CH23: Archimedes

Zacharia Archimedes felt a familiar weight settle in the pit of his stomach as his dreams crashed down around him. It wasn't fair; he was a genius inventor and alchemist, a master of the chimeric craft. So how could the bank foreclose on his farm?

Letters from the bank piled up on his workbench next to a cage of malformed goblins. His alchemy cauldron remained cold; his last log of spirit wood had long since become ash. Zacharia had used his knowledge of alchemy to try everything from growth serums to fertility injections to double up on births. Unfortunately, cows weren't built to have twins and quadruplets. Both mother and brood often died, setting him at a loss, and no one wanted milk with a growth serum aftertaste. Ironically if he hadn't used his alchemical abilities or used them differently, he might have been better off.

There was only one more play left. The genius alchemist and inventor of several variants of the standard growth and fertility potions still had a final gambit. Zachery bought a slot in the upcoming little league monster coliseum. He got the idea from his barber in Ivy and sent his daughter Ivy to get a few goblins. Free range often bred real scrappers better than those bed in the Ludus of professionals. What would mere beast masters know that a genius alchemist didn't?

He turned on one of the most promising subjects. The little green brute had grown half a foot thanks to a few doses of a modified over-the-counter Wife's Delight. No card-carrying alchemist working for the Colosseum would consider it contraband. He wasn't shoving mere natural growth hormones or steroids into his goblins. The artificial growth hormones and steroids would remain undetected if not for an unfortunate side effect.

Zacharia tapped at the wards surrounding the goblin, and a shock went through the monster's system from its collar. Though its muscles strained, he didn't see any lasting damage from the goblin's vitals.

"Routine," Zacharia said, and the poor dumb creature stood up on shaking knees. His poor daughter would have to go get more goblins soon. The delightful girl knew how to sneak into their camps and use her beast-tamer class skills to lead them home. Elizabeth was gifted and clearly inherited his genius, if not in alchemy, then in taming the cretins.

Before he grew impatient, the green beast approached a set of dumbbells, each a mere 50lbs. to a goblin in the first stage; they should be simple to lift. Unfortunately, there was a problem with his serum. While it would quadruple one's strength and constitution gain after taking it, the user's strength and constitution stat was cut down to F. But the improved potential should be more than worth it. After taking the serum, he believed that the goblin was better off.

The goblin tried to lift the weights with all its might, and when it failed, Zacharia shocked it to enhance the monster's motivation. But the other flow in his serum was quickly realized.

Its arms snapped, and the goblin's knees gave out. The alchemist marked it as a failure when his daughter walked in. She looked at the goblin and then at him and sighed.

She was as beautiful as her mother and growing more beautiful by the day. The wolf ears peaking out of her red hair were a testament to his genius. After decades of research and moving from one government organization to another, he found a way to do the impossible and showed the fruit of his genius. Who cared about the stone of immortality or ichor? What he did was something no one else had dared to do. He merged a monster's evolutionary path to his daughter's body while maintaining her ability to receive classes.

That one success led to many tragedies.

"Dear, you have something on your face."

He reached into his robe to pull out a handkerchief, only for her to lick it away. His dear Elizabeth was like her mother.

"Dad, I want you to come with me. There is something in one of our cows."

"A parasite. Did you forget to give them the deworming serum, or did I forget to make some?"

When his daughter snapped her fingers, he looked around to see if he had any ingredients for the serum. "Pay attention; don't wander off and make some new type of dewormer that makes cows explode." He opened his mouth to the reply, then shut it. That wasn't the bridge he would die on. When inspiration struck him, the results weren't always pleasant.

Case and point werewolf suitors and a particularly smug banker offering decreased interest rates for his daughter's hand. It would be a cold day in hell before he sullied his daughter's line with a monster.

"Predatory lending should be outlawed," Zacharia said.

"Wut?" his daughter asked in the eloquence of a teenager.

"If it's not worms, did one of our bulls break out of its pen a while back. How do you know something is inside her?" Zacharia asked.

Elizabeth bit her lip like she always did when she did something she wasn't supposed to. He waited patiently for his little girl to give her testimonial.

"Well, a weird human-shaped leech snuck on our farm. It radiated mana like it was going out of style and hid from me badly. While it was an anomaly, if it made it to the pond, the fish would eat it and gain more exp, or it would feed on one of our cows, and the dewormer would kill it. Only I think one of the cows swallowed it or crawled up somewhere it shouldn't. It's been in there for hours and only halfway through the cow." His daughter said.

He felt a slight tug at his curiosity but little more than that. While it sounded like something he would be interested in, it was little more than a curiosity. Still, it was better than listening to goblins wailing from shattered bones.

…

Seeing in the dark sounded like an awesome power until he had it and found himself inside the small intestines of a cow. Being prechewed for digestion had been an experience, but he had bonus impact resistance since he was an invertebrate. So instead, he had the amazing feeling of thousands of tiny hair-like bristles pushing him along through the cow's guts along with its dried-out cud.

It was an annoying experience made worse by his continued failure to lift the pebble in his fingers with telekinesis. Ok, that wasn't really a big problem; he knew it could take weeks to even move the pebble, and when he did, it would be a massive mana sink. In addition, telekinesis was a hole in the ground regarding mana cost, almost like fortify but not quite.

While fortify poured massive amounts of mana into something in hopes of finding an empty space to fall into. Telekinesis was creating a geyser of mana until something rose by tossing buckets of water up out of a well. Then, he had to compact the mana, gather it under the rock, and push it up constantly to maintain the rock's lift. It was like bashing his head against a boulder to roll it uphill. He might get it up there with enough effort, but there were easier ways. The biggest hurdle was doing it first and then dealing with the massive mana sink. If lifting something wasn't hard enough, the further away something was from his body, the more mana it would cost exponentially.

He continued to move through the bowels of the cow under the animal's sweltering heat. It was a good thing leeches didn't have the same sense of smell as humans.