A New Star Chapter 96 (Patreon)

On the whole, I just needed to spend time in the Wilds, considering that I wasn’t going to be finding anything without actually being there. But first, exactly what I was thinking about, time to do some more alchemy. After returning to the estate and reviewing my plans, I locked myself away in my lab, using a large amount of the ingredients I had acquired, or had others acquire for me, to brew thousands and thousands of pills. I wasn’t going for any more ranks in alchemy, though I would in the near future, but I was already one of the best alchemists in the whole country, though that wasn’t saying a lot considering how maligned the art was these days. Not that I really didn’t understand, especially considering that most people didn’t have the skill to brew so many pills so often and have them be of so high a quality.

Concocting and brewing were also tedious processes for most, but I found them enjoyable, even the hundredth time I had performed the same series of steps. That was another reason alchemy was annoying for many people, though the same could be said about other professions, especially forging, as apprentices in that trade often did the same exact thing for days straight. I would clean out much of what I had on hand and stocked up before heading into the Wilds, making sure that the herbs were turned into pills. Ironic as it was, pills and potions often kept a little better than herbs in the long run. Both could be stored in special containers that preserved them for a long time, but an herb did best in nature, in the ground, planted and thriving. Once it was plucked, it would start to fade, even in a very good storage container, but the same wasn’t true for a pill. Therein, the medicinal properties had been refactored and locked into a different form, one that took longer to fade over time and was easy to keep in a safe state.

I wasn’t going to have to deal with the pills in either case, as I was going to drop them off for Pietr. We had ourselves a nice little business going, one which was legitimate for the most part, and I made sure the biggest offense, tax avoidance, was taken care of. Even with us smuggling goods and doing work off the books, the earnings were still noted down in the ‘legal’ side of our paperwork and the full tax paid on them. If the Crown investigated at some point and found the smuggling, even Robin and Pietr would get a light slap on the wrist for that, and that was if I didn’t step in and smooth things over. If the Crown, however, found that we hadn’t been honest in our earnings statements and accounting for our taxes, that was not going to be a slap on the wrist but more like an avalanche on our heads, which would be something much more tedious to negotiate our way out from under.

I didn’t need to worry much about that; as long as the smuggling avoided a few prohibited items, including death-related items, which were being heavily scrutinized because of the cult right now, then it was something that was barely noticeable for a noble, let alone one of my standing. Basically every noble in the country was wrapped up in some kind of little under-the-table deal or business at this point; trying to quash them all would keep the Crown busy till the light of the stars finally faded, so there was a certain amount of graft that was…tolerable, as long as things didn’t go too far. And as long as people weren’t idiots about it; any time anyone got caught with their fingers in something they shouldn’t be dealing with, it was big fuel for the rumor mill and the capital gossips kept it alive for months.

I had crated up everything I made, and yes, it did require more than one crate to contain everything, and proceeded to haul the things to Pietr. Unlike years ago, I didn’t need to rely on my physical strength alone to handle things; I grabbed all the crates with my affinities, using gravity to lighten them and ice to move them, creating sets of claws of ice that grabbed the crates and slid along the ground. I then moved everything through The Dark, the entire estate unaware of what was happening and what I was doing. I moved the stuff to town, dropping it in a room in Pietr’s tavern, where Robin would then grab it on one of her trips back north. Her team was now using a set of the trucks (no longer modified wagons with engines but full-on trucks built for purpose) to haul goods between cities, something they were used to from the days when they had been using wagons to smuggle minor goods back and forth. They would have used the train, but the rail company charged an extortionate price for shipping bulk goods, or any goods, really, and that would have destroyed any profit in the business, or so Robin claimed.

How and why they did it was none of my business. As long as they were paying me my cut and not doing anything particularly stupid, then I didn’t care if they flew all the crates right to the target city. I had marked and labeled everything, leaving it in a stack in the corner, not bothering with Pietr or his goons today, walking back to the estate before anyone had even had an inkling that I had left. I then grabbed my equipment and supplies and headed out, again walking The Dark and disappearing from the estate without even a whisper. I had already consulted on bolstering the defenses of the estate, but the enchanters had a damnable time trying to figure out what I was doing, let alone trying to figure out how to program into the defenses how to detect, let alone stop, someone doing something similar. The only bright spot there being that I was rather special in this particular affinity; others may have lightning, even if not as powerful as mine, or even something like gravity, but The Dark was very rare and quite special, or so the story went.

All I knew was that it provided a rather great advantage to me, one which I shamelessly took advantage of at every single opportunity. It was no different today, either, as I trekked through that strange, faded place of other, moving north, through a gap in the mountains and towards one of my hideouts. I only dropped out of The Dark once I was in the hideout, staying there for about an hour, though I wasn’t really doing much. I was just getting my scent, mana signature, and other signs there; if someone followed me, they would assume they had found one of my hiding spots, which was accurate, or maybe even the only hiding spot, which was not. I always used different fallbacks to confuse anyone that might possibly be following me or tracking me, and I had the help of alchemy in foiling such attempts as well, various concoctions of mine used for several different scrambling methods.

First, I applied a type of powder around the area, one which was specifically crafted to just erase my scent and no other. Deploying a powder that just erased smells, or that covered things up, like an air freshener, didn’t really do a great job. It was easy to detect and some of them were easy to counter. Much more difficult was the prospect of following someone somewhere and having no signs of them, that one being in particular, having ever set foot in that location. Targeting only my own scent in an area was a way to throw anyone, or anything, given it was the Wilds and who knew what was here, off the scent and keep them guessing.

Second, I used a kind of special pill I had found a record for in the capital to throw off any tracing magics. Those extended to more than just scent, and some of them even included things like catching glimpses of past events in specific locations. The pills I had brewed, when dissolved in a solution of alcohol and ginger, would mess with mana patterns in a small area around them. That interference would last for about four hours, and anything that happened from just before the pill dissolved to between three and four hours later would be extremely blurry if not downright impossible to ferret out regardless of affinity used.

The last precaution I had from alchemy was a way to keep tracking spells from locking onto me if someone found this location or searched around it. It was all well and good to try to hide what I was doing and throw someone off the scent, but there was also the thought that someone or something could stumble on the location, sniff around, and figure where I had gone after I was here. I had a special type of powder that I used for that, one that interfered with certain skills and affinities and made it very difficult to figure out where someone had gone after a certain location.

I deployed all the countermeasures in just a minute, still being careful to be meticulous even as I did it rather quickly. I waited a bit over an hour before I then moved out, quickly heading to a second base where I did the exact same procedures, including waiting an hour before moving on. I would have concocted some fresh pills in the meantime, but doing alchemy while I had all those various pills and powder interfering with the surrounding mana and area wasn’t a great idea, though I had tested it and found I could do it in a pinch. Still, it didn’t produce the kinds of results that I wanted, so I passed time in my obfuscating by study spell notes, trying to figure out better ways to utilize affinities to create certain effects.

I had moved on from there and headed over to the old mage’s tower, the place where I had found the notes on fire affinities, which I still had not sold or traded to anyone. I wasn’t really in utter, desperate need for money, and if I was, there were others ways I would likely go about getting it rather than part with the notes. I was saving them for a rainy day, but more for if something interesting popped up that the person would only except a valuable trade for. The person wouldn’t even have to be someone interested in fire affinities or with a relative interested in fire affinities; nobles loved to collect things, especially rare or one of a kind things, just to show off their wealth and power. While my family didn’t tend to fall into that trap all that often, there were scrolls locked away in glass cases in the family library where part of the point did seem to be that they were rare and valuable. Of course such things would need protected, but showing them off in a glass case also sent its own message.

I moved through the tower, making sure nothing had been disturbed, before dropping off a few supplies and scanning the area. Satisfied that everything was right and proper, I used some of the methods to disguise my presence and passage, waiting just a short time before slipping out, heading into the woods to the north. The Shiverwood, as it was often called in older documents, was a bit of a dreary place at the best of times, though the one good thing I could say about was that it didn’t rain all that often. Enough for the forest to be healthy, but it was a marsh or swamp, nor was there perpetual cloud or fog haunting the place. It did get some properly nasty storms, however, part of that being because it was sandwiched between two mountain chains, and partly because the natural weather patterns seemed to line up properly. I was also suspicious that the abundance of mana in the atmosphere had certain effects on the weather and climate, but that was going to be a much taller order to prove. Studying both weather and climate required a huge amount of data, meaning a huge number of advanced observation posts, and it also required immense computational resources. Considering there weren’t even magical or magitech computers on this world, or at least, on this continent, that was a very tall order indeed.

The one thing I could say about the Shiverwood was that, while it was not silent, it was a generally quiet place. There wasn’t any civilization there, as far as I could ever find, and the animals, beasts, and occasional monsters didn’t create any particular cacophony of noise and sound as they went about their business. I was on high alert at this point, as there was plenty of danger here, and not just beasts and monsters. Yes, there were plenty of those, of kinds and strength that would push me to my limits and beyond, but there was all kinds of strange phenomena in the Shiverwood and the Wilds as a whole. Some of it was wondrous, some of it was dastardly, some of it was both, and some simply defied normal reason or logic.

Exploring any part of the Wilds was a dangerous prospect, more so anywhere an expedition had not been recently, and even more than that was doing it solo. I had strength, though not nearly enough, in my own opinion, experience, and knowledge. Even still, I often moved quickly and silently, constantly scanning my surroundings, immersing myself in the sounds and noises of whatever location I was in. If the birds and insects suddenly went quiet, or there was a new noise that wasn’t there a moment ago, or animals started crying out all at once, these could all be indications that something was seriously wrong. I kept my eyes peeled as well, but vision was likely one of the less useful senses here; the forest was dense as hell and anything that I could see that was a danger I should have heard or detected with my mana senses and affinities long before that point.

Smell was also important, including for harvesting rare plants and materials. I had been blessed, or maybe Alex had been blessed, with a preternatural sense of plants and animals in the surroundings, and part of that was certain a very strong olfactory sense. I was able to pick up on the smell of a fresh herb or magical plant from hundreds of yards away, a slight shift in the wind bringing a cool scent, or a loamy and musty smell, or a sharp spice into my nostrils. Such was how I found the first rather interesting, and rather dangerous, encounter of this longer expedition, stopping to confirm exactly where the scent was coming from.

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