[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 177 - Matthew’s Mystic Medicines (Patreon)

Matt was busy grinding away his Alchemy levels when the kingdom quest came through. His eyes brightened at the thought of helping not only Sil’mara, but himself.

Those hellhound molars were proving to be useful in developing alchemical poisons. It was too bad he hadn’t been able to snatch up those hellhound fangs, too. Lenal likely already [Analyzed] them into oblivion, or whatever nerdy ability she did.

He couldn’t help but be excited to further explore the synergy between his Poisonmind Job, Alchemy Profession, and his necram lifestate. The potential was there, and yet Matt was only just beginning.

Kai poked his head into the large room. Several carved holes in the rough timbers provided adequate ventilation. Thin trails of smoke from a recent batch drifted out through them. “Did you get the same quest?”

“Sure did,” Matt said, waving away the fumes. They didn’t bother him. Being a necram had its benefits. Poisons were ineffective on him, many even gave him positive bonuses and they all healed him in one way or another.

And the best part was, aside from Raiko teasing him about it, nothing on his body was in danger of falling off. In all honesty, he didn’t get the stigma the undead had. Sure, he hadn’t seen a stereotypical zombie yet. Now one of those would be at risk of tidbits falling off. Maybe they didn’t even exist in this new world in the standard sense, what with mana, health, and stats.

He mentally paused. Did I really consider a zombie finger falling off as a tidbit?

Matt hastily brushed that aside.

Perhaps necram were different, and he was lucky, but it just seemed like a better state of existence. Sure, his added HP modifier was easily and painfully eclipsed by Sam’s staggering Vigor, but that was okay by him.

Matt preferred to stay far enough away that he wouldn’t take the sort of damage Sam seemed to incur on a regular basis.

Not that he begrudged the man’s valiant nature. He took hurts, so the others didn’t have to and in Matt’s eyes—though he wouldn’t dare tell a soul—that was true kingly behavior.

Whether Sam wanted to be a king was irrelevant. He was acting more like one every single day and in many ways, showing Matt just how shitty a boss he really had been.

Sure, he could have blamed a lot on corporate policy. The Benton Home Office were a bunch of uptight c-suite asshats, but he could have pushed back.

Yeah, but you wanted to join them, a small voice reminded him. You wanted to pull yourself up so hard by your bootstraps that you forgot those were the types of people who put you—and every other poverty-stricken family—in that situation to begin with.

Matt tuned the buzzing annoyance out. There was nothing he could do about that. His earlier thoughts on giving Sam advice for ruling seemed comical in the face of how he naturally took to the role.

There were a few things he could help with, mostly logistical issues, things that had nothing to do with heart or feelings.

Case in point: their accommodations were dreadful. If the world hadn’t just experienced an apocalyptic event, Matt would have said they were no better off than some third world country where there were no labor laws.

Not that Sam worked them every hour of every single day, but who on Earth regularly had to use a hole in the ground for a toilet, had a cold-ass river for a bath, and a structure built out of 90% splinter without any air conditioning, insulation, or comfort of any kind?

The moss beds did not count, no matter how springy they were.

None of these things were Sam’s fault, but they were horrible conditions when you took a moment to think about the change in your circumstances from living in a high rise in Honolulu to… this.

And yet, Matt wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Maybe it was the higher stats, or… maybe this world wasn’t quite so fucked as Earth had been. But there was little need for air conditioning or proper insulation except at night, and they had the dome for that.

It never did seem to get too hot or too cold in the dome so far. Maybe that would change when some kind of inclement weather hit.

What fumes or vapors might have called down OSHA with a hammer of fines were a complete non-issue for Matt and he suspected the same applied to Sam, though for very different reasons.

In the end, Matt was quite happy with the way things were. He was able to produce something other than increased shareholder profits, and his life certainly was looking up.

Royalty was a possibility. He didn’t think Sam would play favorites, but he knew if he worked hard and did his best to contribute, he’d be able to reap those rewards just as Sam, Raiko, Kai, and even Lenal would.

As more people joined them, their initial positions of closeness to the king and queen would, no doubt, prove beneficial.

And yet Matt struggled to think of it in terms of what would help him. He was long-sighted enough to care about the health of the kingdom over his own, since his own health was immaterial.

He would outlast any other person, provided nothing killed him.

That put a very different perspective on life. You stopped wanting to climb any sort of ladder and instead spent time focusing on making what you had last. By making your home better, more than just the single person would gain a better life.

Philosophical musings over, Matt turned back to the poison he was making. He took some of the crushed up [Wind Crystal] from the dead Zuu loot he’d gotten a while back and sprinkled it into the mixture.

As he hoped, the ingredients frothed and began to foam. By giving the bowl a slight stirring motion, he set the wind element into a clockwise pattern. Once it got started, it continued on its own power. It looked a lot like a blender, with the ingredients spinning around a central axis of empty air.

Poisons were a lot harder than healing or recovery potions, Matt learned. His mentor had explained as much, letting him know that he was incredibly lucky to be undead.

The reason most Alchemists never “majored” in poisons as Aldoverre said was because they didn’t survive. And you had to differentiate yourself early in the Alchemy journey to get a good chance at a proper poison variant.

Normal potions required a few ingredients to be added. Some had to be crushed into a paste, or ground in a mill, all of which he was lucky enough to possess, but the actual mixing process was remarkably simple.

He didn’t bother risking higher level crafting recipes yet. Only Raiko and Sam were daring enough to try that. Ingredients for poisons were much, much harder to come by than potions and tinctures.

And despite his careful approach, Matt still blew up his attempts more than two-thirds of the time. Literally. Despite what Raiko previously stated, that she destroyed recipes more frequently than him, that wasn’t actually the case.

Poisons were challenging to make, to say the least. Balancing the mana fluctuations was rough. Whenever Matt did succeed, the completed craft did seem to reward a hefty amount of Experience.

There was a reason Kai only poked his head in for a moment instead of coming inside. The Hawaiian wasn’t stupid. Most people held their breath as they walked past his workshop room.

If only there was a way of getting more poisonous substances, then he could tank all the explosions that he caused since the worst they did was dye his clothes and skin.

Most of the time, they actually healed him.

The oni weren’t exactly raining from the sky with their deliciously scrumptious teeth.

Fortunately, nobody could read his mind to be made aware how creepy that sounded. Most of his source of materials came from the mandragora, the couple who had taken to growing those poisonous tubers.

He wasn’t sure how to thank them, so he tried giving them rel.

That hadn’t worked out too well.

They tried to plant it.

However, this new kingdom quest gave Matt a reason to take a break from poisons if only to help get more Experience and to contribute to the building of a proper [Workshop]. It had brackets and everything, so you knew it was official.

One of the items that this new Builder needed was [Basic Adhesive]. There was no recipe book—though Matt desperately wished there was—so he had to go on his knowledge of plant matter and herbology.

Both of which came built-in to Alchemist thankfully, because Matt couldn’t keep a money tree alive in his apartment to save his life. And despite living in Hawaii, he had no way of telling one type of plant from the other.

Now, he could tell all sorts of properties about the plants just by looking, sniffing, and even tasting them.

It was like a whole new world had opened up to him, and Matt was more than happy to take a few HP losses when he ate something like [Red Herba] thinking it was poisonous.

Mushrooms were a good source of poisons, but you didn’t find them just anywhere. And their types of poisons were rather specific. You got quite a lot more variety among standard plants. Quite a few could be distilled, ground, or dissolved into various potent toxins.

This [Basic Adhesive] though? Matt wasn’t entirely sure where to go. Though he had made something very similar, it didn’t have a name like [Basic Adhesive], and Matt didn’t think it’d work. Judging by how drunkenly the boards of the shack were leaning, he wouldn’t trust his glue paste to do the job.

He had a pouch full of various herbs, so he began doing the sensible Alchemist thing.

He shoved them into his mouth.

Their flavor was usually pretty bitter and terrible, but as he ate the various herbs, he was clued in to their multi-faceted properties. Usually just one or two at a time, but sometimes he gained a whole gamut of knowledge from a single leaf.

He wasn’t sure if all Alchemists needed to eat ingredients in order to learn about their properties, but it worked well enough for him. So why bother changing it up?

And he wasn’t about to knock something that worked, even if these things often had a rather foul zest. It wasn’t like Matt could contract a lethal disease.

Okay, I’m not 100% on that, but it’s worked out thus far.

After a few minutes chewing on something that tasted like a mixture of mint and hot summer asphalt, Matt had found what he was looking for.

[Eritis] was a long stemmy sort of plant with bluish-green flowers, and aside from tasting like absolute ass, it had a host of interesting properties.

Chief among them was its [Adhesion] property. When mixed with a basic binder like [Hemroot], and some good clean [Pure Water], it would produce a potent adhesive depending on its final balance.

Matt immediately went to work, blowing up the first three attempts right off the bat because he had tried to add powdered [Earth Crystal] to the mix far too soon and it had seized up the process right at its most critical point.

He would be picking pieces of hardened goo out of the walls for days. His own Vigor was high enough that the shrapnel just bounced off his skin, something that definitely would not have happened before Copper.

The hours flew by as Matt experimented with the balances of ingredients. This, in his opinion, was the hardest part. Getting the right proportions was paramount, and only then could you work on the often whimsical and ridiculous steps required after.

Long after the rest of his companions had gone to bed, Matt continued to work. He had the balance down. Now he needed the process, which in and of itself was a mess.

Who could have known that if you stirred counterclockwise three turns and failed to stir clockwise on the fourth, you’d cause a mixture to turn to ash and smell like something crawled up your nose and died?

Matt did.