The Insider System

Chapter 145: Master Mandis

The next day Lake didn\'t worry about rushing off to work as soon as he woke up like normal and instead took the time to talk to his servants about the belt he had asked for. He understood they had been preoccupied with the giant that was coming because he had had them out on the balcony the whole time but he still wanted to know how it was coming along.

"Yes sir we put in your request and were told it would be a few days." Lake didn\'t understand why it would take so long for a belt so he said. "Why so long for a belt, surely there were a few laying around."

"No sir, they\'re a commodity so all the ones in the guild at the moment already have owners, we\'re waiting on more to be sent to the guild by the Blacksmiths guild. If we\'re lucky it will happen today." Lake nodded with approval and did the only other thing he needed to do before leaving and stepped out onto the balcony to see what the city looked like today.

"To his surprise he saw people and he got excited that there was some sort of truce or something but after getting a better look he saw these people were clearly hired by the king to clear the roads of all the debris from last night that had started to make it kind of hard to travel in a cart around the city.

That was the other thing he saw, carts. It was clear that today was being treated as a safe day where there wouldn\'t be any big battles. It made sense after last night Lake was sure both sides had fallen back to make plans. Now that they both knew what they would have to face, Lake was sure they would take the time to gather bigger armies.

Seeing the carts also made him realize what the servant had meant when he said he could be getting the belt today, it was unlikely that Lucas would waste this opportunity to get more supplies in and make money by trading what they didn\'t need. It also made him realize he should go and get done with work as quickly as possible.

This might be his last chance to level up before the war became devastating and he was stuck inside until it was over. Now that he could no longer go into the dungeon, time outside had become a real commodity. After Lake thought this he rushed towards the Master Lab, once he was inside Lake saw some of the masters were actually working today.

He didn\'t see Nancom at his normal position though, looking around Lake eventually saw Nancom coming out of the section of the Master Lab that had books and desks. Walking over to him, Lake just made it known he was here and let Nancom say whatever he wanted. "Lake, good to see you. You\'re a little early today but that\'s fine, follow me."

Lake did what he was told and silently celebrated the fact that Nancom seemed in a good mood today. It wasn\'t like Nancom was ever unpleasant to him or anything but when he was annoyed Lake had a hard time getting any information out of him and that could be annoying when he didn\'t know what he was doing or what was going on.

After Lake followed Nancom for a while he could tell they were going to be working on something new today and it seemed he would be helping more than one Master today. They were quickly approaching one of the other masters who seemed to be organizing ingredients and equipment.

Once they got there Nancom handed the other master the book he had been carrying and said. "I found it, Julien had it." Lake saw the other master\'s face as he turned to take the book and knew who it was instantly. Lake had spent a lot of time looking at this man while being in the Master Lab. It was the guy who was always injecting things into monsters/corpses.

"Of course he did, I\'m sure he knew we were going to need it and went to get it to pretend he was using it, tell me did he ask for something to let you use it?"

"Yes, he asked to see my recipe for Siclilly fertilizer."

"What an annoying man, at least it seems his lazy ass is going to be doing something soon." Lake felt like he shouldn\'t be listening to this because they were most likely talking about one of the other Masters so he cleared his throat and said. "Excuse me, masters." And tried to walk away but he was stopped by the new Master saying. "No it\'s fine we\'re done. Come back here so I can introduce myself."

Lake did as he was told and turned back around to face the Master. "I\'m Master Mandis, I\'ve seen you looking at me a few times so I\'m sure you know what I do here in the guild." Lake quickly said. "My name\'s Lake, and I only vaguely understand what you do, I\'m still inexperienced."

"Well, most of my time is spent completing requests for specialized poisons, say there\'s a outbreak of a certain type of monster somewhere they can pay the guild and I\'ll make a poison that their hunters can coat their arrows and such in that will make any small wounds they inflict lethal, It\'s considered a luxury service so it\'s expensive but you\'d be surprised how many jobs I get."

"What about the rest of your time?"

"Torture, I\'m in charge of making things like truth serum and pain multipliers and other luxury goods we sell, Its for people who cant just curse someone and make them tell you whatever you want. That\'s also closer to what we\'ll be doing today." After master Mandis said this, Lake realized what they were doing and asked. "Are we getting the stuff for the execution ready?"

"That\'s right we were told to find a way to make this execution as cheap as possible while making all these pansies happy, oh, not you, I\'m not criticizing your idea or anything I just don\'t think it should be necessary." Lake agreed with this and said so. "I agree. It seems kind of silly and I would have never even suggested it if it wasn\'t for the fact that that meeting was dragging on, I mean we all have things to do and I was hungry."

Mandis seemed to think what he said was funny and asked him. "You couldn\'t get the food out of your head huh?" Lake nodded, he had been standing right next to Millie so it was pretty much all he could think about and the fact he didn\'t care about what the meeting was about at all made it much worse."

"Alright let\'s get to work." Master Nancom seemed to have had enough of their little bonding session and snapped them both out of it. "Lake, read this section right here and come help once you\'re done." Nancom opened the book they had been talking about and pointed to a section that was printed in red.

"Yes Master Nancom." After he said this the two Masters got to work and that left Lake to read the book. He was only a few words in when he had to stop because what he was reading scared him. He then quickly remembered that poison didn\'t work on him as far as he knew, and continued to read.

\'Dice poison shares some similarities with all poisons that interfere with healing: Extreme pain, and it\'s easy to cure if it\'s known which poison was used but they still need to have the correct type of antidote. The way Dice poison differs from the others is the method it uses to kill, it causes barriers of tough black scabs to form in any type of wound that need to be removed before the wound can properly heal. It also interferes with the regrowing of limbs which is where it gets its name. Any limbs regrown while inflicted with Dice poison will be malformed and usually useless. Dice poison also stops the person afflicted from bleeding out so it\'s usually used in live capture cases but can still be fatal if the wounds are to the neck, head, or organs.\'

Lake quickly finished the description of the poison and read the ingredients and process to brew the poison. It wasn\'t too complicated and only had four ingredients for the simplest version which was the version they were going to use for the execution. Walking over to Nancom Lake saw he wasn\'t currently doing any actual Alchemy and was just setting up the equipment so he said. "Master, I\'m ready to help."

"Ok go over there and make nine doses, when you\'re done you can come and watch us work or you can head home, you\'re only responsible for the poison me and Mandis are making everything else because your skills won\'t really help since it\'s not poison."

"Yes Master Nancom." Lake had never made a dose of something before, it was much smaller than a normal potion so all he needed to do today was make one potion then split it up into nine small containers. This wasn\'t the level of work you would expect to be happening in the Master Lab but he wasn\'t a Master so he was perfect for this job.

Getting the four ingredients, three plant and one monster, Lake filled a cup with water and dumped everything in all at once. He wasn\'t being reckless; this was literally how you made it. After a bit of stirring he was done. The effect of this poison was from the monster ingredient that came from a type of worm that had really hard black scales that you ground up and added so the plant ingredients were just to make the potion stable enough that you could store it for long periods of time.

They were low level and he didn\'t even have to use Poison Control to make sure the poison didn\'t fail. Lake was sure the only reason Nancom had had him do this part was because it was so beneath him Nancom would have felt embarrassed to do it himself. Lake shrugged and quickly poured the nine doses and brought them over to Nancom who seemed to be about to start with whatever they were doing.

"I\'m done, Master." Nancom didn\'t stop setting up and just pointed at a small leather case Lake could tell was specifically made to hold the small glass bottles he had just filled. Sliding them into place, Lake said. "Master, I\'m going to go now." Lake was sure Master Nancom probably didn\'t care if he stayed or not but Lake felt it would come off as rude if he didn\'t say bye.

"You don\'t need to worry about coming to work tomorrow, I\'m sure you can guess but Lucas will be announcing the execution today and it\'s scheduled for tomorrow so no one will be here." Lake nodded and left after he was able to wave bye to Master Mandis. After that he went towards Lucas\'s office to ask to go out.