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As with most things, her Talent proved both a curse and a saving grace. What boxed her into a specific fighting style also potentially opened a door to something unique.
After enduring agonizing testing with Luna, she had confirmed that she could purge herself of a potion’s side effects. With her control over her blood and body, she could locate the small remnants of the potions and expel them, while focusing [Blood Endurance] on regenerating the exact areas where the potion had stressed her body.
The required caliber of control forced her to push the scope of her abilities to a level she would never have thought possible at this Tier. But it was. She proved it.
A shudder ran through her as she remembered the training. Luna had no issue in dosing her up to the gills with untold types of potions to build enough toxins for her to learn how to identify them. Apparently, this type of training hadn’t been planned for another few Tiers, but their manager was delighted to start early. That nightmare had left her bedridden for a week, and Matt had tried to convince her to give up on the idea entirely.
When she refused, he hadn’t pushed, but she knew the whole tactic still troubled the big softy.
Regardless, he supported her and ensured that she had all the ingredients she could ask for.
And she had gotten the idea to work. Just not as well as she needed it to.
Now, if she took a potion, she could control the speed at which it affected her by controlling her absorption of the potion. She could also make a short duration potion only affect her when she needed it to.
That had been the first step, but she needed to push it further.
Scrutinizing her cauldron, she watched as the normal strength potion thickened and the liquids boiled off. When it was reduced to a few thimbles of liquid, she transferred it into a waiting pair of vials.
Aster, who was lounging on the chair next to her and reading a book through her AI, was more than happy to quickly cool the concoction.
Liz peeked up to see Matt paused in his talisman creation; the parchment in front of him was messily dissolving. He must have halted mid-enchantment to cause a failure so catastrophic.
He remained silent, but she easily guessed his thoughts.
“Babe, we’ve been through this. It will be fine. I can direct the potion well enough to quickly shunt it out if something goes wrong. I have before. Even if that fails, you spent a small fortune on Tier 12 purification potions as backups.”
He scooted his stool forward. “Yeah, but you shouldn’t have to put yourself through that much pain. But if you insist on going through with this, I’m going to be ready with a healing spell, too.”
Liz leaned forward to peck on his forehead and then moved over to their confirmatory testing station and observation center. It wasn’t just for his concerns that she was going to pre-test the vial of concentrated potion. She wanted to do that for her own safety as well.
Liz wasn’t stupid. That particular trait had skipped a generation.
After the concoction was verified as a viable strength potion, she put the vial in an injector and stabbed it into her thigh.
Her jaw locked open as she felt the concentrated potion suffuse her bloodstream. It was like molten lava as the thick solution oozed its way through her veins.
With what felt like limitless power stampeding through her muscles, she punched out at the Tier 13 strength measuring device next to her alchemy station.
Not checking to see what number flashed on the display, she shifted her concentration inward to see what was going on.
The removal of extra water wasn’t the only thing she had changed during the formulation of her potion.
Potions were made with ingredients that would slow the absorption of the medicinal effects. Removing them greatly increased the efficiency of the potion but came with the drawback of being much harder on the body.
Even now, she could sense enough damage to her muscles and veins to verify she would be needing that healing spell. Probably more than just the one.
Thankfully, they had just returned from The Masquerade, and she would recover from the healing cooldown before the next one.
With only a month before the opening of the Tier 10 tournament, everyone was getting increasingly restless, and the masked competitors were all jostling for a place in the top ten.
They had already fought seven other teams in the last three masquerades, and she expected that number to drastically increase over the next four meetings. She also worried that numerous rival teams might conspire to deplete Quill’s talisman supply as much as possible before the tournament, by issuing them continuous rank challenges beforehand.
In actuality, such a tactic wouldn’t even put a dent in his stockpile, but every fight was an opportunity for them to slip up and reveal something they shouldn’t.
It took everything she had to control her blood and start to extract the lingering effects of the potions that tried to build up her resistance. As she had known it would, the increase in efficiency came with a greater reaction from her body.
Still, with precise control and a mountainous nudge from her Concept, she gathered the lingering remnants and shunted them out through the injection site on her leg. The rust brown ooze smelled wretched, but she hardly noticed.
After a healing spell from Matt, she gingerly picked up the remaining vial and injected it directly into her other thigh.
Instead of letting the potion run free, she strictly regulated its journey through her system with tightly controlled barriers of blood.
Standing tall, she looked back up to Matt, whose hand glowed with a healing spell at the ready.
“All good. I’ve got the concoction under control. Now for the next test.”
Saying that, Liz waited as she stretched out the portion of controlled blood through her entire muscular system.
When the potion was evenly spread around, she dropped her control for an instant and punched out again.
The rush erupted through her so strongly that her vision faltered as colors instantly sharpened to a mind-bending degree.
Still, her fist landed, and with her tight control over her blood, she had only burned through about a quarter of the medicinal effect of the potion.
Inhaling deeply, she focused on remedying the more broadly stretched out damage and checked the amount of force she had generated. While not a perfect indicator of her power, it was a decent metric that she could use before sparring with someone else.
Her first results with just the pure injection poked into early Tier 11 territory for melee fighters. Nothing to scoff at, but also nothing special compared to the follow-up strike from when she had saturated the potion out through her entire body.
With that technique, her pure physical power approached the middle of Tier 11. Despite it being a single step within the same Tier, the difference amounted to a massive leap in qualitative strength.
Liz whooped and pulled Matt into an embrace. She had pulled it off.
It worked.
Matt squeezed her closer. “Well done! I just wish you didn’t have to torture yourself in your testing.”
Liz sunk into her beau’s warmth. Matt was her rock, and she knew better than to take him for granted.
Trying to lighten the mood, she teased, “Ahhh. You’re just worried that I can whack things harder than you now, aren’t you?”
As he leaned back with a grin, she realized that she’d egged on his competitive spirit. Matt activated [Cracked Phantom Armor], and she suspected, or rather hoped, [Mage’s Retreat], too, before turning and launching a haymaker at the strength measuring device.
Assuming he wasn’t holding back for her sake, that single punch edged into the middle of Tier 11.
- Writer
