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

the right way, like I was using a car to drive forwards and backwards, only clutching the steering wheel to make sure it stayed straight, yet never really understanding that the car could actually turn corners.

I looked at the ingredients from every conceivable angle, using my Greater Examination on them again and again. I got extra information, telling me what three, and sometimes four, of the uses of the ingredients were, but somehow, something was still missing.

I tried to shake the feeling off, forcing myself to go ahead, mixing up a basic batch of mana regeneration potions, then pouring them into smaller vials, and staring in dissatisfaction at the finished, weak product.

I knew I was doing something wrong; I just couldn’t figure out what.

I tucked the vials away, then summoned another fountain of cool, clear water, washing out the collection of old vials I’d accumulated. I felt ready for another attempt, when I paused, looking at the way the water flowed down between the floorboards and seeped into the lower levels of the ship.

I ignored the muffled, shouted complaints of the researcher who had apparently chosen to remain in the room directly below me, and I concentrated, feeling the idea, a breakthrough just out of reach.

Water…

Flowing down, seeping into the cracks, and passing through…

Not water… MANA!

My eyes flared open as I suddenly realized what I was missing. These potions almost all did ‘magical’ things; they healed us, they altered us; hell, the goddamn potion I’d poured onto the Lich had literally summoned an Earth Golem. These weren’t effects a go damn cocktail should have; they were spells in liquid form!

A damn mojito shouldn’t make your wounds close, after all!

I grabbed a mana potion and glared at it, feeling Oracle moving closer. She knew I was on the verge of something and remained silent, but the reassurance I felt from her was enough to guide me. I reached out, focusing, and attempting to build a spell the way I’d seen her do it earlier.

I used ‘Greater Examination’ as the base, then took other sections from my knowledge, ‘guidance’ and ‘aiming’ portions from the ‘Magic Missiles’, the ‘testing’ and ‘identification’ from Cleansing Fire, and I layered them atop each other. Oracle reached out and ‘smoothed’ the edges, pushing the spell around until the sections seemed to lock together, almost like a jigsaw.

Congratulations!

You have created a new spell: ‘Organic Examination.’

The world around you is filled with information. The plants, animals, and the very elements interact with each other, and for the first time, you can see this too, even if only at a very basic level.

Cost: 10 mana per second active.

I grinned to myself and reached out, plucking a Pergola tuber from the collection of random shit I’d piled up. I had two of these left from when I first found them in the Great Tower. Before, I’d found a single use for them; now, I had three when I examined it using the ‘Greater Examination’ spell.

Pergola

Further Description Yes/No

Details:

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

Uses Discovered:

1) Somnolence

2) Perception Poison

3) Fire Resistance

4) ?

Rarity

Magical

Durability

Charge:

Common

No

76/100

N/A

I nodded to myself as I looked it over; then I used the new spell instead, pouring the mana into it and watching as it blossomed, growing to a single point of energy that filled my right palm. Once it was stable, it flowed sideways, sinking into the tuber I held in my left and suffusing it, seeping through its layers, then oozing back to the surface and flowing back to me, like a lazy breeze.

When it returned, I felt… or tasted, something totally new.

It was an entirely new sense, and I struggled for long minutes to make sense of it, but eventually, I did, and I smiled unconsciously at the wonder of it all.

This new sense had carried impressions back to me, parts of patterns that I now knew were suffused throughout the realm and indeed the universe around me.

I examined the patterns, or fragments, feeling the heat that radiated from the section that granted the resistance to fire. It literally formed an overlay to the substance I was made of, adding a pattern that seemed to make the fire appear to be a part of me.

It wouldn’t last long, as it was, in essence, a liquid version of the pattern, and it’d break up, dissolving away. But what if I added other parts, if I took that tiny piece of the pattern, and added to it? Building upon the piece I had, like constructing a jigsaw, I could see more of the picture.

I could see more of the pattern of reality, and I could alter it.

I moved through the ingredients before me in a daze, gathering up some, tossing others aside, and examining still more, until in the end I had five ingredients laid out before me.

The Pergola tubers, Mora Telendril, Labian Leaves and Mugrot stems, as well as the damn Bernicle Beans. I remembered Lydia telling me that the Bernicle beans were used to boost your sex life, and I saw that stood out… prominently… when I examined each ingredient now as well. However, each of them, even though the ‘Greater Examination’ spell hadn’t picked up a use for them that included fire, still resonated in that way to me, strangely. I decided to trust my new instincts.

I set to work, first locating the part that held this ‘pattern’; in some, it was a leaf; in others, the furry underside of the leaf. In still others, the sap that I could squeeze out from the roots.

As the hours passed, I ran out of many of the ingredients, finding that adding water ruined some of them, while it enhanced others.

I boiled, chopped, and reduced. I dried some sections out, and still others I ground up whole, but after nearly six hours, my limbs feeling leaden with exhaustion, my eyes gritty with a need to sleep, I had a single new potion sitting on the desk before me. I’d hoped to have dozens, but I