Dimensional Summoner: Infinite Growth in a Leveling Apocalypse

Wren gave me the name over breakfast at a stall beside the mercenary hall. Using the standing Ashmark favour for it would have been insulting, so she refused to let me.

"You need a refiner, not a shop," she said after I described the resource without naming its location. "Half the people with a mortar and a painted sign are selling coloured water. Greyhaven has four licensed practitioners. Two are tied to guild contracts and will not touch outside material."

She tore her bread in half.

"Oren Pell. Fourth street off the north market. Blue door. He’s rude."

"How rude?"

"He once told Teo his suturing was ’adequate for a field.’ Teo has been offended for a year." Wren almost smiled. "The name is free. Ashmark still owes you."

Pell’s premises had been a hospital pharmacy before the Merge and had not entirely stopped being one. The floor was scrubbed. Sterile instruments occupied one half of the central bench, while mortars and stained trays occupied the other. Labels faced outward on every shelf. A steel cabinet bore a lock and a red warning card. The open ledger contained dated batch records in handwriting small enough to qualify as security.

Oren Pell was about fifty, wore a stained apron, and did not look up when I entered.

"Whatever it is, I’m not treating you. Clinic is two streets south."

"I need botanical refinement."

"Which botanical?"

"I would like to see your licence first."

That got his attention.

Pell wiped his hands, removed a framed card from the wall, and placed it on the bench. It showed a current Greyhaven practitioner’s licence and a hospital-pharmacy accreditation dated eleven years before the Merge.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"One question. If a pale, substrate-networked alchemical root warms after being cut, what happens?"

"It dies from the cut face inward. Warmth accelerates it. Drying accelerates it further." Pell folded his arms. "If you rinse it in untreated floodwater after cutting, I will not put it through my equipment for any amount of money. Marrowlace."

"Yes."

He studied me properly for the first time. "You’re the Carrow Deep scout."

"Does that matter?"

"It means you can read one kind of danger. It does not mean you understand mine." He pulled out a stool. "I buried a man who thought competence transferred automatically. Show me the handling notes. Keep the map."

He read the notes and then explained what was wrong with them.

"’Keep wet’ is useless. Wet with what? Floodwater contaminates it. Clean water leaches it. Leave the roots in either for six hours and you have expensive string." Pell tapped the paper. "It needs a prepared mineral solution within one minute of cutting. You remove it with substrate. A solid block of original soil, root network intact, and you do not shake it clean because the case gets heavy."

"How much substrate?"

"As much as remains stable. Expose the network on more than one face and you halve the usable yield." He handed back the notes. "Where is the bed?"

"Below a greenhouse foundation. Approximately two metres of water, then silt."

"So you’re cutting underwater."

"Yes."

"With what container?" Pell asked. "If your answer involves carrying roots to shore in your coat, leave now."

"That is why I came here."

Something in his expression relaxed.

"Good. Then this is the arrangement. I provide sealed field cases containing the correct mineral solution. Each has a one-way valve, so harvested material can enter underwater without letting the floodwater follow. I provide diagrams and handling instructions. I perform the four-stage refinement, which takes eleven days and uses equipment you could not buy in this city with your entire Carrow Deep reward."

"Your share?"

"One third of the usable refined yield. Not one third of whatever mud you drag through my door. One third of what survives processing."

"That is substantial."

"It is enormous," Pell agreed. "It is also one third of nothing if you bring back dead roots. I have supplied two attempts before and lost my solution both times. If you prefer an upfront fee, I can quote one, and I promise you will rediscover your affection for fractions."

I considered it. "Write down the terms."

"Naturally."

He made two copies.

Harvested mass and refined yield are distinct. Practitioner’s share: one third of usable refined preparation. Unusable material yields nothing to either party. Field cases and prepared solution supplied at nominal replacement cost. Medical dosage warning to be provided upon delivery.

We signed both copies.

Pell turned mine over and began writing on the back. "Now the part you will like less. I cannot tell you your dose in advance."

"The records say it strengthens weak constitutions."

"It does. They do not say how much a particular man already forcing energy through a weak body should take." He pointed the pen at me. "You have a body-tempering practice."

"Yes."

"Demanding?"

"Very."

"Then you are the difficult case. A man doing nothing can take Marrowlace slowly and gain slowly. Add it to an aggressive practice and your outer tissue may improve faster than your organs tolerate. The failure is not dramatic. You become tired, then yellow, and then you die while insisting it is merely training fatigue."

He finished writing.

"If you return with usable material, you begin with one third of the dose I estimate. You report how you slept, whether you kept food down, and what colour your urine was before I increase it."

"Understood."

"Say it back."

I did.

Only then did Pell retrieve two cylindrical field cases from the locked cabinet. Each was the length of my forearm, metal-braced, and heavier than it looked. He charged almost nothing beyond the replacement cost of the solution and valves.

At the door, he asked, "Who is doing the diving?"

"I have not decided."

"Decide before you enter the water." Pell opened the door. "And do not confuse being difficult to notice with being difficult to hurt. I have treated that mistake too."

Greyhaven’s north market could have consumed ten thousand Coins before lunch. Better armour, crates of ammunition, imported medicine, enchanted tools—everything had a seller and a reason I might die without buying it.

I replaced the antiseptic, gauze, and other supplies used in Carrow Deep. I bought food, intact contraception, and a few ordinary necessities. Including Pell’s nominal charge, it barely touched the reward.

The rest stayed where it was.

Money mattered most when it remained available for the opportunity that actually changed my limits. Marrowlace might be that opportunity. If it was not, something later would be.

I walked the nine kilometres back to the compound and felt the new attributes in small, useful ways. The pack settled better. The final stretch began hurting later than usual. At the pedestrian gate, I checked the ground for tracks before unlocking it, went inside, and secured it behind me.

The compound was untouched.

I placed Pell’s cases on the workshop bench. His handling summary was written across both lids in grease pencil, with the final line underlined twice.

BRING THEM BACK PALE, WET, AND ALIVE—OR DO NOT BRING THEM BACK.

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