The Alchemist at Hell's Gates

2

^^ Dungeon Boss ^^

The dungeon was expansive, moving up and down and back and forth, but every single path circled back to the big room we'd broken through the ceiling of, leaving us chasing our tails for a few more hours, before we decided to stop for a rest. We'd found a few more skeletons and poison slimes, so I was at 250/1000, a quarter of the way to third level, which not even close to were I'd thought I'd be by the end of this Dungeon Crawl.

The others were helping me gather the loot and metal from the cave when I had a thought about why we'd been going around in circles. "Wait... Uric, have you ever read Sherlock Holmes's Novels?"

He glanced at me slowly, and sighed. "Figured you'd be one of those who read paper books... no, Sam, I have not. Why?"

"He used to find secret doors with his cigar! Specifically it's smoke!!!" I produced the Smoking Bottle from my inventory, and he cocked his head.

"I... I don't follow?" He frowned, clueless.

"The smoke is attracted to air currents, and secret doors mean small air currents that'll suck in the smoke, detailing their positions to us!" I explained excitedly.

He hummed, scratching his head. "Alright... that's actually pretty smart, but even if you find one, how would you open it?"

"Isn't that your job?" I grinned and popped the cork of the bottle, releasing an impressive quantity of smoke towards one of the walls. When nothing happened, I sprinted over to another wall and opened it again, watching expectantly. After a moment, I turned away, and spotted a portion of the ground that was sucking a small portion of air away from the small cloud. "Ha! I found it!!!" I stabbed a rusty sword from one of the skeletons into the crack I could now see, prying it up slowly but surely.

"Woah woah woah, what if it's trapped!!!" The Archer rushed over in a panic, and flinched when a dagger sprang out from within the open space, barely missing my ear.

"Well, it's not trapped anymore!" I grinned, throwing the trap door open and peering inside. A short ladder descended into a warmly-lit chamber, of which I could only see a small portion; it seemed to be a laboratory of sorts, from the basic scientific equipment I could see. "A laboratory... interesting..." I hummed, and looked at Uric. "You want to rest a bit, or go in there now?"

"Rest, that's what we were doing before you found this thing. It's good we know how to more forward, though, I was getting bored of this bull-$@&3!" The auto-censor made his curse sound like a duck noise, and I snickered at his irritated expression, but followed him to the little area we'd set up under my rope that was still hanging from the ceiling, considering we hadn't found a way out, yet, other than the hole we'd made.

"Smoke in a bottle... never thought that would be useful, but I'm happy to be wrong! You're pretty good at this for a Newbie!" Kenny grinned at me, nudging Hellen with his elbow. They'd sat next to each other naturally, and their flirting was subtle, but constant, and that coupled with the lack of sexual tension leading me to believe they were a well-established couple.

She looked up from her invisible screen where she was checking something, and nodded. "I agree, actually. I was just looking up the cost of one of those Smoking Bottles, and apparently they sell for 100 gold a piece, because each one is technically a magical item; they don't ever run out of smoke! You made a magic item! I suppose healing potions count as Magic Items, but they're much more... I dunno, common? Everyone knows about healing potions, there's no mystery to it, but an Ever-Smoking Bottle? That's magic!"

"Well, I mean, other than giving someone carbon monoxide poisoning and a few other minor uses, I can't think of any major uses for it, which I suppose is why I got it at Level 2." I shrugged, and placed the bottle into my inventory again, then pulled out the sleeping potion. "What's it say about Sleeping Potions?"