Man was this another unlucky chapter. I was hoping to get another 1k words in to transition fully to the next arc, but I couldn't work it in without another delay, so I decided to pump it to next week.Also, slight change to the weekly voting. I've decided to launch the vote in the third week of the month, so people who aren't interested in the winner can opt out if they want.As always, thank you for all your support!
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Chapter Twenty Four:
Second Floor: Potions, Booze, and… the Same Gnoll?
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Oh no.
I stood amongst a carpet of shed fur reaching all the way up to my ankles; Piled high on my bathroom floor. The gnoll looking back at me from the mirror above the sink was not the same one that I had seen in that pond all those months ago.
My coat was no longer flat and sleek, but instead thick and puffy. Sticking up in jagged peaks deep enough to swallow my finger whole when I went to scratch my chin. My cheeks were buried beneath two spires of fur sticking out half a foot from my face, like a fox. And rounding it all off, a messy goatee was making itself known, peaking out from the ocean of floof on my face. I flicked my ears back, which looked twice as big as normal under the dense coat of sandy fur. Between them, my mohawk had grown tall enough that it had collapsed under its own weight, drifting across my left eye like a cowlick. On top of everything else, tufts of the stuff were sticking up wildly from where it could escape from under my night clothes.
My winter coat had come in.
And I looked adorable.
I groaned aloud, thunking my head against the glass–which I didn’t feel at all through the blanket growing on my face. This was an unmitigated disaster. One look at this, and no one would ever take me seriously ever again. Risking a glance back up, I winced again when all I wanted to do was pinch the cheeks of the fluffy hyena looking back at me with those big ol’ doe-eyes.
I must not have noticed I was shedding because of all the Prestidigitations I’ve been throwing around. I use that spell on everything–basic hygiene, house cleaning, cooking–I’ve gotten more mileage out of it than a shitbox Toyota.So now, I am warm. But at what cost?
For a brief moment, I considered shaving it back down into something more distinguished. I did have enough to work with for a mean twirled mustache-goatee combo…
I quickly shook my head. No, for the first time in weeks, I actually felt warm. That frigid bitch Winter could gnaw at my coat all she wanted, but her crooked teeth could not reach me now. I had just about given in too, and was ready to make myself heated clothes. I would have been forced to take precious resources away from the various projects I actually wanted to make, simply to be slightly more comfortable when I was outdoors.
Far below, at the very edge of my hearing, I heard the bell above the front door ring; Hestia was here. Damn, I guess it was time to face the music.
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The first thing I saw when I stepped through the door separating my workshop from the storefront was Hestia’s back. She was flipping through the coins in the register, probably making sure she had enough change for the day. She didn’t even look up from her work as she grunted out a greeting.
“Good Morning, Max, happy dies Veneris. Anything special on the docket today? I checked the log book, and I didn’t see any consultations blocked out.”
As she paused to take a pull of the coffee mug that never seemed to stray far out of reach, I nervously padded up behind her. “Mornin’, Hestia. No, it should be a normal day. We’ll just be rolling with the punches-”
As I spoke, her head swiveled to the side, eyes traveling to meet my own. ‘Punches’ had only just finished rolling off my tongue when her eyes bugged out, and she performed a picture-perfect spit take back into her mug. She paid no mind to her gross cup of backwash as she pointed a finger at me and howled with laughter. I immediately spun on my heels and marched back out the door. “I’ll be in the back.”
She was too busy gasping for breath to respond as I slammed the door.
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With a flick of a switch, Betty began to spool down, mana compressors stopped their work with a relieved sigh–raw aether slipping back from the compression chambers and rising up from the exhaust vents like hot breath on a winter's day. The buzzing mithril rails quieted down to a gentle hum, and ceramic brakes running along the hammerhead spine snapped shut–locking the head tight to the top of the machine.
Pulling on a pair of dragonhide gloves, I pried the flattened piece of copper, still glowing cherry-red from the sheer friction imparted by Betty’s tender ministrations, off of the anvil. I quickly brought it over to the roller machine I had put together back during the renovations.
I slowly fed the sheet into the machine, adjusting it as necessary when the kick-back knocked it out of battery. Over and over again, the sheet was rolled until, finally, I could slice off the excess and spot weld it together into a pipe.
It was not clean cut by any measure, but in a world without heavy industry, it was probably as good as it was going to get without me dumping a huge amount of time and money setting up a real factory pipeline.
I ran a sander down the pipe's length to shave down the weld, and tossed it behind me to join the small pile growing on my workshop floor. In all the excitement of the past few weeks, I had finally decided to tackle a project I had been procrastinating on for a while–A still. Two of them, to be exact. One would be my dedicated ‘bulk product’ machine, that’s only job was to mass distill potions down into a standard quality I could sell at a flat rate. The second one would be smaller, and easily disassembled for cleaning purposes, as it would be used for my more experimental work.
Max’s education and his passion were focused almost entirely on the more physical side of Artificing. Enchantments, magical and mundane physics, mechanics–the usual artificer flair. His knowledge of potion making, on the other hand, was entirely self-taught. Learned out of necessity as the self-inflicted injuries caused by his inventions malfunctioning grew by the day.I was hoping that, together, we might be able to overcome this gap in his skillset. I doubt we’d ever stumble on the method to recreate some of the more esoteric potions out there, not without access to the knowledge base of the Infinite Realms. But we might be able to improve on what he did know.
Also–moonshine.
I mean ethanol.
Having a working still would let me produce ethanol, which I could imagine a few fun uses for.
…I will not use it to produce blinding amounts of cheap booze.
No sir.
The next few sheets of copper I hammered out were fed through the roller only a few times, as I had all the piping I’d need. I crimped the last few inches shut myself, keeping the diameter as wide as I could. I spot-welded a few more sheets around the rim, until I had a suitable riveted boiler.
The main still rose up in the corner of the room, pipe by pipe, weld by weld. Helped along by Snarf holding pieces in place with his teeth while I crimped them shut with Heat Metal. The final product was a towering homage to the ingenuity of plastered rednecks everywhere.
Somewhere, somehow–someone’s Drunk Uncle Cletus just shed a single, prideful tear.
What it lacked in the delightful utilitarianism of an illegal moonshiner’s still, it made up for with a nice steampunk aesthetic. With a bright copper finish, pipes wound around one another in condensing helical, creating a dense weave. The main drum was heated with a mana-blue induction coil, connected to a generator of low-tier monster stones laid out in parallel.
The still’s smaller brother soon joined it, though that was much simpler in layout. I’d only need it for trial runs and experiments, so it would probably spend most of its time disassembled.
All that was left was to get a brew going and fire it up; Christen it with a batch of Low-Grade. I guess it was time to give Granny Arnica another visit.
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“Heyo’, Lady Hestia, Howere’ you doing?”
Hestia looked up from her… mortal study material to find one of Max’s regulars, Dormul, standing in the doorway; sheets of biting winter rain cascading behind him. The dwarf was stomping his boots dry, and shaking out his coat to rid himself of the freezing water.
“I’m well, thank you for asking, Mister Bolster.” She said, putting away her book and donning her best service-smile. “Are you looking for Max, or is there anything I can help you with today?”
“I ave’ been meaning to take a look around to see what he’s offering,” The dwarf said, rubbing his chin consideringly as he eyed their stock of Everbright Lanterns, “But I do need to talk to him about my order. Is he in the back?” She hummed agreeably. “I think he’s working on a personal project at the moment. But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you heading back there.”
Dormul nodded and made his way behind the counter and towards the door to Max’s workshop. He pulled it open–and was hit in the face by a cloud of pink-tinged vapor. The dwarf staggered back, hacking a wet cough as more of the cloud seeped into the room.
“Max!” Hestia jumped to her feet and rushed into the workshop, her head buried into the crook of her arm to block out the noxious fumes… Though, now that she was inside, she noticed that the problem wasn’t as bad as it seemed. There was a light haze hovering over the room, but much of it was being sucked away by a series of holes lining the walls–a low drone emanating from them.
It didn’t take long to find Max, standing before a monstrous spire of copper and tubing. Puffs of that pink-tinged smoke rose from the violently boiling drum. Just under the roar of frothing, rolling liquid, she could hear whatever it was inside the piping rushing through the twisted maze above her head. At the end of the machine, a revolving tray holding glass vials rotated beneath a spigot, a stream of blood-red potion being shot into each one before the tray would rotate a fresh glass into place.
A small metal hinge would then flick the filled vial into a second chamber, where a cork would be stamped into place by a piston. The finished product was then unceremoniously dropped onto a metal slide, where it fell into a pile of its fellows with a cascading series of clinks.
He must have heard her come in, because Max spun around with a wobble, and she immediately knew that the gnoll was plastered on whatever byproduct that the machine was giving off. His eyes were glossy over a goofy grin, and his ears were pressed flat against his head.
Max blinked asynchronously, his smile growing wider at the sight of her. “Tia’! Hello! I got it…” He paused, blinking again. “-Working!”
“I can see that.” She muttered into her arm, eyes quickly darting towards the infernal machine and back. “But I think your ventilation system needs work.”
“Yeah…” He stopped, wavering in place as a small frown replaced his blissful smile. “I think… I think I need one of them-Hood thingies.” He staggered forward, making a drunken beeline towards that terrifying forge hammer of his.
Oh, absolutely not!
She darted in front of him, arms outstretched, desperate to stop her seven-and-a-half-foot-tall boss from maiming himself with his own tools–and got immediately bowled over for her troubles by a creature who was well over half-again as tall as herself.
Thankfully, Dormul was there to catch both of them. The dwarf clamped a hand around Max’s wrist, and scooped her up before she fell. Hestia could tell by his muffled chortles that he was fighting hard not to burst out laughing as he guided them both out of the room. “I though’ you could hold your booze, Max!”
“Imma’ liddle messed up.” He slurred, spitting a wad of pink slime to the side. “But am fine! Honest!... he trailed off, feet dragging on the floor as they frog marched him out. He suddenly threw his head back and hollered. “GROK! Gen a way to unfuck my shit!”
The two shortest people in the room shared a disbelieving look, before sighing in unison.
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Mortification, thy name is Max.
I could feel my ears burning in shame as I sat at my kitchen table. Hestia and Dormul sat on the other end, both snickering at my misfortune. How the hell was I supposed to know that a full five filtered vent fans wouldn’t be enough to keep a room clean?! Worst of it was, I couldn’t even tell if it was something in the brew that affected me, or just pure hypoxia. I should have thought of a fume hood going in, but I wasn’t expecting my humble little still to put out that much exhaust. Lessons learned, I suppose.
“So,” Dormul said, breaking me from my own spiraling humiliation as he clearly swallowed back another laugh. “Who's this ‘Grok’?”
I moaned, drooping down into myself. “A trickster god of misinformation–Look, can you please leave it, man, and tell me what brought you by?”
“Fine, fine,” He held his hands up in faux surrender, not bothering to hide his grin. “I wanted to talk to you about my commission. I had a few ideas, and wanted to run them by you. But first–” The dwarf reached under his collar and pulled out a letter. He slapped it on the table and slid it over. I gave him a look over the rim of the envelope. When I found no hint as to its contents in his expression, I sliced it open with a claw.
It was… a formal invitation to a celebration hosted by the Magni familia, to celebrate the first Second Class adventurer to rise from their ranks; To be held the next weekend.
“I’d be delighted to attend,” I said, coughing slightly as the last dredges of the fumes worked its way out of my system. “And I know what I’ll give you for your present.”
“My armor for free?” He asked, hopefully.
“At a slight discount.” I instantly shot back.
He slumped in his seat before springing back up. “Eh, I’ll take it. Speaking of, I saw a man the other day taking on the Middle Floors with a special mask bearing your mark. He said he could walk through a horde of Purple Moths and not feel a thing. I want that for ma’ own kit.”
“Naturally,” I agreed. “I was already planning on making your armor hermetically sealed, along with using a BoH to hold its own supply of oxygen-” I cut myself off when I found two confused faces blinking at me. “-Air. So you’d be able to operate in an airless environment for hours.”
“Sounds good, as long as it doesn’t deprive the ladies of a view of this mug.” He grinned, rubbing his chin.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I huffed a laugh, considering some solutions. Maybe a removable facemask? Or perhaps a clear visor? I grabbed my pad of paper out of my BoH, and started sketching out a prototype. I started with a sterling-silver visored Bascinet, with a lens made of polished Crystal Mantis blades. The visor would be raised or lowered with a push of a button under the chin, allowing it to be sealed completely hands-free.
The helmet flowed down into a thick gorget, flanked by two pauldrons large enough to make even Garen Crownguard sweat. The chestplate was a classic plated cuirass, folded in overlapping layers that swept down to the midriff, before transitioning into a cod piece. The Cuirass would be fitted with a series of sacrificial ceramic plates that would be enchanted to disperse magic. Hopefully taking the bite out of the many ranged attacks available to monsters.
Over top of the chest, and between the plates, I draped a set of combat webbing, dyed black to highlight the armor. The webbing could be configured by Dormul to hold either additional plates, or holsters containing consumables like potions. Over the left breast, I added a holster for a curved stiletto dagger, angled downwards–a perfect holdout weapon for slipping in between ribs or armor plates.
The thigh guards I kept simple and open, optimized for mobility and agility; Same for the greaves. Instead of using sabatons, I drew up a pair of steel-toed combat boots, as the terrain in the Dungeon varied far too much to forgo good treads.
I took a step back, and–ah shit, I made Reinhardt’s armor.
Hell, he even had the hammer! Well, two of them. The only thing it was missing was the lion head gauntlet, and the shield… Huh, I wonder how hard it would be to make some sort of hardlight projector and mount it on the vambrace. I turned to face my audience, ready to ask them their input, only to find them staring slackjawed at my rough draft.
Both of them spoke up at the same time.
“–Tha’ looks bad ass!”
“–You can draw?!”
I shot Hestia a dirty look at the sheer incredulity in her voice; Rude.
Dormul, on the other hand, was suitably awed by my artistic ability. He stood up and made his way around the table. Running a rough hand over the page, his eyes sparkled as he turned to me. “This is perfect, Max. Absolutely phenomenal! And this helmet will work the same way as that other fellow’s mask?”
“It’ll do more than that when I’m done with it,” I smirk, happy to brag to such an enthusiastic audience. “I’m planning to run the limbs with mana-netic enchantments, so the armor will supplement your natural strength. I also have a few other, experimental ideas, if you're open to trying them out for me.”