Chapter 196: The Alchemist
Immune boosters were the safety net. They kept your body from tearing itself apart during a “modification,” turning a roll of the dice into a calculated risk.
Especially when you were hitting a tier bottleneck—during that critical, all-or-nothing “Life Leap”—a high-quality immune booster, tailored to your specific condition, wasn’t a luxury. It was a lifeline.
For apprentices on the Corpse-Plague Acolyte path, every breakthrough was a death gamble. You stared down permanent mutation or worse.
That’s why, of all the immune boosters out there, the ‘Dew of Eden’ was king. It had the best effects with the fewest side effects. For anyone in the Corpse Hall, that bottle was gospel.
Poppy wasn’t ready to push for the Third-Rank bottleneck yet.
Her need for that top-tier booster wasn’t urgent.
But you never started too early when it came to hunting down, collecting, or trading for this kind of precious hard currency.
This stuff was essential. A strategic resource on the path to power.
Preparing early was never a bad idea.
“The pay is good.” Poppy’s finger slid across the Palmfiend’s skin.
“And the mission type… I don’t have a problem with it.”
“That Blighted Hand guy’s abilities… are disgusting.”
She paused, her tone laced with undisguised revulsion.
“I've hated him for a long time.”
“Look, out of respect for The Blood Tonic, it’s not smart to openly oppose him…”
“But, just ‘nauseating’ him a bit, giving him a hard time… that’s no problem.”
“I’ll take this commission.”
A moment later, The Snow replied:
“Great.”
“One last reminder—”
“The gig requires you to wait in the ‘Sakura Road’ area for the client’s signal. Once you get it, you move to the designated spot and ‘save’ them.”
“That place is a bit of a hike from ‘there’.”
“So...”
“You’d better leave now.”
“Don’t be late, or the guy dies.”
Poppy chuckled.
“Of course.”
She didn’t reply to The Snow.
Instead, she raised the exquisite glazed pipe to her lips.
This time, she didn’t take a light, slow drag like before.
She took a deep, long pull.
Then, she exhaled slowly.
Unlike the thin, ethereal smoke used to build the bar’s phantoms, the smoke from her lips was richer, thicker. It carried a strange, acrid scent that was far more choking.
The rich white smoke surged and condensed in front of her, refusing to dissipate.
In the blink of an eye, a massive, ferocious fox head erupted from the vapor, solid in the air.
Its eyes were two dancing points of pale blue light.
Then came the slender neck, the powerful body, the huge, fluffy tail…
A giant fox, made entirely of dense white smoke, took form.
The smoke-fox moved with impossible grace.
Its long, flowing tail curled like a living thing, lifting Poppy’s slender body and settling her onto its broad back.
Silently, the glass door swung open. The fox leaped.
Just like that, it carried Poppy and vanished into the grey, rain-shrouded sky.
A few kilometers was nothing. A few minutes, tops.
As long as she didn’t dawdle, there was no chance of being “late.”
As for the bar, the shadowy figures flitting about… with Poppy gone, their anchor vanished. They collapsed like sandcastles at high tide, dissolving into thin, harmless smoke.
Carried by the wind whipping through the open door, the last of the phantom ball was blown apart, scattered, and gone.
Only the old record player remained, spinning its lonely melody from another age.
..................
Botanical Garden, East Side.
The west side was an open-air ornamental garden. The same place the Scarred Woman had kicked off a bloodbath last time.
But the actual main entrance was on the east.
It was supposed to have a small admissions area, ticket booths, a visitor center. Even a souvenir shop or two.
For the tourists, they’d put in a small dining area nearby.
Now, what should have been full of life was just another killing field, shrouded in rain and fog.
Echo Quarry wasn’t as rich as Ascension Road.
They’d only had the Garden for ten days.
That wasn’t enough time to set up a complete, solid ritual network like Ascension Road’s.
So, the Ritual’s power was focused on the core glass greenhouse and a few key nodes. Out here, on the open battlefield? The Quarry’s people got no cover. No buffs. They were on their own.
Right now, mixed in with the natural rain-fog was something else.
A greasy-looking mist, slightly turbid, carrying a faint fishy sweetness and the stench of decay.
Potion poison.
This was Ascension Road’s specialty.
They used potion vapors to create an environment that buffed them and slowly poisoned their enemies.
But Echo Quarry wasn’t helpless.
Besides using bellows and tools to blow the poison away, they were scattering their own powders and aerosols—antidotes to “cleanse” and “neutralize” the toxicity.
The speed of neutralization could barely keep up, sometimes lagging just behind the enemy’s “poisoning.”
But at least it kept the concentration from “dizzy and slow” up to “lethal” for the low-ranks.
However, whether it was this dizzy-level poison mist, or a thicker cloud that could kill First or even some Second-Rank apprentices…
For Pandora, silently infiltrating the edge of the battlefield right now, it didn’t matter much.