Chapter 365 - Toxic relationship (Patreon)

Author's note:

Hey! I'm taking the next week off for the holidays (Even if realistically I'll spend most of the time editing the first book for the amazon release...) So to offset that a bit I made today's chapter a bit longer than usual ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა

I tried to end on a cliff that isn't toooo painful...

It's crazy to think I've been doing this for a full year already. Isn't it fitting to end the first year on chapter 365? Here's to another good year of SSS incoming. ( ^_^）o自自o（^_^ ）

Thank you everyone for your support, you're the whole reason I can keep writing.

Anyways, see you next year on January 1st, Happy holidays, and happy reading! (｀• ω •´)b

Sofia followed Alith to the underground sections of the academy, Alith was renting a room just like Shaily did for her monster corpse business, except Alith was using hers as an alchemy laboratory.

“What are the slimes for?” Sofia asked, observing the bunch of small red slimes sleeping at the bottom of a glass container.

“Waste disposal. They’re called sponge slimes, they eat just about anything as long as it’s in liquid form, they’d even gobble up molten mithril if they had the chance,” Alith explained while she gathered a variety of glass tools from the many shelves lining the walls.

“Oh, right, I remember those from your bestiary book. Aren’t they supposed to be quite rare?”

“Feed them enough junk and they’ll duplicate, since most alchemists use them there’s actually a surplus, making them quite cheap,” she turned, showing Sofia the glassware she was preparing, “The enchanted beakers and flasks are relatively cheap too. What really hurts is actually the herbs and powders we need to cook.”

“Right, I should pay you. How much do you want?”

Alith shrugged, “Heh, I’m not about to make you pay for it, just reimburse me for the more expensive ingredients if you really want to get rid of some gold. What do you want to try first? A couple of Health candies to test your theory? You might actually lose some Health,” Alith warned her.

“Since it’s a bit risky, let’s leave it for the end, maybe I’ll complete the thing fast enough that it won’t be needed,” Sofia answered, poking at the inert slimes.

“Alright… Now that I think about it, Sof, this is the first time you’ll see me actually do my job, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen you cook food plenty of times, it’s not that far from one another if I understand Alchemy correctly.”

“Yeah except this time I’m cooking neurotoxic poison for my best friend instead of a good meal. Hurray,” Alith sarcastically rejoiced.

Sofia stopped playing with the slimes and walked up to Alith, “I’m really interested in seeing you do your thing, actually. And hey, I’ve cooked poison for you plenty of times, haven’t I?” Sofia giggled, remembering the ‘food’ she used to cook sometimes when she was traveling with Alith. It was no mystery why Alith had started taking care of the meals.

“It’s shocking to me you even survived to adulthood with cooking skills this hazardous,” Alith answered, giggling too.

“Heh, you know, Orphans don’t get much of an opportunity to cook. Most times we couldn’t even make a fire to heat up the stuff we found, so imagine actually cooking. I never learned to cook in the orphanage either.”

“Never too late to learn,” Alith told her while she produced a bunch of small bundles of dried and fresh herbs from her storage ring.

“I might as well just get a cook skeleton. Also I’m quite decent at roasting meat now, if nothing else,” Sofia answered while watching Alith sort through her ingredients.

“That’s a start…” Alith humored her while she grabbed a small bundle of brown dried herbs and threw it into a stone mortar. She sweeped the pestle from her work table and twirled it in her hand before starting to pound the dried herbs into a powder. Adding some water, the powder became a sticky paste, which Alith rolled into a small ball, covered in a white powder, and presented to Sofia. “That’ll be the first thing I can give you. How are the other poisons you took before going?” she asked, “Some compounds can cancel each other so it’s best not to take too many at once.”

“The effect from the poison flowers and the fruit are almost all gone, the progress has stopped going up too, it has been stuck at 3.8% since around the time we left the refectory. The Silent Death powder should kick in soon though, it’s been almost four hours since I took it,” Sofia explained.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Silent Death is supposed to be a bit weak for someone our level, worst case you might faint. Shouldn’t interfere with that Tabinic powder gummy. This one usually causes mild paralysis, I think it should work for VPPV. It’s slightly sweet too.”

“You tasted it?” Sofia asked, as she gobbled up the squishy ball without even [Identify]ing it. It is a bit sweet, she’s right.

“Well yeah I’m an undead. I can taste whatever I want, I’m immune to all poisons as long as they don’t damage the soul. Too bad [Mark of Aphenoreth] doesn’t protect from soul-altering poison or I’d be able to eat literally anything and be fine. Effects should be very quick to show up, how is it?”

“I don’t really feel anything at all,” Sofia admitted.

Alith frowned, “Really? Oh, wait… This one spreads mostly through the blood, of course you wouldn’t be affected by this crap… A lot of what I can do is actually like that… Hmm. That’s annoying. Let me make something else.”

“I’m quite sure VPPV is in that order exactly because I’m immune to a lot of poisons now. It allows me to consume most of them relatively safely for this step.” Just like it transformed my blood to light right after making my skin opaque to avoid turning me back into a weird glowing person.

“It’ll make it so you can take the strong magic stuff without having to worry too much yeah… It also means all the cheap poisons I could give you to progress fast are gonna be useless so this might actually make the thing harder,” Alith explained, looking slightly annoyed.

“Sorry to be an inconvenience,” Sofia apologized.

“Are you kidding?” Alith asked, wide eyed. She narrowed her eyes and filled her hands with even more herbs from her storage rings, with a smirk, she added, “I just got myself a willing test subject to try out all of the worst things I can make. This is going to be fun.”

Alith poked at Sofia’s face, Sofia was currently having full-body spasms while sitting on a bone chair.

“No longer going up?” Alith asked, seeing Sofia’s expression sour.

“It stopped al- already,” Sofia answered, getting interrupted by another spasm.

“Well shit, that’s all I have, the batch of health candy is still cooking and that’ll be everything. Let me get you an antidote for this one, the spasms look painful.”

“I- It’s fine. It’ll go aw- away.”

“Nah, you crazy? This could last like half an hour with the quantity you downed, no point if VPPV’s no longer going up,” Alith dismissed her as she started throwing herbs into a pot of boiling water.

Already up to 48%, it’s n- Ugh, Not bad.

It took a while more for Alith to finish the batch of five Health candies.

“I didn’t think this needed so many ingredients,” Sofia commented as she held the small balls of medicine.

“It’s a tough balance of combining a lot of chemical and magical properties. Kind of like fusing two unrelated ritual circles. It’s not far from creating an actual spell pattern in food form; of course you’d need a lot of ingredients,” Alith explained, “That’s also why they all give the exact same amount of stats, any deviation and the ‘spell’ fails.”

“Alright, well, let’s see how this goes. At least no matter what happens I won’t be vomiting blood this time.”

“Sometimes vomiting blood can be preferable. You want to suffer from the poisoning tho so yeah. I can’t say what might happen honestly, Sof. We might actually use your rune here.”

“Worst case I lose some health. Let’s go.” Sofia popped a candy in her mouth and chewed twice before swallowing, closely monitoring her health.

The health did not move, but Sofia felt her consciousness blur.

Crap.

When she opened her eyes, Alith was bent over her, examining her eyes. “Oh, you’re back with us. Good, I was starting to worry a bit. You didn’t die but you were out for about twenty seconds,” she explained.

Uegh. “I- I feel like shit.”

But I got five thousand extra health!

Health : 85 980 / 85 980

Alith nodded, “Unsurprising, really, there’s a reason these can give so many stat points, they’re pretty strong compounds. If you remove your rune and heal a bit it should go away.”

“No, my Health is full, still. I even got the five thousand from the candy… But I’m… Nauseous.”

“Huh? That shouldn’t… Wait…” Alith turned into a ghost and back, she had a slightly worried expression. “You suffered some soul damage…”

“Oh… How bad is that?”

“Not too bad. Just like the damage from summoning sickness it will heal by itself, but it’s pretty significant still, you should sleep it out, Sof. No more candies for you, this isn’t external soul damage it’s damage from the inside. Any more could be really dangerous.”

“Understood… Can you help me get to my room?”

“I’m sure Pareth would be happy to do that but if you ask me then of course.”

“I’m worried someone might try to steal my token pouch on the way…”

The soul damage was gone by next morning. It turned out the health candy hadn’t contributed at all to the progress of VPPV but the extra Health was worth it. After her class and her bolt-training session with Shaily, Sofia went to ask Eternam for help only to learn that he had just left for the weekend.

Sofia sought out Beryl to ask if there was anyone else in the academy likely to be able to help her. The teacher coordinator gave her an idea and helped her set it up in the hour, that is how Sofia ended up behind a booth at the entrance of the refectory just before lunch time.

Above Sofia’s head, the completion of VPPV was displayed as ‘48.3/100’ and a bone slate atop the booth said: ‘Poison me and get paid!’ while another underneath said ‘1% poisoning = 100G!”

I didn’t know we were allowed to be this shameless and set up a shop inside the academy… Will the students even be able to help? Do people normally go around carrying strong poisons for no reason?

I mean I was carrying some until I ate it but still…

A group of students strolled in the refectory without paying any attention to Sofia’s booth.

Kind of reminds me of that time spent begging on the streets. Fun.

The disappointment did not last long, as the next group of students noticed the booth and came to check it out.

A level 60 Exidian student walked up to Sofia, “Aren’t you the summoning teacher?”

“That’s me,” Sofia answered, pointing at Pareth, literally sitting behind her on a bone chair. His lights were all off and he was in the shade so his presence wasn’t all that obvious.

“Are the signs true?” the student asked, skeptical.

Sofia dumped a bunch of gold coins on the counter of the booth. “If you poison me and it’s strong enough that the number goes up, you get the gold. There’s no catch, I’m just very resistant to poison.”

“I’ll be back,” the student said before running away in the direction of the student dormitories.

A few minutes later, it was time for lunch, and many more students started coming, Sofia had left the pile of gold on the counter which did not fail to catch a lot of eyes, and soon, a first student came with something for Sofia to try. It was a flask of red liquid.

[Flesh berry juice] : Poisonous substance extracted from flesh berries. It has a strong meaty smell. Often used to get rid of invasive rodents and scavengers.

That’s new. Never heard of flesh berries.

Sofia opened the flash and gulped down the contents under the weirded-out gaze of the student.

It kind of tastes like meat too.

After waiting a few seconds, nothing happened, Sofia felt nothing wrong with her body.

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ - Third step of the Light forging realm :

Third step : Your nerves and brain become light (48.3/100%)

“This one looks like it’s a miss, no gold for you, sorry.”

The student walked away, dejected. Before long, more students came with things for Sofia to try, some of which she had to refuse like the girl who tried to give her a box full of ‘Dried Jakdak dejection’, which smelled exactly like what it was: shit.

A few students actually managed to make VPPV go up for fractions of a percent, making a few gold coins and driving even more students to come try to feed poisonous stuff to the weird teacher.

All was going decently well, forty minutes in, the progress was already up to 53.8%, which is when a familiar person showed up to stand in line behind a few students: Elizabeth Fraus.

Or rather, the Empress… What do you want with me?!!

Sofia glared at the woman, and got a wave and a mischievous smile in response.

She might actually kill me this time.

And I’d probably have to pay her for it…