It Started with Slime - Part 1

Interlude III - Haemish, And the Youngest Prince

"Young Prince! How are you feeling today?" Haemish asked kindly to the young boy of nine.

He had been lead from the Alchemical Lab through the many, many corridors in the Palace to the rooms of the youngest Prince of the Frelaine bloodline. They had been a powerful house since the Great Civil War many years ago, well before Haemish's time. His Imperial Majesty King Borowyn of House Frelaine had been the Imperial Advisor at the time but when he had seen the kind of man "Mad King" Gaustaff Kristor had become and how he was tormenting the citizens of his nation he had decided it was time to take over and get the country back on track.

In his 435 years as reigning King so far, he had changed the populace from a cowering wretch of people to a major power on the continent of Fryst. While Darf had always been a small nation compare to its Neighbouring nations, it was a rich nation in terms of natural resources and mining opportunities. What had been owned by the crown for many decades and not exploited properly for the country's benefit was now working like a well-oiled machine with the companies extracting the resource and paying fair but abundant taxes to fill the royal coffers. It was a system that had been working and further refined to near perfection over the centuries.

As for the neighbouring nations, they had been negotiated expertly into beneficial trade agreements by the king himself who as the previous Royal Advisor; was far more business-minded than many of the previous monarchs had been. While many of the larger surrounding countries had been waging war with each other on their shared borders, Darf was left unharmed and continue to benefit from all the trade flowing through it to opposing countries as neutral ground. Of course, the Darf coffers benefited from that as well.

The trouble with the Prince had started one month prior, something he had ingested had given him the status Diseased and nothing that the Healers or Alchemists had administered had done any good to him, the Diseased status had persisted. It had now fallen to Haemish to find the still evasive solution.

The boy was curled up in bed and looked pale and gaunt. He was weak from the extended bought of illness and none were clear on how it had happened. Levelling up or evolving his class had not worked. None of the usual solutions had worked, and now the prince was too weak for the Swordmaster of the court to keep training him.

Now healing only provided a temporary respite and so far blood samples that had been tested had yielded no meaningful results. But none in the kingdom were a Potion Master of Haemish's renown, and he had a unique skill to his class that allowed him to distil an antidote from the poison itself. He had kept it a secret up till now, thinking the Alchemists of the Palace were dithering about but would find a solution. He would need to take matters into his own hands and hide his antidote until he could discern what its make-up was.

His skill Distil Antidote while powerful also had several very specific requirements which made it difficult to use. First, it required a Level 100 Potion Master and as far as he knew, he was the only one who had made it that far on this path. Meaning that one needed to be at least a Level 100 Alchemist and then choose Potion Master as a speciality and then level that to 100 as well. Second, it required the sample of the Poison to be freshly distilled. Third and finally it required at least 3cm3 of the Poison to create the Antidote. Just from the first requirement, there was no one else in this country or as far as he knew any other of the surrounding countries that could do what he was capable of.

Many would capture and imprison him for the single skill he had that he had spent a lifetime working towards. He had found a book of lore that explained in great detail what the Potion Master was capable of and what its specific requirements were. But that book had been lost in the explosion and as far as Haemish knew it was the only copy in existence. A lifetime of work and it had gone up in smoke. He hadn't been worried though, one of the first skills he had earned a fledgling Alchemist was Memory Trap and so anything he read or wrote would be filed away for safekeeping in his mind. He would take this secret to his grave. It was the reason he preferred to live in isolation and did not want to get involved with many people though he did feel the longing.