Summoned A Hundred Years Too Late

In Medh’s elemental essence shop, there was a counter. Behind that counter stood a door that led to a tunnel. This tunnel was lined with more doors, each leading to a storage room dedicated to a specific type of elemental essence. But if one continued further into the tunnel, past the last storage room, deep into the bowels of the mountain, they would find another room.

That room was small. It wasn’t easy to dig something so deep into the rock, especially if one wanted it to stay a secret. So much rock had to be dug out and turned into fine dust before being disposed of so as not to raise the town’s suspicions.

Inside the room, there was a chair. Medh was sitting on that chair. In front of him was a table, and on the table, a communication orb.

Medh was waiting for his call to be returned. He had been waiting for a while now, but Medh was not an impatient man. He could wait longer. He would wait longer, until his call was returned, and further.

The air in the room was stale, its circulation limited by the layout. That was fine. Medh didn’t mind physical discomfort.

After a long period of sitting motionless, Medh felt a pull in his leg. He adjusted his posture and kept waiting.

The call came when he stopped expecting it.

His orb lit up, pulsing with a faint glow as a lazy voice sounded from inside the device. “Brother Medh, I awaited your call.”

“I awaited your call, Brother Samos,” Medh answered, his voice calm and composed, as if he hadn’t just waited for hours.

The orb flickered. “What news do you bring?”

“My best hunter has brought me a few stone elemental sources,” Medh said.

“Stone again? Is she with us?”

“No.”

“Try directing her toward the types we lack. Though we can wait, hastening the end would only bring us joy,” Samos said.

“I will try,” Medh answered. “Though hurrying is futile. My hunter also brought me a new group of people who are looking to get started in gathering elemental sources. I wouldn’t normally report it as their strongest member is only a Silver, but my hunter seems to believe in their potential.”

“Noted, Brother Medh. Keep in mind that one’s rank is but a temporary condition. All will come in time.”

“Naturally.” Medh nodded. “Unless we succeed first.”

“Naturally.”

The conversation settled on a long, drawn-out silence as each party waited for the other to say something.

Samos went first. “Other branches have not found a solar elemental source yet.”

“Time is on our side,” Medh said. “But I will direct my hunters in that direction once more. However, I fear none of them will want to hunt such a beast.”

The pact keeping Platinums human, but not monsters, out of the basin meant nobody would be foolish enough to fight such a beast.

“It doesn’t matter. Everything has an end, and so we will prevail.”

“Indeed. Farewell, Brother Samos.”

Medh put an end to the communication, letting the orb’s light fade. He waited for a few more minutes, taking the opportunity to pray to his patron. The leaders of the cult wouldn’t approve of their actions, but deep in his heart, he knew he was doing the work of the divinity. Decay was inevitable, but hastening it would serve Oc well.

They just missed a few rare elemental sources to synthesise a rot elemental. Surely the apostle of decay would reward them.

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Medh stood up, went back into the tunnel, and closed the door to his secret room behind him. If the people of Balrum found out he was a member of the Watchers, it would ruin everything. Ingrates. They didn’t know it, but their interests converged. Despite their status as a demonic cult, the Watchers never wanted to bring pain and misery to the world, but only to let it arrive at its natural conclusion.

Decay.

Medh walked the dark corridor, not bothering with a light. He stopped in front of the slime elemental source storage room. The newcomers had brought a lot of it, and he still needed to examine the quality of the batch he acquired from them.

There, he turned on the mana-powered lantern and gathered the flasks the trio had sold him.

He uncorked the first and poured the viscous source into a test vial. He didn’t need to run any tests to be disappointed. So many impurities had filtered into the source that it was barely usable. Furthermore, the quantity was too low. A good portion of the source had been lost.

Medh didn’t react. He just poured the content of the vial into one of the clay pots on the shelves and moved on to the next vial.

This one was a little better, but not much of an improvement. At least, they’d managed to gather more of the source before it dissipated, but it was just as impure.

The next few vials were more of the same. Medh showed no sign of impatience, but he was starting to doubt Zeynep’s assessment of the newcomers. Slime elementals were among the easiest to hunt. This was the work of amateurs.

Still, Medh was guaranteed to break even, even on impure products. Slime elemental source was a highly sought-after alchemical ingredient. Masters would purchase impure batches for their students to practice with.

And there was always the off-chance of a lucky find.

The seventh vial completely changed his perspective. This was the first full container. Medh nodded approvingly as he noted the progress of the group. Beginners wasting a bit of elemental source wasn’t a problem, and improving this much in a single outing was commendable. Maybe Zeynep was onto something after all.

Medh poured the content of the flask into a vial and raised his eyebrows. The green-tainted source was flowing better than expected, leaving no residue on the walls of the flask.

“Good,” he murmured. “Very good. This one is worth testing further.”

The difference between an impure source and a pure one was staggering, though the locals of the basin didn’t need to know that. However, perfect purity was not possible. Even the best source Medh had ever seen was only seventy-five percent pure. The process of killing elementals was simply too messy, and it always contaminated the source.

Sources were considered pure when they reached at least fifty percent purity. Above that, each additional percent represented a mountain of gold. Well, not quite. It depended on the type of the source, its uses, and its rarity, but it was always a significant increase in price.

This one, Medh wagered, was at least fifty-five percent pure. Just that was enough to make this batch profitable, even if all the remaining vials were duds.

Medh put the vial on a rack and grabbed a clay pot from the upper shelves. Unlike the other pots that were either empty or filled with slime source, this one contained a bunch of testers, enchanted paper slips that would change color according to the source’s purity.

They were not cheap, hence why he would only use them on specific vials.

Medh took a tester and plunged it inside the slime source. At first, nothing happened, but Medh knew the importance of patience, so he waited.

The paper slip slowly changed color from white to red, indicating that the specimen was indeed at least fifty percent pure. Medh smiled.

The tester soon turned orange, fifty-five percent, as he expected. But it didn’t stop there. Yellow, sixty percent. Green, sixty-five.

Just as it looked like it was going to continue, the color stabilized at green.

Medh exhaled slowly.

This was even better than he thought. He turned his head to the two remaining flasks. He had to test them too.

He filled two new test vials and put a paper slip in each.

The second one was also green, sixty-five percent. The third went up to cyan. Seventy percent.

“If this level of quality is repeatable…” Medh pondered the issue for a moment. Zeynep’s assessment was correct, likely even more than the woman believed.

Now the question remained whether the newcomers could maintain this quality on different sources. This was unlikely, as each elemental was radically different. But even if this was just slime sources, it would fill up Medh’s coffer to the brim. Especially since it was possible that whoever was doing that still had a margin of progression.

Seventy percent was great. Seventy-five was better. Eighty was something he’d never seen in his life.

Feeling his heart beating faster in his chest, Medh considered offering them a better deal. He had to push them toward slime elementals. He had to encourage them to work.

Then he came back to his senses. Carefully pouring the content of the vials into individual clay pots, he listened to the tenets of his patron. Patience was key in all things. It was too early to offer a better deal. What if they kept hunting slime elementals on their own? What if they could actually manage this purity on other sources?

Medh left the slime source storage room and returned to the communication room. He had to report his findings to Samos.

Then all he would need to do was to keep doing what he was already doing.

Watch.