PreCursive

  I awoke to the sound of rattling drawers and the muttering of Grey. I was ying in his bed again, in a mirror of my first day here. He must have moved me here after I had…passed out? Was that what had happeo me? Groggily, I raised my head to look around. I don’t think I had been out for very long, based on the light streaming through the window. Off to the side, I spied Grey hunched over his desk messing with something. I guess that was where the muttering was ing from.

  I tried to sit up more, only to be hit with an almost bone-deep wave of exhaustion when I did so. Flopping back down onto the bed, I must have made a noise. Grey stopped his muttering and fidgeting and turned around to peer at me. I had to withhold a smile at his appearance. He was wearing a pair of oversized goggles of some kind. They were festooned with bits and bobs of a type that I didn’t reize, and must have had some kind of magnification built into the lehe effect left his eyes looking ically rge.

  “Ah.” Grey bli me. “Wele back to the nd of the living, Nathan.”

  “I-” I tried to say, before breaking out into a fit of coughs. Grey wheeled over to my bed, helpio sit up. I was surprised at how weak I felt, and how much help I needed in order to just sit up in a bed. Once I , Grey handed me a gss of water sitting on his bedside. I took it gratefully, taking a few greedy gulps. Holding onto it, I tried again. “How long was I out?”

  “Oh, perhaps an hrey said, taking off his goggles aing them in his p. “Not long. Irospect, I’m not terribly surprised once I examined you.”

  I took a breath, starting to feel a little better. “Yeah? What happeo me? One moment I was doing…something with, uh, I guess ‘Aetherial Melding’. The , I’m out.”

  “plete Stamina drain,” Grey answered matter of factly. “So much so, that you drew on your own life force briefly to supplement your output.”

  I tensed in sudden nervousness. “That…doesn’t sound good.”

  Grey waved me off, pletely at ease. “Oh, it only sounds worse than it is. While it’s sub-optimal to draw upon your own life forore teically the i Aether of your soul, you’re fine. You didn’t draw deeply enough to injure yourself, merely to exhaustion. You should recover shortly, although I don’t reend drawing on your mana until much ter in the day.”

  I let out a breath. “Okay then.” I paused briefly to sit up in a more fortable position, already starting to feel better. “So…Stamina drain. I guess I…tried too hard or something? Making that potion? You know, we’ve never even talked about what Stamina is. I know Mana, Aether, and sort of know Ki, but not Stamina.”

  “Making that potion, he says,” Grey muttered under his breath disbelievingly. He shook his head. “Stamina is easily expined. It’s believed to merely be a by-product waste energy produced by a soul. In truth, you don’t keep a Stamina bar for long, if you desire to be a Csser. It’s pletely repced by Mana or Ki upon perf the needed rituals to break through the first threshold. As for your first questio’s start from the top, shall we? Nathan, did you uand what you were doing?”

  I frowned slightly, fiddling with the gss of water in my hands and staring off into space. “Sort of? I’m not going to lie, a rge amount of what I did was instinct. It’s…hard to describe. It’s like I had trol of myself, but there arate yer of uanding over everything. I don’t want to say it was anything like a System interface or something but…” I made a noise of frustration, looking back over to Grey. He was leaning forward in his chair, resting on an arm propped up on his leg, listening ily. “Usiherial Meldi both instinctual and guided at the same time. Am I making sense?”

  Grey was silent for a moment, before making a vague noise of assent. “Hmm. tinue, please. Try and describe the process.”

  Over the several minutes, I expined everything I had doh the herbs to Grey. I told him about the waves of Aether, and how they seemed to resoh the Aether within the ingredients. I told him about how they responded somehow to both myself and the Aether of the phat he had described to me earlier. I told him about how once all of the herbs had begun resonating with me, the boundaries that separated them began to break down.

  “How?” Grey interrupted me. “How did you break down the boundaries separating each herb's individual Aether pool?”

  All I could do was shrug at Grey’s question, to his frustration. I had no idea how I had dohat. It was one of the things that had felt guided.

  Once I had finished my expnation about how I had done everyone, about how I had merged all of the herbs Aether together, I fell silent. Grey was visibly p what I had told him.

  “Extraordinary.” He ented after some time, before fog bae. “Before we tinue, let me tell you my own findings.” He wheeled away from the bed and back over to the desk, motioning for me to follow him.

  I stood up from the bed, still exhausted, but recovered enough to maanding. I shuffled over to the desk to see what Grey wao show me.

  “This,” Grey said, motioning to the potion I had made, still sitting oray. “Is ridiculous. It is indeed a minor Healing Potion, but not like any I’ve ever seen before. It is, quite frankly, too good. Unnaturally so. I have seen grandmaster alchemists, myself included, struggle to create a potion this perfectly brewed, if such a word even applies. The potency of this potion is such that it could nearly be sidered a regur strength Healing Potion. Which, I assure you, is quite an aplishment, sidering the weak ingredient base used in its creation. I have never seen the like, and if I had, I would have most likely taken the creator as a personal apprentice.”

  “Huh,” I said, quite intelligently. “How do you know how good it is?”

  “Observe,” Grey told me, pointing to two small, regur pieces of paper yio the tray. “This is Aether reactive paper. Quite expeo make, and I have limited quantities of it in my captivity. I was terribly surprised that the Prince was even willing to supply me the small amount I have. The point is, this type of paper is useful in alchemy to determiive strength between potions.”

  Okay, so kind of like PH strips bae. Only, magid not like PH strips at all.

  Whatever.

  I focused ba Grey.

  “The paper on the left.” He poiowards it. “Was treated with a random weak Healing Potion that I have on hand. While the one on the right was treated with the potion you created. Do you see the difference?”

  I focused owo strips of paper at his behest. On both pieces of paper, there was a small droplet of absorbed liquid, likely from the two droppers I noticed off to the side. On both strips, the area where the liquid had been pced wasn’t red like I would think it was, sidering the color of the potion. No, both of them were green, oddly enough. At first gnce, I couldn’t tell the difference. But taking a closer look…

  I looked back up at Grey. “The one on the right is a little blue?” I asked unsurely.

  Grey smiled at me and nodded. “Ihe way these papers work is by assessing their retive rarity as measured by the System. Very often, a mere diagnostic skill like Observe does not have the requisite detail to give precise readings for objects. This paper helps provide a…somewhat more accurate reading on the rarity of liquid applied. Of course,” He waved a hand dismissively. “Mere color analysis isn’t precise enough oftentimes, which is why there are even more specialized tools to analyze these results. As, I do not possess them here.”

  “Rarity, huh,” I said to Grey. “How does that work?” I remembered seeing what I’d thought were rarity indicators on my css sele s.

  “Oh, yes.” He blinked. “Ah, well. It’s the method that the System uses to determihe retive strength between items and Csses. Nearly universally, an object of a higher rarity is either more potent or more powerful. Fairly easy to remember. In order, they are Poor, on, Superior, Rare, Legendary, Artifact, and Unique. Correspondingly, their colors are white, green, blue, purple, red, gold, and a rather fetg rainbow color.”

  I raised my eyebrows in i. “Rainbow, huh? Like the color of my skill?” I was referring to the aurora that my skill The Stilnt Bde surrounded ons I held in.

  “Indeed. Quite a ce, wouldn’t you say?” Grey smiled wryly. “Ba topic though, as you noted both potions read as on in quality. However, the ohat you created is of such a purity that it is verging into Superior quality. Very curious, as I rarely notice such a phenomenon in regards to lower quality goods.”

  I o show I uood. “All right, I get it. What now, then? Where do we go from here?”

  “Why, we experiment of course!” Grey said cheerfully. “Your new Profession is curious indeed, and I for one am quite eager to test the limits of it. What else it be applied to? What determines a successful creation? How freeform your creations be, using this Profession? I already have theories about how it funs, but I’m excited to either prove or disprove them!”

  I held up a hand. “Not to rain on your parade, but slow down there. Is this it then? Is this Profession the silver bullet, the secret on you’ve been hoping I had? Do you think this is what we need?”

  Grey visibly calmed himself at my words, folding his hands in his p. “Possibly.” He answered soberly. “Very possibly, indeed. While it is not the fantastical solution that I had hoped for, it is promising. I had, rather foolishly in hindsight, imagined you maing some pletely ridiculous skill to solve all of our problems with a wave of your hand. I really should know better by now, at my age. While knowledge of Precursors is rare, the System simply doesn’t provide solutions without a degree of effort attached. It’s a fantastical ability, of course, but if we are to devise a method of escape through its use, it will require research.”

  I took a deep breath, and the out in a long exhale. I nodded. “All right. I’m up for it. Where do we start?”

  Grey let out a small, shh. “Well, first you have to recover enough Stamina in order to use it again, Nathan. We don’t want you drawing on your life fory more than you o, hmm?”

  I felt my face redden before I coughed into my fist in embarrassment. “Right, right. Yeah.”

  “o worry,” Grey said, smiling and shaking his head. “I believe you’ll have recovered enough to start attempting small experiments after lunch. The food will help in that matter. Speaking of, I believe we’re approag that time. I don’t know if you’re hungry, but I’m feeling a mite peckish myself.”

  Since I wasn’t in an anime or something, my stomach didn’t choose that veime to rumble. But I was definitely feeling a bit of emptiness in my belly and told Grey that.

  We decided to take a brief break for lunch.

  ……………………………………..

  Grey and I threw together a short, simple lunch from whatever we could find in the cupboard. Azarus didn’t join us, but I wasn’t too bothered by it. I could hear the audible, rhythmic hammering of his own work from out ba the smithy. Grey told me it wasn’t unon for him to get lost in his work. I guess we could tell him ter what we had discovered about my new Profession.

  Once we were situated ba Grey’s room, we got to work. This time, Grey had me testing at a much reduced iy than immediately trying to create a potion. For now, Grey had me trying to sense and break down single ingredients to see what would happen. He retty happy about what we found.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Grey said wly, holding a small vial of my test attempt up to the light beaming through his window. He tur bad forth, letting the light stream through the small amount of thin pearlest liquid within. “As I suspected, you’re creating Essences wholesale from the raw ingredients.”

  This st time, Grey had given me a small, white tuber and asked me to try and break it down into a bottle. When asked what it was, he told me it owerful restorative named Mirthroot.

  I was resting after this st attempt, leaning bay hands on Grey’s bed. “Yeah? What’s that?” I said once I had caught my breath.

  Grey snapped out of his woo look over at me. “Ah, essentially an Essence is a purified form of an ingredient in Alchemy. Think of them as the purest expression of a particur ingredient. Very useful, if not somewhat wasteful to create iraditional method. Typically, you need a not insignifit amount of a particur ingredient in order to distill one. If someone had told me that one day, I would be holding an Essence created from a oo-one version of particurly ornery ingredient like Mirthroot, I would have ughed in their face.” He set the bottle back down on the desk before c. “I’ll just be holding onto that. It’ll be quite useful in my work. Now, let’s get back to testing, shall we?”

  I sighed at the nearly maement on Grey’s face, before sitting back up. I guess there was more work to be done.