Chapter 10
So where did the creation of the Elixir of Intellect actually begin, setting aside the preparatory stage I had already completed?
With another preparatory stage, naturally: drawing the curtains and switching on the red light.
A thick, unsettling half-dark flooded my tiny apartment, turning it into something between an alchemist's lab and a photographer's darkroom.
My makeshift lab was already arranged on the table and the instructions were engraved in my memory, so I got straight to work on the Phantasmine extraction.
The pollen of the Phantom Orchid was not a loose powder, as an untrained observer might expect, but a pollinium — a single compact, waxy mass.
In the case of the Phantom Orchid, it was a blinding white with a faint pearlescent sheen.
Working by the crimson glow of the lamp with no other light source in the apartment, I carefully plucked the pollinium from the center of the flower I had pulled from my inventory, using a pair of tweezers.
I placed the waxy pollinium on a small laboratory scale.
The display held steady: 57 mg.
That fell within the required 50 to 70 mg range for one dose of the Elixir of Intellect, so I pressed on.
I transferred the weighed pollinium into a perfectly dry, sterile 50 ml flask, then used a graduated cylinder to measure out exactly 20 ml of isopropyl alcohol.
Its sharp, clinical scent hit my nose for an instant as I added it to the flask.
I switched on the dry heating block and set it to ramp gradually from 30 to 40 degrees Celsius over five minutes, then hold at 40 degrees for the next ten.
I placed the flask into the block and waited, occasionally checking to see whether the pollinium had begun to break down.
In theory it should dissolve, tinting the alcohol with a barely perceptible opalescent hue.
My nerves were drawn tight.
Fortunately, on the tenth minute the process began, and five minutes later, when the heating block clicked off, I poured the resulting solution into a centrifuge tube and started the machine.
A steady, rising hum filled the room.
Five minutes later, all the insoluble particles — wax, flower debris, dust — had packed into a dense whitish pellet at the bottom of the tube.
I needed only the clear liquid on top, the supernatant, which I carefully drew off with a syringe into a new sterile flask.
That was the purified Phantasmine extract.
I immediately added exactly 5 ml of colloidal silver.
The solution reacted at once, turning slightly cloudy — a good sign that I was doing everything right.
Before the nearly final and most critical step, I placed the flask in my inventory, filled a deep bowl with cold water, added salt and ice, and returned the flask with the extract to the physical world.
A small box containing one charged quartz crystal appeared silently on the table.
Using ceramic tongs, I lifted the crystal — it seemed to vibrate with an almost imperceptible buzzing charge — and pressed it against the outer surface of the flask where it sat on the table.
I wasn't willing to attempt this step while holding the flask in my hands, afraid of destabilizing the crystal's charge.
Everything hinged on this working correctly.
I hoped it would.
The crystal's vibrational field penetrated the glass and triggered the chain reaction I had been counting on.
First, the liquid went heavily cloudy, turning a milky white.
I waited, holding the crystal steady against the flask and feeling the air thicken around me.
After about three minutes the liquid began to clear rapidly, like fog burning off in fast-forward, and roughly a minute after that it became perfectly transparent — clean as water.
A faint, fresh smell of ozone spread through the apartment.
Another confirmation that the activation had succeeded.
Without removing the crystal from the glass, I gripped the flask with a second pair of tongs and submerged it in the prepared ice-salt bath.
There was a soft hiss.
The sudden drop in temperature locked the elixir's unstable molecular structure into a stable form, making it suitable for both use and storage.
A minute later I withdrew the flask from the bath, returned the now-depleted crystal — which had reverted to ordinary stone — to its box, and drew approximately 25 ml of the potion into a lightproof glass vial using a syringe.
Done.
The Elixir of Intellect was officially complete, and the System agreed.
[System] Created a potion of Common complexity — "Elixir of Intellect." Difficulty: Normal. Gained +200 OP!
Finally.
I had actually done it.
So much effort, so many expenses, so many plans and ambitions compressed into this elixir the System aptly called a potion — and here it was, sitting in my hand.
I wanted to drink it right then and there, but I held back.
Not yet.
I still had four more doses to brew, so I stowed the vial in my inventory and kept going.
Heh.
[System] Created a potion of Common complexity — "Elixir of Intellect." Difficulty: Normal. Gained +150 OP!
[System] Created a potion of Common complexity — "Elixir of Intellect." Difficulty: Normal. Gained +100 OP!
[System] Created a potion of Common complexity — "Elixir of Intellect." Difficulty: Normal. Gained +50 OP!
[System] Created a potion of Common complexity — "Elixir of Intellect." Difficulty: Normal. Gained +40 OP!
The System really did slash rewards for successful but repetitive work.
Annoying, but I was used to it.
Even with the cuts, five Elixirs of Intellect had netted me +540 OP, bringing my total balance to a staggering 685 OP.
A number I couldn't have imagined a couple of days ago, though reality sobered me up quickly.
It wasn't enough for three spins of the System wheel — only two: one at 200 OP and one at 250 OP.
The third, priced at 300 OP, was out of reach; I'd be left with 235 OP afterward, and a hundred of that would probably go toward unlocking the Muscle Stimulator, unless something more interesting dropped from the System first.
Thinking it over once more, I decided that was the best path forward.
But tomorrow.
Before the spins and any further planning, I would take an Elixir of Intellect.
Why wait until tomorrow?
It was late, and after a productive, successful stretch of work the weight of exhaustion was pressing down hard, so it made far more sense to rest and come at this with a clear, well-rested mind.
Satisfied with my own iron logic, I finally switched on the regular light, cleaned up what remained of my improvised chemistry lab, and collapsed into bed.
Sunday morning greeted me with the same incredible surge of energy and drive as the day before.
After a quick shower and breakfast, I pulled an Elixir of Intellect from my inventory, downed it in one swallow, and waited.
The effect came fast.
It was like a veil lifting from my eyes and cotton being pulled from my ears — the world sharpened, and thoughts that had already been quick became lightning-fast, organizing themselves into perfect logical structures with no effort at all.
Feeling a clarity of mind I had never known before, with the sense that I could accomplish anything, I didn't waste a second and opened the System, activating the first spin for 200 OP.
[System] Received blueprint (Common) — "Refined Extremis Formula (Marvel)." (Unlocking this blueprint costs 500 OP.)
Extremis is the cutting edge of the super-soldier development program.
It grants superhuman strength, reflexes like a sprung trap, and exceptional endurance.
Extremis subjects gain the ability to generate extreme heat through a metabolic process, letting them push any part of their body to thousands of degrees Celsius at will.
Regeneration with Extremis is extraordinary: wounds burn to smoldering ash from which lost tissue can grow back within minutes, fully restoring skin, flesh, and bone.
But that power carries a price — the body registers on thermal scanners, and unchecked overheating can trigger a catastrophic explosion.
Use with extreme caution.
This flipped my plans completely, making everything I'd been working toward feel suddenly obsolete and almost absurd.
Actual Extremis, from this same universe.
Granted, there was no certainty this was the exact origin variant, but still.
Even with a powerful neuro-stimulant running through my system, I couldn't contain the excitement.
I wanted it.
I wanted it badly — a physical, almost visceral hunger for the power that blueprint promised.
And since it was a refined version, the risk of explosive failure on injection was presumably reduced, even if overheating remained a problem.
But it looked incredible.
Enticing in a way that was hard to reason against.
And with 485 OP remaining, I only needed to earn another 15 to unlock knowledge of how to make a super-soldier serum without leaving my apartment.
That was achievable in roughly half an hour.
I forced myself to stop.
Time for cold calculation.
Emotions aside.
Extremis was here — or rather, the recipe was.
But unlike a simple Elixir of Intellect, this wouldn't be buildable with what I had.
If memory served — and under the neuro-stimulant the odds of error were low — Extremis involved nanotechnology, which put it squarely in the top tier of complexity.
I would need a proper lab, significant resources, money, and considerably more knowledge.
And knowledge was the most critical piece.
Unlocking that recipe right now would be like buying a starship blueprint when all I had in the backyard was a pile of scrap metal and a wrench.
Tempting, but completely useless at this stage.
No matter how badly I wanted it, I set the Extremis blueprint aside and spent 250 OP on the second spin, hoping for something at least as useful — or better — than a super-soldier formula I couldn't yet build.
The blueprint had been Common rarity, after all, and nothing higher had dropped for me yet.
Maybe this time.
[System] Received item (Common) — "Box of Magical Ore (Each Comes Home)." (Unlocking this item costs 400 OP; ensure you have 1 free inventory slot!)
Who forges without metal?
In this world, equipment matters enormously, and without quality materials even the most skilled craftsman can't reach his potential.
Fortunately for you, this is a capacious storage box measuring 2 by 2 by 1 meters, filled to the brim with raw ore chunks ranging from common iron to the rarest of heavenly metals.
The rarer the ore, the scarcer its representation in the box.
Hopefully you have the tools to refine and forge what you find.
The box's contents replenish monthly.
An actual item.
Finally.
In that moment my overloaded brain instantly mapped the chain: Extremis was the destination.
The ore box was the road.
This wasn't money — it was a foundation.
An endless stream of resources to build a proper lab, to create the necessary equipment, to achieve real financial independence.
Why was this "Common" ore box so absurdly powerful?
Yes, unlocking it wasn't cheap, but monthly replenishment of a full range of ores — from ordinary iron to a hypothetical Adamantium or Uru — was almost too good to believe.
It could also hold gold and platinum, which would solve my financial problems outright.
My priorities rearranged themselves on the spot.
First, unlock the ore box.
Second, pick something from the Arcanum, like the Muscle Stimulator, for survivability.
Third, once I had a proper workshop and a stable financial footing, unlock the Extremis blueprint.
That left me with roughly an hour and a half to two hours while the Elixir of Intellect held, and I needed to sort through the next steps:
First, where had I left traces, if any, and had I attracted unwanted attention?
Second, what was the most efficient way to earn enough OP to hit 400 today?
Third, what would it cost to move out of this place, and how could I convert valuable ore into money without drawing scrutiny?
Fourth, time permitting — a review of key origin points for major players in this universe, compared against what I knew of this world, to establish a reliable baseline.
Starting at the top.
My head, operating like an overclocked processor, devoted full resources to the first question.
The Phantom Orchid stood out as a real and probable trace — not a maybe, but a certainty.
It grew at night in a park in a central New York City neighborhood and could not have gone unnoticed.
There were no public records of this flower, which made sense: much like Vibranium, it was hidden knowledge, known only to those already in that world.
Which meant I had trespassed in someone's territory.
Who collected mystical flowers from Bowling Green Park?
S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Some order of mages?
A corporation like Oscorp?
The critical detail was this: whoever collected them had gone to the park on the night I took the plant, or the night after, and found it missing.
My main mistake, driven by impulsive greed, had been taking the entire flower cluster — several dozen blooms at once.
One missing bloom could be written off as an animal or a vandal.
The disappearance of the entire plant was a clear and deliberate theft.
So the question was: could they track me?
And how?
Standard threat assessment first.
The city was blanketed in cameras.
A competent team could build a movement heat map, track my digital ghost — my phone, which had absolutely not been switched off — through cell tower pings, reconstruct my route, and narrow it down to Hell's Kitchen.
Camera coverage there was imperfect, but present.
Maybe enough to get down to my street, which was fairly decent by neighborhood standards.
After that: door-to-door checks, anomaly searches, things like a sudden spike in my apartment's power consumption.
Or maybe I had left some footprint somewhere I couldn't even recall, despite the neuro-boost.
Either way, an agency like S.H.I.E.L.D., if it decided to look for me, would find me.
It was a matter of time and priority.
For now I was an unknown thief of a rare but not world-shattering plant — assuming I had even appeared on their radar.
But if they found out what I had synthesized from it, the calculus changed entirely.
Non-standard threat assessment.
A hypothetical Lenape shaman who harvested the flower for use in powerful ritual preparations — if he was genuinely a mage, then things got more complicated.
But as far as I knew, local magic users in this universe didn't have foresight or direct access to an information field unless they wielded one of the Great Artifacts, like the Eye of Agamotto, which was effectively a Time Stone.
I doubted anyone would deploy a cosmic artifact to track down a missing flower.
Beyond that, I wanted to believe I was a blind spot in this world.
Being an outsider, with a System, might make me invisible to magical detection.
The fact that nearly two days had passed with no knock on the door was the best evidence I had.
If someone was looking for me, they were using conventional methods.
The concern was real.
Panic was premature.
But this imposed one hard condition: I needed to accelerate my move.
And with only $200 in the account, that was a problem in itself.
Were there other traces?
For materials procurement, I had made an effort to spread my purchases across different hardware stores and private sellers, paying cash throughout.
That trail looked clean for now.
And nothing I had bought screamed illicit lab, just ordinary maker and lab supplies.
My interactions with Mary Jane Watson and Harry Osborn?
They had almost certainly already forgotten I existed.
The note to self was clear: avoid obvious mistakes when dealing with restricted resources, because that was exactly the kind of thing that attracted attention.
First item, resolved.
The threat was real but delayed.
I had a window, and I had to use it.
Which brought me directly to the next question.
How to most efficiently grind to 400 OP before the day was out?
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