D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2025 Secret Poisons Part 1

Kat ---

Turns out Appoline didn’t just have one secret brewing room she had a hole corridor filled with them. Not wanting to waste any more time, Kat and Lily went for the closest door. Lily was tempted to transform back, but just in case something was enchanted to detect the presence of a person, it was safer to stay as she was. Counter intuitively, Kat was better off in her human form instead of the water one. She didn’t have any mana to detect and water droplets were far more likely to accidentally get caught up in the equipment. It also meant, Lily could sit on Kat’s shoulder.

Pushing open the first door saw them enter a room with six big metal barrels. They were open to the air and had giant funnels above them that seemed to be sucking the fumes up and carrying them to another corner of the room where the piping lead to moderate sized boxes. Only two seemed to be filled with liquid, and they all had a spot in the bottom for a set of churning paddles. Of the two filled barrels only one had a stirring rod in it, the other seemed to have nothing.

Both seemed to be bubbling and giving off fumes, and the one with the rod was a deep green while the one without it was more blue. Still somewhat green, but there was a blue sheen to it. The rest of the room was fairly barren. A table with various dings and knife marks on it was clearly used to cut ingredients up. The lack of ingredient storage across the whole room implied they’d come from elsewhere.

Kat sniffed a few times to try and fix the smell in her memory. She didn’t know how to explain it, but if they had examples at the guard station she could probably point them out. She also double checked the colour once more and left the room. There was a door directly across from them, and Kat chose to head right inside. *

Kat need not be overly worried about this room though. Inside it was row upon row of books and stacks of paper. Lily quickly glanced over the covers and noted that they were recipe books. Some were different editions of the same books, and the lose bits of paper seemed to be a mixture of notes taken based on the writings in the books, and Appoline’s own findings.

Exiting the book storage room, Kat moved into the door at the end of the hallway. Opening this one, Kat was immediately hit with the concentrated smell of dozens of herbs. Inside shelves and shelves of dried ingredients, both plant based and not, covered the room. There was barely enough room to move between the shelves. Kat wasn’t even sure she COULD move between them without transforming. Her wings made her a bit too large and you already needed to shimmy sideways just to make it down.

There didn’t seem to be any space to hide anything because that would mean less space for ingredients. Kat doubted this was truly everything, because while the room was no doubt enchanted for storage, the herbs themselves were simply packed into the shelves in between basic dividers. Some of the piles even extended up and over their dividers to rest on other piles. Low priority ingredients probably... but a LOT of them.

Moving back down the corridor, Kat opened a room into a true mad scientist lab. It was fascinating to see that it was all, mostly, working without anyone to interact with them. Beakers on Bunsen burners, or the fantasy equivalent, and long pipes where colourful liquid would spin through them in segments. Their was a cauldron bubbling away in the corner... in Lily’s vision. It was purely illusionary to add to the ambience of the room.

The back wall was filled with a big wood and glass cabinet that each held a sealed bottle or two. It didn’t seem like potion storage, more ’liquid ingredient’ storage. Perhaps just the more precious ones? Kat wasn’t sure. There was also a desk in the corner but it was a small, squat thing with barely enough space for you to write anything on it. Seemingly it was there more to allow for some note taking in the room and was added as a late edition.

A much larger table was taking up space just off the centre of the room but the large rack of knives, mallets, and other kitchen tools implied it was solely for prepping ingredients. There were cupboards underneath the bench but Kat suspected she’d just find more kitchen-y things. Still... worth checking out at least.