Therapeutics (Technology of Healing), combination of chemistry and mechanics to create healing devices and powerful medicines. I mentally bowed to this discipline. This is a joker. The ace up the sleeve. In a world where something constantly explodes, collapses, where heroes and villains clash in battles demolishing entire blocks, the ability to heal isn't just a useful skill. It's survival, money, influence. The ability to stitch up your own wound without going to a hospital where they'll start asking uncomfortable questions. The ability to create regenerative gel or a stimulant that will put you back on your feet in a couple hours, not weeks. This is where the real gold is buried. But this is also the biggest danger. A person capable of performing medical miracles will immediately become a target for everyone: from the government to criminal syndicates. They'll either try to bring you under control, or simply kill you so you don't fall to the enemy. The complexity here is also off the charts, you need to understand chemistry, mechanics, and apparently biology. This is a goal for the future. Very important, but not top priority.
So, after briefly running through the disciplines and headings, I proceeded to the most important and crucial stage, choosing a recipe! Opening one discipline after another, I carefully read again the abbreviated descriptions of recipes and noted the most interesting and potentially useful ones. Each discipline had several dozen recipes, which pleased me, because if the count went into hundreds... I'm afraid even one night wouldn't be enough to adequately cover them all, but as it is about 200-250 recipes total from all disciplines.
I decided to start marking useful ones in order, and to avoid confusion I wrote names in a notebook, starting with Herbology. Here I liked 7 recipes, each useful and functional in its own way: healing balm, elixir of persuasion, fatigue pills, restorative remedy, wonder drug, potion of haste and brew of intellect. Despite seemingly obvious names, descriptions of the same elixir of persuasion or fatigue pills surprised me, which is why I added them to my wish list. The elixir of persuasion temporarily increased the charisma and eloquence of whoever drank it, and fatigue pills removed that very fatigue and ideally would be better named anti-fatigue pills.
Reading the resulting list with my eyes again, I crossed out healing balm and restorative remedy. These are less effective healing analogs of the wonder drug. With a star I marked Brew of Intellect, which according to the description temporarily sharpened the mind, allowing solving complex problems or noticing what was previously hidden. A sort of NZT-48 on minimum settings. In the end, 5 recipes remained, whose problem was that I didn't understand whether magical herbs were needed for them, which I'd unlikely be able to obtain... Anyway, analyzing and moving to Chemistry!
Here, discarding a bunch of poisons of varying degrees of dubiousness and lethality, a bunch of options aimed at neutralizing or enhancing magic, I ultimately settled on just 3 recipes: Acid Mixture (caustic acid capable of corroding armor, weapons and flesh), Elixir of Fire Resistance and Paralysis of Will Poison (strong neurotoxin that completely paralyzes the victim for some time without killing them). According to brief descriptions of both the discipline and the recipes themselves, I dare hope magic isn't heavily involved here, although...
My gaze lingered again on "Elixir of Fire Resistance." This was a perfect example of what confused me about this "Arcanum." Where was the line between science and magic? The description stated: "a compound that makes skin temporarily impervious to high temperatures through formation of an unstable energy field." Sounded scientific. But what is an "unstable energy field"? Is this something from Tony Stark's or Doctor Strange's lexicon? If for its creation I need, conditionally, powder from mythical salamander scales, then it's magic. If it's achieved by mixing rare earth metals and irradiating them with a certain frequency, then it's science, albeit incredibly complex. The system mixed these concepts, calling everything "technologies." Perhaps for it there was no difference. As Arthur Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And I'd apparently have to get used to this blurred boundary. Main thing is the ingredient list doesn't have items like "add a pinch of faith and drop of luck." I might have problems with that. Alright, moving to the Explosives discipline!
Molotov Cocktail, Dynamite, Flamethrower, Mine, Chlorine Gas Grenade... All this and even more I swept into the furnace! For now I don't need lethality, in the end only 2, or actually even 1 recipe interested me: Stun Grenade, a non-lethal device that when exploding disorients and stuns everyone in the radius with a bright flash and loud sound. According to the description a useful thing, the second recipe is Plastic Explosive (powerful and controlled explosive that can be attached to any surface), and precisely because it can be controlled I marked it with a question mark, but still more no than yes. Next we have Smithing.
Axes, swords, shields, armor, plate gauntlets, helmets and even boomerangs... Different properties indistinguishable from magic, or most likely being it, and huge selection of recipes, from which I took note of nothing for the simple reason that creating something from this list in my current reality I'd unlikely be able to. For example, Molten Glass Armor (unique armor created using volcanic glass that excellently protects from fire), I physically find it hard to imagine how to make armor from glass and what is volcanic glass anyway? Or Shield Boomerang (aerodynamically refined shield that after throwing returns to the owner), do you need to train to use it like Captain America? Or is it a conceptual property embedded in the shield during its creation and working regardless of the shield's owner and their skills? Questions... Many questions I'm not yet able to answer adequately, so moving to Gunsmithing.
Here things were roughly the same as with Smithing. I physically find it hard to imagine where and how I can now assemble a conditional Harpoon Gun (fires a steel harpoon attached to a cable, allowing pulling enemies or objects) or Elephant Gun (large-caliber rifle with monstrous killing power). Running through the impressive list of rifle, shotgun, revolver, rifle recipes and various exotics, I ultimately settled on just 1 recipe: Tesla Rifle (shoots concentrated lightning charges, dealing enormous area damage and especially effective against mechanisms and electronics), I definitely won't choose it, but nothing stops me from just noting a Gauss cannon on max settings, especially since the next discipline we have is Electrical and I think there will be more interesting options than Big-Gun-Make-Boom.
Excluding completely lethal things and just analogs of a shocker I can buy in a store like Shock Staff (staff capable of hitting enemies with electrical discharges on contact), I settled on just 3 recipes, one of which even by description sounds too imbalanced, but dreaming doesn't hurt: Mechanical Spider-Shocker (small automaton that runs up to an enemy and hits them with a powerful electric discharge), Protective Field Generator (device creating a small force barrier capable of stopping bullets and arrows) and the imbalanced Teleportation Beacon (complex device that after installation creates an anchor point to which you can teleport using a special remote). Naturally Protective Field Generator looks like the most obvious choice, if we exclude the Beacon, which I'd unlikely be able to create, and it sounds like something... Magical. Ugh, short-circuits from that word, well whatever, next discipline is Mechanics!
There were... Quite a few recipes here, almost as in Smithing, only most of them are highly specialized automatons. I'd unlikely even assemble an ordinary Spider Automaton (mechanical assistant capable of fighting and carrying loads), let alone a conditional Medical Spider (advanced automaton programmed for first aid and capable of administering healing balms) which also needs healing balms, I suspect from Herbology or Therapeutics, and it's hard to trust first aid to a robot assembled on a shoestring (assuming I can even assemble it). Anyway, Automatons go into the furnace, I'm noting the following interesting recipes: Mechanical Dagger (dagger with complex spring mechanism that "shoots" the blade forward, increasing attack distance), Binocular Goggles (optical device for observing distant objects), Gyroscope (complex device that can be built into weapons or armor to improve balance and accuracy) and Exoskeleton (pinnacle of mechanics. Power frame that not only protects but significantly increases the wearer's physical strength). The last again to drool over a steampunk version of Iron Man armor on minimum settings, hah. As for Mechanical Dagger, that's nostalgia for Assassins' hidden blade, and Binocular Goggles aren't really that needed considering I can buy ordinary binoculars, fine I won't cross out anyway. Ideally the most useful in this discipline is Gyroscope, but how it works I have no idea, so I'll just mark with a star and move to the last and most interesting discipline for me, Therapeutics!
Dozens of Healing Potion variants, differing in fact only by names I skipped, especially since their analogs exist in Herbology, and in the end I had only 4 relatively interesting recipes left... Not much, but can't complain, anyway ahead awaits truly difficult choice, but now in Therapeutics I settled on the following recipes: Necromizer (chemical compound that on contact with undead causes a chain decay reaction in them), Muscle Stimulant (powerful steroid that temporarily increases strength and endurance to superhuman limits without side effects), Vivisector (rarest and most complex device that when applied to the recently deceased can start their heart and bring back to life) and Purity Serum (medicine capable of curing the most terrible diseases and even removing some curses, affecting them at the cellular level).
Necromizer I left purely just in case, what if zombie apocalypse happens, after all this is Marvel, here you can't be insured against anything... Among the remaining 3 options the most interesting looks like Vivisector, but Purity Serum, in fact being Healing Potion on max settings is also attractive. True, neither Vivisector nor Purity Serum I'd most likely be able to create, which means the star goes to Muscle Stimulant.
Running through the list with my eyes once more and marking with stars the most interesting and obvious options that don't look like "Atomic Reactor in Garage," my final choice turned out not so big: Brew of Intellect, Paralysis of Will Poison, Stun Grenade, Protective Field Generator, Gyroscope and Muscle Stimulant. Just 6 options with which I in theory (only in it for now) could do something, and even then regarding the conditional Protective Field Generator and Gyroscope I'm not sure what level of technology is required there... Why only 1 recipe to choose... This is too difficult! Alright, actually the choice is quite obvious.