Chapter 65: Chapter 65 - Chapter 65: The Plan - Part 3

“Oh, just got board in the stables and decided to go for a wander. Then I saw you lot. What are you up to?”

“Planning a kidnapping.”

“…”

“…”

Stunned silence was all that could be heard as Olivia and Lyrika just craned their heads to look at Philly who was still going through her bottles and spoke out of impulse.

*pfft* “A kidnapping.” Milly said in amongst her laughter, “You almost got me there. For a moment I was like, woah, are these actually bad people. That was a good one little bunny.”

“Ha, Ha, yeah. Good one Philly.” Olivia could only say in a very robotic voice.

“Ahhh, so seriously. Are you buying anything special.”

“Just stocking up on supplies, ready for when we head out next.” Olivia replied.

“You’re not staying. That’s a shame. When do you plan on leaving?”

“In err…”

Olivia quickly managed to stop herself as the whole oddity from the last meeting came to mind, so rather than state how many days, she just decided to be vague about it.

“…I mean, we don’t know yet. We still need to get ready and figure out where we are going, then we will head off.”

Milly just blinked a couple of times, and to Olivia it felt like she could tell that she was lying.

“I see. Well, I hope you come see me before you do leave, say good bye and all. Anyway, mind if I join you. I’m free for the rest of the day and haven’t got anything planned.”

“…Yeah. Sure.”

Olivia had wanted to say no, but knew that is she did, there wasn’t any real reason for doing so. All it would do is cause an awkward silence and probably bring about many more questions on her decision.

At that, they all headed into the store. It then occurred to her, Milly’s first words when she arrived, having changed topics quite quickly since then.

“You mentioned some vine when you arrived, what was it again?” Olivia asked.

“Oh, the vines from a Chrysanium tree. They are found all over the Demon region. They don’t have much use aside from being used as an ingredient to add flavour to food. So, if you’re looking for some, it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Might be able to find some in the grocers.”

‘That’s good, we shall have to head there after. I just hope it works like I imagine.’

…

They all headed into the apothecary and were greeted by the woman behind the counter.

“Hello, is there anything I can help- Wait, didn’t you come in a while ago.” the woman said as the looked at Lyrika. “Do you need more of the-”

“No! No, I don’t need any more of that. I’m just here with my friends. I’m fine.” Lyrika quickly shouted out, startling the woman.

“Okay… ”

Having turned her head away from Lyrika, she finally noticed the hulking mass of half-orc that had entered her shop. How she missed her at the start Olivia didn’t know.

The woman all but froze at the sight, but after a few deep breaths, she managed to calm herself and looked away.

It did feel odd to Olivia that so far, no one had been overly…terrified of her. Sure, there were the glances, stares and the looks of shock and fear that many had, but no one had ran away in terror or tried to attack her. Not yet anyway.

When they were in Yoban’s village, the villagers were desperate and probably more fearful of the bandits that had killed their friends. Some, it’s sad to say, may have seen the monster turning as a welcome sight, allowing them to be with their friends and family. But here, it was a village full of people and so far nothing horrible had happened. Aside from her entrance that is. The only reason she could think of was that Teagan’s words had a very big impact on things. For that to be the case, it was truly astonishing that only his words were needed to placate everyone.

…

After the oddity with Lyrika turning up again and seeing a monster in her shop, the woman at the counter decided to leave them be, not wanting to be involved in any more drama. The scene with Lyrika however just further caused more questions on what she was hiding.

‘I thought it might have been some medical thing. Like a condition, she has needed to take treatment for. But now it just seems like it’s something embarrassing. I guess it could always be something embarrassing that she has to take medicine for.’

Milly did raise the same question to the group, but like when Olivia asked, Lyrika just shot her down, not wanting to explain.

“Any idea what it could be she got,” Milly asked as she leaned right over to whisper in Olivia’s ear.

“Err… no, no clue. I’m sure will talk about it in time.”

Putting that all behind them, they decided to browse the store. A store which was quite amazing in Olivia’s eyes. Sure, the place was small, it being in a village and all, but each and every one of the four walls was covered in shelves and held an incredible number of potions. As she looked around, it was an assortment of colours, where practically every colour from the rainbow was present. The bottles themselves were in many shapes and sizes, some being incredibly long, almost like test tubes from her science lessons, some were conical, spherical, cuboid, really the list went on.

Looking closer at the shelves she went ahead and read the labels, showing what each one was. One of the walls she was perusing, as far as she could see, held cures. Well rather than that, they were all potions that helped to alleviate symptoms of some form of sickness, illness or poison, while only a few treated the cause. Only a few of them claimed to completely cure something, mainly the ones that helped with poisons, which felt like a disclaimer you would find back on Earth. The rest all helped deal with things like colds and fevers.

On another wall she found what she had expected. Health potions, or more accurately, healing and ailment potions. They stated they helped improve the recovery rate of the body, helping to seal wounds and replenish life fluid, which she assumed was blood. There were also ones that helped with things like tiredness and stress, where it replenishes your energy and keeps you going. It did however state that it was only temporary, where she imagined it was like receiving a burst of energy, and when it fades you fall hard back into the problem you had before.

Then on the last couple of walls were random miscellaneous ones that really made no sense to her, but the rest were what she could only refer to as buffs. She didn’t know what she was expecting when she walked into the apothecary, but she didn’t expect to see potions that buffed a person’s strength as you did in video games. But, she guessed that in a world with magic, it wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility.

Looking through the labels, she could see that there were ones for strength, speed, even one for reaction time or your thought process. Those were Olivia’s words, not what was stated on the bottle. But, where she thought there were miraculous, many of them had down sides. It seemed that while they did help improve those aspects, by only a small amount though, once it wore off the opposite happened for a short while. So, when you finished being able to bench press boulders and it wore off, you wouldn’t even be able to lift your arms up. Same with the reaction times one, once it finished, you would be hard-pressed to be able to dodge or react to anything without it taking ages.

So, while quite amazing that something like this existed, they had their pitfalls. That however didn’t seem to take away from fact that they were being sold for exorbitant amounts of coin. In comparison to the healing potions, they were about three of four times dearer. Olivia really wanted to know what sort of people would be buying these.

Thinking back to the action plan, she could see it being good to have something like the strength or reaction time potion, but if it wore off in the middle of the fight, she would just be a sitting duck.

Leaving those behind, she perused some of the healing potions, which is when Philly wandered over.

“It’s disappointing, they only have the basic stuff. No sleeping potions or poisons, just stuff to help stop you vomiting or sneezing.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Not all of it. I’m sure these healing potions will come in handy.” Olivia said as she picked one up handing it over to Philly.

She gave it a quick inspection and after a while just sighed.

“This won’t be helpful. Sure, the root that this potion uses does help with recovery, but it’s more like taking a day off when you need to heal for a week. This won’t help if you’re severely bleeding or in the heat of a battle.”

“Huh…think you can find us some good ones then. Something to keep us all alive should anything happen.”

“Sure. Leave it to me.”

At that, Philly started taking bottles off the shelf and sorting through them, trying to figure out which ones would be best for the situations they would likely come across.

‘Well, I am very glad that Philly is part of the group now. Having a potions expert is quite the boon.’

Hopefully, she would find some good potions to keep them all alive for the fight to come and any other adventures that await them.