Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (beach books .txt) 📗

nearby. “And send Giint to me!” I ordered, knowing that crazy bastard would have some weird shit that I might be able to use for alchemy, if any of them did.

I spent the next ten minutes working on Tang, and finally, I felt he was stable enough that I could take an hour’s break.

I tried to sit back down and found Giint fast asleep in my chair. When I startled him, he bared his teeth and snarled, before sniffing and evidently deciding he liked me after all, switching to grinning up at me instead.

“Yooou have gifffft for Giiiint?” he asked me hopefully, and I frowned at him.

“What? No. Well, maybe… have you got any alchemy ingredients?” I asked him, and he shrugged.

“Some mebbbbie, Giiiint liiikes smelly herbbbbs,” he said, as though embarrassed.

“I’ll give you this…” I promised, holding up an entire stick of their wonder drug. “…if you give me whatever you have.” He froze, eyes wide.

When he didn’t respond, I waved the stick back and forth, and he followed it doggedly. I put it back in my bag and he growled at me momentarily, before apparently remembering my offer and pulling out three bags. I recognized two of them as having been on the Badunka riders we’d killed earlier, I and passed him the stick when he put the bags on the desk.

He ran off to the corner quickly, gnawing on it and making strange sounds, and I looked around hesitantly before pulling out one of the remaining sticks and using ‘Greater Examination’ on it.

I could see a number of notifications waiting for me by now and resolved to check them quickly next.

Gnomish Wonderdrug

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

This substance is known by many names, Krissa, You’Oli, Ginesen, and occasionally, Valerian.

Ingredients:

1)       Catnip

2)       Valerian Root

3)       Lemon Balm

4)       Xnathar Gum

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Rare

No

100/100

N/A

I read it, then blinked, then read it again, and again, before starting to snigger. I’d spent years working in clubs and bars. I’d beaten the shit out of dealers and had force fed them their own shit over the years, and the ‘Wonderdrug’ that the gnomes were addicted to… was some kind of industrial strength goddamn catnip!

Not one of these things had anything dodgy in it, except maybe the gum; all the others were simple herbs that chilled you the hell out, or sent cats loopy, and that was what the gnomes were off their heads on!

I couldn’t help it; I had to laugh.

It started out low, a collection of sniggers and stifled chuckles, before growing and growing, until I couldn’t contain it anymore, and I was shaking. My fears and exhaustion had taken their toll on me in little ways that meant that such a simple thing had a profound effect.

For some reason, as finally I calmed myself and got back to the plan, setting up the last few parts of the alchemy kit, I found that I felt better than I had in hours. Days, possibly.

The thought that I was enabling the gnomes to get their rocks off with some kind of seriously harmful drugs, potentially harming them permanently, in order to serve my own ends, had been sitting badly with me, but finding out that it was basically super-strength catnip that they were addicted to?

It changed the entire way I looked at their race. They had been hyped up as these almost mystically smart creatures before. Considering how amazing the Fenris was, and the way people spoke about gnomes, that had only reinforced that image, building upon a foundation that I’d had from all the games and lore of my own world. Finding out that instead, they were a race of drug-obsessed lunatics, and meeting an offshoot splinter of them that had basically regressed to a semi-feral state, had made me start to hate them.

It was as though, in my mind, they’d betrayed me by not living up to an image I’d had of them. Now, though… now, I’d been forcibly reminded that not only were they real people, and as such, owed my mental image of them nothing… but they were even more batshit than I thought they were.

They were off their tits on goddamn catnip!

I let another round of the giggles escape as I searched through the bags that Giint had given me, finding a collection of mainly fungus, with a handful of additional herbs that had adapted to low-light conditions, or that had clearly been grown near a magelight, considering the bleached out and worn look of them in real sunlight.

Ginseng

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

These long leaves have many uses. Perhaps further investigation is needed?

Uses Discovered:

1) Cure Disease

2) Restore Health

3) Stamina Boost

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

Warnock Root

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

This root has many uses. Perhaps further investigation is needed?

Uses Discovered:

1) Cure Disease

2) Lesser Poison

3) Perception Boost

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

Pergola

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

These long tubers have an earthy taste but are oddly satisfying.

Uses Discovered:

1) Sleeping potion

2) Blood Cleansing

3) Enrage

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

Greater Spotted Cap Mushroom

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

These dark spotted mushrooms feel slimy to the touch and make your skin shudder away instinctively…

Uses Discovered:

1) Cause Disease

2) Paralysis

3) Lesser Poison

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

Green Flutes

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

These pale green fluted mushrooms give off a sense of enormous relaxation…

Uses Discovered:

1) Somnolence

2) Calming

3) Poison

4) Restore Mana

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

Rotting flesh

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

This flesh gives off a pungent odor and makes you feel unclean…

Uses Discovered:

1) Disease

2) Greater Poison

3) Smoke

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

Mora Telendril

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

This dark and flat fungus branches out to form solid tendrils that draw in the spilled lifeblood of those caught by Delicious Snare plants

Uses Discovered:

1) Restore Health

2) Paralysis

3) Endurance Boost

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

Delicious Snare

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

These plants give off a heady scent of summer and sweet fruits ready to drop… but the plants themselves are coated in razor-sharp needles that cause copious bleeding when disturbed…

Uses Discovered:

1) Major Damage Health

2) Paralysis

3) Calm

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

100/100

N/A

I read through the notifications for the various ingredients as quickly as I could, dumping the majority back into the pouches, and keeping out only the Mora Telendril, the Ginseng, and on a whim, the Green Flutes.

I