Epsil
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2020
- Messages
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EVALUATION
Rewards:
Seeing that you've filled in all the requirements, You've been given the full reward. - Alias.Quest Report - Unevaluated
Quest Report - Okarin
Okarin needed to be stronger. They knew that.
If they wanted to be able to chase Vicious... Okarin needed to be much, much stronger.
But how...?
The slime person was pensive as they sat in the little shack that the Liberi had made for them. Absentmindedly, they were absorbing brightweed on the ground through their skin. The past month or so, Okarin had eaten almost nothing but healing herbs and developed a healing property, but somehow it felt like their improvement was too slow.
Their healing slime wasn't even that great of an ability. It took hours for Okarin to heal a single injury in a temple, whereas an ordinary healing potion could take minutes. No matter how Okarin looked at it, they were inferior.
+ + +
Okarin held a flyer from the guild in their hand.
This was an Alchemist's Assistant quest.
Would it be possible for them to learn how to make potions? Perhaps Okarin could take their own healing slime and make it into a stronger potion?
Although...
The slime person stared at the quest requirements.
—5 slime cores.
Okarin felt a chill even thinking about it.
Wasn't it basically like saying that healing a person depends on the lives of slimes?
It was quite a dark way of thinking about it.
Kill one person to heal another.
+ + +
Okarin ended up spending a day walking around the city looking for an apothecary who would be willing to accept them as a student even though Okarin didn't bring any Slime Cores. Unfortunately, most places rejected Okarin, saying that the Slime Core payment was essential. Okarin even tried offering the Healing Jelly that they secreted, but most of the alchemists were flatly disinterested.
It was close to the evening when Okarin was walking back to North Scribel Forest.
They noticed a shack on the edge of the forest with a small chimney. There was a small stack of smoke rising, which was why they noticed it in the first place.
Was that always there?
For no real reason, Okarin started walking towards the shack. They knocked on the door.
A witch with a wide-brimmed hat answered the door.
"What do you want?" The witch complained grouchily.
"Are you looking for an assistant? I'd like to learn how to make potions." Okarin responded.
"Why don't you go to one of the Alchemists in the city?" She asked.
"I don't want to collect Slime Cores," Okarin explained simply.
The witch narrowed her eyes and squinted at them.
"Hm, I see. You are a slime, I suppose."
Okarin blinked a few times. The witch saw through their human form? Okarin had gotten pretty good at shapeshifting, and ordinarily Okarin thought that they had a fairly convincing human form. None of the alchemists that Okarin visited earlier in the day had even noticed that they were in fact a slime. Most people thought Okarin was an ordinary human.
"I'll accept you as my student if you give me your slime core."
"I can't do that," Okarin answered. "I'll die without my slime core."
The witch snickered and laughed.
"The Law of Equivalent Exchange. Have you ever heard of it? If you desire something enormous, you must pay the equivalent price."
"Why does it have to be my slime core in particular? Shouldn't any slime core be fine?"
"Okarin, my dear. You're terribly mistaken. It has to be your slime core and no one else's. Otherwise it wouldn't work. Say, do you know the answer to 1 + 1 ?"
"Two?"
"Oh my goodness, it seems you've been corrupted by by those silly human 'scientists' already. You'll never be able to comprehend my magic if you're so stubbornly attached to the illusion of rationality and reality. Every one is different. Adding one to another one certainly does not make two. At best, you end up with merely two entirely different ones, but they certainly cannot be combined. It is a mistake to assume that two ones are the same."
"Huh?"
The puns and word-play was confusing.
"Do you believe in the Law of Threes? Death flags? Deus Ex Machina? Plot armor? Star-Crossed Lovers? Reincarnated as a Villainess?"
"I'm... not sure what you're talking about...?"
"Science is meaningless in this world, dear. Even those silly magic systems that pretend to be science. The only thing that matters is the Story, and whether you stay on the right side of the Story. I am a Stitch Witch, and my craft is the fabric of Fate and Stories itself."
The haggard woman began cackling maniacally like a third-rate villain.
"...Okay."
Okarin sounded skeptical. They were positive that the witch was insane.
"But can you teach me to make potions?"
+ + +
A full 24 hours later, Okarin knocked on the witch's door again.
They were huffing and puffing and covered with twigs and leaves.
"I brought you sour milk and a datura, just like you asked," Okarin said.
The witch was chewing on an ice popsicle and fiddling with some kind of metallic device when she opened the door.
Finding the datura, by the way, was a huge pain. Okarin had no idea what it was, until they walked around the city and visited several apothecaries. A kind person told Okarin that it was a poisonous flower sometimes known as Devil's Trumpet or a Moonflower. Since Moonflower sounded a lot like Moonlight Water, Okarin thought they might be able to find it in a similar place. Okarin hired an adventurer for 30G to help them find the Moonlight Lake, and they spent a full day searching the bushes beside the lake for a weird flower despite the chagrin of the adventurer who thought it was a useless endeavor.
Miraculously, Okarin seemed to discover a small patch of the flowers right before sunset as the moon started rising above the horizon.
"Good work." The witch said. "Would you like another lecture on Denouement and Dramatic Irony?"
Okarin hastily interrupted the witch before she could start rambling jibberish again.
"Um, you're going to teach me how to make potions, right?"
The witch lazily responded that Okarin was already slowly learning it, and there was nothing else to teach today.
"???"
"Come back another day," the witch said. "I'm going to go watch Tee-Vee. You're bothering me."
Okarin had no idea what this mysterious Tee-Vee thing was.
"Um, excuse me." They asked another question. "Has your cottage always been here? I never really noticed it until recently."
"Of course not," the witch said. "That's a ridiculous question."
She explained that the cottage is only here when it feels like being here.
Otherwise, it isn't here.
The witch bid Okarin a good evening, and then shut the door.
+ + +
As Okarin started walking away, it suddenly occurred to them that they never asked for the witch's name.
How strange of them to forget such basic manners?!
When the slime person turned around to glance at the cottage at the edge of the forest...
...it was gone.
Vanished into thin air.
Almost like it was never there to begin with.
Rewards:
- Points: 30 EXP
- Money: 10 G
- Other: n/a