Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 58: Interlude Patrick

What a day. Patrick yawned before blasting himself in the face with a gust of freezing cold wind in the hopes that it would wake him up a little more. At a mere twenty-five points in Fortitude, he needed a mere fraction of the sleep other humans did, but that was a far cry from some of the other people on Professor Bailey’s team, who could literally sit down, close their eyes for less time than it took for someone to grab coffee and then stay awake for another twenty-four hours.

He'd considered going that way with his build, but decided that having more mana and getting it back quicker had a higher priority. The sheer amount of options that opened up for him was simply incredible.

Patrick yawned again, resolving to invest all ten points from the next Level-up into Fortitude. Less sleep meant more time to do things, even if he’d be slightly less capable at doing those things.

He quickly glanced into the summoning room once again, [Scry] showing them fight a four meter tall flaming stick figure made from wood. Crossbow bolts thunked into it in a steady stream, each and every one being wreathed in a gigantic spectral broadhead as some kind of [Skill] was being applied. He’d have loved to be there and try and copy that and then use it as another building block for custom spells, but he had other things to do.

Forging new spells based on existing ones was not something he could do yet, but both Raul and Isaac insisted it should be soon, possibly as early as the next evolution, given that that was the natural progression of the [System Researcher] [Class]. At least according to game and story logic, which may or may not apply to real life. Patrick really didn’t know, he’d never really had much time for fun and games, he’d been too busy studying. He could have fun when he was retired.

However, as interesting as being in the summoning room with the others would be, this was an even greater opportunity. Professor Chandler was a legend. Gained a full professorship at 22, created several separate startups and sold them off, making millions in the process and he’d narrowly missed getting a Nobel Prize on two separate occasions, but still stayed here at this university, working to teach the next generation of chemists while still doing incredible research.

A chance to work with him directly, while he was doing research on a substance that no one could have used before now, making literally any discoveries something worth following up on? Now that was worth abandoning the event over. As for the [Skills] he’d be giving up his shot to copy right now, that was no problem either. Amy was there and she’d be copying as many [Skills] as she could get her hands on. While her overall attitude was far more relaxed and careless than he felt was appropriate for such serious research, no one could deny her ability and dedication to copying as many [Skills] as was humanly possible.

The flaming stick figure, which he assumed to be the Bonfire Golem from the Event summoning list, finally fell over as Karl yanked its feet out from under it and then Isaac cut it to pieces with a sweeping attack that projected out six black bars of energy that cut most of the way through it, then a wave of force erupted from Amy’s hands and shattered it in a dozen places, the spots where in had been damaged before. The reward for killing that particular creature turned out to be some kind of extremely durable and element resistant hardwood, prompting Isaac to wonder if he could use the room later to he could gather enough of it to build a house from.

That wasn’t actually a bad idea … if one was interested in living in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. Patrick could see the appeal of being well clear of anyone who might disturb him, having peace and quiet, and the spot Isaac had chosen was beautiful, but he preferred to be closer to the lab. Or rather, he wanted to be closer to the lab and was currently in the process of moving here, but he still lived in the nearby major city while the part of the university he worked at was a twenty kilometers from there. After all, this was the biological and agricultural campus, the latter of which required vast amounts of space, nevermind the fact that the Forestry faculty needed to be close to the woods.

Then they were back to tossing around ideas for ‘why the ever loving fuck would someone create an event that is practically designed to make someone summon something they couldn’t handle?’.

… as it turned out, Professor Bishop had a bit of a potty mouth.

‘Because it probably was.’ seemed to be the consensus.

Bailey looked thoughtful, Bishop looked annoyed, Amy was clearly hiding her true feelings because Patrick doubted she’d be smiling otherwise and Isaac looked uncharacteristically thunderous.

They continued to discuss the matter while Amy used magic to cool the room back down and blow in fresh air.

Finally, he reached the chemistry building. Not the university’s main one, that was in the city, but a secondary one that had been built to ensure that practical lessons for the biology students could be held near their other lectures.

He pushed against the door, trying to open it, but it was locked.

“Professor Bailey, the door’s locked. Should I just walk in or wait outside for Professor Chandler?” he asked, magically projecting his voice into the summoning room, close to a kilometer away. Now that there wasn’t an actual fight going on, startling them wouldn’t risk causing fatal consequences.

“He’s probably already in his lab. If he isn’t, he won’t mind you being in there already as long as you don’t mess with anything.” Bailey stated offhandedly, trying to look at Patrick’s point of view while speaking to him, but he was off by around ten meters.

One of these days, Patrick would have to learn how to project an image along with his voice so he could have a proper conversation, but that wasn’t a priority yet.

And now that he had permission, at least sort of, to go into the locked building. He phased through the door, then used [Levitation] while still incorporeal to reach the top floor, where the lab was located. He could have taken the stairs, but that would have required him to search for them and there really wasn’t a point when he didn’t need them in the first place, now was there?

Finding the lab itself was pretty easy to find, given that it covered the entire top floor. Patrick emerged through the floor between large cabinets full of various chemicals. Most were relatively standard metal ones with a pane of glass in the door to show their contents, but two were practically safes, massive and bulky, designed to withstand the combined force of all their contents combusting at once.

And then there was the crown jewel of this storage room, a smaller, hefty cabinet that looked weirdly ancient despite having been made quite recently, given the lack of wear and tear. That alone might have been enough to make it stand out, but the thing that really drew his attention was the mana imbued into it.

Was Professor Chandler researching magic as well? It certainly looked like it.

Suddenly, the lights were flicked on and Patrick reflexively closed his eyes, then opened them again. He could see perfectly well in the dark and was immune to such changes in the light level, but he’d not yet managed to get rid of those pesky superfluous reflexes yet.

“Made yourself at home already, I see?” a voice called from somewhere else in the lab, even though there was no line of sight between the professor and him. But somehow, the older man had known he was here.

“I got here just a few seconds ago.” Patrick replied, trying to find his way around the place using a combination of walking in random directions and scrying random spots until he found the way and coming face to face with Professor Chandler himself.

The older man matched Patrick for height despite his age and despite the late, or early, depending on how you looked at it, time, he was wearing a very sharp looking polo shirt and pants that were practically good enough to wear for at a proper event. His stark white hair was cropped close to the skull and a pair of glasses with large lenses were perched on the tip of his nose. In total, he looked like the stereotypical mad scientist pre-explosion and without the frizzy hair style.

“Good morning Professor Chandler, I’m Patrick Lerch, one of Professor Bailey’s assistants and I’ve brought you the Stellar Venom retrieved from the Uraeus Serpent included in this Event.” he introduced himself, holding out the vial of glowing orange liquid. It reminded him of lava … or maybe one of those scientific pictures of the sun.

“Ah yes, very good.” Chandler muttered, staring hungrily at the vial before finally looking at Patrick himself “Follow me please.”

And with that, he spun on his feet and hurried off in a seemingly random direction, forcing Patrick to practically run after him until the pair of them reached a separate room, completely closed off from the rest of the lab.

Unlike the rest of the place, which looked like a perfectly normal laboratory, all of the various glassware and other devices properly packed away under the tables, a small centrifuge on every other table with a large one in the corner of every room, stores of commonly used materials easily reachable in every room while the less often used chemicals were stored in the place he’d first entered.

But this place was … Patrick couldn’t decide if you could call a genius’ workspace messy if it was still working. It certainly was full, though, and in use. In many ways, it reminded him of how chemistry labs in movies looked, with the tables covered in impressive looking glassware, given that the normal ‘clean and packed up’ look labs held most of the time would be rather boring. It also held a faint whiff of magic, which he hadn’t expected.

“This is my personal lab, normally, no one else is allowed in here. Venom, please.” Chandler announced, holding out his hand expectantly. Patrick immediately gave him the vial … and his jaw hit the floor when he saw what the professor was doing with it.

Chandler had uncorked it, then waved his other hand through the air to send the smell coming from the opening towards his nose, the standard procedure for not directly inhaling any potentially dangerous fumes when dealing with chemicals. Then, he stuck his nose in before jerking his head back with a disgusted face and began to practically run through the room like a scalded cat, yanking things out of cabinets and drawers and tossing chemicals together before adding in tiny drops of the venom at speeds that would have been unsafe even if there hadn’t been fragile glass objects all over the place.

And then, one of the vials seemed to explode, mana flaring, the entire thing shining as if a miniature sun had appeared within. Patrick reflexively raised a shield in front of himself, then created a second one between Chandler and the potential bomb in his hand. If he could just survive the initial detonation, everything else could be fixed.

… but nothing actually seemed to happen. The light dimmed down to something closer to a regular lightbulb, and it was now actually possible to tell that the vial was empty, with the light emanating from the glass itself. The Chandler put it between his hands and rolled them as if he were trying to create a ball of dough and when he pulled them back apart, a glass marble that shone with an inner light lay there.

Patrick frowned. [Deep Analysis] showed how mana flowed from the professor’s hand and into the freshly created orb, where it was turned into light.

Seeing his stunned look, Chandler grinned at him “I suppose a little explanation is in order. I’m not actually a [Chemist], not anymore. I’m an [Alchemist], and that [Class] doesn’t quite work the same as my old job.”

“You’re a world renowned chemist, why …” Patrick slammed his mouth shut the instant his brain had caught up to what he was saying.

“… why would I change my career so late in life?” Chandler chuckled “Let me tell you something about academia, young man. In broad strokes, it applies to plenty of other things as well, but that’s not really the point, now is it?

“You see, getting a Bachelors is easy enough. All one needs is a little bit of intelligence, a good memory, or simple determination. Then one can go ahead and grab a Masters as well, given that it’s not that much more difficult.

“If one then has the necessary determination and willingness to work hard, as well as the time and a good idea, one can get a doctorate and eventually become a professor, something only one in two thousand people ever manages.

“But then, while one has gotten pretty far, there are still plenty of other people at the same level and from that point onwards, one needs to reach for sky. Publications in major scientific journals, major improvements to humanity’s knowledge base, even the Nobel Prize. Smarts, determination, none of that will bring you that far.

“No, that requires vision. A willingness to leave behind the normal and safe established areas of study, merely slowly expanding on existing ideas. To go down a new route just because you had an idea and want to pursue it.

“So that’s what I did. There are plenty of professors of chemistry in the world, but I am one of the first [Alchemists] and likely the first one who is also a chemistry professor. And now I’ve turned some gold powder, a standard laboratory beaker, all three different kinds of phosphor and some venom from a magical snake into a magical lamp. All you need to use it is the mana that every member of the human race has access to, or at least all the adults do. Your team wouldn’t happen to have figured out why only some of the people under sixteen have access to the [System]?”

Patrick blinked a couple of times as the steady stream of consciousness came to an end, then shook his head.

“We think it might have something to do with maturity, but we don’t know.”

“Oh well, it would have been nice to know, but I suppose the [System] is rather lacking in the information department, isn’t it?” Chandler sighed.

“The going theory, at least for our team, is that it was created with ill intentions. Which somehow doesn’t really mesh with the fact that it’s the more mature young people who have the [System], not the idiots, but everything else … take this Event, for example. Awesome prizes, from creatures slightly stronger than their Tier would indicate, available for a limited time? That practically screams that it was intended to cause trouble.” Patrick said.

“It’s a good thing you have that soldier guy, then?” Chandler suggested “Always better to have a good fighter there to keep you safe, be it from [System] monsters or idiots who think your experiments are going to end the world.”

“Soldier guy?” Patrick frowned.

“The one who dresses in colors that don’t really show blood, at least in all the videos Professor Bailey makes to show monsters. The one with the knife.”

“You mean Isaac? He’s just a mythology buff who’s dedicated to getting stronger.” Patrick shrugged.

“Nah, that’s someone who’s seen more darkness than any normal civilian does in a lifetime. He hides it well, but I’ve spent a lot of time around people like that. Actual soldiers. Not tin soldiers in a peacetime military that only sees two casualties a month, but ones who fought in bloody wars.” Chandler said seriously, then shrugged “Or maybe I’m getting old, who knows? Anyway, you’re a [Mage], right? Can you check what happens when you use a magical flame on this venom?”

Patrick blinked in surprise at the sudden change in topic but obeyed. Chandler handed him a glass dish from a random drawer, put in a drop of venom and gestured for him to light it. He did so, and a [System] window popped up, which he promptly shared with the professor.

Starvenom Flame

A normal magical flame infused with the venom of the Uraeus serpent. This can also be done to enhance attack spells in order to create firebolts that both burn and poison anything they hit.

“Well, this is interesting.” Chandler noted “Too bad it requires this venom to create, which is in very limited supply.”

“Actually, that isn’t going to be an issue.” Patrick grinned proudly at the older man and shared another window.

Firebolt -> Starvenom Bolt; Flame Creation -> Starvenom Flame Creation; …

All fire type Skills may now be created from Starvenom Flame. Would you like to upgrade them all, or create an alternate Skill for each one while retaining the original effect?

Y/N

“I’m a [System Researcher], I can copy things like that relatively easily, though that one was faster to pick up than anything else I’ve encountered. My [Skill] list might be full to bursting, but as long as I can pay careful attention to which one would be best for a given situation, I can do anything.”

“Good on you.” Chandler nodded appreciatively “Your Professor Bailey gathered up quite the nice group, didn’t he?”

Then, he turned and walked out of the room, only turning back once he was out of the door “I’m heading over to Bailey’s bunker to tell him how useful that stuff is and to try and get as much as he can. Are you coming?”

“Yeas, but they’re not there.” Patrick warned and hurried after him. That analysis hadn’t taken long, but it had been interesting. Now they’d be working together on actually gathering the samples, which was almost as cool. Onwards!