Excerpt from The Profound and Pretty Princess' Ultimate Guide to Cultivation, Captivation, Cuteness, and Carving Your Way to the Top, English Edition (the worst-selling guide in the history of Putijama)

On Potion Toxicity

While potions are excellent, life-saving tools, they have their drawbacks, the two biggest being waning effectiveness and toxicity.

The first is rather easy: the more you use any potions, perfect or not, in a short space of time, the less effective they are. It happens for any combination of potions but is the most pronounced for the same potions. So, taking a strength-enhancing potion and a speed-enhancing potion before a fight, then taking an antidote and a healing potion after, that antidote and healing potion are both going to be far less effective. But taking three healing potions in a row, the third one will be at significantly reduced efficacy.

Most potions come with a little guide to let you know how quickly you can take them back-to-back for full bang for your bronze.

But toxicity is far more complicated to combat and measure.

Essentially all potions that aren't rift-dropped – and even some that are dropped by rifts! – have at least minor contaminants in them. This can be from incorrect handling of ingredients, imperfections in the ingredients themselves, issues that arise during the alchemical brewing process, even dust particles floating on the breeze that plop into your cauldron.

There are people who say potions should be brewed in exceptionally sterile rooms but, even there, conditions are often extremely hard to control. The magical residue in the air from using mana-based heating for the cauldrons causes more fluctuations than is acceptable anyway and burning wood in an enclosed space without great ventilation isn't usually the greatest idea…

A Tier 1 or higher body can usually handle the impurities in a reasonably well-made Tier 1 potion, especially any potions that would make it to a store's shelves. There are controls in place where any store selling dodgy potions is likely to get shut down if the proprietor isn't killed first by an angry delver.

But once you start to take potions in quick succession or if your potions are of dubious quality, things get dicey. It's why most alchemical stores sell graded potions of exceptional, high, mid, and low-tier quality.

Low-tier potions are usually made so by either the quality of the ingredients and/or the quality of the alchemist. The same goes for higher in the quality ranges as exceptional quality potions are usually either rift-dropped or crafted by someone with both an Innate Capability related to potions and exceptional alchemical skill.

Each Tier 1 potion – at least as regulated by the Verdant Kingdom government – should only have enough contaminants to be processed out naturally by a standard low Tier 1 person in about three days and with essentially no impact. So a low-tier potion has the same amount of contaminants as a high-tier potion, just far less healing for the same level of bad.

It's like if someone is really bad at making trail mix. How much of the things you actually want to eat are in there? Putting in 50% boring or bad stuff means you can only stomach so much of the mix – unless you try to pick at things individually but that ruins the analogy! And yes, most nuts are included in 'the bad stuff'. And a few raisins are great but 80% raisins is a war crime.

The more potions you take, the more raisins contaminants get into your body, which limits the impact of any further potions – and other magical means of intervention, either healing or buffing – for a longer and longer period of time. The building toxicity in your body and essence channels becomes so high that it blocks the 'good' ingredients from taking effect.

There are theories about using a high potion toxicity to prevent some debuffs from working but, as far as this author's research uncovered, the self-administered tests resulted in the subjects dying instead of finding some new secret weapon.

Using a dodgy healing potion often has far more negative impact than good. It might prevent any future healing for days, leading to someone slowly dying because the healing – potion-based or otherwise – cannot take effect in time.

There are some people with Innate Capabilities related to measuring potion toxicity in people but even that is an inexact way to tell. The only known Innate Capabilities related to clearing potion toxicity are internally focused. Those people can't clear toxins in others unfortunately.

So be safe and careful out there. Only use potions you trust and keep a few high-quality potions on you just in case!

Our welcome to Chazin Mark was simultaneously better and worse than when we visited Struva.

On the one hand, no asshole Councilor getting in our way; on the other, our accommodations were not the nicest.

Upon arriving at the inn, nothing seemed amiss – the combined entrance area and common room were well-kept and there was even a small device in the corner playing some music softly.

The wizened innkeeper gave us one look, or rather sniff, and demanded we take baths before we could eat or see our rooms. We all still smelled 'rather ripe' as a few of our fellow patrons called it, so I could see the reasoning.

However, the baths were not included; we each paid two silvers for the experience of splashing cold water on ourselves with ineffective soap after an extremely long day of riding horses and two delves. There were also only two bathtubs we could use so it took a while.

Luckily, each of us had spare sets of clothes because the innkeeper also refused to do our laundry or send it out to be done by others.

When we finally all sat down, smelling at least marginally better, it was to cold stew. The old man shrugged as if there was no way to warm it up despite clearly having a stove he could turn on. Rather than fighting it, we all rolled our eyes, tired from a long day.

I took Inara aside. "I made the decision on how we should split the money for delves where I'm carried through. I am going with the model I came up with, 20% to the rest of the team, as I think that is best for us." I indicated to Steve and myself.

Before I could explain my reasoning, mostly that the higher upside meant I could push things further faster with my other ambitions, she said, "Okay, sending to Vidas now." A few seconds later, she added, "He says he'll go to Zalano first thing in the morning to put the change in at the Adventurers Guild. We'll do that model for the delves tomorrow even if it's not on the books by the time any of them start."

I smiled and we went back to our very underwhelming food.

It almost seemed like they made our rooms worse on purpose as the nice common room and at least clean bathrooms didn't prepare any of us for the lumpy mattresses, rock-hard pillows, and damp smells in our rooms.

That's at least three strikes. Rude innkeeper, cold baths, no laundry, bad food, and terrible beds…

I sent a message to Lurka, the assistant to the Velez Council, requesting we be put in better accommodations as the current inn was going to impact our readiness to delve.

While I prided myself on not being the 'complain at the smallest inconvenience' type, it did seem like someone was targeting us for no reason. Whether that was merely a bad innkeeper or the Council, I didn't really care.

I picked up the sleepy Steve as we were getting ready for bed. "One nice thing about spatial storage is that we can move to another inn easily." He nodded like he agreed but it was just his signal he wanted head rubs.

I looked over our itinerary for the next four days: five delves a day, two with The Order, but no other big city-led functions. Beyond that, not much else to do outside three one-on-one meetings with Councilors and one with a group of merchants that focused on cross-border trade with The Monetary Might Kingdom.

Zdenka had tried to set up meetings with two of the biggest consumer-facing businesses in the city about our debit card machines for a potential expansion in a few months but received rather rude responses. The Council came through with meeting offers to those companies but Nikolaj and I discussed with her and we decided to focus on other cities instead.

I reviewed the video guides for the delves the following day and turned in early.

***

Natalia, our guide for all four days we'd be in Chazin Mark, was escorting us to the first rift outside the city. It was a bit of a long jog at 45 minutes but none of us minded too much – it was a lovely day and the area was actually quite pretty, a large lake and some meadows spread out before us.

"Okay team! Are we excited for the first delve? I think you're really going to love this one. It was a favorite of mine when I was your age. Ah, to be young again!" She was jogging backwards while talking at us, a bright smile on her face the entire time, her long brown braid swinging rhythmically behind her in a hypnotic pattern.

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It felt like she was a counselor at a corporate retreat camp, someone whose job was to be peppy and chipper whether the audience was engaged or not.

And we were not.

At least we just tuned her out.

Our other companion for the day was Pal, who definitely did not live up to his name. The young man had shaved his head – though rather inexpertly – and kept giving grumpy glares at all of us and muttering about Natalia, surely loud enough for her to hear.

He was mid-Tier 1 like me but had not been told we'd be jogging, expecting a horse or carriage. Sent to take measurements of the rifts – so the city could advertise what sub-Tier they'd be safe for once we did a full clear – he'd clearly been drafted instead of volunteering.

The rift was fainter than I'd been expecting. On our Struva trip, the rifts hadn't been full-to-bursting, but it felt far less powerful or foreboding than what I was expecting. Shrugging it off, we went through our final prep.

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Inara said not too long after, handing over the small chunk of gold to Natalia.

"Yup," Romie intoned and Pavel and I didn't feel the need to add anything.

The delve had taken a little under an hour as we cleared our way through essentially a giant ant farm. The toughest part was when we had to climb vertically, Pavel and I acting as a platform for Inara to leap from and hang a rope down via driving a piton into the wall.

"Ooh, you lucky ducks! This is worth three gold coins! After taxes, it looks like you'll be: Hitting – it – big!" She threw her hips from side-to-side on each word.

I soundlessly gawked at the excited woman, trying to figure out if she was kidding or not. Deciding to move on, I asked, "I think we're ready, can you lead the way to the next rift?"

She tapped Pal on the shoulder and started running backwards, talking about her delves as a Tier 1 in the rift I was going to clear with teams provided by Chazin Mark.

She told me the lizards were not that fast but incredibly strong, able to inflict a bite that created a mild mana wasting effect. She was laughing about one teammate who wanted a picture next to one to impress a girl and the lizard wasn't quite dead – he was out of mana for a full week afterwards.

Upon arriving, the clear and protection teams weren't there yet. The trip already didn't seem quite as well-organized as Struva but it was a smaller city that was having more financial troubles so I figured that wasn't too out of the norm or against expectations.

I could see – and feel even more – the rift was relatively full; when I said it had more essence than the city led us to believe, Pal rolled his eyes and took out his equipment, sighing and groaning more than a petulant teenager on a shopping trip with their mom.

Five minutes later, he finished up as we saw the teams starting to arrive from the city on the horizon. "It's totally fine, like I already said," Pal complained. "It's not even close to a break. You do your job, let me do mine." He plopped down on the ground with a groan and tuned us out before we could reply, pushing an AAI notification he was on a 'do not disturb' mode.

"Wow, I hope I wasn't bad at his age," Inara said.

"That was last month," Pavel replied. "And you were worse."

At Inara's incensed noise, Romie asked, "Worth it?"

Pavel gave the 'kind of' gesture and we all chuckled before I headed over to greet the teams that were going to clear the rift with me, Natalia in tow.

The 'clear team' was a long-term group of local delvers at Tier 1.7 so they were keeping 100% of the green essence and even a little of the null since this was a paid chance to advance. That was beyond the 'generally preferred' allocation from our city delve contracts of 100% of null essence to me and 10% of other essence type also to me but it wasn't anything for me to get upset over, especially after our monkey madness rift the previous day gave me so much essence. I let Natalia know it was against the agreement but 'it was fine this time'.

Isekonsultant Tip to Thriving #55: Always evaluate when it makes sense to raise an issue. There are some people who are just looking to push your boundaries and some looking to get away with as much as they can. A lot of the time though, it's simply people looking out for their own interests, which is valid and appropriate. Don't sweat the small stuff but also let people know you see the small stuff.

My 'protection team' was not wearing any essence allocation bracelets, which was a bit weird to me since they would still absorb a bit of ambient essence rather than none if they wore bracelets turned to zero. It was even weirder as they were at the peak of Tier 1.9 and said they didn't have skills to channel the extra essence into.

Not my monkeys, not my circus.

I cast [Poison Resistance] on myself as we headed in, all seven of us at once.

The monsters in this rift were known to spawn or wait – no one really knew how the rifts worked – near the rift entrance.

We all agreed it heading in together was the right call. The clear team needing to hold off monsters until I was inside or risk any debilitation with null essence if they killed a monster before I could absorb it was not a good strategy.

There was only one of the giant yellow and red monsters near as we emerged from the tear in space. It looked like an iguana took some really crazy steroids, glued pretty vicious spikes onto its side, added blades to its arms near its razor-sharp claws, and barbed its tail.

The clear team of four people fanned out quickly in practiced formation, calling out what they saw, showing they had delved the rift before.

Their main frontline fighter, outfitted in full-plate armor that creaked and croaked with every step, charged at it while yelling.

The iguanadon, as I named them, reared onto its back legs, slashing down at the man as if to split him from top to taint.

A sudden flash had a large, single-edged sword appearing directly in the way, braced by both of his arms. The monster tried to pull back but its momentum sheared off two of its seven toes on each front leg.

A blood-curdling scream ripped from the monster's mouth as another of the team used the distraction to clip off the barb on the monster's tail, their scimitar glinting in the late afternoon sunlight of the rift.

An ice spell hit the iguanadon's side, slowing its movement as the monster looked wildly from person to person, trying to decide who to eviscerate.

And that dithering meant it was killed without mounting another attack, sitting still as a throwing axe struck the side of its head, knocking it directly into the path of an ascending sword swing that split its throat.

"Good work everyone," the mage, who was the team shot caller, said before giving out notes.

I decided to call them by their equipment or fighting build to keep them straight. There was the mage, full-plate, axes – who wielded a battle axe and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of throwing axes – and scimitar. Mage was showing scimitar where they'd not hit well enough on a back leg and why the beast still had enough strength to swing at full-plate.

I collected the iguanadon body but quickly discarded it as it took up too much room in my storage sack. No one else wanted to grab them as their venom flowed through their blood, making the meat slightly dangerous to eat and taste repugnant. Their hides made a passable leather but it was far too hard to work with for the meagre output.

Both members of my protection team already looked bored after the opening battle. To keep them engaged from the start, as them paying attention was rather crucial to my safety, I asked about their backgrounds. After twenty words between them in answer to five questions, I went back to silence as well.

The first fifteen kills were clinical, the clear team obviously experienced at the formations and tactics they were using.

The first cracks started to show after that though.

"[Ice Bolt]!" the mage cried out, extending his hand to strike the side of the iguanadon's arm as it pulled up for a smashing strike. The only reaction was a wet dribble from his fingers splashing harmlessly to the ground.

"Shit, I'm out, formation seven!" The mage reacted relatively quickly but not before full-plate took the arm the mage was supposed to freeze to the side, throwing him fifteen feet (5m) to the side, crashing into a rock and eliciting an undignified wheeze as the air was ripped from his lungs.

The team recovered quickly enough to dispatch the enemy and, after the fight, full-plate channeled some mana into his armor, reducing his pain and a bit of swelling for the time being with a rather impressive enchantment.

Five more fights and my protection team had to step in. The second sword wielder – scimitar – missed another called shot on an iguanadon's back leg, leaving it with enough strength to pounce at axes. She artfully dodged out of the way but that left it free to charge past full-plate and try to tackle our group of three.

I had my shield and morningstar ready, knowing a second of inattention in a rift that felt so full was tantamount to suicide.

But my protection team calmly stepped forward, the man casting [Restricting Vines] to stop the charging monster dead in its tracks while the woman brought down her empty hand towards the powerless beast. An axe head on a chain materialized mid swing, smashing directly between the iguanadon's eyes, killing it in one go.

While the weapon was impractical as hell, it more than made up for that in how cool it looked in action.

When asked about it, she laughed and pointed to her partner. "Aye, only when he immobilizes. It's fun as fuck but gets stuck in bodies easy. Awful and dangerous to pull out mid fight, ya know? I was summoning my halberd but 'twas stopped dead so had a wee bit o' fun." She shrugged as the weapon disappeared back into her storage item, a gaudy obsidian ring on her thumb.

In the fight with the rift boss, the clear team was obviously over their heads. While they probably would have killed the six-legged, two-headed beast that could also shoot a debilitating cloud of what smelled like fart spray without help, my protection team stepped in again to cast [Restricting Vines] so scimitar could impale one head, leading to a far easier fight against the remaining one.

As we cleared the reward distortion, the mage groaned loudly. "Lizard leather! Are you kidding me?" He cast a quick, very tuned-down ice spell on it.

The leather disintegrated.

At my noise of protest, he held up a hand. "If it's magic-resistant, it's worth something. Otherwise, that was spending a few silver, most of which would go to the city…"

Seeing how much of a bust the rift was, I asked the teams why they wanted me to bring the essence down for others to be able to run it.

Full-plate said with a carefully restrained voice, "Gives way more essence than a normal rift. The rewards are usually hot garbage at best but it's the region's best source of Tier 1 essence. I think the typical reward is worth less than half a gold."

Groaning slightly, realizing I'd been had in a way, I figured I was being too lax again, expecting the cities to not screw me over because it meant damaging our relationship. If they were betting the null essence situation was going to be solved quickly, a single trip might take care of everything so they wouldn't have to care.

Could simply be this is an economic boon to the area and they thought the 1.25 gold fee was enough… I guess I'll see.

The clear team had taken more than half of the most valuable resource – the essence – and I'd gotten a single gold, my cut for each carried delve. It was also a delve with a team that was clearly out of practice, meaning the risk/reward was out of whack.

When we arrived back, I told Natalia that I wanted to allocate my essence there rather than head to the next rift first. I sent off a series of AAI messages with recordings to my teammates, asking their views as I split my attention between allocating the essence to my spirit and mulling over my own feelings and analysis.

The team consensus was that it was a one-off – a team that was clearly capable, just rusty, missed a call. I asked the mage as they were leaving about running out of mana.

He looked incensed but his look quickly softened. "I just lost count… I thought I had two more casts left and… I'm sorry." With a resigned shake of his head, he walked off to join his team heading back to Chazin Mark.

"Well, if you are up and asking questions, that means you're ready to roll out, right?" Natalia asked excitedly.

She frowned for the briefest of seconds when I said no, I still needed to allocate but then hiked her chipper smile back onto her face. "Well, that just means I can lead the others in a team-building exercise."

I mildly pitied them while simultaneously chuckling.

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