D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2131: Chapter 2131 Playing with Grey Matter

--- Kat ---

Appoline needed to spend another half an hour finishing off the potion. Adding a few more ingredients each with their own requirement. Finishing it was the most interesting part. The two cores of the potion had becoming glowing spotlights, one of black and one white. How the black managed to glow, Kat had no idea. Appoline then started to spin them around, getting the cores closer and closer to each other with each rotation before crashing them into each other. Light and darkness fought with each other, overwhelming the smaller floating lights that she had set up in the area.

Eventually, it all settled down and the potion remained two distinct colours, black and white with them constantly swirling together. In the very centre a black dot, slightly larger then it should be was clearly outlined and yet seemed to be draining both the rest of the black and the white. Constantly. It wasn’t just an optical illusion but without being able to see through the top of the potion it was hard to say if the colours were just flowing through the centre, or if magic was somehow keeping the loop going.

”Now bottling this has an interesting effect, assuming I did it correctly,” Appoline stated as she dipped a potion bottle into the liquid. She deliberately placed it in one of the solid white sections and followed it around a bit so that the bottle could be filled with purely the white parts of the potion.

Despite this, when she took the potion out and lifted it up into the air, the stuff in the bottle was still a mix of the two colours, with the central point now in the centre of the glass bottle. The swirls going not to the top like the cauldron, but the middle and from all directions. It was trippy to look at, massively so for Kat who had true-sight. That means there wasn’t any illusions on the potion... it just looked like that. Which was really, really weird. ”How is it doing that?” asked Kat.

Appoline shrugged, ”Honestly no idea. I mean, presumably its from the duality of the potion but the original recipe didn’t do this and I’ve made similar potions with two cores and a duality theme... that also don’t do this. I’ve tried looking into this sort of thing before... but I don’t REALLY care?”

Appoline shrugged again as she started to bottle the rest of the potion. ”It’s just not something I’m that interested in investigating. I don’t even really know where I’d start. I know that slight changes to a recipe produce almost no change in appearance until eventually it changes in its entirety. That’s usually when its declared a separate potion... but it’s not like we don’t have unique health potions that mostly end up red. The different colouring isn’t necessary.”

”I feel like a spiral of mixed black and white that transfers into a container, somehow, is a bit different then just ’being red’... but I guess if you don’t know, you don’t know,” said Kat.

Appoline nodded, fishing the last of the potion out of the cauldron. It was interesting to note that unlike other instances there was no water at all left in it, but at the bottom of the cauldron was a bunch of grey sludge. Tweedle seemed surprised at it as well, and even asked. ”That’s... a lot of impurities at the bottom...”

Appoline nodded, ”Yup and the most useless kind. There’s no magic in any of it and because the potion is split in half, effectively, it neutralises any lingering echoes that might make them... acceptable to use for other purposes. It’s almost like they’ve been scoured. Still, it looks worse then it is,”

”I’m pretty sure there’s more sludge then you had ingredients though, by mass at least,” countered Tweedle.

”Oh, this stuff weighs almost nothing. If I blow on it all the mush will simply fly out of the cauldron. It might look like a thick gloop but that’s all appearance. Poke it if you want,” offered Appoline.

Tweedle glanced at Appoline a few times before stepping forward and lightly pressing into the stuff. Before her hand even made contact some was already floating away and by the time she did make contact, there was a veritable explosion of the stuff. Dust going everywhere. Tweedle backed away, waving her hand in the air while holding her breath to avoid breathing it in... and yet soon it all vanished. Like it dissolved in the air.

*I... have no idea how that works.*

While Kat was expressing her confusion, Lily decided to do her own test. Reaching out with tiny hand of shadow the size of a babies, she carefully, very slowly, lowered it down and tapped the sludge. It seemed to simply break down under the shadow finger, falling away into almost nothing. ”How is this all so unstable?” asked Lily.

”It’s literally nothing,” Appoline explained. ”The other stuff at least has a tiny bit of substance to it. An echo of what it once was left inside. It doesn’t give it MUCH structure but it gives it some. This stuff though? The conflicting cores running across it turn remove the echoes as they pass instead of infusing it with both... so you’re left with the closest physical thing you CAN get to nothing.”

”Weird...” whispered Kat. ”So... what are you going to do with it?”

Appoline shrugged, ”I was just going to throw it off to the side and watch it vanish. It’s not like you can store it. Even if I left it all together in a special container it still wouldn’t last the week. Maybe if you had some fancy setup you could keep it longer but I didn’t before and I certainly don’t now so... if anyone wants to do the honours?”

Tanisha immediately leapt at the chance, and nobody decided to stop her. This proved, to be a mistake in a few moments. Tanisha reached down and grabbed it with her good arm... and simply seemed to think she’d grabbed it with the other arm as well. Instead of holding it in such a way as to keep it steady, either against her stomach or with some exceptional grip... she just lifted it casually.

The cauldron immediately fell sideways and the remaining grey stuff exploded out everywhere, coating the group in gunk and making it hard to breath, or rather, Kat and Lily decided it would be best not to do so, and the others clearly agreed. The coating was over everything and the stuff still airborne vanished first, with the stuff on Kat lasting only a tiny bit longer. Everyone else though? They got to suffer through it for a while longer.

”Ok... so why is this sticking around?” asked Lily. ”Kat’s already fine! I mean... wait hang on...” Lily transformed, and then transformed back. When she did so the stuff had vanished. ”Ok how does this even work?!”

Appoline shrugged, ”It’s really not something I’ve looked into. Though I do know it lasts longer on people and things because... reasons? I guess? I really don’t know. Maybe because people have more mana in them then everything else and there’s less concentrated stuff in the air? Or perhaps wind mana has dispersing properties which vanishes it faster?”

”And the fact it disappears when I transformed?” asked Lily.

Appoline gave Lily a dry look. ”I just explained I’m guessing here. If it can be said I don’t care about what influences the appearance of a potion then when it comes to impurities? I haven’t even CONSIDERED them. Especially not the truly empty stuff that Tanisha just sent everywhere. You can’t really work for it, and it is by definition useless for alchemy so why would I care? Especially when it vanishes soon after being made.

”And yes, I did try to use it for alchemy, but it simply either vanishes, or adds to the impurities in the end product for the next potion, but impurities really aren’t useful enough that you’d want more of them so that’s also a dead end.” Appoline took in a deep breath and sighed. ”If I had to guess, and this is really just a guess, then you transformation removed them because they aren’t really anything.

”I was being quite literal when I said they were the closest thing to a physical representation to ’nothing’ you could get. So when you transformed, they simply vanished because they were ’basically nothing’. I mean, do you keep every bit of dirt and dust on you when you transform?”

”I... hmm... I don’t actually know...” Lily admitted with a frown. ”I certainly do need to get clean at times... but I’m not sure if that’s just a feeling or if there’s dirt, and I’ve never even thought to check to see if I had the same amount. Hmmm... weird.”

Tweedle coughed, sending some of the grey stuff flying for a moment before it vanished. ”How long do we have to deal with this though? Lily and Kat are fine sure, but I don’t want to get any in the potion you want me to brew...”

Appoline shrugged, ”Depends on the person but considering how thick the coating is? I’d guess an hour or two.”