Chapter 99: Disaster Priest
After dinner, Alice prepared the ritual to request bestowal and obtained her other main ingredient from Klein - "The Hanged Man" had finally completed the transaction. Hurrah!
After a good night's rest to recharge, Alice set up the Spirit Wall early in the morning, prepared the potion ingredients, took a deep breath, and began brewing the potion.
This was her first time concocting a potion.
Looking at the chemical lab equipment like graduated cylinders, beakers, and test tubes helped ease Alice's nervousness. After all, there were chemistry experiments in the high school entrance exams...
Once familiar with handling the equipment, Alice officially began her first potion brewing.
The completed "Disaster Priest" potion appeared deep black, constantly churning like dark waves. The potion seemed to have a strange allure. Alice stared at it mesmerized, finding its color and scent enticing.
Look how tempting it is... Go closer, drink it, quickly...
She lowered her head, expression entranced as she neared the potion. Just as her nose was about to touch it, she suddenly stopped, her expression shifting from intoxication to horror.
Alice straightened up, still shaken. She took a few steps back, eyeing the potion warily as if it were some terrifying demon. Yet the potion remained in place, emitting that intoxicating aura. If she looked a moment longer, she would be unable to resist moving closer, and closer...
No!
Alice pinched herself hard.
The pain brought brief clarity. She closed her eyes and stepped back again, as if that could block out the influence.
She was... craving the potion before her!
It was a very strange feeling that Alice didn't know how to describe. In a daze, she recalled that three years ago, when she had just awakened, she had been drawn in the same way to pick up that extraordinary characteristic.
Even without falling, even if the extraordinary characteristic hadn't coincidentally landed in her mouth, she probably would have involuntarily swallowed it anyway.
Just as she had uncontrollably moved closer to the potion moments ago.
"The Law of Extraordinary Characteristic Aggregation?" Alice looked down at herself, then at the potion, digging up a piece of mystical knowledge from her memory that might relate to the current situation.
"No, that's not it..." Alice muttered to herself, rejecting her own guess. "My state just now was more like... instinct."
With a complex expression, Alice pushed aside her thoughts, approached the potion, and drank it all without even divining if it had been successful.
The potion that appeared liquid had a jelly-like solid texture as it slid into her mouth. In an instant, countless bits of information bloomed like fireworks in Alice's mind.
But she felt no pain from this. She suddenly felt at peace, as if her soul had left her body and was continuously rising higher and higher.
Where... was this going?
Who... was she?
Why was she here?
Just as these uneasy questions surfaced in her mind, a sense of comfort emerged. She suddenly felt as safe as being in her mother's embrace, wanting to contentedly close her eyes and drift off to sleep.
...Mother?
What did that mean again?
The word bubbling up from deep in her consciousness briefly awakened her awareness. She gazed blankly, or rather sensed blankly.
She found herself somehow already in a river.
It was an indescribable, shimmering long river with countless tributaries. The illusory water flowed endlessly forward, submerging tributary after tributary, returning them to the main stream.
The flowing, shimmering river was beautiful and dreamlike. Still wrapped in that motherly comfort, she instinctively wanted to fall asleep again in such an environment.
"Waaah!"
"Help!"
"No!"
...Who was crying?
A cacophony of sobs, screams and shouts came from afar, making her furrow her brow as she tried to sleep - if she actually had "eyebrows" and could "furrow" them now.
In any case, the noisy sounds prevented her from sleeping. She grew irritated and wanted to see clearly what was happening.
No... this was too high. Lower, lower...
She made her soul descend, trying to see what was happening. Enveloped by the "water", she fell continuously until finally she saw the blonde girl who had taken the potion.
The body, abandoned by its owner, had collapsed on the ground. The vial that held the potion lay in the corner, seemingly having rolled out of the girl's open palm.
That body gave her a sense of familiarity. The distant cries and shouts in her ears had not ceased, but seemed to diminish as she neared the body.
Perhaps if she got closer, it would be quiet?
She reached out and touched the girl lying on the ground.
Alice woke up.
"Huh? Why am I on the floor..." Alice got up from the ground in confusion. She found the rolled-away vial in the corner and frowned, trying to remember what had happened.
After brewing the potion, she had been strangely drawn to it, but managed to snap out of it in time...
She drank the potion, and then...
A stinging sensation she hadn't felt in a long time faintly emerged from deep in her spirit. Warned and restrained, Alice quickly stopped trying to remember, which only confused her more.
She already knew that when a beyonder consumed a potion, there would be special reactions, like hearing murmurs or seeing hallucinations, or...
Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't waking up from unconsciousness with no memory like she had!
But she was absolutely certain she had seen something, only... remembering those things seemed dangerous for her?
After a while, Alice sighed and began tidying up.
Having put away the messy equipment, Alice sat down and started trying to search for the knowledge and abilities contained in the potion.
Disaster Priest... able to foresee disasters, and also actively bring about disasters... Actively bring about disasters?
"Waaah!"
A vague, distant, piercing cry made Alice furrow her brow.
Unlike the fleeting sound from before, this one seemed continuous. So Alice concentrated, trying hard to discern the source and content of the sound.
In a daze, Alice thought she saw people fleeing in all directions, and... what else?
A illusory shattering sound suddenly appeared in her ears.
Alice felt something dissolving inside her, merging with her own spirit. In the haze, she saw one illusory star after another. She herself was one of them, and these stars were attracting each other, seemingly wanting to coalesce into one.
That was... a sign of the potion being digested.
She had finally reached Sequence 6 (wipes sweat).