D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2316 Breathless Prep

--- Kat ---

Getting Appoline to rest proved to be harder then she thought. In the end, Kat had needed to compromise a bit and allow for her to brew some potions to test later before resting, but at least the elf was asleep now. Lily was left behind as a guard, while Kat ducked into the few other portals to see if she could tell anything about them... but she didn’t learn anything too helpful. Kat had no idea how to tell what was too high for Appoline, and it was hard to tell how far away the ground was when they were already so high by default...

Though something interesting did happen. Kat could feel Lily through the link of course, and when taking the extra portals Kat could get a rough sense of where her girlfriend was. Annoyingly though, that sense was muted because the portals took them MUCH further away then you’d expect. Kat had assumed they were roughly climbing the same side of the mountain and working their way up in a vaguely straight path.

Her recent tests disproved that completely. One portal took her to the opposite side of the mountain, another took her a good deal below where Lily was, and most of them took her somewhere off to the left or right by a good distance. Most seemed higher other than that one that was quite a ways down... but it also had other portals that would take them elsewhere so it was hard to know if that was still the right direction.

The ’lower’ portal she was talking about was a mostly featureless rock and might have been underground at one point or another. It had three portals, and each of them had a guard. Some sort of mix between an ore vein and a venus flytrap was guarding each of the portals, wrapped around them as if they were protecting a nest. Only reason Kat didn’t fight them while Appoline was asleep was that Lily begged her not to.

So she was being a good girl and not doing so. Though the fact she was attacked soon after leaving some of the other portals meant there was still some fighting to be had, just not ones that were difficult at all. Some sort of electric bull thing that had electricity sparking between its horns and a group of... Kat wanted to say dodos? Frankly they didn’t look like any bird she was familiar with and they couldn’t fly... just teleport by turning into lightning for a bit.

They also, had no protection against grounding apparently. Simply ramming themselves into Kat in their lightning form while she was standing on the ground had seemingly killed the lot of them. It was the main reason she called them Lightning Dodos in her head, but once again, they didn’t really LOOK like that. Though Lily also pointed out Dodos weren’t inherently suicidal, Kat countered with ’They’re flightless birds known for stupidity’ and Lily hadn’t come up with a good counter for that logic.

Eventually, mostly due to not wanting to get too far away from any of the portals, Kat settled back into the clearing with Lily and Appoline and started to practice a bit. Lily joined in at that point and they passed the time together before Lily got tired and started to sleep as well. At that point, Kat decided to meditate to pass the time, rest, and still keep watch. There were no problem until Appoline woke, and even then they weren’t the serious kind.

Appoline first had to test the mushroom portal. Going through it, trying to manage her breathing and adapt. Kat stood next to her, ready to check her through the portal while Lily waited on the other side, ready to catch her should it be necessary. It wasn’t quite that bad. Appoline accepted it when she failed and entered the portal under her own power. Though it was with a good deal of disappointment.

After a few failed attempts at acclimatisation she started to test out her potions. The first was oddly bubbly and when Appoline drank it, left a thick sheen over her mouth. Kat wondered if that meant it wasn’t affecting her nose. Regardless, Appoline was able to deal with the atmosphere with no issues due to the potion, and she hadn’t drunk the whole thing. It was closer to a third... but Appoline was still frowning. "Not good enough."

"What’s wrong with it?" asked Kat.

Appoline sighed. "It’s protecting me from the lack of air by providing me extra essentially. I can already tell the current dose will only last me half an hour and I don’t have enough ingredients or this to be a long term solution. Perhaps if I had the time and ingredients to refine this properly I could make it last longer or take less... but you don’t want to be stuck here for too long and even if I did take that time I likely still wouldn’t have the ingredients for it."

Appoline pulled out another potion, notably not one she made earlier, and let a single drop fall on her lips. The film evaporated instantly, and soon Appoline was being careful with her breathing once again. Kat waited until Appoline had down a second potion. This one looked like the liquid was frozen and it moved very slowly. Not sure how something like that was meant to help with oxygen deprivation.

Still, Appoline downed it and took a few deep breaths before nodding. Kat took that as a chance to ask, "So... what was that second bottle you used? Or first? The one that you used only a drop of."

"It’s a general purpose alchemical destabiliser. If applied directly to a potion it can, in most cases, force the effect to end early. Though I say it’s ’general purpose’ it doesn’t work on potions you have to fully swallow and work through the body instead. And for something like a healing potion it does basically nothing because of how fast they work, in the sense that the energy in them quickly drains out and into the body, not that you can instantly heal with a basic potion," explained Appoline.

"So... how useful is something like that?" asked Kat.

"Useful for me because I’m an alchemist... not that useful for everyone else. Then again, it’s rather shelf-stable and I think that bottle is two or three years old at this point. I go through it faster then that sure, but that bottle is one I had hidden on me for ’in case of emergency’ stuff when I got locked up," explained Appoline.

"Wait... you still had stuff in there? I thought they took everything and all of these potions are new?" Kat queried.

"Ah, guess you would pick up on that. I won’t say where, but I do have a tiny hidden spatial storage that I never lost. It only had spots for three things, and I used two of them in my attempt to escape. The third slot is that bottle you just saw me use. The first two were more for escape stuff, while the neutraliser is in case I need it right that instant and need to stop some sort of catastrophic side effect I didn’t properly account for. Rarely happens," explained Appoline.

Kat gave her a wary look but nodded, "Ok... and what does this other potion do?"

"It slows down the need to breathe... in theory. The idea is that if I’m using that potion and breathing at a normal rate I should be getting the same amount of air as I would elsewhere. Though... hmmm... I wondering if a half dose would be better? It would last longer, and while it might be a struggle it also might allow for me to acclimatise to the lack of air," pondered Appoline.

"Well... I’m happy to go with what you think is best... assuming you think you can continue at all? It’s only going to get harder to breathe. Heck, Lily and I might even start to have issues higher up," Kat considered.

Appoline shrugged, "I’m sure I can find some good ingredients to help me overcome this issue. If not... well... I do have a poison that can put people in a death-like state. It won’t technically kill me, but it will get close, close enough that I shouldn’t need oxygen." Kat raised an eyebrow as she caught a lie in the sentence.

Appoline smiled back for a bit before Kat upped her glare. "Ok fine, I know how to make it and I have most of the ingredients but I’m missing a few of them and don’t actually have the potion on me and ready. It also takes a long time to brew so it’s not the safety feature I’m advertising. Happy?"

Kat sighed. "Not... entirely but I suppose you’re going to do this anyway?" Appoline nodded. "I also doubt it’s all that safe for you to turn back anyway... so fine. If you want to take this risk, I won’t stop you. Just, please give me some warning before things go sideways if you’re having issues?"