The Sherry in Shadow

Chapter 15: The Defiler

Without further ado, Sherry pulled out a number of items she needed for tonight's work. This included:

> A miniature alchemy set

Sherry brought this along because why would she leave home without it? The kit held a medley of ingredients she had deemed potentially useful for her mission and was also the toolset she used to prepare antacids for the bandits.

The compact kit, no larger than a shoebox, contained an assortment of vials, each filled with meticulously categorized and labeled ingredients. Powders, liquids, and small gemstones of different colors were all at her disposal.

Housed within the kit was also an array of miniature tools — a pestle and mortar for grinding, tweezers for handling delicate materials, a tuning fork for precise magical resonance, and a small but potent burner that utilized her own magic as fuel. Additionally, a stack of high-quality parchment and a few sticks of chalk for drawing magic circles were neatly arranged in a corner. Sherry set the set aside for now.

> Invisibility cloak

A seemingly ordinary cloak, but once suffused with magic, it rendered the wearer invisible. Ironically, it didn't allow the user to see from beneath it, necessitating the exposure of the wearer's eyes to avoid stumbling around blindly.

Its unremarkable appearance when inactive had led Sherry to consider wearing it at the start of her mission, but she wisely chose otherwise. Had she done so, it would've already been shredded to pieces by Shadow Garden's apparent hatred for non-slime clothes.

Holding the smooth fabric of the invisibility cloak, Sherry decided to verify its functionality for tonight. The cloak absorbed her magic, the fabric rippling with a sheen of distortion as it refracted the light around it. Sherry glanced at the mirror, seeing her whole body disappear under the cloak's illusion save for a pair of floating eyes. She could feel the energy being drawn from her, a steady trickle of mana.

Sherry turned off the lamp – a fancy magic one given that it used a switch. Regardless, Sherry's room was plunged into darkness, the only light coming from the moonlight filtering through the curtains. The magic drain of the cloak significantly lessened, as was anticipated. The cloak's magic consumption correlated directly with the intensity of light it was exposed to. This made it ideal for night escapades, but not much else, unless one had an absurd level of magic.

Satisfied with the cloak's functionality, she promptly deactivated it, the fabric reappearing to the naked eye. Having confirmed the cloak's readiness, she resumed her inspection of her inventory.

> A small pouch of red pills

These small capsules were a horrifying testament to the lengths Shadow Garden would go to achieve their goals. These capsules were remnants of a past Shadow Garden assault. They were a form of drug designed to bolster the physical prowess of a user, albeit at the heavy price of significant cognitive debilitation. It was a chilling testament to the ruthless lengths Shadow Garden would go to craft and control their potent soldiers.

Sherry was still trying to figure out how these pills fit in with Shadow Garden's training regimen, and honestly, she expected to have been issued a variant of these pills by now. These pills were perhaps the most mysterious thing about Shadow Garden, and Sherry had formulated several wild theories about their genesis, some even relying on the existence of fairy tales.

Regardless of their source, Sherry developed a method to purify the capsules, mitigating their harmful effects while maintaining a modicum of their enhancing properties. Her method was overzealous: she used an assortment of reagents and several rounds of distillation and filtration. This drastically reduced their potency but secured their safe consumption.