With what looked like a gourmet cooking station I placed down several herbs, slowly cutting, and crushing various plants to get optimum medical properties from each one. The difference between study and actually doing was rather apparent as I had failed over twenty times while trying to make a simple pill that increases the muscle growth after training.
Balancing the poison that promoted the destruction of muscles to build upon them and the healing extracts were the biggest problems. Too much poison your body would feel fatigued and it would take you longer to recover. The reverse, where you had too much healing, it would just repair the damage instead of forcing your body to speed up recovery effectively making the workout worthless.
The other more nuanced things like a pain reliever to make it not feel like your muscles were being torn apart, the mild laxative to get rid of toxins and the cleanser were all rather straight forward in comparison. Too much of any of those would make you uncomfortable but you'd still feel the effects of the pill. Though I'm sure many would complain about having far too much laxative, but I'm sure extra couldn't hurt much.
Measuring out and writing down my measurements, I tried to make the pill for the twenty-first time. All the while crushing and cutting various other plants and extracts to use for later. My hands were constantly busy doing one thing or another, each step carefully done with its own tools. Behind me, various bottles filled with my finished products were sorting themselves slowly as I trained my psionic abilities.
After a series of adjustments to the fire, and turning my hour, minute, and seconds glasses over. These would go off one after another letting me select any time between two hours rather accurately... as far as I could tell at least. Adding a series of regulatory additives to the mixture I lowered the temperature so it could form a gel at the bottom before the final steps of the pill making.
"If I took my alchemical practices and used it for cooking I could probably make a great dish." I topped two of the beakers that ran tubes into the cauldron that the pills were being formed in to make sure that they gave a constant drip of the laxatives and pain-relieving drugs.
Sealing the cauldron I began turning the knob to the side of it so it started to roll around to evenly heat the mixture from now on. After two hours of rotating the knob, I turned off the heat and continued to turn until my arm got tired.
Unsealing the lid some steam came from the mixture, it was white this time without any purple which meant that it was a success. The final step was easy, using pure mana to cover the whole mixture before condensing pieces of it into round pills. After they came out each of them was about the size of an eraser tip.
'Explosive Cleanser with Muscle Building Properties: Once taken the user will have explosive diarrhea after four hours, this will last for an hour and a half before the body is cleansed of toxins. A side effect of this drug is that your muscles will experience five times the normal growth, and your foundations will be 5% better for future growth.'
"Ah, maybe adding that much laxatives was a bad thing, though the normal formula only increased the foundation by 1%." Thinking it over I nodded, "Definitely worth it in my opinion as you could only take this drug once per week."
I contemplated adding more of the laxatives but the effects would overshadow the primary ingredients too much then. With a nod, I bottled up the twenty-seven pills and looked at the God Drone with interest. The God Drone through its several fights in the wilderness had developed survival senses and immediately ran off.
In the drone's mind, it could feel the stare of death on him, whatever the entity wanted it would not help him! Fearing for its life it went to the safer, monster-infested forest. It would not return until it could evolve, then it would show that shadow of death who's who!
At a loss of words, I looked at the cute little strangler, who started at me innocently unaware. Its eyes blinked slowly as if something was on its mind, as it felt a shiver of fear from the look in my eyes.
"Strangler you shall become my number one disciple! You shall get the most resources of them all and become a beast that can't be fought against even if they're three evolutions above you! Do you accept this?" I yelled out to the strangler passionately, gripping my first to my chest like a heroic general. The wind around me slowly picked up to make the grass sway at my words, and flower petals dance between us.
The strangler grew visibly excited and moved forward with a glimmer in its eyes knowing that from then on its fate would change. It crawled to my feet, looking up with a shy, yet determined look as it shook a little bit in anticipation.
"From now on, you shall be known as Lucius Morningstar!" Suddenly I felt weak as a massive amount of mana was leaving my body.
Naming a creature was a serious thing that any beastmaster would be able to tell you about. Only the most loyal of their beasts under a contract that completely bound the master with the beast. By using mana, and a name one could give the monster immense potential and drive it to evolutions not even possible previously. This made their most loyal, and powerful beasts a force that you couldn't ignore.
There were negatives, and reasons you couldn't perform this to just any beast. If the beast was to refuse, or it couldn't accept your blessing due to your mana not being compatible then you'd sacrifice a lot for no benefits. Since a naming could only happen once per year, this also made people's selections more precious.
The sacrifices that the master took were not much to any beastmaster as they relied a lot on the beasts that they fought with for their attack and defense. For another mage, it was almost a death sentence for a year, as your mana would be cut in half for that year to enhance the creature but it was an investment. Once you got your mana back, it would be increased and transformed into something much more powerful allowing the mage in most cases to advance.
Two things were required for naming, both of which I unknowingly fulfilled. One, your mana reserves have to at least be at the same stage as the creature, in this case, bronze. Two, the creature has to be compatible with you, and as their progenitor, there was no one more compatible than me. At least that's the requirements for an artificial naming, a natural one is still a mystery.
When the creature you named becomes stronger you also gain the benefits, but this is limited to the body. As beastmasters have to keep up, and often times fight alongside their beasts an advancement in their body was a very big boon to them, other mages wouldn't risk a year without half their mana though for such 'minor' benefits.
The very last benefit was showing up on my body in a process that looked very painful but was harmless. My skin was slowly darkening as if being burnt by a brand that would allow me to call a creature into my soul to rest, or out to battle. The tattoo looked strange on my body though, a black blob with spider legs and shiny eyes was turned into a chibi version of itself on my skin.
Bronze rank pets will only take up an inch of space on your skin, as it went higher though more space was taken up. It didn't matter the actual size of the beast at all when it was formed into a tattoo. The good thing was that these tattoos could be anywhere on your body, so mine was hidden on my left shoulder blade. This would hide it for now as my body was currently laying down, and it wouldn't be a hassle to explain things should they arise.
After being drained of mana, I started to train Lucius in speed and explosive strength, making him be able to go from shadow to shadow to blend in. Every time his body could endure it, I fed him one of the pills until his body instinctually shivered any time I pulled one of them out. This made him lose stored biomass but came with many benefits as he was twice his normal size in a very short time.
Various other pills were experi- I mean gifted to Lucius before our time was up, as I knew I could only do so much. My time, and my skills were limited and wouldn't progress much since I had no outside knowledge. I needed to expand what I already knew, as I only had so much imagination to progress myself.
In fact...
'5 hours, 37 minutes'
There was very little time on the countdown until I was free from my soul. There wasn't much to prep, but I made sure to turn the original drone into a meat pool as I didn't know the next time I would be able to come here. This would be considered a long term investment in my children.
'War has begun, the end of the countdown will mark the beginning of your fight. Steady aim, stay alive, and remember a bullet in every healer's head, except your own.'
"Why are you quoting Crowley's war chant?" I asked confused before my body jolted up awake.
The walls were stone, cold stone too as there didn't seem to be any heating in the area nor a way to regulate it. Furs covered my body and were coming off slowly showing off my chest as it heaved up and down as I tried to catch my breath. The bed, though warm, was stuff and made of a hard meshy material that clumped up in various places.
Around the room we're dark tones of purples and greens, my family's colors, with a crest of a dragon eating a horse was sewn on every tapestry around me. The rest of the furniture was made out of dark red woods that made my room seem almost gloomy. With all the dark colors, the candlelight seemed to not do much except make some areas even darker.
This made it take me several moments before I noticed I was being watched by an older gentleman, a lady in a white gown, and a young man about my age. All of them stared at me with eyes wide open in shock, the woman seemed the one the most on guard, taking a step back as if to tell the others to protect her.
"What is everyone staring at? Get me some eggs and bacon, I'm starving." I yelled at them to snap them out of their stupor as I rolled over and went to sleep. There's been too much on my mind lately, I deserve some rest.