Sylphie had once more been a bit mad when Jake had sent her away to spend some time with her parents, but today was one of those days where having a bird sitting around just wasn’t feasible. The reason for this was simple… today would be the day he would craft his first uncommon-rarity Necrotic Poison. He could feel it. At least that’s what he kept telling himself as he felt the same the day before.

Another two weeks had passed, and it had now been nearly a month since the World Congress ended, aka two months away from the Treasure Hunt. He had gotten another profession-level in the bag, bringing it to 105, and with it, a race level had also naturally come. Yet his stats had grown quite a bit more than one would expect. The reason for this was simple.

Jake had begun a new diet called: ”SHIT, I GOTTA HURRY UP AND EAT THAT FUCKING BANANA BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS! DAMN YOU, TIME TREE THAT ISN’T ACTUALLY A TREE!”

It was a very healthy diet, naturally consisting of magical time bananas.

[Celerita Banana (Rare)] – As a banana from the Ancient Celerita Musa, this fruit contains intense amounts of Celerita-affinity mana with agility-enhancing effects. This fruit can be used in many different creations and is especially suited for flasks and elixirs. Due to this banana’s origin, it will be returned to the rivers of time if it is removed too far from the tree. Consuming or transforming the fruit will anchor the energies in time, removing this effect. +3 Agility upon consumption.

Jake constantly kept watch of the tree with his sphere, and whenever he saw a ripe banana appear, he stopped whatever he was doing to rush in and pick it off the tree. He had discovered the bananas could disappear and no longer be recognized as items in as little as a minute, while at other times, they remained on the tree for hours on end.

He suddenly understood far better why the Prima never left the temple. It didn’t want to miss out on bananas.

He had also tried not heeding the warning and taking the banana away and out of the time-distortion area surrounding the tree. That hadn’t gone well as it instantly began rotting and turned to dust in his hand within seconds. Jake still had no idea how to anchor the banana either besides eating it, but he did have one way of finding out.

Swallowing one. No, not eating it, but swallow a banana with Palate of the Malefic Viper. Sadly, he could only have one item stored at a time, and currently, he still had the Lifecore within there. He could switch it up but didn’t really feel the need to. Eating the bananas normally was fine, too, as they were super tasty.

Also, while he made it sound like he ate a lot, he had only actually eaten 13 more during this month, giving him an extra 39 agility. He knew there was a cap of stats and all that, but he had decided that since agility was one of his best stats, it was fine. Besides… it allowed him to do something he really wanted: throw every single free point into perception again. Perception for the win.

Overall, his status had experienced quite the growth, especially in agility and the stats his class gave. Not to talk badly of the 10 race levels. That in itself was more than 100 to all stats due to his titles. Of course, Perception was still the one that had grown most – as it should be.

Status

Name: Jake Thayne

Race: [Human (D) – lvl 110]

Class: [Avaricious Arcane Hunter – lvl 115]

Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper – lvl 105]

Health Points (HP): 20070/20070

Mana Points (MP): 25941/26975

Stamina: 14571/16880

Stats

Strength: 1439

Agility: 2376

Endurance: 1688

Vitality: 2007

Toughness: 1392

Wisdom: 2158

Intelligence: 1709

Perception: 3902

Willpower: 1722

Free points: 0

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As for skills, not much had changed besides a few upgrades here and there, such as Enhanced Splitting Arrow and Descending Dark Arcane Fang. Quite a mouthful that last one.

Anyway, bananas were tasty, perception is the best stat, and he had grown quite a bit since reaching D-grade. He had made way more progress in the first week on his monkey hunt than during this month, but that was just the disparity between professions and classes. Jake liked both, and that’s what’s important. Plus, right now, he wanted to make a cool new poison.

With his cauldron between his legs, he began his preparations. The first and most important ingredient he needed was, of course, the mushrooms themselves.

[Aged Bluebright Mushroom (Uncommon)] - A poisonous blue mushroom that emits blue light. The Aged Blue Mushroom has grown to a point where simply being touched by its light can bring you harm, and the juices found within are more toxic than ever.

Damn toxic, pretty tasty, and he had even discovered that he slowly got a bit of knowledge from Palate just by basking in their blue light. It was only a bit, though, and he quickly got “capped” on knowledge from doing that. Pretty much all he learned was that it emitted a kind of light that directly attacked the vital energies of anything it touched.

Secondly was the moss. One always needs to have moss as a side dish to their mushrooms. It was the butter to the bread or the rum to the coke. Of course, with a stronger mushroom, one needs more potent moss.

This is where another of the must-buys of the system store came in. Another item that Jake just bought everything of whenever possible.

[Black Moss (Uncommon)] - A rare variant of the Green moss found in places with absolutely no sunlight and a high level of death-affinity mana. This moss is extremely dangerous and will erode any vitality-based substance it comes into contact with.

The moss was black, as the name suggested. It was an almost unnaturally dark color, and he even felt a bit of dark-mana mixed into the overpowering death-affinity energy. Jake had naturally munched down quite a bit of this moss, too, having some good old moss-soup, bringing him back to his tutorial days.

With that and quite a few failed crafting attempts under his belt, he was beginning to get quite confident.

The final ingredient was, as always, his blood. It replaced most of the water and was quite frankly instrumental to him making as much progress as he did. It just made everything far easier, and the synergy with all of his Malefic Viper skills just amplified it even more. Sense of the Malefic Viper allowed him to way better get a feel for the concoction as his blood was already part of it, as an example.

With all of that in mind, he began.

Firstly, he cut his own wrist to add blood to the mixture – don’t do this at home. He also added a bit of Purified Water to not have his blood be too overpowering in the concoction. With both hands on the cauldron, he slowly mixed the two until he was satisfied.

Next up was the moss.

Jake slowly took out a good handful of it, chopped it apart in mid-air with a few mana strings, and let all the small fragments enter the mix. The reaction was immediate as the two energies clashed, and he once more had to step in and be the guiding hand to make the two play nice.

Toxic fumes entered the air from the cauldron, and Jake was happy he was doing this outside and in a relatively open area. He did see that he was still a bit too close to a few trees as he saw some leaves turn black and wither, but what can ya do? He really needed to set up a proper lab.

After fully integrating the moss energy, he noticed that the entire concoction was still a bit too weak, so he used Touch of the Malefic Viper and infused a bit more necrotic energy into it, just slightly topping it up. The moss-fragments absorbed the energy, and it gave them a second wind of sorts, allowing them to squeeze out just a bit more until they fully disintegrated.

Nodding in satisfaction, he took out one of the mushrooms. Its blue light seemed all-encompassing, and the entire area he was sitting in had already been cleared of grass by one of its brethren earlier.

With the common-rarity mushrooms, he squeezed them for their juices first, but with this uncommon version, he just placed it straight into the mix. The reason for this was simple: it would allow him to not only squeeze out the juices but also absorb all the light energy first.

The “flesh” of the mushroom had been bathed in its own light and contained a lot of its energy. Jake wanted to get that out before he fully ripped the mushroom apart and began directly integrating its potent juices. Also, it allowed the concoction to more easily assimilate the mushroom if he first let it get used to the death-light.

He assumed that when he got more used to the crafting process, this part was one he could speed up significantly, but currently, that would only be a shortcut to having the entire concoction explode in his face. That had happened a few times already.

So he took it slow and let the mushroom exude its own energy for a bit before he willed it to speed up just a little bit. He couldn’t just sit there forever, or the concoction would be ruined too, so he was forced to.

Deploying some more advanced techniques, he shielded parts of the concoction with his mana, even using a bit of his own arcane-affinity to make the protective constructs stable to not interfere with the other energies of the concoction. That was the good thing about his own stable version of arcane mana: it didn’t give a fuck about other types of energies.

This technique allowed him to avoid a cascading effect when some of the energies didn’t play nice but allowed him to isolate the issues and deal with them. Once more, this made the entire crafting process a lot harder and prolonged, but you gotta do what you gotta do to make it work.

He sat like that for a good five minutes before the passive light was nearly entirely absorbed. He couldn’t delay any longer as he began extracting the toxic liquids from within the mushroom as he braced himself.

A lot could be said about the blue mushrooms – most of it bad. One thing was certain, though, that’s that they were toxic as hell. The liquids instantly sought to overpower the rest of the concoction with their potency as the death-affinity energy spread throughout the mix.

Now, one may call it a bit counterproductive, but the death-affinity energy tried to kill the death-affinity energy from the Black Moss. Death-affinity liked to make things dead, even other dead things, it appears, so Jake had to play mediator and make sure the two didn’t just stupidly try to cancel each other out but instead mixed as they were supposed to.

With a guiding hand, he concentrated fully to keep the equilibrium stable as the energies slowly mixed and the synergistic effects began showing. Instead of killing each other, the two energies of death mixed, like they had agreed to team up and tag-team the next thing they met. This was exactly the state Jake had hoped for as he made a final push.

*You have successfully crafted [Potent Necrotic Poison (Uncommon)] – A new kind of creation has been made. Bonus experience earned*

Jake had a massive smile on his face as he opened the lid of the cauldron and took a good whiff of his concoction. It smelled absolutely terrible, and he got a bad taste in his mouth from doing so, and from the looks of it, the trees around him and the ground below didn’t like it either.

Nearly 15 meters around him was just dead grass, and quite a few trees also had signs of rot on them, with the closest two trees now nearly completely withered.

Okay, I really fucking need a proper alchemy lab.

If he kept doing as he did now, his entire valley would just be a dead wasteland by the time he was done. With Sense of the Malefic Viper, he could feel that the area had yet to be even close to permanently affected, but he risked that happening if he kept doing as he did. Aka, the ground becoming like someone had polluted it with a chemical spill or something.

Besides possibly ruining his home with toxic pollution, everything was great, and he had even gained two levels from the successful craft.

*’DING!’ Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 106 - Stat points allocated, +10 free points*

*’DING!’ Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 107 - Stat points allocated, +10 free points*

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (D)] has reached level 111 - Stat points allocated, +15 free points*

Jake guessed he was already close to a level, and that’s why he got two. It had been quite a while since his last profession-level, after all. Anyway, more free points in perception.

Finally, he was down to the meat of things… the poison itself. And honestly, it hadn’t changed much description-wise.

[Potent Necrotic Poison (Uncommon)] – An extremely toxic poison with necrotic properties, infecting and killing off biological material in the affected area. Wounds caused by necrotic poison are extremely difficult to heal. The poison takes effect upon any contact with any biological material. The poison emits necrotic light that affects the area around where it is applied, making necrotic energy seep into the enemy even further.

It did mention things that clearly came from the mushroom, such as the whole necrotic light thing. Funny fact, this was the first time Jake learned the official term for the death-affinity light.

Jake quickly scooped up the poison, only getting two bottles worth, which was to be expected. For reference, he usually got around 10 when making common-rarity necrotic poison per batch now.

With it in the bag, Jake decided it was best to wait for Miranda to arrive. He had a few things to talk to her about, renovating the basement and turning it into an alchemist lab being the primary one. Also… he had eaten so many damn mushrooms and too much moss these days, and he would really appreciate a proper meal.