D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad - Chapter 2025 Secret Poisons Part 1
Chapter 2025: Chapter 2025 Secret Poisons Part 1
— Kat —
Turns out Appoline didn’t just have one secret brewing room she had a hole corridor filled with them. Not wanting to waste any more time, Kat and Lily went for the closest door. Lily was tempted to transform back, but just in case something was enchanted to detect the presence of a person, it was safer to stay as she was. Counter intuitively, Kat was better off in her human form instead of the water one. She didn’t have any mana to detect and water droplets were far more likely to accidentally get caught up in the equipment. It also meant, Lily could sit on Kat’s shoulder.
Pushing open the first door saw them enter a room with six big metal barrels. They were open to the air and had giant funnels above them that seemed to be sucking the fumes up and carrying them to another corner of the room where the piping lead to moderate sized boxes. Only two seemed to be filled with liquid, and they all had a spot in the bottom for a set of churning paddles. Of the two filled barrels only one had a stirring rod in it, the other seemed to have nothing.
Both seemed to be bubbling and giving off fumes, and the one with the rod was a deep green while the one without it was more blue. Still somewhat green, but there was a blue sheen to it. The rest of the room was fairly barren. A table with various dings and knife marks on it was clearly used to cut ingredients up. The lack of ingredient storage across the whole room implied they’d come from elsewhere.
*What do you think the point of these barrels is?*
[Probably concentrating the poisons… but I’m not sure if the fumes are doing that or if it’s the liquid that’s meant to be concentrated…]
*What do you mean?*
[Well, the stuff getting sucked up from the barrel is getting sent down the pipes to those boxes off to the side. The fact that they’ve all got separate boxes implies, to me at least, that the fumes aren’t just waste products… but it’s possible that it really is just water that’s being burnt off or some other base that’s reducing the effectiveness.]
[On the other hand, perhaps the liquid from the barrels is where the real potency lies, so the barrels are getting simmered down until its just the debris left and the concentrated poison will end up in the box. Maybe it’s one each because they’re clearly different potions and one is being stirred.]
*Can you tell what they do? And should we like… take samples or something?*
[Definitely shouldn’t take any samples. Even just reaching in to the barrel could disrupt the potion making process. That’s not even getting into the possibility of your sweat drastically altering the potion. Or worse your blood, if it’s even a little acidic…]
*Really? Sweat? It’s not like I even do that much these days.*
[Yeah and that would make it worse. For all that you rarely act it, and you’re currently supressed you are a RANK 4 DEMON. That has major mystical effects and would change the potion in huge ways with only small amounts. Heck I probably shouldn’t get too close to them either because my fur is probably the same. So would my mana be. So even using shadows would be bad.]
*So… what now then?*
[We just leave. There’s nothing here for us to properly investigate. We make a note of the room, the colour, and the smell of the potion and report back.]
*I have no idea how to describe the smell… but alright fair enough.*
Kat sniffed a few times to try and fix the smell in her memory. She didn’t know how to explain it, but if they had examples at the guard station she could probably point them out. She also double checked the colour once more and left the room. There was a door directly across from them, and Kat chose to head right inside. *Is there anything else we have to be careful at in regards to potions?*
[I mean, the big worry is that some are really sensitive to any sort of disturbance. Opening them up to the light, or even looking at them too much. If Appoline is sufficiently confident, or just lazy, we might stumble into those and she’d DEFINITELY notice something went wrong. Not sure if she’d jump to intruders, but it’s something to worry about.]
*Alright. Absolutely do NOT touch the potions I get it.* Kat need not be overly worried about this room though. Inside it was row upon row of books and stacks of paper. Lily quickly glanced over the covers and noted that they were recipe books. Some were different editions of the same books, and the lose bits of paper seemed to be a mixture of notes taken based on the writings in the books, and Appoline’s own findings.
[Don’t touch ANY of these. The bookcases are heavily enchanted and I don’t know what it does. It’s not space aligned but… it seems to be at least somewhat paper aligned. My best guess is that it’s just something to keep it all in good condition but it is extremely possible that she has some sort of tracking enchantment on these.]
*Alright. Continuing to not touch anything.*
[Look, this room at least, that’s a LOT harder for me then it is for you. I really want to just straight up steal some of these notes. I know almost nothing about potions and this seems like a great chance to get something. The problem is, I don’t know if any of these are beginning things, and we’d definitely be caught.]
*Perhaps, but if you want to take a book here, I’m not going to stop you.*
[Dammit. I’d love if my photocopier spell was better. I can copy single pages but we don’t have time for that. I’m not good enough to grab the whole book.]
*Still won’t stop you.*
[Just get out the room before I’m more tempted. I don’t see anything that isn’t recipe related so we should leave.]
Exiting the book storage room, Kat moved into the door at the end of the hallway. Opening this one, Kat was immediately hit with the concentrated smell of dozens of herbs. Inside shelves and shelves of dried ingredients, both plant based and not, covered the room. There was barely enough room to move between the shelves. Kat wasn’t even sure she COULD move between them without transforming. Her wings made her a bit too large and you already needed to shimmy sideways just to make it down.
There didn’t seem to be any space to hide anything because that would mean less space for ingredients. Kat doubted this was truly everything, because while the room was no doubt enchanted for storage, the herbs themselves were simply packed into the shelves in between basic dividers. Some of the piles even extended up and over their dividers to rest on other piles. Low priority ingredients probably… but a LOT of them.
*This feels like enough ingredients to poison the whole city!*
[Like… I can tell you’re saying that as a joke but I’m not sure it is. Sure it’d be hard to dump it all into the water supply but if you turned this all into potions and force-fed it to everyone? I think you could take out ninety plus percent of the city. Only the stronger people would survive, and more from their increased durability then from lack of poison.]
*Kind of crazy she has all of this.*
[Maybe not. Her family along with the Haleblooms grow a lot of ingredients. This could be her stockpile going back decades, maybe centuries. Not sure we ever got a good idea of how old she was.]
Moving back down the corridor, Kat opened a room into a true mad scientist lab. It was fascinating to see that it was all, mostly, working without anyone to interact with them. Beakers on Bunsen burners, or the fantasy equivalent, and long pipes where colourful liquid would spin through them in segments. Their was a cauldron bubbling away in the corner… in Lily’s vision. It was purely illusionary to add to the ambience of the room.
The back wall was filled with a big wood and glass cabinet that each held a sealed bottle or two. It didn’t seem like potion storage, more ’liquid ingredient’ storage. Perhaps just the more precious ones? Kat wasn’t sure. There was also a desk in the corner but it was a small, squat thing with barely enough space for you to write anything on it. Seemingly it was there more to allow for some note taking in the room and was added as a late edition.
A much larger table was taking up space just off the centre of the room but the large rack of knives, mallets, and other kitchen tools implied it was solely for prepping ingredients. There were cupboards underneath the bench but Kat suspected she’d just find more kitchen-y things. Still… worth checking out at least.
