth floor people walked by. Three keys to open a locked door. One iron, one silver, and one gold, three heroes to reveal what was inside.

“How do I get rid of it?”

“You could find the other key holders and complete the quest. I’m not an expert, but they should be visible to you until the key wears off. I don’t have a lot of information. I’d have to check with James, but the oath you had me bound to means I can’t even do that. You’d have to ask.” Randy suggested.

The odds of them involving the local guild master would increase exponentially if that happened. She was not going to ask a guild representative to dig into an ancient, unfinished quest. “Burn that. I’m leaving.”

Hyacinth returned the now stuffed Bowe back to wee dragon form while Harmony took the three items needed to improve her potions result, the command crystal, the pure rust, and the homemade soul-binding agent, in order to make a confident tactical retreat out of the dungeon, knowing Adric and Randy would sell the rest of the loot at guild rates.  

Swapping back into her student uniform along the way was slightly tricky, but she’d gotten used to changing clothes in the darkest of shadows while Hyacinth kept watch for trouble. One bout of heavy sleep in her slightly damaged bed later, she awoke almost convinced it had all been a bad dream until her morning routine, with the help of [Recall] and a touch of icy clarity from [Cold Touch], snapped all the memories of last night's late adventures into place.

“All I wanted to do was pass the damned test!”

‘“Gweep.” Hyacinth answered.

Ignoring the barb, Harmony gathered herself up for class. Her school uniform would gain a new badge today, depending on whether she passed or failed the exam testing out of potions 201.

Before that was Practical Magicware Effects on Planar Experiences. For the fourth week in a row, the class had a sign on the locked door.  Getting messy with magic, see you next week!  A class that was constantly delayed and canceled with zero repercussions, which was one oddity she could handle. Life was busy enough without that extra load of work to deal with.

Not that she was alone in checking out the sign. “Saved again!” exclaimed a curly-haired redhead. The fifty-seventh-ranked fourth-year moaned as she let out all the tension in her body.

“Is her class really that bad?” Harmony asked?

“It’s the trips she takes you on. Only luck has us not losing one or two students to horrible deaths. There was one time we were teleported to the bottom of the ocean in the middle of a kraken’s nest, only to watch the fertilization process up close. A week of scrubbing every crevasse wasn’t enough to feel clean again.”

“Then why are you taking her class again?” Harmony asked.

“Strong progression opportunities are rare, and the failure rate is low. Not like I’m desperate enough to take Curie’s class. You’ll see once your leveling stalls out.  I’m Arnette.”

“Harmony.”

“Yes, your name is starting to stand out among the new chosen this year. Personally insulted by the glitter explosion at the club enough to avoid that trap, only to have  the rusting alarm overshadow your accomplishment; otherwise, it might be bigger news. I managed to snag the septus spot during my second quarter, but that only lasted so long; still, I’ve maintained my connections. There are some congratulatory drinks waiting for you at the Warden’s Rest.”    

“It didn’t feel very welcoming, so I’ve yet to go back to the club.”

Arnette shrugged. “Kids and their games. Don’t overlook the social opportunities. Once I graduate, if my next evolution turns out right, you’re looking at Mirelock’s next court wizard.” The woman pulled out a small metal card.”My information. Send me a message if you have any questions.”

With a wave, the woman dashed off.

And that was why people went to this school. Flipping the card over in her fingers. It’s not that her personal networking was completely lacking. It was just that it was hard when she couldn’t be honest about her situation.  That was one reason why Tun-Knee’s offer was tempting. Loap had better be available the next time Max summoned her.

Planning out that meeting was a good distraction from going over the steps she would take for the potions exam the hundredth time. As sympathetic as Verus had been with Gary and Don, he’d made it quite clear that doing it in the middle of a quarter brought extra complications. He couldn’t be the judge. Too often, the decision to try to test out had to do with strife between teacher and student. He’d be an observer while two teachers administered the exam during the class period. Her test would be a teaching moment, either in success or failure, for the other students.

She’d performed in front of thousands; she could handle her class, even if it included the leering gazes of the two kids whose necks she nearly snapped. For some, they’d be driven to avoid failure and earn a rare new badge sewn into their school uniform. What started out needing to avoid human irritants morphed into the bigger goals of helping Tasha gain a suitable body type and learning the secrets of Half-step potions for those she left behind. Staff worked together to keep the house running properly.

Adric waited outside the building with additional supplies. “I’ve acquired better quality soul-binding agents and good rust, if my connections are to be believed. Randy pointed me in their direction, so they’re probably reliable. The purified water used by The Academy is standard; there should be no unexpected issues there. Good luck.”

These materials would be a good comparison for what the school provided. Too bad none of the human-corpse-based binding agents were available. That was one expense even an efficient sweep of the first floor wouldn’t cover. She only needed to use her funds to help her with a passing grade, not pay for perfection.

Vital body’s keen hearing was enough of a sixth sense to warn that this would be beyond her initial expectations as she made her way to class. The murmurs of a packed room had a certain echoing to it that brought excited energy. Ambrosia’s shows at the Dragonfly Inn had brought such crowds, but to see a packed room for a test was new. Unfamiliar faces that parted way for her as she made her way into the classroom were a tad irksome. All the normal desks and equipment had been cleared out to make space for the mass of students from all the years coming to watch the show.

Verus’s cold, annoyed look was reserved more for the crowd than for her, and was as close to an apology she was going to get as he waited off to the side to observe. Two other instructors chatted gayly next to him, beams of sunshine to his gloomy nature. Harmony preferred the gloom. They interrupted their laughter to greet her, “Ah, student White.  I’m Professor Swoop, and this is Potionmaster Esop here to proctor your test. I hope you don’t mind that we invited our students. We didn’t expect them all to show up on such short notice.” Swoop extended his hand.

She minded. Harmony shook, disappointed he didn’t try to test her grip so she could fracture a bone in retaliation. “I’m sure it won’t affect the outcome. I brought some supplies and tools to supplement the school-provided materials.”

Esop looked a little taken aback. “I don’t know if that’s…” Swoop put a hand on his shoulder, stilling him from cautioning her.

Verus mentioned how the school acquired decent materials even if low bidders, and often, outside sources could hurt more than they helped. Oftentimes, desperate students would try  many tricks that backfired in examinations like this. Cheats, shortcuts, and such.  

The setup provided was exactly as in the first class. Enough supplies to make three half-step iron body potions. She’d only have enough time to make one, but the test gave her a few additional valuable minutes to work. The table was twice as wide, allowing her to pull out her supplies from her bag.  The blood-red sickle glimmered under the glow stone light, drawing curious looks from the proctors administering the test.  The whole command crystal had them mummering, as did the vermillion sample of rust that was several shades brighter than that supplied by the school.

“Calibration of the testing stone?” Harmony asked.

“Yes. Yes.” Swoop said. He opened a special case. The potion inside smelled like Oorty’s Tomb. “Dungeon made.”  He took it to the stone.  Setting it down, it read 96%, and with a slight nudge of adjustment to the magical script, the man brought it down to 95%.  The exam will begin in one minute.

The exam started the moment she entered the room, but the arbitrary signal for when she could begin to act was fine. [Keen Investigative Awareness] watched everything carefully, as she reprioritized due to the composition of the room.

Time started, and Harmony acted. The beakers of purified water had been sitting out too long in a packed room full of people tracking in dirt and breathing heavily, filling the room with their excited, heavy breaths. Though diluted into the water, it was still a sight factor she could control, and Harmony had plenty of experience with particulates in purified water during the last few weeks, and the faint remains from a normal class were annoying enough.  [Dust] scraped the inside of her chosen beaker using [Mend] and [Manipulate Dead] to work on all those bits of skin and enzymes floating in the air. It wasn’t just that she was pulling a half thimble full of goop out of the liquid, she was also clearing off the supplies provided and creating a vapor barrier around  her work area to be maintained by a hum of energy around  her skills, leaning into the area affect of [Shadowed Graves] to guide the bubble of space that [Dust], and [Manipulate Dead], and even [Final Silence] used a little bit of energy to push against the foreign aspects in the room.

It was a bit of a contortionist's move to lean on skills this way when she’d need to use stronger applications when she actually got to putting together the potion, but better some pain now than a tainted result and failure.

Hormony moved to the rust using her sickle to gather a few grains on the tip to rub between her fingers, nicking herself in the process. [Dust] looked at the grains while [Manipulate Dead] felt how it interacted with her dead cells, and her vital body touched upon the living ones. She even went so far as to taste and smell the differences between what the school provided, what Randy recommended, and what had been gathered off the crab.

A local drug did use rust, but that wasn’t the point of this bit of damage. Iron content. Ash, and a key difference was oxidation, the rust provided by the school, and the slightly better one purchased was literally rusted, a result of being burnt. Only a light toasting, but enough to both explain the nickname and her soul could tell that it shouldn't be that way, the pure stuff actively stabbed into her vital body’s soul.

Old-fashioned necromancy evaluated the soul-binding agents. [Renew Spirit] prepped and ready to refresh those when applicable to the process.

The show of poking and prodding all the materials before the large audience cut into the prep time. Now it was time to dance.

Stillness, even with [Final Silence] and [Cold Touch] for full coverage and equal distribution of the rust inside the distilled water, was never going to work when crafting his iron body potion for Harmony. She wasn’t Verus, and her skills were different from his.  They’d lock things too much in place, creating too much space while combating the vibrations of the other chaos in the room.  

She might make the stillness of death her friend, but she knew how to move with the rhythm and go with the vibrations provided by the masses. Be it a room packed with over a hundred or a crowd of thousands. She could shake and move with the best of them, and [Disintegrate] shattered and separated for coverage the same way [Dust] could diffuse a mess when it needed to be gone.

Keeping the agitation up, Harmony kicked it into high gear to keep things perfectly separated while she worked. Loap would be proud of the jiggling and bouncing, even as [Style and Grace] tried to keep her cool as she grabbed the command crystal. [Claim the Remains of Power] coated her fist as her hand held the harvested organ. With some effort from her necromantic soul and her stat of connections, she knew it was an organ from a living creature, and [Manipulate Dead] would have additional influence over it.

The key here was concept. Creating this potion was more than a recipe. It bled into the question of what a half-step potion was.  Soul binding agents scraped from corpses to change the path of a human when they were most open to change.

Half-step iron-bodied criminals died with her hands in their souls. She’d touched the difference from those who had never taken such a potion.  They had a feeling she’d felt elsewhere in the dead whose memories lingered in their flesh.

Bea had a strength brought to her from who she once was.

A half-step potion wasn’t just a simple source of power; it was a bit of borrowed spirit from the dungeon and its monsters. Monsterification, a word many would find insulting and disgusting, considering that now everyone has a body type. These were the iron guards, distilled bits of soul seeped into a human, adding a step of their strength and speed. Pure bloody necromancy.

Lessons, the wrong kind, from Defense Against the Forbidden Arts, how foreign entities infect souls from her time with Curie in Deworming, Decursing, and Deconstructing Skills, and her personal necromantic sense worked with all the practical alignment lessons from hundreds of years of practice that let Instructor Verus teach students to the point where their rudimentary understanding let them throw together a potion that got them close to 90%.

Students were never meant to test out of this class. Verus told her as much. The two on record who had proved it was barely possible to do so, and Harmony would have bet that they had some link to necromancy, not that she’d ever spill their secret. It is what would allow her to nudge herself past that threshold to a passing grade despite not being an alchemist.

The soul-binding agents born of monsters and dungeon rewards pushed the powdered guardians' iron spirit and guard’s dead crystal heart past the threshold of the soul, blooming red and with a spark, shifting the liquid to a shimmering purple color.  Purple, it should be red?

Congratulations! You’ve earned the title:  Guaranteed.

Your actions are less Lucky and more Certain.

“Well, that’s disappointing.” Swoop started, before Esop physically threw the man across the room and took the potion out of Harmony’s hands as gently as he had roughly tossed the man aside, setting it on the grading stone.  110% was the result displayed, a clear error if you didn’t see the awe in the potion master's face.

​

[Analyze] looked at what she’d created.

​

A potion guaranteed to give anyone without a body type the half-step iron body type.

Confusion and chaos rose like a wave in the room. Harmony was aware that Verus put his arm around her, and the pair teleported out of the building.

“Sorry about that, Student White. With a result like that, I’m sure your next evolution will give you some alchemy choices. I look forward to seeing what half-step potion you can make for your friend Tasha. I recommend hiding in your dorm for the rest of the day while I put out some interdepartmental fires.”  Versu assured her as he ran back into the building.

This was all Garry and Don’s fault.