Well this was lame.

Fine, maybe it was a bit much to assume Mina would just randomly use Insight on me. I mean, she probably has already, and it’s not like most cats would randomly be changing their class, level, title, or whatever else Insight shows at higher levels. So logically, there would be no need for her to use it.

But it would be a hell of a lot funnier if she did Insight me, so I was still going to hold this against her.

Instead of looking at my fancy new title, Mina flipped me onto my back and began to take off my bandages, carefully unwrapping them in a circular manner and tossing them into a waste bin beside her. I twitched my leg and paw, stretching out. Those bandages hadn’t been that bothersome to be honest, but once they were off? Sweet, sweet freedom. Just feeling air on that paw instead of stuffy, ever so slightly itchy cloth was a feeling I would cherish for the rest of my days. I began to stand up, hesitantly putting weight on my now freed paw.

I hissed, buckling a bit as the pain flared up once again. I began to lick my injury, felt gross, but wasn’t ‘licking your wounds’ a saying? And something cats generally do? It seemed disgusting, but it kinda felt like the right thing to do in the situation. Still, it was likely no substitute for proper healthcare, which I was gently reminded of as Mina carefully grabbed my paw and began to wrap new bandages around it. Great, now I was aware of how much worse it was to have them on.

“Alright! That's all done, thank you for your cooperation Soot.” Mina said in the slightly condescending and full of wonder tone everyone uses when they talk to their pet.

Mina snatched a blanket off of her bed and folded it, placing it on the corner of her rather cluttered desk. “Up ya go.” She said as she grabbed me and placed me down atop it, ignoring my meow of protest as usual. If she had just asked nicely I would have moved anyway, no need to forcefully displace me.

I kneaded the blanket a bit with my unsheathed claws, making sure the softness was adequate before situating myself with my legs tucked under me. Some head scritches from Mina quickly dispelled my internal grumbling and complaints.

Mina stood up and pulled out a large drawer that was attached to the underside of the table, revealing a carefully organized assortment of… a whole bunch of stuff, honestly. There were quite a few varied plants, for starters. Tangled and twisted ivy with green and black leaves, a flower that had blue, pink, and white petals, slightly teal leaves that glowed faintly.

Asphix Ivy cuttings.

A Transplant.

Multiple Lumaleafs.

Hmmm, Insight only told me the names, which would be helpful if I had a way of looking them up. Still better than just saying ‘a plant’ though.

The drawer didn’t just contain plants though. There were spiral shaped shells, deep azure butterfly wings, scraps of fur, vials of different colored liquids, and so much more. Everything was kept isolated by thin white barriers sectioning them off into countless (ok it was like 80 or so) rectangles of varying sizes, a few were empty, revealing that there were labels of what went where, but most of them were covered completely and functionally useless. All of it was familiar, yet completely alien. The closest comparison I could make would be to a spice drawer, but generally those have spices instead of moss and eyeballs.

Mina perused the drawer, which I now noticed had white runes engraved inside of it, running her finger from side to side while occasionally humming in disappointment or shaking her head. After a moment of thinking, she grabbed a vine shaped like a chain, two lumaleafs, a vial of dark navy blue liquid, one of the blue butterfly wings, a vial filled with baby blue translucent slime, and a flower that was entirely blue in color, from the petals to the stem to the roots. Quite a lot of blue stuff here. Everything she grabbed seemed to not move for a second when she pulled before coming free and leaving the drawer, as if stuck in place.

Mina set the group of stuff I didn’t quite understand to the side, and after a moment of thought, took the five vitaleaf flowers the rat bastard had gotten and placed them with the others. She leaned over me and grabbed a thick, weathered notebook with numerous papers and bookmarks sticking out of it., flipping through until she found a blank page about 200 pages in. She bent down and began to write in it, obscuring my view of both the book and the things she had gotten from the drawer. No Insight for me, I guess. It’s fine. I didn’t want to know about the cool magical items, they were probably lame anyway.

After a few minutes of writing, she placed her stick of charcoal down to the side, wiping her now slightly blackened hands on her dress. She slid her book towards me and grabbed some metal instruments and glass vials, placing them in front of her. She opened another drawer, grabbing a square, rune-covered stone slab that had a blackened top and a white underside. It came out with the same weird, delayed movement of the previous objects.

Mina carefully set down the slab, sliding her fingers out from under it. She hesitated, then touched the top quickly before pulling her finger away with a wince of pain, slightly burnt. “Alright, it’s still got energy.” She muttered to herself.

Enchanted Heat Rock, 32% charged.

If only there was a way for you to have seen that without burning yourself, Mina. Maybe some way of gaining knowledge of something just by looking, perhaps.

Hmm, maybe I did deserve the Judgemental title.

Bored with watching Mina set up who knows what, I turned to the book she had set aside, reading over what she had written. Her handwriting was small and neat, every letter carefully printed and completely uniform.

Potion to Increase Maximum Mana, prototype 38

Ingredients:

Nachi Vine (2 Links) (GET RID OF LEAVES! THEY SECRETE ACID!)

Lumaleafs (2)

Arcane Snake Blood (1/4th Vial)

Puppeteer Butterfly Wing (1)

Mana Slime Gel (1/8th Vial)

Full Mana Hibiscus (1)

Vitaleafs (5, shit quality)

Procedure:

Finely chop the butterfly wings, mash the vine links (NO FUCKING LEAVES) into a fine powder, squeeze lumaleafs dry and set liquid aside. Mix snake blood with water in a 1:3 ratio, add wings + vines + leaf juice. Boil. Add slime, mana hibiscus, and vitaleafs to a separate beaker, mash ‘em all together, add to blood mixture, stir until something changes or until I give up.

Expected Result:

If it works, I should gain mana, hopefully permanently. The blood, lumaleafs, wings, gel, and hibiscus are all high in natural mana, nachi vine should be able to establish a ‘link’ between me and the mana ingredients, and vitaleafs are known to ‘refresh and renew’ so maybe they’ll help to do that with my mana.

Not really doing anything fancy brewing wise, just stirring and boiling. Probably gonna fail, the last 37 did and they didn’t have garbage, probably detrimental vitaleafs. Potion might be fatal due to combatting mana reagents and vitaleaf quality, probably not though. One way to find out.

Mina worked through her written procedure with practiced precision and speed; removing the vine leaves with metal tongs and placing them in the drawer, mashing, cutting, squeezing, mixing, boiling. Eventually, she began to stir what was to eventually be the final potion, but for now was just an off-blue mixture with chunks of plants floating around.

The sun had fully set by the time anything happened. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of stirring at a steady, monotonous pace, the mixture changed. It thickened in viscosity and became a deep, inky blue with black swirls throughout it. A faint, dark vapor constantly steamed off of it, shaping into faces, animals, and people before somehow falling back down into the potion itself. It had a lovely fragrance of fresh cut flowers, but the smell felt unstable somehow, like if it were any more sweet and inviting it would somehow collapse in on itself. Smells couldn’t collapse, but this one seemed like it could break that rule.

Mina frowned, jotting down some notes. “Well, at least there was some kind of reaction.” She placed the beaker with the potion on the table, thankfully not near me, and began to clean up after herself, returning stuff to the drawers where they almost struggled to go in, halting her hand in the air for a second as she placed them inside.

She closed the drawers again, wiping her hands on her dress once more. “Alright, only one thing to do now, should be cooled off by now.” She said, sitting down and picking up the potion. The potion that had face-shaped black fog coming off of it. The potion that smelled like a flower about to have a mental breakdown. The potion with untold, potentially deadly effects. Wait, one sec.

A dubious potion of Mana Animation.

Alright, the potion with told, but still potentially deadly effects. Who cares what ‘Mana Animation’ meant, it was described as dubious, that couldn’t be good. She wasn’t gonna drink that, right? Especially after giving a whole speech a few hours ago about how potions could easily kill someone?

“Bottoms up!” Mina chirped before taking a swig, swallowing the dubious, sketchy, and evil looking potion. She began to cough a bit, black haze coming out of her mouth with every one. Was she dying? Did it kill her? Should I somehow get help? Was I gonna be a suspect?

Mina cleared her throat, ceasing her coughing fit and smacking her lips together in disgust. She was very much not dead, thankfully. “Oh, wow, that tasted TERRIBLE.” She groaned, noting it in her notebook. She looked over her body, giving a hum of approval. “No visible changes, good.” She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, concentrating hard on… something. Upon opening her eyes, she sighed deeply, her posture sinking. “No change to mana, it seems.” She remarked dejectedly, writing in her notebook once again. I peeked over at her new written section.

Actual Result:

Dark, weird gaseous vapor, smelled sweet yet off. Tasted like shit, very slimy/oily texture.

No change to my body

No change to my mana

No effects at all that I can see, attempt 38 is a failure.

“Really expected something, at the least. Hmmm, could be delayed, but none of the ingredients would induce something like that… Maybe it would be more effective on someone else?” Mina tapped her charcoal writing stick against her face absentmindedly, getting grey marks all over her cheek. We both jolted up in surprise as a knock sounded at her door.

“Mina, I know you’ve had a long day, but we need a bit of help downstairs now, kinda swamped right now.” Her father’s apologetic voice rang out, muffled. “And sorry about the customer from earlier, I’ll get you some better vitaleafs tomorrow. But anyway, be downstairs as quick as you can, it’s packed down there.” He said, his footsteps marking his departure.

Mina flopped onto her bed, covering her face with a pillow and screaming into it wretchedly. Slowly, she got back up and looked over her dress, seeing it was covered in stains and marks. Sighing, she went to her closet and pulled out another identical dress; white sleeves and collar, green on the top half, and a tan skirt. She began to undress to put it on, I looked out the window into the alleyway because it would be pretty creepy and weird and generally messed up for me to watch her change when she didn’t even know I was technically a human.

After a minute of fumbling and complaining about the zipper under her breath, Mina walked back to the table, grabbing the remainder of the slightly-drunk potion. “Might as well toss the rest of this.” She said with a shrug, opening the window and pouring it into a pipe that led directly to a grate on the alley floor.

She pet me a few times, which was greatly appreciated, before leaving the room with a charcoal stain still on her face. I wasn’t about to sit around a room, alone and bored out of my mind though. It would be far better for me to sit around downstairs in the tavern where I could eavesdrop on everyone, after all. I silently walked through the door, as it had been left ajar, and followed Mina downstairs.