The bell of the door whistled as the four of them stepped into the cramped potion shop one by once, immediately being greeted by a foul burning smell as several cauldrons towards the back of the shop lifted quite a bit of smoke into the air.
Chase had no sort of reaction to the terrible amount of smoke peaking at the rafters above, and flooring to the... Well, floor below.
However, Poppy instantly starting coughing and frantically covering her nose and mouth while grabbing at the bottom of Chase's shirt with her other hand.
Equan was already hacking violently and the thought of stop, drop, and roll probably crossed his mind one or two times.
Luna luckily had a similar reaction to Chase and simply summoned a silver mask over her face that Chase had never seen before.
Then...
A strange idea crept into Chase's mind.
Something that had crossed his mind once during his time between reaching Olympia and departing from Solis; however, the idea seemed almost impossible at his current level, as if his brain was thinking far too long term in the form of new abilities and capabilities.
Yet, something was whispering... Teetering at the edge of his mind as he simply said...
'Screw it...'
He outstretched a hand, observing the tip of his metallic finger as he let Soul Sight show him the energy within the smoke.
Every form of element or natural matter had a different combination of thousands of atoms and molecules, each resembling something very similar to what he liked to call a micro soul.
Meaning that if he could artificially attune his own energy to match up with that of the one he wanted to manipulate, then he could theoretically- and very subtly change and use the energy from said element; however, he had only used this once with his fight with Poppy, and noticed that it could only really work with elements that were related to, or at least similar to that of flames.
But that wasn't the idea that he had just had.
The thought wasn't manipulating the smoke (At least the main part of the spell) but actually changing its form entirely... Or more so compressing the element and changing its density...
He watched and gently allowed his energy to flow to the tip of his finger, and then began to mentally memorize the combination of the smoke that he could see with Soul Sight...
Then he slowly nodded and squinted his eyes as he began to coerce the smoke to flow towards the tip of his finger.
As it did, he then began to use his own energy and subtly change the force into some sort of natural vacuum, which in tune, began to suck the smoke into a single point on Chase's finger.
A small sphere of gray smoke began to form and swirl as more and more smoke was sucked into it.
Chase watched in astonishment as his concentration never broke once, and all of a sudden the room was crystal clear...
Floating above Chase's finger, was a small ball of smoke with the density of an entire room full of it.
He turned and looked at his three friends...
"What?" He asked, while the three of them looked at him with mouths agape and dumbfounded wide eyes.
"You just changed the laws of matter..." Poppy said with clear confusion as well as a pride-inducing amount of awe.
Chase could only smirk, seeing as his idea had worked out quite well.
"Who the hell?!" A way old man pushed aside a large cart in-between two potion shelves and squinted his eyes as he glanced between Chase and the ball of smoke several times over.
The man wore a black cloak that went down to his feet, and was hunched so far over that Chase naturally assumed that the man had either very little spine, or even no spine at all...
"You?! You did this!?" He shouted with his wrinkled forward violently pulling his eyebrows upward.
"I- I can put it back if you really want... I think?" Chase responded in a panic, not wanting to anger the old man.
"I'll kill you if you do..." He growled back, which made Chase all the more confused.
"So? What do I do with it?" Chase asked, realizing that he didn't actually think this far ahead, and had no way to get rid of the smoke aside from just throwing it outside and hoping it doesn't explode.
"Throw it outside! I want to see if it explodes HAHA!" The man boomed with laughter while pointing at Chase like an idiot.
"No! Don't do that!" Poppy grimaced and yelped, realizing that she would most likely end up having to pay for repairs, and Chase's identity would probably be easily realized after that.
"No! Please do that! You have no idea how badly I want to wreck that damned Freznov shop!" The old man pleaded against Poppy's please, which made Chase even more confused.
Eventually, Equan shrugged and sat on a bench next to the exit with a sigh.
"Just like? I don't know, destroy it?" He shrugged again.
"PLEASE!" The man screamed, clasping his hands together and lowering his head.
"NO!" Poppy yelled in response, making Chase naturally assume that trying to destroy the condensed smoke would probably lead to an even bigger explosion... Or maybe implosion? Chase shook his head, figuring that thinking about the exact details would break his fine tuned concentration.
"Bah! Stupid royals... Just eat it then if you are so worried..." The old man groaned.
Poppy was taken aback as she glanced around before realizing that he was talking to her.
"Pardon me!?" She put a hand on her chest and her eyes were as wide as they could possibly be.
"It aint an insult, girl... With one look I can tell that you are related to a dragon... Just eat the damned smoke." He shrugged simply.
Chase; however, had widened his eyes at what the old man had just said...
'Not like this...' He panicked internally, almost breaking his concentration on the sphere.
"The hell are you talking about, geezer?" Equan asked, looking at the man as if he were under the influence of the most powerful drugs in Vallmora.
'Thank you!' Chase let out a sigh of release, thankfully not losing concentration on the sphere of smoke.
However, Poppy's eyes narrowed and scowled at the man for a second, before turning her vision towards Chase.
"What is he talking about?" She asked him with quite a deep frown.
"No clue! Why are you asking me? I'm a little preoccupied with the whole, you know? Not exploding!" Chase damn near lost concentration on the sphere once again but quickly brought it back.
At the same time...
Luna had a dreadful look on her face... She glanced between everyone in the room several times, before turning to Poppy and asking...
"Perhaps your father?"