"It's a form of entertainment that you play in certain kinds of machines. It often involves controlling an little animated avatar that you send to fight monster and defeat evil."

"In that case then you may well be in a video game. I apologize for misleading you."

"I am sure it wasn't intentional, mostly because you didn't have any idea. Oh, well. Now I wonder if there are character levels." He picks up the gel core thingie. "On top of the likely crafting system."

"Many useful things can be crafted from slime cores," Enserric confirms. "Armor. A rudimentary magical focus. Dessert. The sky, as they say, is the limit."

"Alright. Let's just keep exploring."

They continue exploring.

In the distance there is a figure, features indeterminate under a brown hooded cloak, pushing a wooden cart around. It doesn't seem to have noticed Teo.

"Oh, another round 'potential rape encounter', ahead?" Teo asks Enserric.

"Potentially! How exciting."

"Alright. I am going to approach." Because avoiding people that might be rapists will be terrible for his social life in the rape world. "Hey, there!"

The figure turns, and reveals himself to be an elderly grey rat-person. “Hello, hello,” he calls back, trundling his cart over. “Rathazul the Alchemist, at your service, yes. Purveyor of potions, seller of salves... emcee of elixirs? No, that sounds terrible. I’m working on a slogan, you see.”

”Work harder,” Enserric advises.

"To be fair is the best alchemist slogan I ever heard," Teo says peeking in the cart, to see what is being sold. Half aspecting liquid dildos or someting.

No such luck. There's something called "Reducto," something called "Gro+", and a wide selection of hair dyes. There's also a twisty mess of fragile-looking glassware, with which Rathazul presumably makes his wares.

"What 'Reducto' and 'Gro plus' do?"

The alchemist begins polishing his glasses with a cloth. "Reducto shrinks, ah, intimate portions of the humanoid anatomy, in case you drink incubus draught or succubus milk or something to that effect and regret the results. Gro+ is the inverse, for those who are dissatisfied with nature's gifts. I'd rather make more useful potions, frankly, but the market wants what it wants."

"I was expecting something like that. Or maybe something that causes the drinker to grow and shrink." Pause. "I mean in height. It sounds like one of those fetishes that would come up." He thinks for moment, almost calls the alchemist a npc, but instead he says. "Do you purchase monster ingredients?"

"Why, yes! Slime cores, beeperson chitin, trap oil - these things can be very useful in my line of work, and I'm not much for the combat necessary to get them myself. I can defend myself, of course, but magic is tiring and I often end up resorting to combat potions, which would rather defeat the point of going out hunting for reagents. And I can also craft items from reagents if you bring me the reagents and provide a nominal fee."

Ah, cool, someone gave this NPC a reason to not do the quests himself.

Teo doesn't say.

"Oh, I got a slime core earlier. What sort of combat potions do you know how to make?"

The rat’s face lights up. He lists off a bunch of potions that sound thoroughly unpleasant, like fleshrot and devilfire and snapfreeze and several others.

“But those tend to require reagents, which dyes and the size potions don’t,” he finishes, “so I don’t sell them off the rack.”

"But you sell them if I bring the ingredients... And do you know where I can harvest the ingredients from?"

"Most of the ones I can't get on my own can be harvested from monsters or morphs, whether via combat or by asking nicely. Bee handmaiden chitin, for instance, sheds naturally, and they have little enough use for it."

"I am sure I will keep that in mind if I meet that one that didn't try to date rape me, again. Is the process of concocting those things complicated?"

"Yes," the alchemist says. "You can get a certain amount done with a recipe and some glassware, but true mastery of the alchemical arts can take a lifetime."

"Mostly I wanted to know if some basic healing potions could be learned that way."