D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2295 Liquid but Not Molten

--- Kat ---

It worked. Super well actually. Kat and Lily had both been worried for some sort of backlash or for the elemental, now free to just attack as air to go wild... but nope. It just vanished once half of the glass was being melted down. There was no hint of it remaining at all. Lily didn’t feel it pressing against her second shield, nor did it attack anyone inside. Though, Lily couldn’t prevent it escaping... assuming it even still existed.

When her mana finally ran out and Lily let herself fall into Kat’s arms, there was no great rush of air as the monster exited the cave... it all just seemed to have gone back to normal. That set them both up to be paranoid about that fact, but there were bigger issues to try and solve. Lily was shifted to between Kat’s boobs as she was too tired to move properly on her own, and Kat skipped over to Appoline.

While technically things were fine on Kat and Lily’s end of things, the amount of glass needed to be thrown into the cauldron had been... greater then expected. It also might not all have been perfectly normal glass. Currently the cauldron itself was rattling on the stand, jumping and hopping around as if it was just waiting for a chance to escape. Appoline was constantly orbiting the thing, giving it odd stirs, sometimes in the direction of its jumps even but she seemed... maybe not happy with things but not annoyed or worried.

The liquid in the cauldron could barely be called as such any more. Instead it seemed like someone had turned a stained-glass mirror into a liquid. Notably NOT molten glass, no these seemed like someone had managed to somehow make merge the idea of liquids with a glass sheet. When it rocked out of the cauldron, it did so in slow waves, almost like it was on a second or two delay.

It would then freeze at the apex, crystalising for a moment as if to admire its own beauty, before slumping back into the cauldron. The rest of the liquid inside was similarly crazy looking. It moved in a slow mass, that nevertheless seemed to hold great weight. The mixture was mostly clear but strong pockets of colour acted as if they’d been frozen in a spot... except remember it was still a liquid, so that ’spot’ could move and deform as the rest of the mixture moved. It created an extremely trippy effect to look at.

The top of the mixture also did seem to be hardening over. While Appoline kept stirring, the top would solidify slightly, as if it was so cold that ice was forming in a thin layer over the concoction. Appoline continual movements kept the entire apparatus moving and... probably functional?

That was Kat’s current dilemma. Based on Appoline’s face she didn’t seem to be having a hard time, but her arms were visibly shaking and of course the cauldron was going crazy. Kat felt like she should help, but didn’t even know if it was safe to say anything. Even just asking if Appoline needed help, or making her presence known might be enough to startle the alchemist and send everything crashing down. Whatever the final product was going to be, Kat doubted that same three-five minute timeline was still in place.

Kat’s worries proved to be somewhat valid when the cauldron shook and exploded... sort of. The glassy liquid shot out of the cauldron like a geyser, only to freeze at the apex of its jump, with the liquid just starting to spread out. Appoline used her stirring rod to smack the edges as she sprinted around the outside, visibly forcing the half-frozen geyser back into the pot. Kat’s hands twitched as she debated helping again and again as the liquid try to rise back up in rebellion.

Eventually, after who knows how long, Appoline managed to force it all back into the cauldron... though the metal was starting to look a little shiny. Perhaps not normally a worry, but it didn’t look like that at the start of the brew, so it was something Kat was now keeping an eye on.

Appoline however, seemed to be calming down. Her movements became less erratic and she didn’t need to move as much. Eventually the liquid settled into a soft rocking to invisible waves. It moved from one side to the other, almost as if it was trying to throw the cauldron over or something, but the movements were a bit too gradual for something like that. Once it settled into this pace, Appoline let out a sigh and dropped some more dust of some kind into the potion. It flashed for a moment as the dust made contact, a ripple of rainbows covered the entire thing before settling back down.

Appoline let out a big sigh, and said, "That should be fine now. You can talk,"

"Oh... um... so you did know we were there?" said Kat awkwardly as Lily huffed in her sleep. Apparently somewhere along that harrowing display Lily had simply dropped out like a light. Kat didn’t blame her. Lily had been exhausted from dealing with the... maybe golem and Kat supposed the rest of the excitement had been too much. Perhaps she’d nodded off just as things calmed down.

"Indeed. I could not be so unaware of my surroundings while dealing with such a volatile mixture. I suspect the core was mixed inside the glass somehow. Perhaps in multiple pieces? I didn’t know that was even possible... but there was clearly more magic in at least some of that glass then all of the rest combined. It took a bit to wrangle the potion into place... but I’ve done so now. I am also... less certain I know what the effects of it will be," admitted Appoline.

Kat shrugged, "Well with the monster gone I also think the wind is. I can’t hear it raging all too loudly anymore. I mean, it’s not down to nothing but it’s getting quieter as we stand here so we might not need it for digging... though yeah, is it even going to be safe to bottle?"

Appoline winced. "Not in glass that’s for sure. I have a couple of specialised flasks made of this wood-like structure that should hold it... I think. Hopefully they’ll be fine once I put them in my storage ring. I have one designed for alchemy so it’s meant to prevent most unwanted interaction while they’re stored inside... but do keep in mind the ’most’ in that sentence."

"Well... what’s the worst case scenario?" asked Kat.

"Probably that it turns my storage ring to glass and I loose access to both it and all of my potions," answered Appoline quickly.

"That can happen?!" hissed Kat.

Appoline made a ’so-so’ gesture as she carefully stirred the cauldron, watching it intently as she did so. "I wouldn’t call it likely... but not impossible either. These rings are not perfect, and they do their best but... as I said this is a far more potent brew then it was meant to be. I didn’t design it with effects in mind, I had to improve several times to ensure that the entire thing didn’t just explode and coat us in whatever malformed mixture was inside my cauldron. I’ll need to take some time to properly map out what I even added to work out what the effects might be."

"Wait you don’t know?" asked Kat. "That... how do you not know?"

Appoline shrugged. "I had to act quickly at a few points so it would be wrong to say I know entirely what’s in here. I had to let instinct take over and simply add what extras I felt I needed in the moment. I have some idea of what those things were, but that’s just it. I have ’some idea’. This is not the sort of brewing I like doing. It’s rather imprecise and hard to replicate... but it is also in part what all alchemists strive for."

"What do you mean?" asked Kat.

"I simply went with the ingredients," explained Appoline. "I automatically added what I felt the potion needed, and tweaked the shape of the internal mana structures along with the ingredient list as I went to ensure that it entered into this stable state... but because I had to throw out the original plan when it started to act up, I was focused more on the ’stable’ part and less on the ’what’ part. So... it probably still turns things to glass... but it also might summon a glass golem to fight, or explode into glass... or half a dozen other things."

Kat rubbed the side of her face as she released a long breath she hadn’t realise she was holding. "So... what do we DO with it? Test it? Lock it away? Use it? As I said I don’t think we need to hide anymore but... well... I just..." Kat gestures vaguely at the cauldron. "I don’t even know what to think. This is out of my wheelhouse and if I didn’t have you along I’d probably just leave it here. So... what do we do with it?"