Making Medicine

[Arkice]

Arkice took a look around at her surroundings, breathing in the stale air. It was an enclosed room without any windows, the only real air source being from the opened doorway that she just walked through. The inside was dark, only illuminated by the flame of the candle in the candleholder that she held in her hand. The darkness was oppressing, but not debilitating so. There were desk, each stacked with unused beakers and equipment. The level of dust was impressive too, enough that it would probably require a good cleaning by someone who had a fair level in the housekeeper subclass.

As she raised the candle holder above her, she looked up at the ceiling. It was covered in dust and spider webs, but the tiny creatures seemed to scatter when the light was shined on them. It was disturbing and more than a bit gross.

The walls of the room had vines and vegetation growing on them, peaking through cracks in the wall. Whether they were cracks formed before or because the vegetation poked through, she didn’t know.

All in all, this laboratory was satisfactory, despite its flaws. Besides, it was not something that she had paid for, after all. London was a strange town, in that it looked just like the original city in England, except that the buildings were in ruins, overgrown with vegetation. It was like this was a setting set in a post-apocalyptic age where the Earth retook the planet.

London had always been overcrowded with buildings, so it was no surprise that there were many unexplored locations. Just like this laboratory. There was an option to build the buildings outright, but the cost was exorbitant for one such as her. Thankfully, this didn’t keep people from checking in the insides. That was how she found this laboratory, though it was in a state of disrepair.

Still, it was useful enough for her crafting profession. All she really needed to do was give certain objects like the desk and a few beakers a cursory cleaning so that they would be usable. There was no true disease system or even an illness system besides getting poisoned so it was unnecessary to truly sanitize the work environment. Still, it was possible that a bit of dust could throw off mixture results so she would at least wipe down the desk and wash out the beakers.

Arkice would have pulled up her sleeves—if she had sleeves in the first place—to prepare for the cleaning ahead. She would also need to bring a bucket of water to use, not only to clean but also to use in her crafting.

~o~

On the now clean desk, there was her candleholder, diligently illuminating her work environment. There were a few beakers, a mortar and pestle, as well as a few test tubes which were lying on their sides. She probably shouldn’t use the test tubes yet until she found out where the holder was for them; putting any liquid inside it when she could only lay it on its side was just asking for trouble.

Oh wait, there was the test tube holder. Stupid. It was in the first drawer. She pulled it out, blew off the dust, and set the test tubes into it so that they could be held upright. It didn’t really need to be that clean, especially since she wasn’t going to be pouring anything into the holders, just into the test tubes that it held.

In any case, she had a few materials that she had gotten through trading some of the materials that she had gotten while hunting. It was a simple enough recipe, one that was already listed in her interface. All she needed to do now was test it out.

From her inventory, she took out the necessary material for her current project. Two base herbs and one impure solvent were necessary to a medicinal formula, a basic healing potion that would restore 20 health points. Laying the two herbs—stocks of green vegetation with leaves—on the table, she then took out the last ingredient. It was a water bottle filled with a murky red liquid. Why would it be in a water bottle in the first place? She didn’t know. That was a strange fact in and of itself, as those kind of materials always had test tube icon on them in the other mmorpgs.

She supposed that was why it was called impure solvent, especially with how cloudy the liquid was. Definitely impure, but it would serve her purpose well enough. She placed the water bottle on the table.

“Okay, let’s get started.”

She picked up both herbs and began ripping them into pieces, placing each of the now shortened plant parts into the ceramic mortar. Once she was done, she picked up the pestle. This was going to take a little bit of grinding until it reached a necessary form that she could use it in the solvent.

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WC: 832

[Arkice]

Arkice swiveled the pestle around the inside of the mortar, smashing the herbs against the ceramic bowl’s walls. The majority of the plant had been reduced to a thick green liquid that was both sticky and clumpy. Yet, it was not ready at the moment; the clumps had to be grinded out so that it would all be a uniform paste. Only then could she continue to the next part of the crafting.

It was strange doing it this way. The world before the Apocalypse was different, where you only had to use a menu command to craft. However, ever since the advent of the Catastrophe, doing the actual process yielded far better results. Now, menu commands in general for crafting had fallen to the wayside, as the proper way was now the only real way to create items. It was time consuming and harder work, though not as hard as in real life, but the results spoke for themselves.

She lifted up her pestle, watching as a clump of green paste fell from its tip and back into the mortar. It was about done. The green paste had an even texture, and even though she could still see some tiny clumps here and there, that was fine. It should still mix well with the solvent anyways so there was no need to add more work when it wasn’t necessary. In the real world, there was the possibility that it could affect the mixture, but here in this virtual world? She highly doubted it.

Dropping the pestle back into the mortar, she picked up the water bottle with the solvent. The water bottle itself was only half full, but that was how it came when she traded it with the trader. Hopefully, he didn’t skim some off the top from it, though that was a bit of a weird thing to do with such a cheap material in any case. That would be more time and effort than it was worth for the price so she also doubted it on that part, especially since that merchant was of a much higher level.

Twisting off the cap, she poured some of the solvent into the mortar, enough to fill the ceramic bowl halfway up. After that, she poured the rest of the solvent into a glass beaker. Recapping the empty water bottle, she set it aside so that she could pick up the pestle again. With it in hand, she swirled in the liquid inside the mortar, mixing the herb with the red solvent as well as getting any off the tip of the pestle.

She just needed to mix it for a little longer before she could pour it all into the beaker with the rest of the solvent. But first, she had to make sure that all of the paste was properly mixed with the solvent in the mortar, such that she wouldn’t leave too much residue behind.

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WC: 489

[Arkice]

Arkice stopped swirling the red liquid with a hint of green and lifted the pestle out of the mixture. She tapped it against the edge of the bowl to make sure all the droplets fell into the mortar and off the pestle. The mixing was about done, as the whole solution had taken a slightly different color, uniform throughout its whole.

She was just about done. It was a bit of a strange concoction, but it wasn’t like she had ever done this before. Of course, before she had even decided to make the potion, she had consulted with a few adventurers with the pharmacist subclass about it. Their answers to her questions had been enlightening, and it certainly wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be. Then again, not many of the crafting subclasses had it easy either.

Blacksmiths had to go through the entire process with an anvil and a furnace, though at a much faster rate than real life. Even tailors had to sew clothes with a needle and thread. It was tough, these crafting professions, but it was also rewarding. It was a nearly risk-free profession, where you didn’t have to face the dangers of actual adventuring. While death had been negated as a consequence, that did not mean the players didn’t feel pain. No, they certainly did.

It was a scary thought to many who were used to modern society, where pain was not often experienced except on the mundane level. She had to admit, it was a scary thought even to herself. However, she had already thrown away such concerns when she went down this path. Pain was momentary, temporary at best, while the gain that could be gotten was enormous.

Arkice lifted the ceramic bowl over the beaker and tipped it, letting the solution pour into the rest of the solvent. She tapped the bowl lightly against the glass beaker so it wouldn’t crack it but allow the last drops fall into the beaker. Letting the liquid settle a bit in the mixture, she took out a glass stirring rod and swirled it in the beaker, as if she was mixing milk with coffee.

Once after a couple of minutes had passed did she finally stop stirring and allowed the now uniformly red liquid settle once again. She picked up the beaker and looked at the liquid from the bottom, checking if there were any residues that haven’t mixed in yet. It was a bit difficult, especially considering how murky the solvent was in the first place, but after a few more glances, she nodded her head in approval. She poured the combined solution into a bottleneck beaker and sealed it with a wooden cork.

The medicinal formula potion was finally done.

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WC: 460