Even while I was collecting ingredients and rocking Poppy’s world, I was not idle in the cave. At one point, while returning to the euchre table, magical window popped open with Celine and Wayne’s faces appearing squashed together. Celine, the mousy Wizard, had been one of the girls to join my bed, specifically to get the ability to heal up the fighting aspect Nakamamon, and I was a little bummed she wasn’t in the camp right now, because she was freakier than my tentacle-haired Nakamamon.

“Fletcher!” she gushed.

“It is refreshing to see you again,” Wayne said. “Very tricky proposition to pinpoint your position by the way.”

“You ever wish you could be in two places at the same time? Well, I can do that.” I wasn’t bothered that it wasn’t a Healer ability rather than a Pleasure Seeker one. I had no problem whatsoever with keeping up intimate contact with the ladies at all times in order to keep the clones around… in fact, the challenge of it made me happy. I rather enjoyed figuring out how to make up a cure one-handed, or have the lady in question clutching to my body, riding me like a backpack, or in the case of Poppy, stuffed into my pants. It was a wonderful type of crazy.

“Are you currently underground?”

“Correct.” I filled him in on the situation with the portal being under the mountain and my possible plans to use it as leverage with the Agency people. “What news?”

“Well, we’re repelling Divination spells from targeting you, but it seems like that’s not as much of a problem as we imagined, if you’re in two places at once.”

“Three,” I said.

“You are in, presently, three places at once?” Wayne asked. “I would like to know this spell.”

“Hi, Fletcher,” Celine said, giving me a coquettish smile. I knew she had the dirtiest things imaginable tattooed on the insides of her thighs, and the thought of her long stockings made my pants uncomfortable.

“Celine has been talking about you nonstop, and the details have been somewhat… graphic,” Wayne said, giving me a flat look. “Regardless of that, we have also been running magical interference over the Agency headquarters and attempting to prevent them from assembling. Our Rogue Oz has been working inside the castle, which is very nearby.”

“G’day mate,” Oz said, popping up and waving. “Bloody Wizards always need their material components, right?”

“Riiiiiight,” I said, knowing where this was going.

Oz held up a bunch of pouches and shook them. “Pity they can’t find none.”

I grinned. “A real pity, yeah.”

“Keep up the good work,” Wayne said.

“By the way,” Oz said, in his usual Aussie way: long, drawn out, and making me worried. “Folks at HQ are taking out all the stops. You oughta know that. No more Rangers runnin’ memos or Wizards keepin’ files for the admin, right? Everybody’s on field assignments.”

“Are they now?” I asked.

“And that field assignment is you,” Wayne said.

Marvelous.

***

With this in mind, I went back to the door, grabbed out Trent, and with a bit of apology, asked him to extract some Emberblossom thornroot, then… did a little gardening. In the bright sun. A nice, cool breeze made it all a bit more comfortable.

Honestly, the whole situation felt a bit surreal, with me having conjugal visits while everyone and their brother was arraying themselves against me. You had the mysterious and unknowable Nakamamon I’d mistakenly called Buttercup on one side, and on the other, the whole might of a government agency calling themselves SNORC.

And me? I was in the middle, planting and tending to flowers and herbs, sifting around in the lab, and taking girls out on dates to fill up all my skills as fast as possible.

Tara had delivered flux moss.

The permutations started in earnest the next day. First I wanted to cure mana disacclimation, even while collecting the ingredients for the cancer cure.

This mean harvesting the flux moss and getting several doses dried up, several doses distilled, and another several doses steeped in oil. Not I’d need to make a variety of cures, trying out Mana Affinity in between each ingredient to feel my way through the process by a sort of instinct.

I didn’t have to do that just yet, because I was in the process of infusing the first flux moss with mana when I leveled up in Healer.

Level 39: +12 skill points

Nice. I added the 6 Pleasure Seeker points on top of that for good measure.

With this, I could boost Develop Cure (Human) and (Medium), Administer Cure, Mana Affinity, Mana Shaping, then Transmutation, Instinctual Casting. Just in case, I added 2 to Meditation for the uncertain time after I burned through my Affinity Tokens to get all my other Tokens back, then Develop Cure (All Aspects).

My skill sheet looked a heck of a lot better when I’d started on this path all those months ago.

Healer (Arcane Mender) Skills:

Diagnostics 12

Treatments 12

Develop Cure (swarm 6, small 6, medium 8, large 6, huge 6)

Develop Cure (All Aspects 11, unique 9, human 15)

Administer Cure 14

Instinctual Casting 14

Mana Affinity 14

Mana Shaping 8

Spellcasting (Abjuration 1, Conjuration 1, Evocation 1, Transmutation 5)

Meditation 6

Divine Resistance 16

Physical Resistance 5

Psychic Resistance 3

Armed with all these new skill levels, I closed my eyes and felt around for how this mana disacclimation cure needed to go. I was surprised when Meditation activated.

The UI supplied the explanation I was looking for.

In a meditative state, you will gain a bonus equal to your Meditation skill for developing previous unknown and unmade cures. For every 2 Tokens you spend, you will gain 3 Tokens, up to 6 Tokens spent.

It wasn’t a massive boost, but I’d make sure it came in handy.

From here, Mana Affinity activated.

Mana Affinity Develop Cure (Medium/Human) Check: You are attempting to craft a previously unknown cure. Mana disacclimation is a uniquely human illness, and humans are of medium size. Your knowledge of cures for these aspects will prove valuable.

You have a total of 37 skill levels. This check defaults to Ingenuity, adding 10 attribute levels. This check will require five successes at increasing difficulties, for each ingredient, and then for the preparation of the combined ingredients. This first check is made at Nigh Impossible difficulty. The difficulty is 20. You do not currently have enough Tokens to automatically succeed at this check. You do not currently have enough Tokens to lower the difficulty for this check.

Total Tokens: 10 Ingenuity and 0 Free Tokens.

Note: You are currently undertaking 3 tasks at a time, and Myriad Mind places a -1 penalty to your checks.

“Increasing difficulty… starting at 20?” I asked myself.

This was the penalty for trying to do too much at once: no Free Tokens and all Affinity Tokens used up. Spending all my Tokens to find the Gravetwine and the Emberblossom had cost me… I’d have to just chance it, and burn more Tokens using Arcane Alchemy

to regain Affinity Tokens. Once I had 5, I could regain all the Tokens.

“I feel like I’m due for a bad skill check,” I muttered.

There was something I could do to regain Tokens, and I sent a clone off to do it. While that was happening, the last clone in the cavern settled into a meditative pose to start generating Tokens the old fashioned way.

This is Christopher buckling down and spending 6 Ingenuity Tokens to get 9 Tokens’ worth of difficulty reduction.

You have succeeded a check! The UI told me. One of five Develop Cure checks succeeded.

I pumped my fist in the air, noting that I actually ended up with 22 out of the needed 17 successes. Blowing out a long, relieved breath, I let the new knowledge flow into me, then dutifully converted a Muscularity Token into 2 more Affinity Tokens.

The check informed me that the flux moss needed to go in last, and it would need to be heated at medium for an hour, stirring clockwise while sprinkling variable amounts of mana into the concoction.

“Great, good,” I told it, and moved on to the second check. Taking a deep breath, I got the ginkgo and concentrated.

Mana Affinity Develop Cure (Medium/Human) Check: You are attempting to craft a previously unknown cure. Mana disacclimation is a uniquely human illness…

I skipped over the rest of the check text and spent the last 4 Ingenuity Tokens to grant myself 6 Tokens’ worth of difficulty reduction. This one started at a difficulty of 22, and I bumped it down to 20. Then I used up Arcane Alchemy once more, used a Likability Token, and turned it into another 2 Affinity Tokens. That gave me 6 total.

“Dice rolls are so fickle,” I told the table.

You have scored 20 successes. You have succeeded on your check! Two of five Develop Cure checks succeeded.

The next check required 25 successes. I sighed, then burned 5 of my 6 Affinity Tokens to replenish all Tokens through the new Arcane Alchemy ability.

Cracking my mental knuckles, I got to work on the mugwort next. This time I was able to lower the difficulty by 3 with 6 Ingenuity Tokens. Afterwards, I went with another 6 to lower it by another 2, drawing 2 from Free Tokens. Then it was time to cross my fingers and hope.

You have scored 21 successes. You have succeeded on your check! Three of five Develop Cure checks succeeded.

In the meantime, the Meditation done with Azalea in my lap also replenished one of my Tokens.

“How are we doing?” my mother asked.

“Quite well,” I said. I was seducing Chrysta right this moment, as well as working on a second Token with my Meditation skill, while also infusing mana into the mugwort and steeping it in the concoction along with the already-added flux moss and ginkgo nuts. “Too well.”

“Too well, huh?”

“Hopefully I don’t get to the fifth check and there’s a difficulty of like 50 successes,” I said, keeping my breathing calm and the mana flowing out of my forehead steadily increasing as my instincts told me it needed to… only now I needed to decrease it. I eased off on the mana.

“You need time to yourself,” she said.

I considered the reasoning behind all that we were doing, and instead gave my mother a tired smile.

“I love you,” I told her.

“I love you too, sweetie,” she said, and left me to my alchemy.

Another hour later, I was prompted with the fourth check, for the holy basil this time. I’d been ramping up and drawing back on the mana again and again.

The difficulty was 28 this time.

“Hooooooooley,” I muttered.

“What’s that?” Regina asked. She’d walked in and was stroking Dee’s fur and petals. The flower fox was nuzzling her face with his nose.

“Difficulty 28 check,” I said.

She literally took a step back. “What?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, and immediately dropped 6 Tokens in to lower the difficulty by 3. 5 of these had to come from Free Tokens, leaving me with just 1. “Or just, you know, cross fingers.”

She crossed Tweedle Dee’s paws.

I could make 25 successes on my 47 total levels… it was theoretically possible. I pressed ‘go’ and hoped.

You have failed! the UI informed me. Would you like to spend a Token to retry this check?

I’d gotten a disastrous 19 successes, a number that only a few months ago would have been absolutely mind boggling. I paid the Token, again crossing my fingers.

You have scored 25 successes. You have succeeded on your check! Four of five Develop Cure checks succeeded.

I let out another relieved breath and added in the holy basil. This stuff had a nice strong scent to it, and now the mana fluctuations needed to come more rapidly. I swayed as I stood over the cauldron, pouring mana in at a flood, then lessening it down into a trickle, before ramping it right back up again.

“Jeez,” Regina said, amazed, watching me work.

It was becoming harder to do three things at once. And the UI’s last Develop Cure check came and smacked me right in the face. It wasn’t just a little higher than the last. It went from 28 successes, practically impossible, to 35.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do this,” I told no one.

“You can do this,” a voice told me, an unexpected voice.

All of them were there. Affinity told me that the gushing Likability of my Bard was there, the wild and untamed ferocity of both Rangers, my bond mate’s water and fairy magic, Larelle’s quiet and implacable psychic shield, Alan’s quiet and insistent jack-of-all-trades magic. My mom stood with my daughter, and Tara stood next to her with Airaconda. I felt Tweedle Dee there, and somehow, the Shrubber-Nee! I’d befriended in Glumpdumpkin. I had no idea how it had tracked me all this way, but it was here.

You have been affected by a Bard ability! the UI said.

“We’re here for you,” Cinzy told me. “Anything you need, we’ll do.”

I would have to do this all over again for my mother’s cancer cure, but there was no way it would be easier than this. Far off, I received a ding! announcing that I’d just leveled up Pleasure Seeker yet again. Astonishing.

All the shuffling around of Tokens wasn’t going to make this happen. There was simply no way.

“Take these,” they said.

A whole bunch of Tokens were pressed into my free hand. I glanced away from the bubbling potion to find Ingenuity Tokens. Lots of them.

Cinzy gave me hers, followed by Regina, then Tara, and my mother. Alan had to give me four different handfuls, because you could only hold about 3 in one hand at any given time. I burned each of them in turn to lower the difficulty of the skill check.  It ended up being a total of 26 of them, enough to bring the difficulty down by 9 by adding one of my own.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling the weight of what they’d done grow hot in my chest and threaten tears.

“Don’t thank us, you dunderhead,” Cinzy said. “Get this done.”

“Twenty-four,” I breathed. It was possible. I told the UI that I was ready to commence, and it rolled the dice for me.

Then I stared at the window for some time.

You have succeeded in crafting a unique, never-before-seen cure. Mana disacclimation is a condition shared by every visitor to this world from earth, and acclimating the soul and chakras to this world’s unique mana signature will allow humans to move throughout the world without having to rely on medicines to purge the built up mana from their bodies.

I read over the message again and again. This was something Rainer could have done. He could have inoculated everyone who came to this world against mana disacclimation, but the Agency wasn’t interested in doing that. Instead they wanted every new recruit under their control. Having me lead a team was a risk they should have been prepared to handle.

I hoped they hadn’t.

“I did it,” I told them.

The whole room erupted into cheers and laughter.

This is Christopher doing something nobody else had ever done before.