The problem with dealing with subterranean demonic corruption isn't just the danger of being eaten alive in the dark. It’s the smell.
By eleven o'clock on Sunday night, the quiet, herb-scented warmth of the glasshouse had been temporarily overwhelmed by the sharp, eye-watering stench of quick-slaking lime, crushed sulfur, and Temple-blessed rock salt.
Standing at the stone workbench in my canvas apron, I carefully scooped the caustic white mixture into four thick, unglazed terracotta spheres.
“I still think we should just collapse the tunnel,” Seraphina murmured from her post by the back door. She was fully geared up in her dark training trousers and a tight-fitting black tunic, the Ashen Bough strapped securely to her hip. She was watching me handle the corrosive powder with the same wariness she usually reserved for Grade-3 ambush predators. “One heavy kinetic strike to the keystone of the grate, and the rubble blocks the flow entirely.”
“And then the corrupted runoff backs up, bursts a pipe under the Rose Spire, and floods the noble dormitories with violet slime,” I replied, gently tapping a cork into the top of the terracotta sphere and sealing it with a thick glob of melted pine pitch. “Which would be hilarious, admittedly. But it would also bring the Royal Inquisition down on the campus, which is terrible for our profit margins.”
I wiped the chalky white residue from my heavy leather gloves and stepped back to admire my handiwork.
[Alchemy Success!] [Item Crafted: Purifying Lime-Salt Bomb (4 Units)] [Quality: Silver-Tier (94% Purity)] [Ingredients: Quick-Slaking Lime, Blessed Rock Salt, Sulfur Dust, Hydro-Ether Binder.] [Effects:
Upon shattering in a damp environment, triggers a violent, hyper-alkaline exothermic reaction.
Instantly neutralizes Grade-3 and below biological miasma, burning away necrotic tissue and Rift-rot without producing toxic smoke.
Leaves behind a dense, calcified mineral crust that hermetically seals iron and stone gaps.]
“Chemical cauterization,” I explained, packing the four heavy spheres into a padded canvas satchel and slinging it over my shoulder. “It burns away the rot, and the leftover lime calcifies into a cement plug over the grate. Corvus’s little pet project stays locked on his side of the plumbing, and our groundwater stays clean.”
Seraphina gave a sharp, single nod. She pushed open the back door of the conservatory, stepping out into the cool, misty darkness of the Southern Woods.
I followed her, pulling the collar of my wool cardigan up against the autumn chill.
Navigating the woods at midnight without a lantern should have been a broken ankle waiting to happen for a former noblewoman. Fortunately, Seraphina moved through the dense undergrowth with the silent, effortless grace of a hunting cat, her hand occasionally reaching back to guide me over a slick tree root or a patch of thorny brambles. With my secondary meridians expanded, I didn't even lose my breath keeping up with her brisk pace.
It took us twenty minutes of weaving through the pines to reach the Sector Four boundary.
Here, the manicured grounds of the Academy gave way to a steep, rocky ravine. At the bottom of the ravine, a narrow creek flowed out from beneath the high stone walls of the main campus, exiting through a massive, rusted iron portcullis bolted directly into the bedrock. Visit novelping(.)com for the full chapter.
As we slid down the muddy embankment toward the water, the smell hit me.
It was foul—a sickly sweet, cloying odor of rotting meat and stagnant swamp water that completely overpowered the natural scent of the pine forest.
Seraphina held up a hand, stopping me three paces from the water's edge. She drew the Ashen Bough in total silence, the dark mythril-grain wood humming faintly in the dark, and stepped forward to inspect the heavy iron grate.
“No movement,” she whispered, relaxing her stance slightly but keeping the blade drawn. “But look at the waterline.”
I stepped up beside her, pulling a small, focused glow-stone from my pocket and shielding the light with my palm so it only illuminated the muddy bank directly in front of us.
Tangled in the iron bars of the grate were the swollen, decaying bodies of three large Moss-Rats. But they weren't just dead. Their fur was matted with a thick, pulsating violet-black slime that seemed to be slowly eating away at the iron bars themselves, causing the metal to flake away in rusted, brittle chunks.
The slime was actively bleeding out of the drainage pipe from deeper inside the Academy sewers.
I crouched down carefully, making sure the hem of my trousers didn't brush the mud, and leaned in close to the violet sludge.
“Don't touch it,” Seraphina warned, her blade hovering just inches from the dead rats, ready to strike if the slime so much as twitched.
“I don't need to,” I murmured. I focused my violet eyes on the pulsing slime, calling upon the new Level 5 Appraisal sub-feature I had unlocked outside the Infirmary yesterday.
Molecular Echo.
[Alchemist’s Appraisal: Molecular Echo — Active]
[Target: Abyssal Miasma Runoff (Grade-2 Concentration)]
[Echo Resonance: Matches the exact alchemical signature of the Refined Blood-Lotus Ash detected on Master Corvus’s spectacles.]
[Trace Origin: The runoff is flowing directly from the subterranean drainage junction beneath the Old Alchemy Annex (Upper Campus).]
I let out a slow, cold breath, clicking the glow-stone off and plunging us back into the dim moonlight.
“It’s him,” I confirmed quietly, standing back up and accepting Seraphina’s offered hand to step away from the slippery bank. “The slime matches the trace on Corvus’s glasses perfectly. And the flow is coming from the Old Alchemy Annex on the upper campus.”
Seraphina’s grip tightened briefly on my fingers before she let go. “The Old Annex was condemned five years ago for structural instability. It’s right above the deepest part of the catacombs. If he’s feeding something down there...” New chapters come out on novelping(.)com first.
“Then he’s building a bomb under the school, and trying to hide the fuse,” I finished grimly. “We’ll deal with Corvus and the Annex once we have a way to shut down his magical wards. For now, we cut off his exhaust pipe.”
I unslung the canvas satchel, pulling out the four heavy terracotta spheres.
“Stand back,” I told her, stepping up to the edge of the creek.
Taking careful aim at the rusted iron grate and the thickest clusters of violet slime, I threw the first Purifying Lime-Salt Bomb as hard as I could.
CRACK.
The terracotta shattered against the iron bars. The moment the quick-slaking lime and blessed salt hit the damp, corrupted water, the reaction was explosive.
A blinding, foaming cascade of pure white, hyper-alkaline heat erupted across the grate. The violet slime didn't even have time to smoke; it simply shrieked—a high-pitched, chemical hiss—and dissolved instantly into harmless grey ash.
I threw the second, third, and fourth bombs in rapid succession, plastering the top, middle, and bottom of the portcullis.
The water around the grate boiled furiously for sixty seconds, illuminated by the bright, searing white glow of the chemical burn. When the foaming finally settled, the sickly sweet smell of rot was completely gone, replaced by the sterile, chalky scent of hot stones and sulfur.
The iron grate was now hermetically sealed behind a foot-thick, rock-hard crust of calcified white mineral salt. Not a single drop of water—or corrupted miasma—was getting through that pipe ever again.
“Well,” Seraphina said, staring at the solid white wall blocking the tunnel. “That’s definitely going to cause a plumbing backup.”
“Master Corvus wanted to play with mud,” I said cheerfully, dusting my hands off. “Now he can swim in it. Come on. Let’s get back to the shop and get some sleep. We need to wake up early tomorrow to secure our glassware supply chain, or we aren't going to have anything to put our potions in for the Equinox Festival.”
Seraphina sheathed the Ashen Bough, her slate-gray eyes catching the faint moonlight as she looked at the sealed grate one last time, then back to me. A fierce, quiet approval radiated from her posture.
“Right behind you, Apothecary.”