Secret Agent Chapter 080 - Ivy's Alchemical Atrocities (Patreon)

Zack Adder clapped his hands together. “That said, is it alright if I bring Henrietta with me? I’m planning to go visit an alchemist to see about the paper, then I’d like to take her to Apothecary Row to see the plants for the cards herself.”

“Only if Roxy goes as well, as an escort,” Sister Paula said primly, giving Zack a look.

Roxy, to Zack’s surprise, sighed. “Unfortunately, Sister, Jack is too much of a gentleman.” She shot him a side-eyed glance. “Though I’m sure Sister Paula would be put at ease if you would just declare your undying love for me already.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” Zack laughed woodenly.

Roxy sighed again.

“This is your own egregious flirtation coming back to bite you,” Sister Paula chided Roxy, then turned to Henrietta. “Do you wish to go with Mister Jack and Roxy? If so, I’ll excuse you from chores for the evening.”

“Yes!” Henrietta’s face lit up with excitement.

“Very well. Roxy, I leave her in your care. Please bring her back before sunset.” It was late afternoon by this point, so there wasn’t much time to dilly-dally, and Zack needed to go to the alchemist before he went to Kathy’s.

After extricating themselves from a swarm of children begging to also go with Roxy, the three made their way to the alchemist. Along the way, Zack explained his immediate plans. After the unexpected intrusion from Cori, and the need to bring Henrietta back before sunset, he had a bit less time than expected.

He supposed in the worst case he could simply buy some herb samples for Henrietta to take back to the orphanage, but he’d prefer to save the money.

As they went, Zack carefully tuned his [Intimidation] for the layabouts and loiterers along the streets, using his [Acting] and related skills to keep it from affecting Henrietta too much. The trick seemed to be in the set of his shoulders and the precise scowl on his face. The young teen girl walked hand in hand with Roxy who seemed completely unworried about the men glaring at them.

“So today I would like to finalize the design for one card, and let you start working on it tonight and tomorrow. Do you have lighting after dark in the orphanage?”

Henrietta shook her head, and Zack could barely see her do so out of the corner of his eye. Then, realizing he wasn’t looking at her, she responded quietly. “No, not for us children. Sister Paula has some candles but uses them sparingly. Even when we work on the posters for the Theater, we do so during the day.”

“That’s fine,” Zack answered. He looked back, suppressing his [Intimidation], and saw that she was struggling to keep up with his stride, so he slowed down. “I’d like to get copies of cards for one or two kinds of plants first, to introduce and test the concept, but there are dozens of kinds of plants the apothecaries want gathered. Plenty of room to expand over time.”

“Uh, Mister Jack, won’t people eventually just learn how to do the, uh, the gathering without the cards, and then they won’t need them anymore?”

Roxy inhaled audibly. Sienna flickered her tongue, though that was unrelated to the conversation.

“You’re right,” Zack freely admitted. There had been soldiers and NCOs who could do their maintenance entirely without the maintenance cards back in the Army, too. “But the adventurers who get good at that will move on to other things as they move up in rank, and lower ranking adventurers will join who won’t know how to do it.”

Zack caught Roxy gazing at him with narrowed eyes.

“Jack, were you an adventurer before you came to Fortinium? You talk like you know that already. But you’ve only been in the Adventurer’s Guild for, what, a week?

Had it really only been a week?

“I’ve already experienced it,” he equivocated. “When I first started, I did courier jobs, you know, delivering letters around town. But then my rank went up, and now the Guild doesn’t want me doing the low rank courier requests anymore. They save them for the newer adventurers. Instead, if I want to keep getting contribution points, I have to do quests appropriate for my rank.”

“Hmmm…” Roxy let the matter drop, but he could still feel her gaze on his skin.

Henrietta, though, nodded as though it made sense.

“Anyway,” Zack continued. “Even if the cards aren’t used often, they’ll just sit there in the Guild until they’re needed. Once they’re created, they’ll just keep generating profit until they get destroyed somehow.”

And… that was where he lost both of them.

“Huh?” Henrietta softly muttered.

“I don’t really get it…” Roxy said.

“That’s okay,” Zack assured them. “Henrietta, all you have to do is copy the cards. I’ll handle the rest.”

After taking a number of side streets they reached the back end of Apothecary Row, the end farthest away from stink street.

There was a plaza there, with the alchemy shop Zack had seen several days ago.

Ivy’s Alchemical Atrocities.

Might as well start here.

The sun was still high enough in the sky for two or three hours of sunlight.

As they approached the storefront, however, Roxy read the sign and scrunched up her nose.

“‘Ivy’s Alchemical Atrocities’… Jack, what exactly are you planning to do to the paper?”

“Make it waterproof and harder to tear.”

Henrietta’s eyes went wide. “You can do that?” she asked, equal parts incredulous and hopeful.

“It’s not perfect, and, uh, I don’t know if the alchemists here know how to do it yet.”

“But you know how to do it,” Roxy stated.

“Kind of. I have a rough idea, anyway.”

“Hmmm…”

The storefront only had very small windows; but the windows, rather than giving a view of the interior of the shop, revealed small display cases. There was what could only be a mister, which looked like an old antique perfume spray bottle with a long tube and bulb at the end. There was also, next to it in the same display case, a small object the size and approximate shape of an egg with a bump at the top. Another display case held light crystals in various sizes, and a number of different housings for the light crystals to reflect, focus, or diffract the light using mirror-like, polished metal surfaces and glass. Another held clothing items, though without labels, Zack couldn’t tell what about them was alchemical. Gloves, socks, a vest, and a bowler hat were on display. And the last display before they reached the door held jewelry, though not particularly stylish in design.

Zack pushed the door open, and a bell above his head rang, drawing Sienna’s immediate attention, and he stepped inside. Henrietta followed, then Roxy, and then the door shut, leaving them all in a surprisingly small shop. It was only about six feet deep, and thrice as wide, and the back was fully occupied by a worktable with only the slightest concession made for business transactions amid what appeared to be half-constructed devices and piles of junk and raw materials.

“Just a minute!”

The top of a woman’s head—auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail—revealed itself just peeking over the counter, and she must have climbed onto a step stool because she rose to a height where she could see over the waist high counter.

She was incredibly short.

“Welcome!” she said brightly. “I’m Ivy! What can I do ya for?”

Zack stepped forward, and he could see that other than her petite size, she was a normal-looking woman. Auburn hair, a straight nose, round face, and freckles across her nose and cheeks. She wore a heavy leather apron, and had a pair of goggles with glass lenses hanging around her neck.

“Hi, I’m Jack,” Zack introduced himself. “I’m interested in a way to make paper more sturdy, and waterproof. Is that something you can do?”

“Eh, paper?” Ivy tilted her head and her eyes turned upward to the ceiling. She pondered a moment with a finger on her chin. “Yeah, I reckon I can, but it depends on exactly what you want and how much you’re willing to spend. And the kind of paper.”

Zack frowned.

There were different kinds of paper?

“And you’re talking about paper, right? Made from plants? Not parchment?”

“Uh…”

The paper with which he was most familiar was lined filler paper used in school, and even that had mostly been provided by his teachers, or by the Army. By the time he got to the NSA, everything had been digital, and they’d been pushing hard to go entirely paperless.

But he couldn’t exactly say he just wanted something like a deck of cards.

“Well, what I’m trying to do is make a card about this big with some information on it, that an Adventurer can put in their pocket without damaging it too much. So tear-resistant, and a bit waterproof so it doesn’t get messed up from sweat or spills to the point it can’t be read.”

Ivy blinked. “Oh, that’s nothin’. But there ain’t no such thing as a ‘bit waterproof.’ It’s either waterproof or it ain’t. You’re talking about water resistance. The reagents are totally different, and a lot cheaper than waterproof.”

What followed was a small lecture on reagents and levels of water-resistance that frankly went over Zack’s head. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand the words she was saying, but the principles of it were entirely different from how things were treated back on Earth.

In his experience, lamination was some kind of plastic or goop that got put on paper in a laminator, and then it had a clear shell of hardened goop that repelled water. He figured it was similar to the waterproof spray he could put on his boots, too.

But Ivy was talking about property extraction, imbuement, elemental interactions, and effect intensification.

“...and so you can see the particular paper you choose is going to have a massive effect on the overall alchemization and you’ll need to choose your ink carefully as well…”

“Excuse me, isn’t there just a kind of stuff you can put on the paper?”

Roxy gave him a look.

Henrietta simply looked like her brain was overheating.

Ivy, however, took his ineloquent question seriously.

“Hmm… so you don’t actually want to alter the paper, just encase it?”

Zack snapped his fingers, making Sienna jerk to look at his hand.

“Yeah, but just a thin layer, so it’s still a little flexible, but harder to crease or tear.”

“Maybe… river slime… resin…” She muttered to herself a bit, then looked up at Zack and Sienna, her gaze shifting back and forth. “Are you making disposable talismans, then? Because if so the encasement itself will interfere with your spell activation.”

“Spell? No, these are just cards with information on them, for adventurers.”

Ivy gave him a skeptical look.

“Besides,” Zack continued. “I can’t do spells or magic. I don’t have the [Skills] for it.”

“Ahh…” Ivy’s expression shifted, first to something like pity, then to something more mischievous. “[Magic Perception] and [Magic Control], right?”

“Yeah. I don’t have those skills, so I can’t be a [Mage].”

Ivy nodded knowingly and smugly. “Heh, yeah, but that ain’t the only way to do magic.” She pointed at Zack’s chest, or more specifically, at the tonic in the external pouch of his first aid kit, still strapped to his body. “What do you think that tonic is, exactly? Magery is one thing, potion brewing is another, and the magic I do here is [Alchemy].”