"You know, you lot can be stubborn, I swear." Rory sighed as he spoke to his captive audience.

Captive, being literal, the Scourge Mites were not exactly fond of being manhandled, twisted, and turned as Rory inspected every inch of them.

It had been several days since his outing at the Apostolos clan home-

They really need to come up with a proper last name, or clan name, or something; calling them the Apostolos household feels weird.

-and Rory had enjoyed the time out. Still, ever since he'd returned, he had been locked up in his basement with nothing but little monstrosities as company.

Said monstrosities at least knew better than to get any funny ideas. When Rory had returned, they had constructed a small spire nest, but otherwise were smart enough not to attempt a prison break.

The only time Rory broke from his work was to pick up deliveries that had been dropped off at his home. Since meeting with Irene, he'd had the 'message' feature re-established, meaning all it took was shooting her a quick message for a parcel or wheelbarrow of goodies to appear shortly at his front door.

Man, being the Big Boss Man is great. Wonder if Zoey or Eia would… You know what, no, no, they would not, so why am I even thinking about it?

"So here is my problem," Rory said as he put down a squealing mite. "I don't think your affinity for 'scourge' or whatever will go down well. If possible, I'd like to introduce some variety of Star Blood Mites, if such a thing is feasible. Or Renewal Mites, I suppose, but that name sounds silly, don't you agree?"

The mites were silent, aside from a quick chitter as they looked up at their tormentor.

"I already severed the blight aspect from your… genus? Family? Not even sure you would consider that as a functional classification, but I digress."

The mites continued to remain silent.

"Jeff, come here," Rory said, pointing at one of the mites that visibly flinched. He wasn't sure why, but at some point, he'd decided to name the small family of mites. Jeff, one of the first two drones, did not seem excited at the prospect.

"Oh, get over yourself."

Snatching the mite to a protesting squeal, Rory poked and prodded, feeling its razor-sharp teeth without a hint of worry.

"Without that blight connection, you lot evolved, changed, whatever you want to refer to it as, as Scourge creatures. Scourge, therefore, sounds like a form of poison or toxin, an adjacent concept that mingles explicitly with the blood affinity. You all following me?"

The mites, in fact, were not following his explanation.

"I need to remove the elements of pestilence concepts entirely, while maintaining your overall function. I'm curious whether the Blight Khan created you purposely, or if it was just a chance of random creation or spawning."

Jeff trembled, held awkwardly, but otherwise made no other move to respond to his lecture.

"Either way, I need to do further work."

Which was precisely what Rory had been doing the last few days, collecting as much data as he could on the mites.

Now, how to put this all together?

It was a question that Rory found himself circling endlessly. The mites had been cut off from the influence of the Blight Khan, but it wasn't enough.

I need a mite, and I need it to align with the municipal affinity of Ehkorrus for my plan to work.

It was very much easier said than done. Rory's original stipulation for his work with the mites was to retain their identity as a mite-genotype, and the second was any alignment that wasn't blight.

And that had already taken quite a bit of work. It would be like looking at a data set and being able to accept any number as long as it was in the top fifty percent.

Now? Now he was essentially looking for only a single cross-section and an order of magnitude more precise at that. Not just that, the specific form of alignment he needed from the desired form of mite-monster was far and away the most advanced form of pneuma he'd ever encountered, save for perhaps foundational-aspect pneuma.

Pneuma was… weird. There was, of course, neutral pneuma. Then it branched out, be it fire-aspect pneuma, earth, etc. Your affinity could help quite a bit in that regard, making the production or usage of such types damn near second nature, yet even that only went so far the further out you branched.

That was the fundamental problem with renewal-aspect pneuma. It was the result of years, if not decades, of blood, growth, and solar or stellar aspect pneuma clashing, colliding, and refining against one another until a new type was achieved and adopted by the city of Ehkorrus.

Trying to replicate that on his own would be asking a lot, not to mention balancing it with living monsters as well.

If I tried to brute force it…

Rory did a quick mental calculation, adjusting for the time it had taken to create a basic scourge mite against the time it had taken to become experienced with other pneuma aspects, such as heavenly-aspect pneuma, which had taken the better part of a decade or more to achieve near-fluent usage.

Something like… sixteen decades? Even if I were to cut that down to a tenth through educational revelations or whatnot, that's still sixteen years.

"Yeah, pretty much what I expected, Jeff," Rory sighed, before finally putting the poor monstrosity back down, which scurried away to put as much distance between itself and Rory.

So, brute force isn't the move. Still, I never really assumed it would be. Valid for the preliminary monster permutations, then nothing more.

"New plan, rope in helpers."

In particular, there was one person he had in mind, someone he'd already made contact with.

I could try to shoot her a direct message, but I think I'll be polite and take the roundabout way.

Opting to send a message to Irene instead, Rory continued his work until it felt like minutes later, when Rory sensed someone approaching; his entire tree seemed to react to the presence nearing.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Oh, must be Mariah.

Not bothering to move, a new presence soon made itself known, a quick spike of her aura like waving at someone you were searching for.

"You got here fast," Rory said as he turned to look at the woman who was looming one step from the basement floor.

"Fast? It's been three days."

"Huh, really?" Rory scratched his nose before shrugging. "Ehh, guess it has been, I was just absorbed in this little problem."

"That you have an infestation of rather nightmarish bug monsters in your basement dungeon?"

"I wouldn't call this a dungeon, it's more of a lab."

"No, what I have at my place is a lab, this is very much some sort of depraved dungeon where untold experiments are made to take place."

"Why exactly do you sound excited?"

"Oh, because I am," Mariah said, a gleam in her eyes before she frowned. "Though, you couldn't have, oh, I don't know, installed some sort of light fixture down here?"

"Why? I can see just fine," Rory said, his eye glowing for a brief instant as he pulsed his eye skill.

"Yes, and no one else can, except those who have some sort of night vision skill."

"You don't?"

"Why would I?" Mariah asked, sounding confused. "I don't exactly spend time working in the dark or anything of that ilk, nor do I need to keep a low profile in monster-infested areas."

"Huh, fair," Having not given it much thought, Rory shrugged as he twisted his hand, glowing red crystals pushing out of the walls and dirt.

"Eerie lighting,"

"Red hue because I'm using my twin affinities as the basis for this freeform magic, then lighting them with a spark of excess energy within. Also, red lighting is going to be easier on poor Jeff, Bill, Mandy, and Marla."

"You named them?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Of course," Mariah sighed as she made her way to stand next to Rory's crouched body. "I appreciate the invitation, by the way, but I'll be honest, I'm not sure how much direct help I can be with this specific area. I'm an alchemist, not a zookeeper."

"Oh, you know that word," Rory said, surprised for a moment before shaking his head. "I understand your normal experience is specifically brews and transmutation, but you can think of this as a slightly more advanced version. Anyway, out of any profession, vocation, artisan, whatever label you want to throw around, it's alchemists who have the most hands-on experience with manipulating and understanding pneuma aspects and their connected concepts."

"I guess that's valid," Mariah said with a slow nod. "But how exactly do these things play into your original plans of turning the walls into fake organisms?"

"Symbiosis," Rory said, holding his hand up like a lecturer. "The walls will be akin to coral, and these guys, or their descendants, will be akin to the fish that live within."

"Coral?"

Not bothering to explain, Rory withdrew a small coral specimen from his volcanic base and tossed it to the woman. Even if his inventory was empty of weapons, it was far from empty of everything.

"Oh, gotcha," Mariah answered after taking a moment to examine the material and toss it back to Rory. "So, you want to change their base nature, and you can't just brute force transmute them?"

"No, these guys aren't plants, which are more receptive to being forcibly altered; it would just kill them, at least with my current understanding. Perhaps if I spent a few years working on a mechanism to 'graft' the desired changes over time-"

"I don't think Apostolos nor Irene would appreciate it if you went into a self-imposed exile right after returning."

"My thoughts as well," Rory agreed. "Originally, I ended up with these few by feeding the original reproducing specimen, a blight mite, a specific blend of pneuma aspects."

"And you knew you could do that… how?"

"A hunch," Rory said, not in the mood to explain the specifics. "Anyway, while that would be a valid course, it's one thing to breed out a type of monster whose base requirement is 'anything but aural aspect X' and another to try to specifically tailor for 'aural aspect XYZ squared.' If you follow."

"I do."

"Good."

Staring at him for several seconds, Maraiah finally raised an eyebrow. "So… now what?"

"Good question," Rory said, nodding along. "No idea."

"No idea?"

"No idea," Rory repeated. "Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"Mostly," Rory confirmed.

"Are you being purposely obstinate, or are you just always this way with people?"

"No, I'm actively formulating thoughts as we go along," Rory chuckled before pointing at his head. "Three mental threads, and I'm slowly working on reliably constructing a fourth, though for the time it can only handle basic functions like monotonous tasks."

"Best I can do is two," Mariah said, inclining her head. "And my second thread still isn't fully fleshed out."

"Should have put more emphasis on Cognition," Rory said with a tut.

"I would have, but I need durability as well to withstand my experiments and failures, and even some pneuma, which hasn't left me as many attributes as I'd like."

"Go heavier in growth then."

Mariah stared at Rory for several seconds before sighing and shaking her head. "Go growth he says. Yes, I'd love to spend two hundred and fifty years in A7 and die of old age before I touch A8."

"Oh, it's not that bad," Rory said with a chuckle, as Mariah once more stared at him as if he were missing some brain cells.

You know what, subject change time.

"So, idea, remember how I said I mostly had no idea? Well, I have since come up with something."

"Being?"

"We take the aura of Ehkorrus, concentrate it, then bottle it in a liquid brew."

Whereas Mariah had been looking at him like he'd lost brain cells earlier, now she looked at him as if he had lost his entire damn mind.

"What?" Rory finally asked after several seconds.

"Sorry, I just must have gotten ahead of myself and made a wild assumption," Mariah said, shaking her head. "You mean, you want to create an alchemic receptacle in brew form, and instill it with the conceptual element of renewal, correct? Like what we do with Astra and her stellar runoff?"

"Not sure I like calling it stellar 'runoff,'" Rory said, making a face. "But, no. I mean, we concentrate and energize renewal-aspect pneuma into pure liquid pneuma, then use that as the solvent base of a proper brew."

Rory held up his hand, lifting fingers as if counting off a simple list.

Mariah, meanwhile, continued to stare with an expression of utter disbelief.

"What?"

"Liquid pneuma."

"Liquid pneuma," Rory confirmed, feeling as if he were repeating himself a lot.

"If I told you that no one here has ever managed to produce liquid pneuma successfully, would you respond with 'oh, I do it every other day' or something equally inane?"

"No," Rory said as if it were preposterous.

"Oh, good."

"Only sometimes."

"Yeah, right, probably should have seen that coming," Mariah sighed, shaking her head. "So many things make more sense when I think about how Apostolos ended up the way he is."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing," Mariah said, crossing her arms. "I'm not sure where I play into all this."

"I'll handle the liquid pneuma," Rory said. If even liquid pneuma using base forms of pneuma was too much for the best of Ehkorrus to manage, trying to produce liquid renewal-aspect pneuma was something only he could manage. "But I want you to figure out the actual details of the brew itself: ingredients, aspects, concepts, the whole nine yards. The purpose is to use the brew to either instigate a forced evolution of our lovely scourge mites," Rory nodded to the pack of terrorized monsters. "Or, to induce a new generation of mites to be born that align with the elements of Ehkorrus."

"You make this sound like something simple. This alone would be my magnum opus."

"Hah," Rory laughed, feeling cheeky. "It really is simple. It's fifty/fifty when you think about it. Either we succeed, or we don't."

"Any other small tasks? Perhaps we can transmute a material into legendary grade?"

"Nah, I still don't even feel close to making aberrant grade gear with any sort of realistic success rate."

"You really don't see the world from a normal lens, do you?" Mariah asked. Even as exasperated as she sounded, there was a sharp twinkle in her eyes.

"What fun is that? Living a life of purely rudimentary satisfaction, with basic goals and successes… Let's say I can imagine a life like that, and while it's not a bad life, I'd rather experience everything life has to offer. Shoot for the moon, end up amongst the stars and all that jazz."

Mariah was silent for a few seconds, before, slowly, a quiet giggle petered out from between pressed lips, eventually turning into a fully bodied belly laugh.

"Something I said particularly amusing?" Rory questioned.

"No, just how you look at the insane as ordinary. It's a whole lot better for my progress than whipping up my billionth brew of unyielding strength. Plus, it's better than doing whatever the Guild wants to try to pester me into doing since their alchemists can't hold a candle to me."

"The Adventurers guild?"

"What?" Mariah looked at Rory as if he were insane. "No, the former crafts guild, which has since been rebranded to the Guild of Arts, assuming they aren't lobbying to vote on another name change as if that is at all important."

While Rory could sense hostility, a more pressing question found its way to the tip of his tongue.

"We have one of those?"

Turning her head slowly, Mariah appraised Rory for several seconds before huffing.

"Still better than the Guild."

Why does that feel like it was said as an insult?

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