It took me a little over an hour, and a massive headache later, but I finally finished that Sudoku puzzle. Whoever came up with such a test must have been just a little sadistic.

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As I hit the last bit and submitted my answers, I got a blue popup screen.

Quest complete!

You have successfully finished the Trial of Logia. Your final time was one hour, four minutes and 23 seconds with zero mistakes. For completing the puzzle, you have earned the following:

+10 wisdom

+10 intelligence

Logia’s Blessing

Alchemy skill increased to Advanced Lvl 1

Logia’s Blessing

You have been blessed by the Goddess of puzzles. While you maintain her favor, intelligence and wisdom requirements to use equipment will be lowered by 20%

Alchemy skill increase!

Your alchemy skill has increased to Advanced lvl 1. You now have a +40% chance to brew a higher quality potion or poison.

Well, the boost to wisdom and intelligence was great, as was the increase to my alchemy skill. As for Logia’s Blessing, while I was glad to have it I didn’t see how it would help me that much. Most equipment that would require intelligence and wisdom to equip tended to be staves, wands and robes for the mage type classes. I suppose I might stumble across a few rings that might need the bonus. I turned to the door and touched the handle, watching as the wards all disappeared and the door clicked open. Three people were staring at me with anxious looks on their faces. “Hey guys, I finished!”

“I see you succeeded young man. Congratulations, and let me be the first to welcome you as an official alchemist.” Willow was the first to speak.

“Thanks, sorry if I seem a little out of sorts. That test was brutal, and my brain is a little fuzzy.”

“Understandably so. Logia isn’t one to slack on the difficulty. Now, before we call it quits, I need to see you in my office for a few things. Nothing terrible, but we do need to figure out how to disperse your new recipes.” Turning after he stopped speaking, Willow headed towards a balcony crosswalk to reach the rooms that were above the testing laboratories. I stumbled after him after casting a bewildered look at Djarleen. She simply made a shooing motion and made no offer to help.

We entered a door marked Willow and into a spacious office. There were multiple desks, each with its own unique reagent and several scattered pages of notes. The guildmaster went around his main desk, and sat underneath what had to be his crowning achievement. Blood vials of different colors, each clearly labeled and from a different raid tier monster. Blue blood from a frost giant, ashes that seemed to be suspended in a fiery red from a balrog, deep purple from a leviathan, and a black ichor with virulent greens from an undead plague dragon. “They never fail to make an impression.” He chuckled as I hadn’t moved for a few seconds.

“How did you ever obtain them? They must be worth a fortune!”

“I could probably bankrupt a kingdom or two if I were to offer these on the market. As to obtaining them? Well, high level alchemists are almost always welcomed in a raid, especially if they specialize like I did in antidotes. It was especially tough taking down that undead plague dragon.”

“I’ll bet. How many poisons did it actually have?”

“I don’t know for sure. We needed two priests constantly dispelling miasma debuffs from the beast, not to mention everything it could do with its virulent plague breath. It was my first time coming up against a cursed disease, and I really hope I would never come up against one again. Any melee hits also dislodged bursts of gasses filled with diseases.” As he was describing the battle, his eyes unfocused as he stared off into the distance, growing paler with each word.

“Either way, I’m glad you prevailed. Things like that could spell the end of the world.” I interrupted his musings, not wanting him to go into some form of PTSD episode.

“Indeed. Now, we do have some business to take care of, yes? First, here is your guild card.” He said as he pulled a silvered card from some drawer in his desk and placed it next to a needle. “Like most things, you will need to bleed on it. It will then be soul bound, and you won’t ever have to worry about losing it. You are entering at the journeyman level instead of novice, and after a few months. You will earn adept status when you can successfully brew 15 potions with 90% accuracy, at least five of which need to require a distillation. You will get a 15% discount on recipes and reagents bought from the guild, but need to remember that materials you gather will inherently be stronger.”

“Why is that exactly?”

“That they’re stronger? Nobody really knows. Make sure you don’t leave without having your own blood collecting supplies though. The Underdark has a lot of unique creatures that have magical properties to their blood. If you can’t figure out a recipe for them, many of the alchemists here would be more than happy to trade reagents for recipes. Now, speaking of recipes, what are we going to do with yours?”

“Well, for the stamina recovery recipe, I think we should keep it within the guild. Only let non adventurer apprentices make it so the recipe won’t get out. I think that should prevent the poison from making its way to the market.”

“Excellent, I was hoping you would say that. As for price, the health and mana potions are only sold for 20 copper apiece, can we keep the stamina the same?”

“Perfect. I don’t want to ruin starting adventurers, and the money won’t be that important to me. Now for the poison, what are my options there?”

“Well, that is the more difficult one. I normally don’t do this, but due to the ease of abusing this and the simplicity of the recipe, I am going to prevent you from releasing this recipe. Only higher tier alchemists will be allowed to know it, and again it will be denied to any adventurers. What would you like to see done with this potion? We will make and distribute it if you wish.”

“Well, I’m not exactly sure. Can you outline some of my choices?”

“Of course. We can offer an exclusive contract with several guilds, notably the thieves and assassins guilds. I think the thieves would prefer it, since they can incapacitate a guard without killing using this. Assassins tend to kill their targets, and wouldn’t find much use in something that disables.”

“Hmm, that makes sense. Could we play both sides on this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, wouldn’t guards love a way to quickly incapacitate someone they wish to arrest? Instead of exclusivity, lets offer the poison to both the thieves guild and city guards. That would make arrests much safer, what do you think? Let both sides know so that they can be expecting it.”

“Hmmm, well if you are okay with that it seems to be workable. Do we want this to be available or fairly restricted though?”

“Let’s try and make it available. It should cut down on unnecessary deaths, so we should make it available.”

“Excellent, I’ll have the proper papers drawn up and we can send them to get it signed, thank you for understanding.” Standing up, he shook my hand and started walking towards the door. “I’m glad Djarleen decided to take you on Angus, I think you’ll be a fine alchemist. I’m sure she wants to get back to her lab so I won’t keep you any longer.”

As the door shut behind me, I saw Djarleen pacing back and forth down the hall. I couldn’t help but give her a little grief, so I said, “Calm down, you’ll wear out the carpets.”

“Angus! Good, you’re done. He didn’t make you drink anything did he? No pastes or salves? You didn’t notice the chair you sat in was a little wet?”

“No, none of that. You seem a little paranoid, did the guildmaster do that a lot in the past?”

“Every few days. He also wouldn’t tell you anything because he wanted to know what your symptoms were without any prompting.” Grabbing my hand, she started dragging me down the stairs on her way out, continuing her rant. “If you start feeling odd, have any strange status effects, let me know immediately. I have a fairly strong cleanse potion that I always keep on hand whenever I have to deal with him. Is there anything we need before heading back? No? Great.”

“Wait! Wait! I still need a blood collection set” I managed to mutter as I was being dragged down the stairs. Djarleen finally let go of my wrist at the bottom of the stairs, and I was so thankful that I hadn’t tripped and broke my neck on the way down.

“Markus!” Djarleen snapped. “I need a basic blood collection kit. With a few extra sets of vials, I have a feeling my apprentice is going to be collecting a lot of blood in the Underdark. At least he better be planning on it.” She muttered the last line, and I felt a little strange. Ever been alone in a dark room, and felt like something was watching you? That it didn’t have good intentions, as the hair on the back of your neck rises? Yeah, I was getting a little bit of that. Like there was something out there just waiting for the opportune moment to take my life, and that it wouldn’t mind one bit if it was a swift end or not. I fought the feeling, not quite sure what had caused it.

Skill unlocked!

Mental fortitude beginner level 1

You have successfully fought off the effects of minor bloodlust. Doing so in the future will be easier.

Fear effects reduced by 1%

Note to self: never annoy my alchemy teacher. I have a feeling that she could hold her own in the Underdark with just her bloodlust. Shaking her head, she paid for the sampling kit. “I’ll teach you how to use it tomorrow, we’ve spent far too long here anyway.” Shoving it into my hands, I quickly stumbled after Djarleen as she made a beeline for the transporter. One uncomfortable transition and we were back in her store.

“Angus, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take my anger out on you in the end there, I just had to get out of there.”

“It’s ok Djarleen, what got you so upset though?”

“That damn testing. He always gives it to the promising new students, then takes them in to have negotiations about how to share their recipes. He knows damn well how mentally draining that test is, and the last thing you want to be doing afterwards is thinking through negotiations. He does it so that he has an upper hand, and it pisses me off every time.”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

“Don’t worry about it, why don’t you head on home and sleep all of this off? I’ll show you tomorrow how to use your blood collecting apparatus, and it is rather important for most of the distilled potions. Stop thinking about it, go and get something to eat and then sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Nodding at her, I headed back to the inn for a quick meal and logged out for the night.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“MARTYYYYYY!” Jon yelled as I walked in to the café after logging off.

“Hey guys, what’s new with you?”

“We all got our classes. Phoebe is a hunter, I got backstabber, and Derrick got the intimidator class.”

“Congrats guys, but I don’t think I’ve heard of an intimidator before. What’s it do?”

“Well, I get a fear aura and bonuses to damage when I do something that causes a fear status in my enemies. Not hard to do when you’re a troll that likes to play darts with tanks.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of darts with tanks, that a new game?” I chuckled at him.

“Ha ha, yeah it is. See the tank is the dart, and his friends are different parts of the dartboard. The healer is the triple twenty, the highest scoring part on the board. Any mages are bulls-eyes, fairly hard to hit but worth it in the end. I haven’t rightly decided what the rogue types are yet, but they keep flipping around so they aren’t that important. So we’ve already discussed our classes among ourselves, what about you? What’s your class?”

“Ambusher. Bonus to traps and surprise attacks. Now I just need to figure out how to make some traps that I can deploy while exploring a dungeon.”

“We will probably be no good for helping on this end, sorry Marty. How did your alchemy go today? You were trying those new options for potions, right?” Phoebe asked.

“Oh yeah, I owe you guys a ton. I ended up getting all the potions to work, and actually came out of it with five elixir recipes. Shops are soon going to have potions and elixirs for health, mana, stamina, and a combination of all three for low level players.”

“That’s awesome! Guess we need a party then, right?” Derrick was quick to jump on the party excuse.

“I’m for it, but let’s hold off for a day or so. If we are going to celebrate, I’m first going to see if we can get them to simulate a slight buzz while offline. Heck, what do you guys say to setting a few goals to work towards and throwing parties when we hit them?”

“Sounds good to me.” Phoebe stated. “I even have one I’m started on. I can upgrade my class eventually to Huntsmaster. It lets me take a group of NPC’s into my party and lead them.”

“Nice! Any idea what the requirements are to get you that far?”

“Not yet. I’m assuming that I have to master at least one weapon, probably two. Then see if I can build up enough reputation to get a few followers and lead them on successful missions.”

“Sounds good enough. Anyone else got ideas for parties? Perhaps when we get an evolution?”

“I like the evolution option. Speaking of that, any ideas as to what we would need to evolve besides max level?” Jon asked.

“Not really. For lower level evolutions I would expect something like a large mana stone or some rare reagent. You will probably need a few achievements to get a better one.”

“Damn. Well, shall we make a pact then? If anyone discovers a possible evolution material, they let the rest of us know so we can see what the possibilities are?”

We all gave simultaneous agreements, then broke out laughing. “Ok, that’s settled. Anything else?”

“I’m good.” Derrick said. Phoebe just gave a quick nod.

“Well, I could use help with something if you guys don’t mind. I’m having issues with these rock hounds. The first one killed me rather easily, and I have no idea how to hurt them.”

“What’s the issue? It’s just a dog. Hit it hard enough and it’ll go down.” Derrick said matter of factly.

“I would do that if it didn’t have insanely thick armor on it. I shot it with a crossbow, and the bolt literally sparked off the side of the thing. Did absolutely no damage.”

“Hmm, that could make it a bit tougher to take out I guess. It can’t have armor everywhere, most creatures tend to follow the dragon example so we should be able to find a weak spot.”

“Dragon example?”

“Yep. Traditionally, dragons have weaker armor on their bellies. I’m sure this hound is the same, just good luck getting a solid hit on it. What do you have for weapons?”

“Hammer and crossbow. I can also form mana blades, but they aren’t very effective in close combat. I can’t focus enough to make them useful.”

“Ok, well you don’t have a great weapon for that. I’m assuming the thing is too fast for you to cripple with your hammer, which would be your best option. How does it attack? Circle you like a wolf would?”

“No, it just charged straight in and lunged for my throat.”

“Perfect! That’s how we will take it down! It’s just like a heavy cavalry charge.”

“So how does that help?”

“Didn’t study any historical battles did you? Heavy cavalry generate an absolutely massive amount of momentum. So much, in fact, that they are pretty much locked into a head on charge and can’t turn until they slow down. The best counter to the charge is infantry armed with pikes.” At my uncomprehending look he kept explaining. “Basically a pike is a spear that is about 15 feet long. You let the enemy get up to speed, and when they pass the point of no return, you put your back foot on the pike and lift it up so that it spears into the charging horse’s chest. It turns their own momentum against them and they impale themselves. Your pike will most likely snap in the middle, but it will have done two things: Broken their momentum and caused massive wounds. Usually you would have a line of pikes facing the charge, but with a one on one battle you will have to have better than average aim and hit it the first time.”

“That. . . is so simple it’s brilliant. Thanks Derrick. I owe you big man. First the potions and now this, if you ever need anything just let me know. I’ll try my best to make it happen.”

“You get them to let us have a semblance of a buzz and I’ll call it good. Now, I gotta get going. Lot to do tomorrow, and I need to figure out what I can do for a profession.” With that, he got up and waved as he walked off. Everyone soon followed, and headed off to their own apartments for the night.