Ch 189 – Poison Jar III
Slamming his hand down on his desk hard enough to send papers scattering and ink bottles rattling in place, Bonehead let out a frustrated growl that rumbled from deep within his ribcage before pushing himself up from his seat and away from the cluttered workspace, his chair scraping backward across the floor with a harsh screech that echoed through the room.
All around the floor of his quarters were countless smashed glass vials and bottles, their various colored contents staining the walls and floor in abstract patterns that looked like some demented artist had gone wild with their paints.
The chemical residue created a pungent mixture of scents that would have been overwhelming to anyone with functioning lungs and a sense of smell, though Bonehead was fortunately spared that particular discomfort by virtue of being, in his opinion, the only good undead race for a “red-blooded” male like himself: a skeleton.
Shelves all around his room were filled to the point of overflowing and looked like they might collapse at any moment under the weight of more glass containers, leather-bound tomes, and loose parchment that had been shoved wherever there was space. At the same time, his desk was completely covered in papers, journals, and ink bottles to the point where the actual wooden surface beneath was barely visible anymore.
“Why the fuck won’t it work?” Bonehead grumbled to himself in frustration as he grabbed the empty glass beaker he’d been drinking from at the edge of his desk and hurled it at the wall, where it shattered into dozens of pieces and added to the already considerable mess covering his floor.
He whipped his skull back toward his desk, where his personal journal sat open atop a mountain of scattered documents and reference materials.
Displayed on the open pages of his journal was a heavily detailed illustration of the Vitruvian Man that he’d painstakingly copied and annotated over the course of several days, along with various other detailed diagrams showing different components and alchemical studies focused specifically on the anatomy and alchemical uses of the human body.
Each model was labeled with notes written in his own hand that grew increasingly frantic and desperate the further into the journal one looked.
Surrounding his journal and covering every available surface of his desk were various scattered documents he’d printed out from the Online Academy Library at considerable cost to his personal funds—thousands of case studies, articles, reports, and academic journals detailing the human body’s anatomy and its various uses in alchemical processes.
They covered everything from bone structure and organ function to the way mana channels formed and developed throughout a person’s growth from infancy to adulthood, and ultimately into their evolution as a Tier 2 human.
And up until recently, the highest Tier a being could be, but that was quickly proven incorrectly in his climb to the top with him and his Party’s involvement in a bet between two Floor Guardians.
Yet with all of this information literally at his fingertips, with more research material than most Tier 1 Alchemists would ever have access to in their entire careers.
Bonehead had gotten no closer to building Esmerelda a functional body than when he’d first begun the project a month ago, right after spending half a month regaining his own skeletal body and saturating bones from a recently deceased Lv 25 human with enough of his mana and miasma to fully adapt them to his core so they would actually respond to his commands.
Something that should have taken a week at most, based on his previous experience with bone manipulation, had instead taken far longer than anticipated, a direct result of his lack of excess miasma releasing naturally from his body the way it used to before he’d bonded with the Symbiotic Parasite, considered a Tower Boon.
Only now did he fully realize and understand the true meaning behind the parasite part of that boon, earned by falling into the altar of Shadowflame back on Floor Five.
As a cost of the excess miasma released from his body being reduced to practically unnoticeable levels, which would have allowed him to be around his brothers without them needing to wear those uncomfortable masks due to their low Vitality stats.
And in exchange for gaining a gradual boost to his mana reserves over time as the parasite fed and grew stronger, he now had a significantly harder time manipulating bones that hadn’t been previously saturated with his own mana and miasma, even with the newly gained Bone Manipulation racial trait he’d unlocked upon reaching Level Twenty-Five in his race.
A consequence he'd learned through the damnedest of fires and one that he should have researched and looked into much earlier, instead of just glossing over the fact that this Tower Boon he'd gained was classified specifically as a Parasitic Symbiote in the System description, the word parasitic being right there in the name for anyone with half a brain to notice and investigate further.
Boon, Bonehead scoffed to himself as he tore his gaze away from his journal and the mountain of useless research surrounding it, then began wading through the cluttered floor. He was completely uncaring of the glass shards he stepped on and brushed aside with his foot bones as he grabbed the door handle adjacent to his sleeping quarters, twisted it, and pulled the door open.
The motion immediately released a thick cloud of gray and red smoke that had built up in his alchemy room, billowing out into his main living space.
Walking into his alchemy room through the dissipating cloud of acrid smoke, Bonehead’s Shadowflame eyes were immediately drawn to the three massive, bubbling cauldrons that dominated most of the available floor space.
Each sat atop an industrial-grade Bunsen burner that had cost him a small fortune to purchase and have shipped to his room on Floor Ten, and he made his way toward the one closest to the door while trying to ignore the persistent ache of failure that had taken up permanent residence in his core.
Reaching for the cauldron's heavy iron lid, Bonehead pulled it off and set it aside before leaning over to examine the contents as he reached down with his other hand to extinguish the flames beneath the cauldron by extinguishing his mana into the flame, and he found himself staring down at a total of thirty Health Pills that lay scattered across the bottom of the massive container like small red stones, each one perfectly formed and emanating a faint restorative aura that he could sense even without touching them.
Item Name:Health Pill
Type: Consumable
Rarity: Uncommon+
Effect: Fully restores 700 Health.
Cooldown: 1 Hour
Description: A dense, deep-red pill refined and concocted by Bennett Graves, a prodigious Tier 1 Alchemist. Unlike liquid restoratives, the pill dissolves instantly upon ingestion, releasing a concentrated surge of regenerative compounds that rapidly close wounds and stabilize the body. Repeated use before the cooldown may cause internal stress or nausea.
Despite their high rarity and the impressive amount of Health they could restore that should have made him feel at least some small measure of pride or satisfaction in his work, Bonehead threw the cauldron lid away from him without warning, the heavy iron disc spinning through the air before it struck and hit the wall behind him with a loud clang that echoed through the room before clattering down onto the floor.
Immediately after throwing the cauldron lid, Bonehead drew his leg back and kicked the side of the massive cauldron with enough force that his ankle bone audibly snapped from the impact, though the cauldron itself only shook slightly in place due to its considerable weight and the stability provided by the Bunsen burner stand beneath it.
"Fuck!" he shouted into the empty room, completely unbothered by his broken ankle bone, and he made no further utterances about the injury as he simply hobbled his way toward the second steaming and bubbling cauldron while his body's natural regeneration slowly began knitting the fractured bone back together with heavy assistance with his first Racial Trait.
Lifting the lid off the second cauldron, Bonehead peered inside to reveal a cobalt blue liquid that was still bubbling away despite the reduced heat, with small black flakes churning within the mixture like some kind of bizarre snowglobe, and he reached into his newly purchased Spatial Satchel to pull out both a clean ladle and an empty medical injector.
Carefully scooping up some of the cobalt liquid with the ladle, making sure to get a good mix of both the base liquid and the black flakes suspended within it, Bonehead poured the mixture into the injector with steady hands that came from months of practice performing delicate alchemical procedures.
The moment the injector was filled and sealed, a System notification appeared in his vision informing him that he'd created a new alchemical concoction and that bonus experience had been granted to his Alchemist Class, and Bonehead took a moment to read through the item description that appeared alongside the notification.
*You have created a new Alchemical Concoction! Bonus XP has been granted to your Class*
Item Name: Lesser Titanblood Tonic
Type: Consumable
Effect: Grants a temporary boost to the drinker’s physical stats.
Duration: 15 minutes
Rarity: Rare
Description: A cobalt-blue alchemical booster drug concocted by Bennett Graves, a prodigious Tier 1 Alchemist. Upon consumption, the user’s muscles swell with unnatural vigor, increasing physical power, while providing a minor increase in height. This effect can be stackable, up to a limit of three before the body will begin to permanently mutate; however, this limit depends on the user's physical, magical, and toxicity resistance.
Staring at the Tonic's description for a while longer while turning the injector over in his hands and watching the cobalt liquid slosh around inside the glass container, Bonehead finally let it drop into his Spatial Satchel alongside the other items he'd been accumulating and reached down to turn off the Bunsen burner beneath the second cauldron.
Reaching the third and final massive cauldron, the only one that wasn't actively bubbling due to its Bunsen burner having been turned off several hours ago, Bonehead lifted the heavy lid and found himself staring down at only a small puddle of tar-like liquid that barely filled a quarter of a cup sitting at the very bottom of the otherwise empty container.
Item Name:Calming Draught
Type: Consumable – Potion
Rarity: Common
Effect: Induces a calming state, suppressing agitation, panic, and emotional instability.
Duration: 30 minutes
Description: A tar-black draught with a thick, syrupy consistency and a bitter aftertaste as a result of being brewed with various noxious and toxic reagents that can only be consumed by the undead. Brewed by Bennett Graves, a prodigious Tier 1 Alchemist, this potion is designed to settle the mind and slow emotional spikes without fully sedating the body. Excessive use may result in addiction and or severe emotional blunting.
Requirements: Undead Race.
Gripping the lid of the third cauldron tightly enough that his finger bones creaked from the pressure, Bonehead raised it above his head with both hands as though preparing to hurl it across the room just like he had with the first cauldron's lid, but just as he was about to release it and let it fly something inside him finally broke under the accumulated weight of a month and a half of failure and grief and crushing guilt.
His arms dropped limply back to his sides, and the cauldron lid slipped from his fingers to clatter onto the floor as Bonehead curled in on himself, wrapping his arms around his legs and pulling his knees up against his ribcage while Shadowflame-like tear droplets began dripping from his Shadowflame eye and splashing down onto the stone floor beneath him.
The light in the alchemy room began to drain away as though someone was slowly turning down a dimmer switch, shadows growing and spreading across every surface like living things as they wrapped themselves around Bonehead's curled form while he sobbed. “…Why did she save me and not herself?”