An Owl's Rise

After the dangers and deaths faced on the first day of the expedition, formations were tightened, and more measures were taken to combat the threats of the new continent.

This certainly slowed down their progress in searching the areas for where the best resources were, but it did prevent many more casualties from happening.

Along with increased vigilance the owls of the expeditionary forces began getting a better understanding for the powers of the moving plants that were quite common on this continent.

Now that they knew what to look for and other measures such a preparing herbicides had been taken, the expedition moved forward with far few deaths than before.

Of course, being on an unfamiliar continent and searching it for resources had them coming in conflict with the local inhabitants plenty of times and a few more owls died in the weeks that they searched the jungle.

At this point the two expeditionary forces had separated but those from the lower ranking one that Evelyn was a part of was now down to sixty-one members from their original seventy-two.

However, it could not be said that their losses were in vain, as their group had found numerous rare resources among the areas they had searched.

This included magical plants, ores, and even beasts that had unusual properties that would be useful in numerous industries such as alchemy.

But their greatest find so far was a magical crystal mine, which were pretty much all taken on the continent the Roost was based in.

Naturally it was not a particularly large or high-quality deposit of the magical crystals since they were searching areas with relatively low magical energy where fiend beasts thrived. With it mostly being filled with the lowest type being the green crystal, while having a healthy amount of the next highest blue crystals, and just a small number of red magical crystals growing in the center.

Still, it was an impeccable find that would be worth several hundreds of thousands of credits for all of the expeditionary members.

Though while this was great for all of the other owls, it was not much for Evelyn whose skills already allowed her to make plenty of the credits used as a currency in the Roost.

She had yet to find what she was looking for, which was the float stones, but they had only cleared out around a third of the areas assigned to their group, so she was still hopeful.

And in case the higher-ranking force found the float stones she had Anneli and Katrina who would inform her.

At the very least things had not been completely worthless to her, as along with Adolophine and the other alchemists on the expedition, they had found numerous ingredients that had been unknown to the roost before.

'Almost done… Come on just a little more… Hehe, I did it.'.

Looking down at the contents of her caldron Evelyn gave a satisfied smile.

She had just finished making a new concoction that had never before been seen in the Roost or maybe even the world.

'Carefully now. I do not want to get any of this on me.' She thought as she poured the substance into a number of containers.

Once it was stored into a few bottles she sealed them up and placed a few talismans she had asked one of the inscriptionists to make.

These talismans all used simple magic that oscillated whatever they were attached to and would actually break the container that Evelyn had placed them on.

This was exactly what she wanted of them though.

The alchemical item she had just created was in fact an incredibly strong adhesive that could stick to pretty much anything.

It also would not come off easily and took multiple hours using fire and water magic to get it off the first time Evelyn had accidently caused it to explode all over Adolophine when they were still in the trial phase.

'Now what am I going to call it?' she thought as she looked at the mostly black substance that looked a bit like oil.

As the creator of this new item, it was her right to name it, but everything she came up with did not sound right.

'I don't think calling it super glue is really accurate.'

Toiling around with it for a little while she eventually decided to just call it entangling tar.

Then with a name for it she found Adolophine and told her that it was completed.

"You really made something quite horrible." She said as Evelyn showed her one of the jars filled with the viscous black substance.

Just looking at it made her wince as she remembered being covered by it and losing a number of her feathers when it was removed.

"Yeah, but it is pretty useful. It works well on restraining movements, and if anything gets caught in it, they are pretty much done for." Evelyn said, proud of her creation.

Sighing, Adolophine, as much as she did not enjoy having been wrapped up in Evelyn's experiment, could not deny how powerful the alchemical item she had created was.

"Still, you used plenty of rare materials we just discovered to make a single batch, and the main ingredient is the resin from that horrible moving plant that disguises itself as a normal tree." Adolophine said as she remembered their encounter with that very plant.

It had managed to catch them all by surprise and it sprayed out its sticky resign not unlike the item Evelyn had made.

Though in comparison, what the plant could make by itself was far tamer than what Evelyn had come up with by increasing its effectiveness and changing some of its properties with alchemy.

"Even so, I think once the area stats receiving more traffic, the ingredients will start flowing into the Roost. For now, though, I will just keep some on me for personal use and sell the recipe to the alchemy hall when we get back." Evelyn said in response.

Unfortunately, there was no sort of patent laws in the Roost, so anyone could just copy whatever they wanted as long as they knew the recipe.

Of course, if the creator never made that recipe public, they could keep the concoction for themselves, but if they tried selling it in the alchemy hall it was likely to be reversed engineered.

So, to prevent all of the owls from hoarding useful knowledge for themselves, the alchemy hall would pay a set amount for new creations and release the recipes to the entire Roost.

'Now I think it could use some live testing.' Evelyn thought.

With that she went around with Adolophine and gathered her squad to go and test out her entangling tar on some of the local beasts.

"I think those fleet foot rabbits we found nearby will make the perfect targets." Evelyn said to everyone as she explained her plan.

Luckily, they all agreed to go out with her on the condition that she give each of them one of the jars of the tar.

After that they took off once they had permission and headed over to the large loosely wooded plains that they had been investigating the day before.

Once there they quickly found one of their targets which was a mostly brown furred rabbit that looked quite similar to the ones from earth.

Though like most beasts in this world its size was gigantic, and even the high tier fiend beast specimen they came across was the size of a small car.

Along with that it had much sharper claws which they used for grip while running and to ward off predators.

'And away we go.'

Launching one of the jars, Evelyn tossed it out with her wind magic and aimed it directly in the path of the rabbit that was trying to flee from her.

Crack!

Not long after she tossed it the talisman attached to the jar activated. Creating an oscillation that shattered the container and released the contents all over the area.

The rabbit fast as it might be, was unable to avoid the falling substance that spread out over a large distance.

Its entire body was soon covered and after it bounded forward a couple more times it became completely wrapped up and skidded to a stop.

'Looks like it is more than effective enough against even fast beasts.' Evelyn thought as she watched the fleet footed rabbit struggle.

All four of its legs had gotten tangled up in the tar, and when it tried to bite its way out its mouth got stuck as well.

Certainly, it was a terribly unfortunate turn for the rabbit, and if just left alone it would have died a slow and horrible death.

At the very least Evelyn was not going to let it suffer. She knew all too much about what it was like to be tortured, and quickly pierced her talons through its throat and ended its life.

'Well, there is definitely one problem with using this stuff. It makes it practically impossible to retrieve anything worthwhile from whatever it is used on.' Evelyn thought as she dug the beast core out of the rabbit.

She would have also like to take its meat since they tasted pretty good, but sadly it was contaminated by the tar.

'I suppose I need to make some sort of solvent that can remove it as some point. Luckily it does not really work on me.'

Wreathing herself in her heavenly flam, Evelyn began burning away the entangling tar she had gotten on herself when retrieving the beast core of the fleet footed rabbit.

Her power flame so far was the only thing she found that could easily remove the substance. but she was the only one who could use it this way without being burned to ash.

Now that the test was done, she prepared to head back to the camp the expedition set up when a surprise message came fluttering over to her.

'Oh, it is a little early for the regular correspondence from Katrina or Anneli?' Evelyn thought as she saw this message coming her way.

The three of them had stayed in communication during the expedition. Updating each other on their relative progress and what interesting beasts, magical, plants, ores, or other such items they had come across.

Though it had only been a couple days ago since their last messaging and normally they only did it at the end of each week.

Holding out her left foot Evelyn snatched the flying piece of paper out of the air as it floated around her.

Carefully she opened it up so as not to pierce or rip it with her talons and began reading the contents of the message.

Yet she did not get past the first line before her eyes went wide in astonishment.

The first thing written on the message said, 'We found it. There is a deposit of float stones near the area we have been searching.'