"Sorry, I've got to talk to them again. They're some coworkers and a few higher-ups in the other companies in the building," Sam explained. He looked at Ashton and smiled, giving him another hug, "I'm happy you're okay, Ash. And about what you told me, I'm going to keep quiet about. I'll take it to my grave with me."
"... I hope by then it won't need to be a secret anymore, I just can't afford to draw too much bad attention yet," Ashton pointed out, glancing to the side, "The attention I'm already getting is bad enough."
[[Observer in the Veil] is curious about the private conversation]
[[Observer in the Veil] promises many riches if you tell him]
[[Observer in the Veil] asks what you want in return]
Ashton let out a long sigh, waving away the messages. He wished he could just 'mute' constellations, but of course, it wasn't that easy. So... ignoring them was the easiest thing he could do.
"By the way, I need a few things before you head back to those guys," Ashton explained, and Sam looked at him with a raised brow.
"What's that? We don't have a lot to give you right now either, honestly. We've got some weapon replicas from one of our games, but that's all. They're not particularly sturdy, though..."
"Oh, no, I'm good as far as weapons are concerned. I've got a lifetime of experience with a staff, and I got that as a reward when I killed an Orc yesterday."
"... An orc? So they're also a thing?"
"Mhm, orcs are pretty common. We're in a city, so there'll be quite a lot of humanoid monsters," Ashton explained, "But anyway, right now I need you to tell me how to get to the roof. I'm going to be making some potions, and the fumes from that can get pretty... let's just say 'toxic', I guess."
Sam's eyes began to glisten. Ashton figured he would be interested in this, Sam wanted to become a chemist for a while before he discovered his passion for art, "Potions?"
"I'll show you later. I need to experiment some, anyway."
"Great!" Sam replied, quickly nodding his head, "We have a shared rooftop balcony, we've got some guys on the lookout there right now, but just tell them you're with me. Just go up to the top of the stairway."
"Neat. And beside that..." Ashton awkwardly scratched his neck, "Do you know anyone here that, uh... rolls their own cigarettes?"
Sam's light smile disappeared instantly, "Excuse me? I thought you stopped."
"I did! For a while. Then, you know... things got stressful, and when that thing heard me say to myself that I needed a cigarette, they kind of started experimenting on me with different herbs and tobacco blends. So yeah, now I'm more addicted than ever. But it's got its benefits, weirdly enough."
Sam narrowed his eyes a bit, "... If you say so. Uhm... there's this guy, a coworker of mine, he smokes, uhm... he smoked and rolled his cigarettes. It should be fine if you take it, hold on."
Ashton didn't push that question. It was pretty obvious what happened. Across the entire world, millions and millions of people must have died. And many more would continue to die in the future. Death was a thing that people had to get used to fast, and lingering on it for too long didn't help anyone.
Ashton waited for a moment, and Sam soon came back to him with a few things in hand. It was two packs of rolling papers, with 50 sheets each, an almost full bag of tobacco, and a small pack of filters.
"Thank you so much. Honestly, because I had already stopped here before, I don't have those physical cravings, but I just keep missing to do it the whole time," Ashton said as he grabbed everything from Sam.
"No worries. Oh, and I'll come upstairs to see you later about that whole phone thing."
"Coolio."
Sam raised a brow, "Coolio? At your age?"
With a shrug, Ashton turned around, flipping his friend off, "I may be the oldest man alive, but I'm still 23 years old."
Quietly laughing, the two briefly parted again. They both had a ton to take care of right now.
Ashton made his way upstairs to the rooftop balcony. It was quite pretty up here. A wooden terrace, tons of bushes and small trees in planters, some benches and tables to eat lunch at. The view was great, too, since this was one of the taller buildings in Drakewood.
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But... from up here, Ashton could see the damage that had already been done to this town. Smoke was rising in the distance from a fire that had started and couldn't be put out. The roads were abandoned and littered with bodies, of monsters and humans alike. It wasn't an easy sight to see, but... things would get worse from now on. Much, much worse.
Just as Sam had said, there were some people up here, apparently just keeping an eye out on any potential monsters in the area. It didn't seem like there were a ton of monsters with flight around here yet, so it was a pretty safe place. Ashton explained that he was Sam's friend, and one of them quickly went downstairs to double-check with him. Ashton didn't really care, and just sat down at one of the tables.
While he was sitting here, Ashton activated his channel ability for the Backpacker. Basically, what this allowed him to do was simple. He just became aware of the objects inside of the bag. He concentrated and mentally 'marked' a few of the objects in there, "Could you give me all of that real quick?"
Immediately, the Backpacker popped into existence, sitting right next to Ashton on the bench. They put their bag onto the table and started looking through to pull out all the tools and materials Ashton asked for.
The other people up here were a bit startled, but Ashton just waved them away.
Ashton put one of the bottles of water onto the table and called on undine again. They quickly came to be, this time with a fresh batch of water. This was why these sorts of elementals were great to have - especially lesser elementals were fairly easy to 'recharge' so you could have them by your side all the time. Unless they refused the offering for whatever reason, of course, but that shouldn't happen as long as Ashton treated these guys well.
"I need to dry out all of these plants here. Is that something you can do already?" he asked, not sure if the undine had the strength for it yet, but the water elemental quickly got to work.
The leaves, petals, grasses, and stalks that were gathered in front of Ashton quickly shrunk and wilted slightly as the water was sucked from them. They were sorted in small tupperware boxes already so that Ashton could easily keep them, so now he was able to just grind them down with a spoon. As dried as they were now, they basically fell apart with the slightest touch. The water from each type of plant was put into a different small jar.
He then grabbed a small pinch of tobacco and placed it onto the rolling paper, sprinkling a bit of each of the powdered, dried plants onto it. After putting the filter into place, he quickly rolled himself a cigarette.
Using one of the lighters he got at the convenience store before, Ashton lit it up, and looked inwardly at the salamander.
"Oh, stop pouting, do you really want to be used as a lighter?" he smiled a bit, watching as the elemental settled back down. He put the cigarette into his mouth and breathed in.
The tobacco was harsh and rough. There were a ton of additives in there, so it tasted quite different, but he would get used to it. His focus was rather the other things he had added to the cigarette.
Basically, right now, Ashton was taking control of the bit of mana around him. He couldn't do a ton, but moving it so that some mana would be filtered through the cigarette was easy enough. Closing his eyes, he tried to focus on not the taste, but rather how this cigarette made him feel.
Some of the dull, persistent pain all over his body calmed down a bit. As he breathed out the smoke, he felt the lingering sensation on the inside of his mouth, and a smile formed, "Okay, perfect. I can use them to make healing potions, after all."
Of course, what Ashton was doing right now was to just simulate potential combinations of ingredients. It wasn't a perfect guideline, obviously, since burning plants could often change the effect to an extreme degree, and the tobacco could also sometimes alter aspects of it. Plus, brewing potions was a complicated process where things had to be fine-tuned heavily.
But for someone that had as much experience, both in being a guinea pig for different herb mixes, as well as brewing potions, Ashton could at least use this method to tell the standard, baseline effects of certain plants and how they interacted with each other.
Plus, though they weren't exactly as strong as potions, there were also ways to imbue similar magical effects into cigarettes if he mixed them right, plus plenty that potions weren't suited for, so this was a good way to test how plants reacted to being burned.
And well, Ashton also just enjoyed the sensation of smoking different herb mixtures and wanted to find something similar to his favourites from the other world, Lumia.
This... wasn't it. It wasn't bad, though, but it wasn't quite how he was used to yet. It might be because of the low amount of mana in the plants and the lack of any mana in the tobacco, but it just felt off.
Even so, it was a good start. Ashton grabbed the pot and the camping stove, and then pulled out one of the water bottles, filled with water from the well in Market Street, purified with the undine's help. He poured in the liquid pulled out of the plants first - it wasn't a lot, but it could still boost the effects to some degree if treated before being reintroduced to the actual plants. After that, he put in the rest of the water he needed from the bottle, bringing it up to a simmer. Again, the salamander was annoyed, but Ashton didn't know what else to do, since he didn't have a good setup to safely use the salamander for these things yet. Especially not up here where practically every surface was made of wood he wanted to be careful.
Once the water simmered, Ashton crushed up some more of the small, weak magic stones and added the resulting powder into the water. By mixing things while introducing his own mana, he could make the powder dissolve into the water fully.
Ashton waited for a while until the water became a little more viscous and then turned off the heat. Once the water calmed, he poured in a little of his mana and used it to affect the state of the magic in the water to force it to 'accept' things more easily. Basically, the magic would encase and absorb foreign magics far more easily now.
And then, it was time to add in the ground-down plants from earlier. Flower petals, some grass, though he kept out one sort of leaf, from one of the trees in the botanical gardens, that seemed to mess things up a little bit in the cigarette, and then added a few other materials that weren't directly dried, which he already knew to have the qualities he needed.
Some of the liquid from inside of the blue moondew, a fraction of an ounce of kobold liver, and even some of the algae that Ashton used to make the aquatic ink.
More and more, the 'liquid' inside of the pot became more viscous. He turned up the heat a bit more again, and once the materials seemed incorporated well enough, Ashton brought the sticky, almost gooey substance, to a bubbling point. With another slight nudge of his own mana, Ashton adjusted the state of the magic within, and practically instantly, the thick substance turned into a translucent, red liquid barely thicker than water.
That was the sign of success he was looking for.
He waited for the liquid to cool down, and then poured it carefully into one of the empty, clean plastic bottles.
Ashton had just created this world's first Healing Potion.
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