Chapter 76.1: There's one more bottle
Since more than ten days ago, the little second commander of the King's Guards was promoted by the young King Alexander to the number one seat in Chambord's Military. Brook now had control over all the military power in Chambord and was called one of the [Two Gurus] in Chambord along with the new Head Minister Bast. One star warrior Brook's future skyrocketed and became one of the most influential figures in Chambord, above everyone else except for one person. Even the richest merchants who didn't even bother to acknowledge him before would now put on a big smile on their faces, invite Brook to their parties frequently, and send him gifts and cute maids. People visited his place from morning till night every day. The hinges on his door were almost worn out because of it.
If it was anyone else, this huge change in status would probably make them dizzy and get them carried away. However, this warrior born in a poor family had finally shown his integrity, boldness and flexibility. To anyone who was trying to network and befriend him purposely, his principle was quiet surprising – he would neither accept or coldly reject them. He would mildly satisfy everyone that came to his door.
He used painstaking effort in order to achieve this – Chambord was currently greatly weakened after the war and needed to recover. Moreover, in half a year Chambord would have to take on another life and death challenge in Zenit's Military Practice. King Alexander said that the goal in front of them was to unite all the powers and strength they could and build up Chambord quickly with the least amount of resources. Therefore, Brook didn't want to stimulate any hidden conflicts between the young king and the old school nobles. He had to at least maintain a superficial friendliness.
Except for burying his head into rectifying military affairs, Brook spent a lot of his time on reforming the military planning. It was his main objective for the next thirty days. King Alexander had mentioned a few requirements and also vaguely expressed some stunning ideas. Brook carefully studied and thought about these ideas; the more he thought about it, the more excited he got. There were many things that he never considered. He was even confused and didn't understand when the king mentioned them for the first time. But slowly, he felt that those ideas and plans were impeccable. After tailoring those ideas to fit them into Chambord's current situation, Chambord would experience an enormous change for the better.
Of course, as the power in his hands grew heavier and heavier, Brook also felt huge unprecedented pressure.
After King Alexander returned to normal, his strength and long-term vision both increased at an astonishing rate. Recently, during a chat in their free time at Chambord's Civil and Military Academy, the number one warrior Lampard actually implicitly admitted that the King's strength had increase to a level that he couldn't even estimate. He probably couldn't even defeat Alexander.
That left people such as Brook and Pierce a ton of pressure.
They knew that if they wanted to follow the king and battle and bleed for Chambord, they had to improve their strength; that was essential. If they couldn't keep up with their majestic king, they would be gradually left behind and eventually become useless men.
During this time, the strongmen such as Pierce and Drogba "got" a set of strange training methods from the King and started to excessively train themselves everyday. Brook on the other hand was busy with military affairs and had limited time to train. He gradually felt that he was falling more and more behind and there was nothing that he could do.
When he was struggling one day, Fei sent his guard Fernando-Torres to Brook along with a king's command – "Mr. Brook, His Majesty has asked you to head to his palace right away. There is something very important that His Majesty wants to talk to you about."
Brook was lost; he didn't remember Fei previously telling him that he wanted to discuss an important matter today. He followed Torres to the main palace.
After he stepped into the palace, he was surprised to find out that the First Commander of King's Guards Peter-Cech was sitting down on a chair and having a conversation with King Alexander. Except for the two of them, no one else was in the palace.
"Haha Brook, you got here just in time. I have something very important for you two to see."
After seeing Brook's arrival, Fei laughed as he walked down from his throne that was surrounded by two lion-like monster statues. He tapped Brook's shoulder and suddenly opened up his palm. Cech and Brook both felt something flash in front of their eyes as a small green bottle appeared in Fei's palm. A green liquid was stored in the elongated crystal bottle...It had a light touch of magic power.
"This is..." Both Cech and Brook were surprised.
"Hehe, this is a violent energy potion that I recently put together..." Fei explained with his nonsense. He spoke proudly, "But I prefer calling it [Hulk Potion]. Hehehe, this is a very magical potion...." Fei paused a little bit to create more suspense.
"[Hulk Potion]? That name is very strange..." Brook could feel the light magic power hiding within the potion. He subconsciously asked, "Your Majesty, what's the special effect of this potion?"
"Of course, Hehehehe, it has the effect of instantly increasing one's strength by a few times..." Fei wanted to show off. "It sounds like the [Mad Potion] that magic pharmacists put together, but the difference between the [Hulk Potion] and those low class [Mad Potions] is that the strength enhancing effect is permanent!"
"Permanent improvement?" Cech and Brook were both flabbergasted. They stared at the potion in Fei's hand and gasped involuntarily, "How is that possible? Could this be one of the epic potions from the legends?"
Under the mage classifications on Azeroth Continent, there was a branch of magic pharmacists. These magic pharmacists could create a lot of strange potions. The potions all had different effects, and due to the differences in effects and materials required for each potion, there were many ranks from low to high. The epic potions from legends were one of the highly ranked potions. They all had incredible effects and there were a few recorded epic potions that could permanently enhance one's strength...
But those were all items from the legends. Epic potions could only be created by epic leveled magic pharmacists, they also need a lot of rare and precious raw materials. These raw materials would even be considered rare by the level 8 and 9 super powerful Empires on the continent. Fei casually took out a potion that he claimed to have the same effect as epic potions, so Cech and Brook naturally had a hard time believing their eyes and ears.
"Ah? Epic Potion? How is that possible, I don't have any of those precious raw materials to make such a potion..." Fei read a ton of books in the Royal Library, so he knew what the epic potions that the two were talking about was. He rolled his eyes and rejected that idea while smiling, "Hehe, although the [Hulk Potion] has such a powerful effect, it has a terrifying side effect... that's why I hesitated for a long time before telling you guys about it. If you guys can endure through the side effect, the real effect would definitely be satisfying. The potion is here, if you wish, you guys can decide among yourselves who wants to give it a try."
"Terrifying side effect?"
Brook and Cech looked at each other in unison. The shock in their eyes quieted down a bit. They believed this explanation a lot more. If the potion didn't have any side effects and could enhance one's strength permanently and flawlessly, then this [Hulk Potion] would definitely be ranked as one of the epic potions; it would be too precious.
Brook hesitated for a few seconds, and suddenly raised his head and said, "Let me try it out!"
The date of Zenit's Imperial Military Practice was getting closer and closer. There was nowhere that Chambord could back off to. If Chambord lost in this event, their kingdom would be gone. Even though Chambord had two trump cards – Lampard and King Alexander, the military practice was based on the total score for the ten matches. There was no way that the Kingdom could depend on just the two of them. If Chambord wanted an overall win, other people's strength had to improve as well. Time was tight, and to Gordon-Brook who was single-mindedly focusing on increasing his strength and fighting alongside the king, the potion in front of him might've been dangerous, but perhaps it could be his last and only opportunity.
Brook made up his mind and reached out for the bottle of green potion.
However –
"Whoosh!"
Peter-Cech who was standing quietly beside Brook suddenly moved first and grabbed the [Hulk Potion]before Brook did. He pulled open the lid on the bottle and chugged down the entire bottle.
"You..."
Brook panicked.
Cech was only pardoned more than ten days ago by the King and barely got out of Iron Prison – Water Dungeon alive. He got ill from the moist and dark environment and the torture in the prison, so his body was very weak. His two energy swirls that represented his two star warrior strength and status was torn and ruined by the former Head Minister Bazzer's vicious methods. All of his two star energy had mostly disappeared and his strength dropped significantly. Although he could get it back and return to being a two star warrior, it would take a long period of time. Cech's body was at its weakest stage; by taking this [Hulk Potion] which had a terrifying side effect, if he wasn't able to endure through it, his life might even be on the line...
He knew that Cech didn't want him to take the risk which was why he took the potion first.
At this point, Brook was very nervous. However, there was nothing that he could do. He could only stare at Cech closely; he didn't even dare to blink his eyes, because he was afraid that he might miss some signs of dangers.
Fei on the other side was secretly laughing to himself shamelessly.
After a few seconds, the side effects that Brook was worrying about appeared –
At first, a bright green light suddenly appeared on Cech's forehead between his eyebrows. It gave off an indescribable magic power. Then, it gradually began to spread downwards in a cloudy fashion. The green light became more and more dense, and soon Cech's head was dyed in green, and even his hair became green as well. It seemed very strange.
As the same time, drops of sweat the size of beans started dripping down his green forehead. The muscles on his face also started twitching unconsciously. Clearly, he was under unimaginable pain.
Brook was shocked.
He turned his head and looked at Fei, and found that he didn't panic at all. Instead, he had a faint smile on his face. This calmed Brook down a little bit; he held back his worries and concerns and continued observing Cech's state.
That green light was getting thicker and thicker and started spreading onto Cech's whole body. Starting from his head, it quickly covered his neck, chest, waist, arms, hands and legs...After more than tens of seconds, the First Commander of the King's Guard Peter-Cech had become a green person. Even his arm hair was glittering green like a jade. This condition was no different than getting poisoned by exotic toxins. What worried Brook more was that he could clearly see that it was as if there was something alive that was drilling and surging underneath Cech's skin. It created many bulges that continued rushing around in Cech's body. The blue veins bulged and sweat dripped down like rain...This process was obviously extremely painful.
"No wonder why it's called [Hulk Potion], Cech is getting bigger and bigger." Brook thought.
Fei had a chill when he saw that.
Fei tried the potion on himself when he was doing the experiments, and the pain of the body enhancement was unbearable; it was like having tens of thousands of ants crawling through his body and devouring every bit of his muscle, having someone cut the flesh off of him piece by piece and deep frying his entire body...even though Fei was tough, he didn't want to experience this hellish pain ever again. This was especially true since the [Hulk Potion] wasn't effective on Fei.
After half a minute, the painful expression on Cech's face toned down a bit, and the dense green light dimmed down. Suddenly, a powerful sensation came off of Cech's body. Brook was very familiar with this sensation. He often felt this sensation from King Alexander. It was the sensation of a breathtaking and dragon-like pure physical strength. What surprised him even more was that this sensation was getting stronger and stronger. This meant that the strength in Cech's body was increasing very quickly.
After another minute, the greenness on Cech was almost negligible, and the sensation finally stopped growing stronger.
"Huh-"
Cech exhaled heavily and finally opened his eyes.
He observed his body and felt the long-lost strength. This strength was even more powerful than his former strength at his peak. He was so excited that tears filled his eyes. Before when his energy swirls were destroyed by Bazzer, he felt hopeless and thought that he was going to become a useless man, but now the light of hope shined through the dark clouds. He instantly turned around and kneeled down before Fei and said with an uncontrollable excitement on his face, " Thank you, Your Majesty! I have recovered...I can feel the monstrous strength in my body, and the energy channels in my body have widened by a few times. I can restore my two star warrior's energy at my peak state in less than half a year..."
Cech was so excited that his sentence structures weren't making any sense.
After some rough observations, Cech had completely understood the effect of the [Hulk Potion]. Although his energy swirls didn't come back, his physical strength and his body's firmness had reached an unimaginable level. He could fight a two star warrior with pure physical strength. The effect didn't just stop there. What made him more excited was that the channels that the energy flowed through in his body was widened by a few times. This meant that when he started training his energy, his improvement speed would be faster than other ordinary warrior by a few times... The actual effect of the little [Hulk Potion] was far superior than the epic potions in the legends.
Fei said calmly with a serious face, " Peter, don't be so overjoyed. [Hulk Potion]'s terrifying side-effect hasn't completely passed yet."
"Ah?" Cech and Brook who were finally relieved were surprised again when they heard that. "What other side effects are there?"
"It's this green light. See? The greenness on your body hasn't fully disappeared yet. According to my calculations, it needs three to five days to completely go away."
Cech asked with a strange face, "Your Majesty...eh, was the terrifying side effect that you were talking about before this greenness over my entire body after taking the [Hulk Potion]?"
"Yes, yes." Fei held back his laughter and nodded firmly. "This greenness will take a long time to disappear; isn't that terrifying?" But right after he said that, he couldn't hold back anymore and started laughing loudly like a kid who had just pranked someone successfully. His kingly temperament instantly disappeared.
Cech and Brook felt like they were about to faint.
That counts as a terrifying side effect?
"Brook...I..." Cech was a little bit embarrassed at this point. He was originally worried about the "terrifying side effect" and took the potion before Brook could react; he wanted to take on the risks himself. Who knew that the king was only joking? Now, it looked like that he had jacked Brook's opportunity of becoming stronger. It didn't matter if it were merits or official titles and positions; Brook deserved it more. Cech instantly regretted his action.
"Mr. Cech..." Brook was still used to calling his former leader mister. " You're being too polite. If Chambord can get another powerful warrior and increase the chance of us winning the upcoming Zenit Military Practice, it doesn't matter who takes this potion." Brook's words were really sincere and didn't feel fake or superficial at all. Cech didn't know what to say. Fei on the side nodded secretly. He knew that he had chosen the right person. This one-star warrior was just, dependable and had integrity. The best part of all was that he was extremely loyal to him.
"Actually, you guys don't need to panic, hehehe..." As Fei was speaking, he flicked his wrist and another bottle of [Hulk Potion] appeared in his hand out of nowhere." I have a few more bottles of this potion!"