With his tail giving a wag behind him, Roge dutifully looked over the peppermint plant, making sure he hadn’t done any lasting damage to it before moving on to the others. Madam Madrid must have gotten a good steal for the plants, as they seemed to barely export the plants to some of the other shops in town. This led to Roge not feeling too bad as he collected four more coins, making sure to give each plant a boost of [Nature Magic] before moving on. This left fifteen other plants for them to take clippings from, the dragon noticing his mana barely going down from the activity. ‘From my high [Intelligence]?’ he wondered, recalling his boost of all of the plants in the greenhouse taking a lot more out of him. ‘Better keep an eye on that…’

  As tempted as he was to drain all of the plants of their Abilities, he tempered the thought so as to not deplete their stock too much. Even five plants being withered as they were, though he noticed the Ability Coin didn’t *remove* the Ability taken, might get him in trouble if he didn’t inform his boss of it by the end of the day. Madam Madrid was a fair woman, but he wouldn’t push things too far.

  Slotting three of the coins into the plants next to his first took nothing out of the dragon mana wise, leaving one coin left to show off to his orc boss. Once again it removed the harmful Carcinogenic Ability and gained them the Magically Sated status. He’d check back tomorrow to see how fast they lost that, pulling up his inventory screen to pull out his tools.

  The screen had the same background as his [Status], filled in with a grid of forty-nine individual boxes with a money counter at the top. Depending on what he put into the extra-dimensional space, it would stack any number of items into one box for smaller items, less for larger. He still hadn’t asked how his inventory worked, content with the rather large size of it for the moment. Pulling out his clippers from its slot, he was about to get to work when he shoved the Ability Coin into the inventory to free up his claws. Instead of going into a normal slot like all of his other items had, it instead made a new column off to the side.

  As soon as that new addition made itself known, even more popups appeared across his vision, making his eyes go wide.

  Blinking *hard* at the new information, Roge looked over at his main [Status] screen, seeing a [+] next to his [Novice Gardening] class that he immediately selected.

  Frowning at the last portion of the tooltip, Roge only hesitated for a moment before selecting [Yes] on the last prompt, pulling back up his [Status] and seeing it listed there. There didn’t seem to be any downside at the moment. Besides, the [Ability Hoard] Ability just made him curious as to what other Abilities could be unlocked.

  Shaking off his distraction, Roge moved on to harvesting some of the viable leaves from the tobacco plants as part of his work. The Magical Tobacco leaves were put into a different slot of his inventory, making it easy to sort them out from the normal ones. Once he had collected a couple hundred leaves, with twenty being the magical kind, he went back to the front of the store.

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  “Hey Madam Madrid?” he asked tentatively, the orc woman giving him a narrow-eyed look at his hesitant tone. “Uh… can I show you something real quick?”

  “You better not have killed some of my plants again,” she sighed, getting up from the desk and locking the front door, the sign on the front stating they would be back in ten minutes.

  “Uh… no. Again, though?” he asked, trailing behind her as she made her way to the greenhouse.

  “With your Skill Ranks so low, you usually…” she trailed off, immediately noticing the slightly wilted peppermint and walked over to it. “Well… these don’t look too sick. What did you do?”

  Roge immediately pulled out his Detox Ability Coin at that, Madam Madrid’s eyes going wide as he handed it over. “I uh… got a new Skill.”

  “A Skill or a Spell, boy?” she asked brusquely, turning the coin over to see the mirrored side.

  “A Skill. There are Spells?” he asked excitedly, pulling up his [Status] and frowning at the lack of the category.

  “Only with people in the Church. And outlaws of course.” At his confused expression, she continued on with the impromptu lecture with a sigh. “Spells are regulated by the Church, as they can very quickly lead to destruction and mayhem. Even the Flame Mage class can get access to various [Mind Magic] Spells, the category outright banned. Even Skills with that descriptor are put under extra scrutiny.”

  “Oh…” Roge muttered, feeling his tail fall limp to the floor. “So my probation meetings…”

  “Are because of your [Nature Magic], yes,” she stated, giving Roge the coin back with a stern look. “What Class did you gain access to?”

  After explaining the Class and its Skill, Madam Madrid nodded her head, jangling the chains on her neck as she did. “Should be fine. Some are going to have issues with the [Ability] aspect, but the [Inspect] Skill has that too, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Just be up front with your parole officer.” She gave him a smirk at that, Roge flinching in response. He didn’t want to think about that at the moment, instead moving on to showing the removal of the negative Ability of the tobacco.

  “My skill says the Magically Sated status should wear off at some point. I’m thinking once it does…”

  “You might be able to get rid of the [Toxic] Ability as well. Smart boy,” Madam Madrid muttered, tapping at her tusks as she thought everything through. “You collected some of the leaves I assume?” At his nod she waved him over to the drying machine, inspecting it for a moment before motioning for him to fill it. “Maybe you’ll get some kind of cleaning skill next, though this should do for now. Fill it with both leaves and we’ll see what difference it makes tomorrow.”

  “Am I uh… after I see if the peppermint is recovered tomorrow…”

  “Yes, you can take more Abilities,” She waved off the rest of his sentence as he finished filling the machine. “See what other things you can get from them. Just make sure to leave enough mana for the tobacco leaves. We’ll start by removing the horrid [Carcinogenic] Ability and go from there.” Turning on the machine for the night, the orc woman clapped him on the back with a wide, tusky smile on her face. “Keep this up and I’ll give you a raise for your troubles. The new product should pay for that and then some. Now to just get you working my side business…”

  “Nope!” Roge shouted out, nearly banging his wings and tail on the machines when he dashed away from her. “Work’s done for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow!” Rushing out of the shop with his scales feeling heated, he barely heard her laughter with how quickly he moved.

  ~~~

  Double checking his [Quests] as he started home, Roge nearly ran into someone as he reached the door of the inn, his mind distracted by the possibilities of his new Class.

  “What’s the rush Zard?” a harsh voice rang out, Roge flinching as he waved away his [Status]. Looking like a humanoid raven with black and red feathers, the dragon couldn’t help the horror he felt the few times he saw his probation officer. Part of that was from having one to begin with, but most of it was from Paul’s fashion sense, his feather color clashing widely with his golden robe robe. [Priests] could pick any colors for their official robe, but this golden one and the previous white one showed that the avian clearly didn’t know what looked good on him.

  “New stuff at work… sorry…” Roge mumbled, Paul’s voice reminding him of things he’d rather forget. After waiting a few seconds, where Paul just glared at him, Roge finally got the hint to share his [Status]. He didn’t need to of course, having been told that the [Priest] just needed proximity to pull it up whenever he wanted, but the smirk on the avian’s face told the dragon everything he needed to know on that front.

  “Let’s see here Zard,” Paul muttered, Roge frowning at the casual use of the slur. “Picked up a new Class I see! Very impressive…” His sarcastic tone quickly trailed off with his voice, presumably reading over the descriptions as his beak somehow expressed a grimace. “What the fuck is this?!”

  “I uh… was trying some things earlier with the plants and got some Skills…”

  “Skills my ass!” the [Priest] squawked, making Roge back up a step as he got right in the dragon’s face. “This is practically a Spell! If I’ve found out you payed for a [Status] rewrite-“

  “What are you-” Roge complained.

  “Not to mention that I’ve never even heard of this Class! What the hell is a [Sorcerer]?!”

  Roge paused for a moment at that, feeling somewhat confused at the question. “I uh… shouldn’t *you* know that?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Oh don’t take that sarcastic tone with me!” A claw was shoved in his face at that, the raven-like man’s hands looking vaguely similar to his own. “I’ll get to the bottom of this and once I do…” A swat to his face was all it took for Roge to go down, grunting as he failed catching himself and felt a bruise forming on his snout and side. Thankfully, there weren’t any other attacks, the dragon looking up and watching the [Priest] angrily walk away.

  Roge took a few minutes after that to calm down, his heart thudding in his chest as, with a pained wince, he shifted to sit with his back to the inn’s wall. He almost crushed his tail as he momentarily forgot about it, not even bothering to lean back lest he do the same with his wings. He felt angry at Paul for his behavior, but also angry at himself. Of course he’d try getting new Skills right before that meeting, though he hadn’t guessed it would go that far. Yes his last probation meeting a few days ago hadn’t been good, but Paul at least had been feigning politeness. Minus the name calling, of course.

  ‘All because I have Magic,’ He sighed at that thought, feeling the joy of his discoveries earlier in the day start to fade. As with most children, he’d dreamed of one day having magical abilities, before the mundanity of reality took hold as he grew. Programming was fun in that regard, having taken up the profession to better understand how the magic of technology had worked. ‘Be careful what you wish for and all that…’

  After he’d calmed himself down, though still laden with a good bit of sadness, Roge got up and headed into the inn to be greeted by a familiar face, one just as reptilian as his own.