While I waited for the guild staff to find the bandit hideout, I didn’t have much to do other than training and learning. Lavanda did her best to squeeze as many hours as possible out of her busy monster hunting schedules into my inferno bomb training, but that still only amounted to about an hour a day, two if she was able to finish her quest quickly.

Reylia and Phyralia trained me from time to time and that did time here and there, although not as much to call my day even half busy. I could have trained on my own in the lot of free time that I had. However, it wasn’t long before I hit a wall. From the way Lavanda taught me, the inferno bomb was constituted of two essential parts, the fireball and the wind sphere. The fireball, no matter how you put it, was rather simple; increase the heat of a fire as much as possible without burning yourself with it. The main difference with a classic fireball spell was that this time it needed to be held for a long amount of time before launch. Contrary to the normal way of doing it, if I wanted to reduce my enemy to a literal cinder, the fire needed to be fuelled much more than a regular fireball spell to reach temperature just not obtainable if I threw the spell too early.

That is exactly why the wind sphere was needed. By forming a protective layer of wind around the fire, it not only shielded me from the incendiary sparkles and the heat but also helped fuel the fire with air rich in oxygen that could push the fire further than regular air. Since the concept of oxygen and atoms wasn’t exactly common in this world, it was rather hard to explain what oxygen was to Lavanda and why a fire needed it.

Whenever Caryly was free, she made time for me, as she was highly curious about Earth knowledge, especially when it came to science. I grew up in a hospital, so I can’t hide the fact that I did a stupid amount of research on my own in the long years of nothing to do I had available. The doctors and nurses answered to the best of their ability any question I had, but that was still a long shot from an actual degree in science or med school. Knowledge from the internet that I verified with the staff was the best I had known, even if the doctors often underestimated the sheer amount of information on the internet. I still thought it was stupid why they never told me the name of my disease, to the point where I wondered if they knew what I had at all.

Even if Caryly still couldn’t grasp entirely what I was talking about when I told her about atoms, she was much more knowledgeable than Lavanda on the subject.

The main problem I had with the inferno bomb was that I wasn’t able to form the layer of wind it needed. I couldn’t even make small breezes with wind, or even influence the element at all for that matter. Whenever I tried, I looked stupid, while Lavanda made it look easy to create a tornado. She assured me that an affinity wasn’t necessary to use the actual element, it just made it miles easier. That didn’t help me at all with the fact that I was lost on how I was supposed to influence the wind.

Plant, the first affinity I discovered, just connected to me whenever I touched the grass or a plant. After that, it wasn’t long before the connection I had with plants became second nature to me so much that I didn’t need to touch the ground anymore to feel and use the affinity. Water was kind of similar, even if I couldn’t sense it the same way I did with water. I just touched the thing and I naturally understood how to manipulate it with time.

But how was I supposed to do it with the wind? Lavanda kept telling me that she just learned how to use the affinity by influencing the surrounding wind. Something I wasn’t able to do, nor had the predisposition to do. Caryly also had a wind affinity and while her explanation wasn’t as useless as Lavanda's, her tutelage and long hours of trying with her did nothing to help me make a breeze at all.

Magic was such a pain in the ass if I didn’t have the proper affinity. I understood why people stuck with their natural magic, learning a new one probably needed years of futile trying to maybe get it one day. Lavanda and Caryly didn’t seem bothered at all with their few hundred years of experience, thousands for Caryly. My only luck, I guessed, was that as a pure elf, I would live so stupidly long that I would probably have the time to learn other magic affinities one day. For the time being, I wasn’t about to waste more time on the ridiculous task of learning new magic.

My inferno bomb was incomplete but still useful. No matter what I would fight, a few hundred if not thousands of degrees of heat in the face was bound to do some respectable damage, even if I had to put it there myself.

In my room, I put a bucket of water on the floor. I had grown tired of one of my main problems with the way I used magic. The two bottles of liquid I always kept on my belt were useful, very useful, too useful! So much that I kept running out of them whenever I had a fight that lasted more than a minute. Procuring the water was the simplest thing in the world, a river or pond could do the job. My main problem was the acid. I could use just about any acidic fluid, but procuring them was a pain in the ass, especially if I wanted a good one. Even if multiple stores offer decent solutions and mixtures, they all cost a lot of money and I didn’t want to spend 5 gold coins to replenish a single bottle of acid whenever I ran out.

It was about time I made my own concoction, my very personal homemade acid solution. For that special occasion, I bought the best acidic solution available in the whole city. The thing was said to dissolve anything to its very core and beyond until there was nothing left of it. Everyone I asked about just said that it was too powerful for the rare occasion where they needed some acid for dissolving something or casual torture. According to Sophia's very detailed analysis, you can’t extract information out of someone if they are screaming as their body is dissolved by a few droplets of acid. If that thing got the seal of approval of the guild as the strongest acid far too dangerous to use, then it was the one I wanted.

Sophia was kind enough to recommend to me where to procure the acid. I was surprised when she told me that Latie had a few bottles in her inventory. When I visited her in her office at the guild, she seemed happy to see me, particularly to see Gnash in his best condition ever. I never visited her after the plagued land bodyguard quest, but it seemed she didn’t mind if I showed up once in a while. After all, she was in the middle of researching information about the plague land, and I was the only plague affinity user in a very, very big area if not the whole country.

The plague dog licked Latie with enthusiasm. At least he was careful not to use his toxic saliva when playing with her. When I told Latie I wanted her strongest acid, she gave it to me in exchange for 30 gold coins. She didn’t personally mind giving it to me, especially since both she and Sophia knew me well enough to know that there must be a reason why I wanted it. Since the guild couldn’t just give rare concoctions to anybody, they had to sell them to me, I didn’t mind paying anyway if it was a potential one-time purchase.

When it was done, I was in my room with a bucket of water and a flask full of acid. To recreate the acid, I would need to first identify it with my plague affinity. I could touch the flask to have a slight feel of the mana present in it or touch the liquid directly to rely on my sense of touch to learn. But, there was a way better to do it.

Unsealing the lid, I put the flask against my lips and took a swig of its contents. The moment I felt the mana in the acid, I knew it couldn’t harm me, my plague affinity could protect me from far stronger things easily, so I was confident I could drink it without any effect. Of course, I didn’t drink it blindly.

To my knowledge, an acid needed to be extremely potent and concentrated to even harm me slightly. Could the acid I drank potentially harm me? Yes, but the dosage was far too little to do anything to me. I didn’t have any direct comparison, but by the taste of spiciness in my mount, it probably needed ten times the quantity to affect me.

The only poison or acid that ever affected me was back when I was still new in this world. One of Tara's spiders spat acid on me and hit my left arm, I still had the scar. The thing only ever penetrated the first layer of skin and was stopped by my plague affinity. The damage was visible and probably would never 100% heal, but I was alive with the affected arm fully operational. The damage was completely cosmetic to me.

I guessed that the affinity didn’t entirely stop the acid because otherwise, I wouldn’t have felt it. Skin existed for a reason after all, and it was to feel things and know what could be harmful or not. As soon as it reached the second layer, my body just eradicated the acid with ease, to not let it affect me more than necessary. If I hadn’t felt the pain at the time, I probably would have thought that the acid couldn’t harm me at all and let the spider splash me with acid to their heart content, maybe to the point that their acid could have got concentrated enough to overpower my affinity and melt through me.

I let the acid in my mouth for a while, carefully letting my plague affinity analyze it for me. It did burn slightly, but not much. The sensation, as far as I was concerned, was rather enjoyable, like a very spicy meal or drink. I couldn’t stop a smile from forming on my face, spice was my thing. One of the few sensations that could make me feel truly alive, when I was in my hospital bed. My brother often tried to beat me in an endurance contest every time he bought a new spicy thing, to the point where he tried to find the spiciest sauce available to see if I was immune or not.

I let out a slow sigh of contempt as some heat in the form of vapour came out of my mouth. The taste wasn’t as spicy as the spiciest sauce I tasted on Earth, but just slightly below. My plague affinity probably made the flavour milder, but it was good. Ten out of ten would drink again. A little sad that this was actual acid and not a sauce, putting that on chicken’s wings would have been too good. In the state that this was, it would melt through the chicken wings, the plate, the table and the floor. Only a magically reinforced flask specifically made for this and my stomach could contain it safely.

After two more sips, I got accustomed to the flavour. It was time to reproduce it. The mana contained in the acid was similar to other kinds of acid I used before, but there was a difference. Filling a glass with water from the water bucket, I dipped my finger in the liquid. Transferring plague mana into the water, the clear liquid slowly took a pale green and became darker as more magic got into it.

Thinking I had done it, I looked at the liquid contained in the glass. It was a very dark green, far more opaque than I initially thought it would be. Now for the real test, I put the glass against my lip and drank the liquid. The taste was far from what I expected. This thing was extremely sour with actual acidity in the flavour, contrary to the spiciness of the acid I aimed for. The power of the creation was weak and couldn’t even trigger my plague affinity to do its job. This wasn’t acid, just sour-coloured water.

After washing the glass clean from the foul liquid, I tried again. I switched the mana content and searched for the perfect mix to recreate the acid I wanted. The results were not just disappointing, they were disgusting. Multiple times I was forced to spit out the mixture because of the nauseating taste in my mouth. My nose couldn’t always tank the vile smell that came out, making me throw the solution out the window before I could vomit it properly.

After hours of unsettling experiments for days, I often had to drink the acid I wanted to recreate to remind myself of the taste and clean my palate of whatever I fed myself. I only had a single bottle of the desired liquid, rationing it was hard, especially considering its taste compared to my failed experiments.

To top it all, this world had some great food, sometimes outclassing anything I ate on Earth, but the beverages were lacking. Fruit juice or any juice for that matter was rare, expensive and either too sweet or sour to my taste. They were crude and unpolished in comparison to the regular juice box I often drank back at the hospital. Of course, there was alcohol, but I never drank any before. I was approaching 17 years old, and a part of me wanted to wait for my 18th birthday for my first tasting of the so-praised divine liquor.

One of the few good things that came out of the hundreds of failed attempts was that Hybry didn’t mind trying the result for himself. At first, I started the experiment by making a full glass of the mixture, but it wasn’t long before I settled on a quarter of a glass at most. At the very least, to spare my stomach from emptying its content. With this little blend, I either drank my half or added it to Hybry's portion. Only a few of the truly foul concoctions were too disgusting for him. For my sanity, I didn’t compete with him to know who could tank the atrocities the best. Calling them torture instruments would have been a euphemism.

I was mentally starting to get sick from trying to get the acid right until there was only a single sip of the original mix left, I finally got it. In my hand, I held a glass filled with a medium green liquid that could make the greenest of grass shy with jealousy. To be sure I had it right, and that I wasn’t crazy from all the previous concoction, I took another sip of the liquid.

A pure heat of spiciness filled my mouth as I let out a vaporous sigh. The acid triggered a smile on my face. Hybry rubbed against me, interested in the successful product. He opened his three mouths as I flooded some of the liquor in them. The hydra beamed with ecstatic joy as the delicious acid worked its blessed flavour.

Dipping my finger in the bucket, I turned all the water into the desired acid. Thankfully, I had a reinforced bucket, so the acid didn’t melt it. Next, I opened a dozen of reinforced glass flasks and vials. At this point, I was extremely familiar with the mana in the acid and was able to remotely control the entire thing with ease. The acid floated into the air like a snake, separating itself into smaller parts to fill all the vials.

I attached one vial to my belt and stored another in one of my pouches. Four flasks would stay in my room with all my other luggage, while I wanted the six others to be stored in my summon storage. When I finished the dancing ritual, the circle was filled with my inventory. This was a mess. Panties and clothes were pilling under bags and bottles of ingredients. My old broken sword and three daggers were unsheathed in the clutter. I really needed to clean the storage, otherwise it would only get worse with time.

In video games, storage was automatically ordered, cleaner and less bothersome to use. At the very least, I was lucky to have some form of storage, even if it wasn’t as good as I hoped.

It took me an hour to put everything in order. When it was done, the clothes were all loaded into more bags in sets, the ingredients were separated by category such as liquid and solid. The weapon could always be useful, so I asked Tara to attach them together in a solid string of webs. They would rest in my storage until they may be of use one day.

The next day, I was sleeping when I heard someone knock on the door. Half asleep, I got up, put the sleeping hydra with Gnash and turned the door handle. Tanta was kind enough to turn into a dress, so I wouldn’t be naked in front of anybody.

“Hey! How are you doing?” Serra asked, beaming with a smile too bright for this early in the morning. Sebastian was with her. He wore his bulky armour while Serra had only a standard set of protective clothes. They were both strapped with their weapon, lance and giant sword.

“I’m great, but I wasn’t expecting any visit. Especially not this early.”

“Early?” Her head tilted as she looked behind me at the window. It was a bright day outside, probably around 10 in the morning.

“Yes, early. Did you need something? You can enter if you want.”

“Don’t bother, Sophia asked us to tell you that they found the bandit hideout and that you are invited to the party. Here’s the information letter.”

Now fully awake with the expectation of action, snatch the letter and open it. It was written like any other quest and detailed the specific information of the task, I recognized Sophia's handwriting.

Two days ago, the bandit attacked a guild caravan and captured its members. The attack location added with the information of the bandits captured in the village raid allowed the guild to restrict their area of search to a more precise location. Guild trackers finally found the bandit nest hidden at the foot of a mountain in an old abandoned fortress that wasn’t registered in the guild archives. It was further than expected, but still in range of Dawnriver.

My mission was to search and rescue the captured guild staff. I was allowed to kill whoever stood in my way but would be additionally rewarded for every captured bandit. The size of the bandit group was far bigger than originally thought with an estimate of a thousand bandits present at the fortress, so the attack was gonna be separated into two groups.

The first would infiltrate discretely to rescue the hostages. When it was done, the other bigger group would raid the fortress to get rid of the bandit operation entirely. At first, I wondered why they didn’t ask the knight garrison of the city to do the job, but they probably couldn’t just leave the city unprotected. With this many bandits present at the fortress, who knows how many more members they had hidden, ready to cause trouble?

The letter didn’t mention how many adventurers there would be in the raiding party, but the main raid group would probably be almost entirely composed of B and C-rank adventurers. Written near the end, the letter said that Lavanda and Caryly would be in the main raiding group. The choice of having S-rank adventurers at the frontline would be good for the morale of the adventurers and horrific for the bandits.

“So you’re ready to go?” Serra asked, perfectly knowing that the moment I finished reading the letter, of course, I would be in.

I turned around to get my stuff only to be greeted by Hybry, Gnash and Tara all ready to go. Gnash already had his harness on, while Tara presented me with my armour and my bag. Before I could say anything, Tenta grabbed my clothes and helped me get in. After only ten seconds, I was fully set.

“I’m ready!” I smiled. Familiars behind me, we fetched Reylia and Phyralia who were also invited to the party and left the inn for the guild. Lavanda and Caryly were already gone from their room.

Tara transported the dragon egg on her back, I wasn’t about to leave it alone in my room without surveillance. I was sure Sophia would agree to look after it in my absence.

It was time to decimate some bandits.

Emman.M.P

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