[Ding!]
Aris snapped his eyes open. The biochip panel flickered to life against the cavern's darkness.
[Recipe synthesized. Material processing parameters established. Instructional data uploaded to storage.]
"Already?" he muttered, pushing himself away from the cavern wall, some of the exhaustion lifted by the brief nap. He turned his focus inward to find a new folder waiting in his mind.
He accessed it, and a series of instructions; clear, ordered, and far more profound than the technical manual he'd expected unfolded. The knowledge settled into him so absolutely that, for a moment, it felt like a book he had written himself over decades of constant herbalism.
He knew it was only the storage feature at work, so he didn't dwell on the sensation. Rising, he gathered his remaining tools: the dagger taken from the two men, the herbs laid out on the wooden board, the board itself and an empty bamboo container from the loot.
He moved toward the curtain of the waterfall, where the diffused light was strong enough to work by. Three meters from the spray, far enough to stay dry, he set up his workstation, then carried the herbs and container to the cascade.
He washed the herbs in the falls, rinsing them in the bamboo container until Prime confirmed their surfaces were sanitized.
Returning to the board, he knelt before it and laid out the wet stalks. He triggered a final scan. The herbs, the wooden board, and the dagger were all free of abnormalities, though none were one hundred percent sterilized. He'd expected as much, given his circumstances.
He reached for the dagger. As he hovered the blade above the first stalk, his vision dimmed and shifted, replaced by a high-contrast overlay, lines and numbers scrolling across his retinas. The stalk before him was suddenly mapped with a grid of glowing green patterns, the precise incision zones the biochip had calculated to isolate the active compounds.
Following the first line, he made the cut with deliberate care. When his hand deviated by a fraction of a millimeter, the grid flared a warning red. He corrected his grip instantly, and the display settled back into a steady green glow.
In the minutes that followed, with Prime guiding every movement, error was impossible. He lacked the years of a master apothecary, yet under the chip's cold guidance, every flick of his wrist was flawless.
For the following minutes, the rhythmic snick of the blade against wood and the constant crash of the waterfall filled the cave as he worked. Processing the thirteen stalks took him half an hour. When he finished, he allowed himself a rest since his body needed to be in peak condition for what was to come.
Ten minutes later, he gathered every sliver of the processed herbs and placed them into the bamboo container, leaving not a single fragment behind.
Inside the narrow container, the scents mingled in a strong, green top note that mellowed into something earthy and grounded. Aris inhaled deeply, a faint smile crossing his face. Setting the container aside, he rose and moved to the curtain of the falls.
He peered through, scanning for any sign of movement beyond the spray. Nothing moved. He stepped through the cascade, dove into the pool, and swam to the far edge, his eyes sweeping the bank until they locked onto a smooth, cylindrical stone.
Improvised pestle in hand, he returned to the cave. But before beginning, he wrung the excess water from his clothes until they were merely damp, moving with agonizing care to ensure no stray drop could contaminate the container's interior. He dried his hair as best he could, leaving nothing to chance.
Once satisfied, he picked up the container and returned to the edge of the waterfall, where he added exactly one hundred milliliters of water, the precise volume the recipe demanded, guided by Prime.
Then he began to crush the stalks with the stone. Every downward strike, every ounce of force, was calculated by the chip, appearing as pressure-sensitive red gauges in his field of vision.
Aris followed the guidance with unwavering focus; he couldn't afford a single error. Finding another set of herbs in this forest while Lilly lay unconscious and fading would be nearly impossible, and the danger of running into others was too high.
He glanced back at her motionless body in the dark, his chest tightening. She was weakening by the second, even the shivering had begun to fade, and he knew that was a grim sign.
I have to hurry. But he couldn't rush the concoction. The recipe had to be followed to the letter, or he'd be forced to start from scratch.
Two hours later, as the sunlight filtering through the waterfall began to dim, he stopped and set the container aside. His hands shook. His entire body felt pushed to the brink of collapse from the relentless, rhythmic beating of the herbs.
Yet, as he looked at the foul, green slurry inside the bamboo, a faint, weary smile crossed his face. He glanced at Lilly, still lost in her unnatural sleep, and a wave of relief washed over him. He slumped to the floor beside the container, catching his breath at last.
After resting for a minute, he picked up the container and brought it to his lips to test its potency, only to recoil from the pungent stench. He clenched his jaw, forced the protest down, and took a mouthful. An overwhelming bitterness coated his tongue. Before he could dwell on it, his eyes snapped wide as if struck by a bolt of electricity.
A bloom of heat erupted below his navel, surging outward in waves until it washed over his entire body. Nausea and a violent urge to vomit followed instantly, but he tightened his fists and fought it down. According to the recipe data, this was merely a standard side effect.
Slowly, he set the container aside, careful not to undo his hard-won progress, then collapsed onto the rocky floor, curling into a fetal position, his hands clutching himself tight. His body temperature swung wildly: shivering cold, then searing internal heat. His damp clothes grew heavier, soaked through with a sudden, feverish sweat.
He lay there for minutes, monitoring his biological feedback with Prime as the violent tremors began to subside. What followed was a cool, serene stillness—neither hot nor cold—so perfectly balanced it bordered on euphoria.
But the euphoria was short-lived.
[WARNING! WARNING! Anomalous substance detected: Unknown energy signature within host body.]
"Unknown energy?" Aris whispered, the exhaustion vanishing from his voice.
[Initiating analysis... Analysis: 0.000001%. Analysis failed.]
[PARAMETER ERROR: TARGET ENERGY EXCEEDS SENSOR CALIBRATION.]
[REFRACTORY ATTEMPT 2. BROADENING SEARCH PARAMETERS... FAILURE.]
[DATA OVERFLOW.]
[NATURE OF ENERGY: INDETERMINATE. CHAOTIC. HYPERDENSE INFORMATION MATRIX. CANNOT PARSE. CANNOT STORE. CANNOT TRANSLATE.]
[CONCLUSION: UNKNOWN.]
"Wait—unknown energy?" Aris's voice echoed sharply through the cave as he sat up, his frown deepening. "You flagged this as safe. Now you're throwing anomalies at me? Prime, explain!"
[NO CLEAR ANSWER. ADDITIONAL BIOMETRIC DATA REQUIRED.]
"Fine. Scan my body for abnormalities." He rose in one smooth, fluid motion. He felt strangely light, and then it hit him. The dull, persistent ache from the wound on his chest had faded to almost nothing. It was as if weeks of recovery had been compressed into a handful of minutes; the concoction had fundamentally accelerated his body's natural healing.
[Status Update: Strength: 1.3 | Agility: 1.4 | Vitality: 1.2]
Vitality 1.2? He stared at the number in disbelief. "Two gulps did this?" He had expected a minor boost in recovery, not a significant jump in his baseline stats. How could a handful of wild herbs carry this kind of potency?
The logic settled into place. Either this world's plants were inherently overpowered, or Prime was. But if these herbs were this potent by default, the village should have been crawling with super-soldiers. They weren't geniuses, but someone would have stumbled onto a health potion by now.
He looked down at the slurry. No. It's the biochip. The raw materials were everywhere in the forest, but without Prime's guidance, concoction recipe creation, refining them into this would have taken decades of trial and error.
He picked up the bamboo container and ran a deep-layer scan on the concoction. He found nothing unusual. Only plant matter, water, and recovery agents—no trace of the unknown energy. He tried again. Still nothing.
The energy was invisible to the scan in its liquid state. Perhaps the energy appeared only when triggered upon contact with my body. To test the theory, he swallowed another mouthful, leaving exactly half for Lilly.
The side effects hit him again; the heat, the nausea, the sudden urge to vomit, but this time his body was stronger, well to be exact healthier. The effects were diminished, though still fierce, and he was back on his feet within three minutes.
As expected, the biochip's warning flared in his vision. As expected, the analysis failed to parse the energy's source.
But he had confirmed the most vital data point: the unknown energy wasn't a virus or a toxin. It was restorative, emerging only when the concoction merged with his body. It left him feeling more energetic, more potent, than he had ever felt in either of his lives.
Yet when he checked his stats, Vitality had barely moved—a gain of only 0.50.
"Perhaps more gulps would push it higher," he murmured, a pang of pure greed sparking in his chest. He looked at the remaining concoction, but the sight of Lilly pushed the impulse aside.
The recipe was already stored in his memory; brewing another batch wouldn't be an issue. Given better tools; proper lab equipment, and refined instruments, he might even create a more concentrated version. A concoction potent enough to let the biochip finally parse the unknown energy, even a sliver of it.
But all of that depended on surviving the forest long enough to build a lab in this ancient world. Everything else was just a dream.
He walked over to Lilly, knelt beside her, and gently shook her shoulder. Her eyelids parted with agonizing slowness. "Brother..." The word was barely a breath.
"I'm here," Aris whispered to her, clutching the bamboo container. In the darkness of the cave, he didn't need light, the biochip tracked her face, guiding the container to her dry lips with precision. She swallowed, and a weak sound of irritation escaped her as the medicinal bitterness coated her tongue.
He remained patient, coaxing her through another swallow, then another. After the fourth and final gulp, her body convulsed. He held her steady, his right hand hovering near her mouth in case she purged the concoction, his eyes locked on the scrolling metrics in his vision.
As he had anticipated, the purge phase struck her just as it had him, alternating waves of heat and cold that he could feel radiating in his palm.
A genuine smile spread across his face as her Vitality stat began to climb: 0.36... 0.47... 0.68... 0.69. Each incremental rise lifted a heavy weight he had been carrying since the moment they fled the village.
Moments later, the tremors ceased. Her Vitality plateaued at 0.7, and she drifted into a deep, restorative sleep, her nervous system overwhelmed by the sheer potency of the unknown energy she had processed.
He released her and sat beside her in the silence for a long time. The immediate threat of the cold had been neutralized, but he knew it was only a temporary reprieve. The only way to truly survive was to avoid exposure entirely, and the cold was not the only enemy in this forest.
"I need to find a better hiding place," he murmured, looking around, then up at the cavern ceiling. "Somewhere with better ventilation."
His mind snapped back to the waterfall and the subterranean world he suspected lay beneath it, but he cut the speculation short. He would examine the pool tomorrow.
He turned toward the western wall where the loot lay. His stomach cramped with hunger at the sight of the dried meat, but he forced himself to restrain the impulse. Lilly would need nourishment the moment she awoke.
Then his gaze shifted to the deer carcass; given its size, it could sustain them for days, provided he could keep the scent from drawing predators. For now, he allowed himself to lean back against the cool stone of the cavern wall. He closed his eyes, letting the muffled crash of the waterfall lull him into sleep.