“Back so soon, brother?” The high priest asked as I entered the church.

“Indeed. I have two more bodies to study if you have the time.” I replied. Smiling, the high priest led me back to the altar. I pulled out the first body and immediately opened up the cap, taking care around the top. I paid particular attention to an odd organ that looked like an amalgamation of grey, slimy grapes. Several ligaments held it in position, and there was a large connection of the same material of the organ to the cap itself. Carefully slicing into it, it took several shallow slashes before the interior burst open and I saw a blue crystal.

It looked like one of the rupees from those games where the swordsman likes to smash clay pots, and was long enough to go from my wrist to my fingertips. I carefully removed it and identified it.

Small mana crystal

0/50 mana

This is the second smallest of the mana crystals. It is rechargeable and has many uses.

So, charged mana crystals can explode? That is very good to know. I tried opening up other organs, but didn’t find anything important. Nodding at the high priest, I watched as he burned the body. Putting the second body on the altar, I opened it but stopped from cutting into organs. I started with anything attached to the outer ring, and tried running my mana through it. “I wouldn’t stand by the top of the cap, these things absorb mana and fire it out of there.” I warned the high priest. Nothing happened until I touched a single grey blob, and the mana moved so rapidly through it that it was shaking. Straight to the main organ that held the crystal.

Ok, experiment one worked and I knew what organs worked to absorb mana. I opened the mana condenser organ for lack of a better term, but kept the mana crystal inside. This time I directly touched the mana crystal and added mana, watching as the inner light gradually increased. It was interesting to watch as the empty crystal looked like clear blue glass, but adding mana seemed to birth a sun in the center of the crystal. Once it reached full charge, a wave from the bottom of the organ smoothly rolled towards the top, carrying the charge with it until it fired out the top in a stream of water.

New Skill acquired!

Anatomy beginner lvl 3

Your study of dead bodies has revealed the most efficient way to do damage to creatures you have studied. Additional loot may be awarded based on knowledge.

+3% damage, +3% critical hit chance

Studied creatures: Mycofiends

“Finally!” I cried out in joy. Noticing the odd look from the high priest I explained, “I got the skill.”

“Congratulations brother, I’m sure our Lord will be pleased with the news. Are you off to put it into action?”

“Not yet brother. It’s getting late enough that I probably shouldn’t make another trip today. Instead I’ll head out and try and learn what I can about these new mushrooms I’ve found.” As I was talking, the high priest was busy burning the body, but not before I grabbed the mana crystal. After an awkward pause, I simply turned and left.

Hoping that Djarleen had forgiven me, I headed into her shop to find her staring off into space. She started at the sound of the door opening, and I saw what looked like happiness, regret, and sadness flash across her face in the half second before it settled on resignation. “Afternoon Djarleen, how are you today?”

“Not bad Angus, thanks for asking.” Damn, it seems we were going to be awkwardly formal for a bit. “Here to use the equipment?”

While not quite meant as an olive branch, I figured I could try and make the best of it. “Actually I was hoping to pick your brain on a few things.”

“Oh really?” She asked, posture straightening as her tone lightened.

“Yeah. I came across a few new ingredients and wanted to see what you would recommend doing with them. Can you help an apprentice out?”

“I suppose.” She said with an exaggerated sigh. “Let’s see what piddling ingredients you managed to stumble across.” She added with a smile. I pulled out one of each of the mushrooms I had come across, but kept the mycofiend spores in reserve. “Oh, interesting. You’ve been over by the volcanic springs, haven’t you?”

“Probably? It was fairly steamy in through there, but I couldn’t sightsee too much. The place is infested with mycofiends.”

“Ugh, those idiotic mushrooms? Too bad you aren’t a mage, burning those things is the best way to get rid of them. I swear unless they are on fire they are too stupid to realize that you hit them.”

“Yeah, they are pretty tough unless you know where to hit them.” At her confused look I explained. “The body is like a plant stalk, nothing in it. Hit them in the cap to get where their organs are at. Anyway, what can you tell me about these mushrooms?” I asked to bring her back to the topic.

“Well, they are decent enough. The white ones I can make into a cleanse potion of decent strength, it should last you up to the mid twenties for levels. The purple and red one can make either a bleeding potion or one that causes a distracting, burning pain. It just depends on how long you cook it for. The green one makes a lovely acidic potion that will corrode iron and steel. Which did you want to start with?”

“Well, let’s start with the cleanse potion so that I can get the recipe. I’ll only brew a few so that I can get it, considering my new limitations with healing potions.” Face falling at the reminder of my aura, we headed to the back.

“Ok, first you need to trim off the stem. Be careful not to cut any of the bulbous parts, we need those intact. Now, add them to your flask and cover them with water. Heat the mix, making sure it doesn’t boil. Good, keep going until the solution turns milky white. Go ahead and strain it, let’s see how it turned out.”

Medium cleansing potion (Low quality)

This potion will remove status effects from creatures level 20 and below.

“Not too bad, all things considered.”

“Thanks. Is there an elixir recipe?”

“Yeah, but it is rather complex and isn’t worth it. Are you looking to improve your little achievement?”

“That obvious?”

“Of course. Sadly, most of what I know already has an elixir recipe. I think next we should use the bleeder shrooms, you’ll enjoy doing this part.”

Once we had everything cleaned and set back up, she had me start by dicing up the cap without any of the gills. “Ok, now we add both ethanol and water. This will be your first distillation. Give it a good stir, and we are going to slowly heat the solution until it turns bright red. Once that happens, put this condenser tube over the top and crank up the heat. We need it to reach a boil as fast as we can, but to immediately get it back to a gentle boil so that we don’t burn up the mushroom residue.” Easier said than done. I got it to a much too vigorous boil, and that lovely red was slowly turning brownish. Of course, I overcompensated and lost the boil midway through. The result was a brown sludge in the first pot and a brownish red potion in the collector.

“So how badly did I mess this up?”

“You got a bit of potion out, not bad for your first distillation. This is a tricky one, so don’t feel too bad.” She sounded sincere, but she was trying not to smile at my results. I looked at it and was disgusted with it. A shoddy potion, it barely did an extra 5 points of damage from bleeding. “Anyway, let’s do the pain one. Same initial setup, only when you get the red color immediately strain the sample. Keep it just below boiling until the volume drops by about half, and it should gradually turn brown the entire time.”

Following these directions was much easier, and I ended up with a fairly neat higher quality potion. It did no damage, but increased the chances of interrupting a skill by 50% and doubled backlash damage from spells. The last potion was incredibly simple. I just had to slice the mushroom in half and soak the thing in water until it turned yellow. Since it was a potion that would require throwing at someone, Djarleen gave me a thin clay gourd to keep it in.

“The clay is fragile and cheaper than glass.” She explained at my confused look. “Now, go ahead and practice those potions. I’ve got a few things to get back to.”

“Wait, before you go, can I ask you about mana crystals?”

“Go ahead.” She said while looking slightly annoyed.

“Well, I’ve found a few small ones, but I was wondering if there was a way to make them bigger.”

“There is, but you need a high alchemy and a lot of them. How many do you have?”

“Two.”

“Need at least ten. Come back when you have enough and I’ll show you how to do it, ok?”

“Sure, thanks Djarleen.” As she left, I turned back to my potions. I went ahead and used half of my supply of the white mushrooms to make some cleanse potions, even though they were weaker than what they could be. I then spent the rest of a frustrating afternoon fighting to get a decent potion from the bleeding mushrooms. By the end I had managed one average potion, and was too frustrated to do anything else. I silently waved goodbye to Djarleen on my way out and headed to the inn for a night of sleep.

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

I woke up early the next morning and thought about what I had to do. I could go through and set up some potions, but if I was going to keep killing mycofiends I didn’t think any would help. I could try and do something with their spores, but with the limited supply I had it wouldn’t be worth it. I guess it was going to have to be a morning of slaughter. As I headed downstairs, I got a ping from an email. Opening it up, I was slightly surprised to find it was Emily getting back to me.

Marty,

Sorry it took so long to reply, but I had to do some digging to find out what went wrong. I also need to apologize about you not getting the full information about what had been adjusted. There are several departments involved in implementing game balance issues, and unfortunately at some point part of an email chain was either deleted or had an error. Either way, the development department had a longer list than the department responsible for announcements. So here is the full list of what has been altered ever since your mana blades were changed:

Stones made purely by hand will hold five mana maximum unless cut and polished by a jeweler. Stones with less than 50 mana will not explode, and instead will simply deteriorate into dust. Chained explosions will have a five second delay. Stone weapons may still hold mana per use with skills, but the blast from striking with the weapon will only affect one monster.

I truly hope you didn’t find this out mid battle, and I will be double checking all game balances from here on to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Sorry for the inconvenience,

Emily

Damn, that’s annoying. Oh well, at least it didn’t cause me a death and Emily had my back going forward. Well, there goes the easy way of taking out groups of enemies. Good thing for me the mycofiends only group up in pairs.

I finished heading downstairs, and was shocked that I had actually beaten Alnoss up for the day. I headed out while eating one of the rations I had bought the other day. It was a little unnerving to be heading through the city this early, as the lack of kobolds almost made it seem like I was walking through one of those pueblo cities out in Arizona.

Following the marks was a good bit quicker today, and I was glad to see that some of the mycofiends had respawned. They still died fairly easily, although a few times I got complacent and took a shot from those water jets. At the distances they were firing from it wasn’t powerful enough to blow a hole through me, but they easily drew blood. I was still only gaining a handful of coppers per opponent, but there were decidedly higher drop rates for the spores and quite a few of the mana crystals. I kept moving, clearing cavern after cavern. At some point there was a popup informing me of completing the weekly quest for Thanatos, and that I earned 7 standing within the church.

Midway through my slaughter, I came across some odd formations in the walls of one of the caverns. It looked like the walls were actually rusting. IRON! It had to be an iron vein! Heh, Dharkiss would probably love to buy a bit of iron from me. Who needs to carry a pickaxe when you have mana blades? Not this guy! I went over and took a swipe at it with a mana blade extended.

This resource cannot be harvested with the skill you are using.

Say what? You bastards, are you seriously stopping me from using my skill that is supposed to cut rocks from cutting metal out of a rock? This is bovine excrement. No matter how I tried it, there was no way that I could use my mana blades within a foot of the ore vein.

Emily,

I don’t know if this is a bug or just something that needs to be addressed, but you guys have effectively killed my mana blades. I understand not being able to use them against a living opponent, but as of right now I can’t use them to cut through an iron ore vein. They are basically useless unless I want to dig. Honestly, I think they should be more than able to cut through an ore vein, and if you want to penalize me for not using a pickaxe go ahead and just give me a less pure ore if I use them.

Can I also get a clarification on one thing? Say I come across a rock golem. Would mana blades be useful against it? Technically golems aren’t alive, and it is just magically enchanted rock.

Thanks,

Marty

Glaring at it, I just wished I could smash the rock apart. I wasn’t about to use my weapon though. Wait a second, smash. . . explode? Placing my hand against the stone next to the vein, I tried just jamming in a bit of mana to see if I could get it to disintegrate.

This resource cannot be harvested with the skill you are using.

Bah, it was worth a try. At least I have a bunch of mycofiends to take my temper out on! “Let the slaughter, RESUME MUAHAHAHAHA!” I cried with an evil cackle. Heading out, I did just that. Slaughtering my way through mycofiends with ruthless efficiency, I ended up leveling twice and gaining almost 70 mana stones. The final chamber I came to was absolutely gorgeous. Four thin waterfalls fell into a pool behind a stepped formation of stone tiers that had water flowing down parts like an elaborate fountain. The only thing ruining it was the bluish mycofiend sitting on a naturally formed throne in the middle of it all.

Mycofiend Hydro Champion lvl 17

Smiling, I got within range of my crossbow and prepared for a boss battle.