God of Trash-Chapter 39. Bottle

Sorden led the way to her house. Rhys followed close behind, familiar with the route from the previous time he’d handed herbs over. She had him wait outside her house while she vanished inside and emerged with a white enameled bottle. A faint aura of mana emanated from the bottle.

“What do you think?” she asked, holding it out.

Rhys held up his potion. He tilted his head back and forth, unsure. “Do you mind if I try it out?”

“Certainly. Go ahead.”

“It might destroy the bottle,” Rhys warned her.

She waved her hand. “The bottle’s enchanted. Nothing a Tier 1 student can brew could destroy its enchantment. If you do, I’ll be impressed more than angry.”

Rhys raised his brows, then shrugged. She’d said herself that she’d only be impressed. He didn’t necessarily trust that, but it was worth a try.

By now, even with Trash Intent and Trash Aura, the potion vial was starting to look a little ragged. The material contained within couldn’t directly degrade the vial’s walls, or even the Trash Intent that enveloped them, but neither could his Trash Intent stop the gasses that welled up from its surface from interfering with the glass. Opening the cap on his bottle, he drew out the impurities and sent them into the new bottle. He deactivated his techniques on his vial and relaxed as relief flowed through him.

The new bottle held for a second. Two seconds. Three.

Sorden turned to him, beaming. “There you have it! I’m more than happy to—”

Rhys lunged just as the bottom fell out of the bottle and barely caught the impurities before they spilled onto the ground. Re-activating Trash Intent and Trash Aura, he sent the impurities back into his vial and half-smiled, half-grimaced at her. “It’s really corrosive.”

Sorden’s jaw dropped. She stared at the enamel bottle, then at Rhys. Taking the remains of the bottle, she retreated back inside. “I’ll bring out something stronger.”

“Please do,” Rhys replied earnestly. He was starting to get tired of this headache, and the momentary relief he got every time he could release the combined techniques was so sweet, only for him to get slammed once more when he had to reinstate them.

She came back out with a black stone bottle. “Try this. It’s also enchanted, and it’s made of a sturdier material.”

Obediently, Rhys sent the impurities into the black bottle. This time, both he and Sorden watched it closely. It held for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds before the impurities started to seep out the sides. Rhys gestured, calling the impurities to him once more.

Sorden shook her head. She returned to her house, this time drawing out two bottles with her. One was glass, but shimmered with a faint barrier, while another was solid crystal. Without a word, she handed the barrier bottle over.

Rhys grimaced. He put the impurities inside, but almost instantly drew them back out again as the barrier popped. She traded him for the crystal, and he let the impurities touch its interior for just long enough that the crystal began to crack before he pulled them back. Back into her house, and out with another three. One after another, the bottles broke or corroded. In and out, in and out. A pile of broken bottles grew around the door.

At last, Sorden stared at the goo. “What the hell did you make?”

Rhys shrugged apologetically. “It’s a bit corrosive.”

“A bit!” She shook her head. Pushing the broken bottles aside, she straightened up and looked him up and down. “I only have one container left. If it doesn’t work, I’m out of bottles.”

Rhys pressed his lips together. “I hope it works.”

“I do, too.” She paused. “It’s my most powerful bottle. Meant to contain dangerous Tier 3 potions. If it can’t contain this, then not only do I not know what to do, but you could probably use it to find yourself a job at a high rank school as a poisonmaster.”

“It’s not a poison. I’m going to drink it. I need to, if I’m going to get stronger,” Rhys explained.

Sorden stared at him. He stared back.

She turned away. “I’m going to tell myself you’re joking. Don’t tell me if you aren’t.”

With that, she vanished into her house.

Rhys turned to the blackish-brown potion. “Why does no one ever believe me?”

The impurities churned inside the vial, searching for a way out.

There was a long pause this time, longer than any other time Sorden had gone for a bottle. When she emerged, it was with a blast of cold, stale air, as if she’d opened a cellar that had remained shut for a long, long time. She offered him a small vial.

At a glance, it was nothing special, no different from the vial he held, if a bit bigger, clunkier, and older in design. As if it were the prototype of the standard potion vial. He couldn’t sense any mana in it, but it felt heavy. There was something about it, some kind of truth that he didn’t understand. It felt like… like his path, but not.

His eyes widened. Someone else’s path. That’s what I’m sensing.

He turned it over in his hand, getting a sense for the shape of the path in the glass, then looked at Sorden. “Where did you find this?”

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“I traded for it from a ragged traveling salesman who claimed he found it in a secret realm. It’s nothing special, but it is very durable. I’ve used it before to store particularly dangerous potions. If I’d known how dangerous that thing you brewed was, I would have brought it out right away… but who would expect a Tier 1 student to make something so dangerous I couldn’t easily contain it?” Sorden replied, muttering the last part mostly to herself.

Rhys nodded. “A secret realm?”

“Ah, that’s right. You’re of mortal breeding. There’s places where incredibly powerful experts have created pathways to new worlds, or folded the world to prevent access, or even created their own worlds within artifacts. Sometimes, beings vastly more powerful than us can even spawn secret realms within their bodies as they decay. There’s a vast variety of sources. What ties them all together, is that unless you know how to access the world inside, you’re unlikely to ever encounter it. Hence, ‘secret realm.’” She looked at the bottle. “I’ve never had the fortune to visit one that wasn’t already plundered myself. The larger sects and schools usually pin down the valuable ones and only allow weaker schools like ours to visit after they’ve already taken all the loot out. Some incredibly rich schools even possess secret realms for training, or hold events within them, but you’re unlikely to see a school like that around here.”

Rhys raised his brows a bit at Sorden’s outright admission that their school was weak. It wasn’t startling—he’d long since come to terms with it, in fact—but he wasn’t expecting such an honest assessment by one of the school’s own staff. I guess I can consider myself someone Sorden trusts, if she speaks so frankly with me.

His head panged, and he turned back to the task at hand. Lifting his hand, he called forth the potion from the bottle. The blackish gunk swirled in midair, then plunged into the new bottle. Slamming the cap home, Rhys held his breath. Sorden leaned in, watching closely.

Nothing happened. The bottle easily contained the impurities. Not a crack nor deterioration of any kind appeared.

Sorden breathed out. She stepped back. “I was starting to worry I wouldn’t be able to return your kindness. There! A bottle that holds that dangerous potion of yours.”

Rhys nodded. “Thank you.”

He turned to walk away, but Sorden caught him by the shoulder. “You’re not going to use that on someone, are you?”

“Only myself,” Rhys promised her.

She chuckled. “Stop joking.”

Rhys held her gaze, eyes earnest.

Sorden pressed her lips together, then waved her hand. “As long as you don’t use it on anyone else. I’d better not lose my herb provider, though.”

“You won’t,” Rhys pledged. He had no intent to kill himself. He’d have to be careful about applying this potion, but no progress was made without danger.

She looked at him for a moment, then sighed. “I suppose you could have already ended yourself, if you meant to do such a thing. Be careful.”

Rhys saluted. He walked off, putting the decayed potion bottle he’d had to use his intent and aura on in his robes for later examination. If he could figure out how it had decayed despite his efforts, he might be able to prevent it in the future. And maybe, one day, he could even create a bottle that held hints of a truth in it, like the bottle that contained the potion now.

But first, it was time to train.

He returned to his usual cave to train. It might have been safer on the upper peak, behind the barrier, but only from the other low-Tier students. There was that beast he’d sensed, and of course, he knew nothing about any of the high-Tier mages on the upper peak. If one of them was a Cynog-style bully, he might get turned to sludge for daring to practice on the upper peak. Better the devil he knew than the devil he didn’t.

Settling in on a piece of patched furniture, he considered the impurities within the bottle closely. The sludge emanated a deadly dangerous aura. He couldn’t drink it, the way he’d drunk the other potion. In fact, it would be better if he could slowly ramp up to this potion. The only problem was, with how dispersed the impurities were in the higher-Tier trash, there was no such thing as a slow ramp up. He jumped up here, or he didn’t advance at all.

Still, there were safer ways to absorb things than simply drinking it. A survival guide he’d read online came to mind. It had been describing how to test new plants, to see if they were edible, but the same idea applied here.

Rhys uncapped the bottle. Step 1: apply a little to your skin to test for irritation. Carefully tipping the bottle, he allowed a single drop to contact the back of his hand.

The black liquid sat on top of his skin for a single moment before it sucked into his flesh. Black veins spread from the point of contact, twisting through his skin and biting into his veins. His blood darkened, and his mana passages corroded. Black-tainted mana flowed from the point of contact toward his heart, darkening everything it passed. From the single point, a black mark raced up his arm, visibly growing longer.

Shit. Rhys plunged inside himself. He closed off his veins and mana passages, but the taint kept spreading—slower, but it kept moving, oozing through the walls of the passages. He searched for two impurities to ignite, desperate to find them before they spread too far.

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From the smooth flow of his normal mana passages, he plunged into the darkness of the impurity-corrupted passages. There, he latched on to one, then a second impurity. He rubbed the two together. Come on. Ignite!

Nothing happened.

Rhys gritted his teeth and rubbed them faster and faster, but nothing continued to happen. These were not ordinary impurities, and they wouldn’t be lit by ordinary means. Behind him, the impurities continued to spread, tainting his impurity-resistant body. If not for his Impurity Resistance, it probably would have already spread through his body.

Ignite! How can I make them ignite? He’d been rubbing the impurities together like two sticks, but these impurities wouldn’t ignite. But that was a primitive way to start a fire. Humanity had come up with so many ways to light fires since then. Like matches, or electricity…

His eyes widened. That was it! He gripped one impurity and forced mana into it. The impurity quickly reached capacity, and then it started to glow. Heat emanated from the impurity. The black mark spread further. It reached his shoulder and climbed toward his chest. Rhys focused on the one impurity in his hands, refusing to let that distract him. More mana. More. The impurity refused to absorb any more, but he poured more in anyways. The heat grew more intense. The glow grew brighter. Rhys shoved in more mana, even as his core began to run dry. This was it. All or nothing.

A flame burst out from the top of the impurity. Rhys’ eyes widened, but just for a moment. Quickly, he grabbed up the impurity he’d been rubbing together earlier and held it close to this one. The fire spread, and spread, and spread. It raced up his arm, chasing after the impurity as it coursed through him. Rhys pushed impurities into it, encouraging its spread. In a few moments, it had caught up, and all the impurities burned, no longer progressing through him.

Mana poured out from the impurities. Not as much as he was used to, but it was denser and more pure than any mana he’d experienced. He had the feeling that this mana would let him use twice as many spells for half the quantity, and if that was the case, then the mana he got from one drop was about as much as an entire trash pile. It wasn’t quite a sip of the previous potion, but it was one single, tiny drop. A few drops would exceed a sip of the previous potion. A sip of this would exceed his current mana capacity several times over.

He opened his eyes, breathing evenly as he circulated this new mana. Now that he knew how to burn these impurities, he was ready. He could train while he gathered the trash, and accomplish two tasks in the same time. It was time to head back to the upper peak and dig through the trash for clues about the teacher he’d been assigned to watch.

Rhys let an evil grin cross his face. That’s right. It’s stalker time.