Five chaos potions were granted to Eva and Manoel for the sake of their experiments. And in somewhat related news, they could at least confirm that it seemed like the distilled potion had a decent duration to it seeing as how Eva was still able to float her way through the Scholars’ headquarters as if she were flying through a space station.

“This is actually more fun than flying,” Eva said.

“Are you saying that just because it does not require any effort?” Manoel asked in response.

“Well, it does require effort. I have to make sure I don’t spin too much and have to find objects to brace myself against in order to stop. In some ways, it’s more complicated than flying. But I will admit that it’s much easier, basically effortless, whenever I want to just hover in one spot. With this, all I have to do is stay still and I don’t move from my position. With flying, I have to try and flap my wings at just the right speed with just enough strength to hover in place without moving much. And… once I launch myself to move in one direction, I don’t have to do anything else until I need to stop. Fighting like this would probably be horrible, though. I don’t think I would be able to react anywhere near as quickly as I could with normal flight.”

“Well, you do still have your wings and tail for mid-course changes while under the effect of no gravity.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be able to cancel my momentum as easily.”

“Ah, right. Without gravity affecting you, you don’t have that natural momentum stopper to assist you. I suppose that neither this nor our preferred outcome would be very good for combat. The only way that it would work well is if you have complete control of gravity to make immediate changes of every sort. The ability to flip your gravity, return it to normal, increase or decrease it, cancel it, and so on. But that would be a decent amount of micromanaging one’s gravity in the middle of a battle, not to mention would likely be incredibly disorientating. But to master such a style of combat would be rather interesting!”

“You know what would be fun that could weaponize these potions?”

“What?”

“Giving them splash effects so that they don’t have to be drank normally. Imagine having a potion that flips somebody’s gravity and throwing it at them. It breaks, splashes onto them… and then they suddenly go falling into the sky. Could you imagine how terrified they would be? Just, suddenly falling toward the upper atmosphere with no way to stop? That would be hilarious. Kind of horrible, but hilarious.”

“E-Eva… since when have you thought of such cruel ideas?”

“Oh. I guess I didn’t think of stuff like that before. You can uh… probably blame my boyfriend for that. He’s kind of a troll.”

“What a horrible influence he has been on you! Fun, but horrible! When do I get to meet him?”

“Maybe you could come back with me? I’ve told him about you before.”

“You… you have? I never would have thought I’m worth telling anybody about.”

Eva gave Manoel a couple of strong pats on his shoulder which messed with her trajectory, causing her to use her wings and tail to readjust it. “Sure you are. We’re friends.” She then had the even better idea of simply grabbing onto his shoulders from behind to let him walk her through the stone halls. “Though, I probably should have told one of the cool stories about you. Like your origin story. You’re pretty badass whenever you’re not being a dork playing with potions.”

“I… do not know if I would call my ‘origin story’ badass. I simply did what I had to do. If anything, it is incredibly tragic.”

“Hmm. That’s also true. Your background is more fitting for an edgy anti-hero or a genocidal villain than a nerdy scholar who wants to reverse gravity for fun.”

Manoel sighed as the two returned to his room, ready to put the chaos potions to use while trying not to think about the massage he now owed their leader.

Thirty minutes later, after creating more of the potion, distilling it, splitting it, and combining it with the chaos potions, the scientific duo had five new potions to try out.

“You know,” Eva said, “considering that each one of these has a very real chance of doing something that is going to brutally murder us… we should hire some more assistants for this. Otherwise, if I die from the first one, I won’t get to try the other four and have to wait to respawn.”

“Ah… good point,” Manoel agreed. “Well, I’ll get everything ready. Would you mind gathering the others?”

Eva gave him a little salute just in time for the potion to wear off, dropping her to the ground. She needed a strong flap of her wings to save herself from faceplanting into it. “Meet you outside?”

Manoel nodded, so the two split up temporarily so that Eva could go on a mission to recruit some extra assistants. Manoel was needed to observe everything and Eva could drink one of the potions, so that left four potions with assistants needed.

Fortunately, she knew exactly who she could get.

Outside, Eva reunited with Manoel alongside the four fellow test subjects she managed to gather.

The robed, tentacled man, Alano, and the scantily clad Grace were among them. There were two others with them, though. After all, the Scholars’ headquarters was full of the most scientifically insane players who loved to experiment with all manner of crazy inventions, so finding more help was easy.

Gobbo Gobbo was one of the other two players that Eva managed to find who was willing to probably die during an experiment. Gobbo Gobbo was a woman who pushed the game’s height limit for player characters to its absolute limit… in the opposite direction than what one might usually suspect. Without going so far as to become a fairy or anything like that, Gobbo Gobbo was a woman who made herself so incredibly short that the top of her wide, green head barely reached up to Eva’s thighs. Despite the incredibly short stature, though, she had a very womanly body in the form of exceptionally wide hips, the thickest thighs around, and breasts that looked ready to pop out from her corset at any second.

Why?

Because Gobbo Gobbo was a goblin shortstack enthusiast who believed in the supremacy of goblin shortstacks.

Even her current body wasn’t shortstack-y enough for her. She wanted to become even shorter and even more stacked!

“Hey, try out Alano’s new tentacle bath yet?” Grace asked Gobbo Gobbo.

Gobbo Gobbo smirked and chuckled. “Try it? I was his test subject for it! Let me tell ya… I liked it better when the tentacles didn’t know how to stop. Shoulda seen it when they just wouldn’t stop no matter what ya tried. Were real tough, too, gehehe.”

Then there was Marissa. Marissa was one of the women who looked the most out of place among the scholars seeing as how she looked more like a royal princess than anything else. She wore an elegant, white dress that reached down to her ankles, her body was adorned with beautiful jewelry, and her straight, blonde hair reached down to the back of her thighs while featuring bangs that stopped just above her eyebrows. She looked like somebody who was better suited to be a friend of Nell than a friend of the Scholars, and her appearance wasn’t the only reason she was suitable to be one of Nell’s friends.

“Tentacles… that—that did not stop? No matter how much one begged and pleaded?” Marisa asked. “And the way you said it… they no longer behave that way?”

“Unfortunately not,” Gobbo Gobbo answered.

Marisa turned her attention to Alano and raised her voice. “How dare you!? Why wouldn’t you invite me?! I know you have heard me talk about my tentacle fantasies before! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get thoroughly ravaged by an unrelenting tentacle beast in this game?! The last seven I have thrown myself at simply devoured me whole! Even when I stripped and tried to pleasure them, they still only ate me! Well… devouring me has its own charm. Especially when I get to sit within its body for a few minutes before perishing. Ah… perhaps I should learn healing magic so that I can continuously heal myself so that I can enjoy being eaten for as long as possible… n-ngh…” Nothing was even happening to her outside of her imagination and she was already pressing her thighs together and twitching. “F-fuck… damn it, Alano! You ruined it!”

“Relax, Mary,” Grace said, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s still good.”

“But now it’s obedient! I don’t want to be ravaged by tentacles that will obey me! I want to be ravaged by tentacles that are going to force me down, defile every single inch of my body, drench me from head to toe in cum no matter how much I beg for it not to, and then leave me knocked up with hundreds of new tentacle babies in my womb, damn it! What’s the point otherwise?! What the fuck is the point if I am not literally drowning in cum?! I want to be forced to swallow so much tentacle cum that it comes out through my fucking ears! A-ahn… so… so intense…”

Manoel looked at Eva and tilted his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eva answered, trying to protect his innocence still.

It should have been no surprise to anybody that the Hermetic Scholars were packed full to the brim of the game’s most sexual degenerates. After all, it was the “nerdy” player faction to join. It was the home of the nerds and degenerates who relished in one another’s company where they knew they wouldn’t be judged for their interests, whether those interests were related to chemistry, tabletop roleplaying… or extremely intense tentacle sex.

Those three circles had much more overlap in reality than most people would ever be aware of.

“I—I came a little,” Marisa said.

“I’m so jealous of her ability to do that,” Grace said next.

Gobbo Gobbo nodded. “Same.”

“You know,” Alano said, “I could always use my own tentacles and—”

“Fuck you,” Marisa snapped. “You’re too nice. The last time we tried, you wanted to stop every few minutes to make sure I’m alright. Of course I’m alright! And you know what would be even better? A complete fucking disregard for my well-being as you destroy my body in pursuit of your own, selfish pleasure! God! I thought men were all about absolutely wrecking royal looking girls?! Bringing them down to their own level and all that?! I don’t want to be courted like some dainty little princess, I want treated like an elf in an orc doujin! Wait. Maybe… maybe that’s—a-ahn… maybe that’s it. I… I should turn myself into an elf. Nobody can resist ruining an elf, right?! An elf who barely wears any clothes with huge tits who always just so happens to trip and land with her ass up in front of monsters and beasts! Why—why didn’t I—nngh!—think of this sooner?!”

“I think she came like three times during that,” Gobbo Gobbo said.

Grace sighed. “Seriously jealous.”

“A-anyways,” Manoel said, “if you are all… alright, would you like to begin the experiment? Has Eva explained what’s going on?”

The group of test subjects nodded.

“Alright. Then, Marisa, since you seem to have… er, plans, would you like to go first?”

“Is it going to kill me?!” Marisa asked, stepping forward with stars in her eyes. “Or maybe drain my body of all its strength, leaving me collapsed on the ground to be freely used by any passing beast or monster?! F-fuck!”

Eva took a step away from Marisa when she noticed the puddle on the ground underneath wherever she stood. She didn’t want any of that getting on her.

“Perhaps?” Manoel answered while holding her potion forward.

Marisa gladly took the potion from him, downed it in an instant, and waited to see what was going to happen.

Yet, nothing seemed to happen.

Until she moved her arm.

The second she moved even a tiny bit, her arm accelerated with enough speed that it popped it out of its socket, forced a moan out of her, and then flew into the neaby wall with a bone-cracking crunch.

Despite the gruesome test result… she couldn’t stop moaning and twitching on the ground.

“Looks like it accelerated her somehow?” Eva commented. “I don’t know how mixing a gravity-based potion with a chaos potion would result in that, but—well, I guess acceleration is affected by gravity in general. So, we turned it into an extreme acceleration potion?”

Manoel nodded, agreeing with Eva’s observations. “Marisa, could you please stand up?”

Marisa nodded… and snapped her neck doing so from the speed at which she nodded.

“Ah. She died.”

“Want me to take her inside?” Alano asked.

“Yes, please. So that she can get her equipment once she is able to come back.”

“Got it.”

Grace stopped Alano by grabbing his shoulder. “She’d forgive you for going gentle on her if you use her corpse and tell her about it later.”

Alano sighed and said, “I’m not into corpses.”

Grace shrugged. “I’m just telling you what to do if you want back on her good side.”

Refusing to go along with that, Alano took Marisa’s corpse back inside.

“Grace, would you like to go next?” Manoel asked.

“Sure,” Grace answered. “Hopefully this one doesn’t do… whatever it just did to Marisa to me.”

“Highly unlikely considering how rare it is for a chaos potion to duplicate its results.” He handed her potion over.

Grace swirled it around in its bottle for a few seconds before giving it a whiff, cringing, and downing it. “I feel… weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I—I feel like I’m… being… crush—”

Another gruesome result took place as Grace collapsed to the ground underneath her own personal gravity, most of her bones breaking and organs getting crushed in the process, resulting in an immediate death and deformed, squished corpse.

“Well then,” Manoel said before sliding a foot under the corpse to see if he could lift it up a little. He could. “The potion wore off as soon as she died, but I am assuming that it temporarily, and extremely, increased her own personal gravity to the point where she practically collapsed into herself. Almost like a black hole.”

Alano came back just in time to see the new corpse. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” he asked.

“Probably,” Eva answered.

With that, Alano took the second corpse inside as if it were a part of his everyday life around the place.

As for Gobbo Gobbo, she looked like she had an idea. “I wonder if I could condense myself using a potion like that? Retain the same amount of mass, but condense it downward so that I get shorter but thicker. The black hole strategy to becoming a shortstack.”

“I’m not sure that would be healthy for your organs,” Eva said.

“Tsk. Dang organs getting in the way of things. Wish I could just remove them.”

“Gobbo Gobbo,” Manoel said. “Here is yours.”

“Alright! Come on, potion. Do your thing and squish me down!” Gobbo Gobbo swallowed the entire potion in an instant. Surely enough, it had an effect on her, but not the one she wanted. Instead, as soon as she moved even slightly upward, she took off. Slowly. She lifted up off the ground with absolutely zero gravity affecting her, similar to what happened to Eva earlier. “He-hey! I’m floating! This ain’t what I asked for!”

“Sorry, Gobbo Gobbo.” Manoel reached up to grab her and pull her back down. “I can’t control what the chaos potions do.”

“Darn it. Well, while I’m free floating and all… mind stripping me down and throwing me up into the sky? That sounds like fun.”

“Why would you need stripped for that?”

“Because I love this corset and have no idea where my body is eventually going to land at, if it ever lands on this planet.”

“Ah. Good point. Er, Eva? Would you mind helping her with that?”

“No problem,” Eva answered.

Manoel made sure to turn around while Eva helped the floating Gobbo Gobbo strip down to nothing but her underwear.

“Ready?” Eva asked.

“Ready!” Gobbo Gobbo answered.

With the launch confirmed, Eva swung Gobbo Gobbo around by her ankles a few times before letting go and sending her straight toward the sky. “Now if only we could do that by reversing gravity instead of removing it.”

“Well, we still have two more potions,” Manoel said. “And we also have our fourth subject!” He looked at Alano who was standing at the entrance with a perverted grin on his face. He made it back just in time to see the almost-nude Gobbo Gobbo get swung around and launched.

“That was beautiful,” Alano said.

All Eva could think about as Manoel handed Alano the potion was how well her lovers would get along with all of the degenerates at the Scholars’ headquarters. Her lovers often acted like they were the biggest degenerates around, and that was probably true for the town of Nameless. But compared to the average Hermetic Scholar member? They were as vanilla as could be. Except for Nell. Nell at max perversion levels was about as perverted as a scholar at low-middle perversion levels.

As for Alano, his potion…

Well.

It was half successful.

The right side of Alano’s body went flying upward with properly reversed gravity. However, the left side of his body collapsed into itself on the ground as he was torn in half in a bloody, gruesome sight.

The scientific experimenting of the Hermetic Scholars was not a family friendly affair.

“Well, that kind of worked,” Eva said.

Manoel looked at the final potion and held it out to Eva. “Perhaps this one will work?”

“Maybe. Also, I forget. What was the point of all of this again?”

“Ah. To see if we could.”

“Did you plan on using it for anything if you could perfect it?”

“I don’t remember if I did.”

“Classic Manoel.”

Despite seeing the results of everybody who tried the potion before her, Eva couldn’t help but to feel excited when she drank the potion.

And then.

She flew into the sky.

Or fell, rather.

With the only successful potion conveniently going to her, Eva’s gravity was reversed and she “fell” into the sky with speed growing by the second. She even made the job of falling easier by straightening out her body and tucking her wings and tail against herself to make herself more aerodynamic, increasing her speed even more.

It didn’t take long for her to pass up Gobbo Gobbo who was curling up into a ball to deal with the cold air of higher elevation. Then she passed up the right side of Alano’s body.

All that was left was to see just how high she could go as the ground below became a distant sight.