Thankfully, Roge had enough extracted tree sap and samara to make all of the arrows he wanted, though he was starting to feel like he’d need to bond to the ash trees next to streamline the process. He wasn’t sure how healthy harvesting from them was, and continuously vented nature magic at them in his worry. At the very least, while he waited for his arrows to finish, he could multitask and make some more healing potions, while also trying out his idea.

  Before getting started on the actual potion making process, however, he started on the first part of his idea. Making blueoak wood potion bottles. He knew that if he tried it with the bombs, there would be a lot of complications with it, including how the bottle would shatter, so he didn’t bother. But healing potions? As long as it didn’t eat away at the material, he should be fine to use them. He even felt a tingle from his creation skill, like it knew it could give him a skill that would help the endeavor. He refused and continued to work over his various bubbling concoctions, eventually looking at the healing potion to see if it was successful.

  Roge froze at the new description, wondering how it was so strong before slapping himself in the forehead. ‘My cap went up to ten…’ he grumbled to himself, catching Hops’ eye as he tossed over the potion.

  “Oh right! You passed that barrier…” Hops exclaimed coming over and handing back the potion. “You’ll want to increase it with your Draconic magic. As far as I’m aware, it can only go up to nine and that takes… a lot more ingredients.” Roge nodded at that, extracting from his seed collection right on the table and adding each healing coin in one at a time.

  “Not too bad…” Roge mumbled, using up almost half of the seeds he had to increase the strength of each potion. “Do you know how I can get rank ten potions?”

  “Nope. That one you’re going to have to either apprentice for, or figure out on your own.”

  Roge pouted, looking at his potions and feeling the rejection when he tried to add in one more coin to any of them. Besides trying to solidify them into pills, which he could try using the sap to do, there was not much else he could think of other than trying to concentrate them more. And even then, he might just end up with less potion that did the same effect.

  “We’re supposed to be leaving today, so I’ll hold off,” Roge muttered clearing out the mess he made and looking out the window. “At least the rain has stopped. We still going to be fine?”

  “Obviously,” Hops chuckled, punching Roge lightly in the shoulder. “We can just ask you for more magic items of course.”

  ~~~

  The rest of the day was making sure everything was packed up, both Roge and Hops being the proverbial pack mules. He was still shocked that intelligence of all things determined how many slots one had in their inventory, though strength still played a role by increasing stack size. When he noticed that some of the provisions weren’t stacking and taking up too much space, he bit the bullet and added an extra eight points into his strength. While it didn’t add another skill slot, with his boost buff, it reached twenty in regards to carrying capacity. Thankfully, that solved his problem immediately, freeing up space in his inventory. While he was doing that, he also noticed that his [Farm Hoard] had gone up a rank when he wasn’t noticing, probably from when he’d added the flowers and oranges. Before moving on to other things, he made sure to add one more point into intelligence as well, bringing it up to a nice round fifty. It effected how powerful his magic attacks were, after all, so it was good to invest points into it, even when it wasn’t needed.

  In that moment, though he felt something resonate inside him, prompting him to look at his skills and finding nothing out of the ordinary. Wanting to look at it at a later time to double check, he moved on to more important things, like buying the rest of the items they’d need for the trip. It was also when Roge got a look at the quest sheet they were going on.

  “Kobolds…?” Roge asked, feeling a bit lost in where he should view the creatures. “Are they sapient?” He said this as they were walking between stores, Roge feeling a bit excited at the glowing stones they’d bought.

  “Not the wild ones,” Marge said, surprising Roge with who answered. “About as smart as wild wolves? Maybe. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

  “I assume ‘wild’ means non-sapient? So there are Kobolds who are sapient, so they’re not called wild?” Roge paused after he said that, feeling like he just confused himself. “If that made any sense.”

  “It did,” Marge confirmed, the deer woman giving him a small grin. “Anything with ‘wild’ in the name is a creature or monster that a sapient creature happens to share a name with. We’re not sure why some of us were given intelligence, while others not.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “That’s fair. How long is the trip going to be? You only said ‘a few days’ before, and I’m not sure…”

  “Oh!” Hops interjected, looking a bit contrite. “Yeah that’s our fault. We couldn’t really get any of the expensive options, so we went for the one gold trip. Takes two nights and some change to get there on the main roads, which is a steal, honestly, for how far it is.”

  “How far is it?” Roge asked, doing some calculations in his head and coming up short.

  “About five hundred miles,” Hops replied, nearly causing the dragon to trip.

  “Damn they’re fast. Cars made that a two day trip too…” At the puzzled glances, Roge looked around the marketplace to make sure no one was paying attention. “In the other world.”

  “Oh right! The information you had that gained you that bard class,” Hops said, clearing up the confusion. “What are cars, though?”

  “Machines that could drive down roads. Honestly, never really got into how they functioned, but they could go anywhere from twenty five to nearly eighty miles an hour, depending on how fast you pushed them.” All three of his party members showed surprise at that, though Roge just shrugged. “It was a normal part of life there. So hearing that carts can go similar speeds is pretty wild. I assume some type of skill?”

  “Pretty much. Some sort of ride skill, I think.” Hops shrugged. “It never really interested me.

  “ROGE YOUNGSTON!” a voice screeched out, jolting the dragon’s body even as dread filled him. He knew that voice. “WHERE IN ALL THAT IS THE UNDERWORLD HAVE YOU BEEN?!” Turning around, he frowned at his feline mother, barely holding back from giving her a glare. Of course she would track him down, Roge noticing his father rushing through the now stopped crowd as well.

  “I moved out. Obviously,” he replied, bringing his mother up short.

  “Well if I knew you’d found a cheaper place, I would have given you a discount, sweetie.” Roge flinched at the pet name, his eyes growing cold at it. It’s just what his *real* mother had called him.

  “Sure. You would have given a ninety percent discount. How generous of you.” Roge held up a hand as his mom tried to respond, looking to his dad who’d just caught up to the conversation. “Hey dad. A little busy right now, but if you want to talk, just leave a letter with the league. I’ll pick it up when we get back from our quest.”

  At that, the dragon turned back around, rolling his eyes at the surprise in his party member’s eyes. Sean, especially, had a grin on his face, like he’d just won some sort of bet. His mother tried calling and following behind them, but was quickly stopped by his father, the older dragon calming down the cat woman.

  “Wow. She’s just as much of a bitch as I remember,” Hops muttered, him and Marge seeming to land on the side of pissed off. “Does your knowledge from the other world include her too? Never saw you stand up to her like that.”

  “Honestly? She was worse. This version of her at least gets a good bit of money to keep her occupied. The only mom I remember was broke as hell, and mainly took it out on us.”

  “Damn, that’s cruel,” Sean said, his grin fading. “Well… at least you have us now?”

  Roge grinned as he looked to the unsure lion, giving the huge guy a shoulder punch. “Of course. I have you guys now.” He felt a bit warm inside that all three seemed to have his back, letting out a sigh as they continued on with their packing.

  ~~~

  With the sun setting into the lake, the party was finally ready and reached their destination, a caravan park situated directly south of the city. Growing out from the park was a smooth, straight road, moving only up and down with the various hills moving into the distance. It was several times wider than what Roge was expecting, looking like a proper highway with four lanes on each side.

  “How do they keep this maintained…” Roge muttered, looking at the smooth gravel road. “Earth skills?”

  Hops chuckled at that, pulling out a book to reference that time. “I think it is… Ah! Here. Yeah, there’s a skill that lets someone smooth out a road while traveling on it. It’s usually part of the [Caravaner] class, so pretty much everyone running the road has it.”

  “Yeah… Imagine having to repair roads every few years and having to close them off,” Roge muttered, chuckling at Hops’ horrified look. “It wasn’t too bad. Mainly because there were a lot more roads, and not one main road straight-shotting between cities and towns.”

  “Sounds complicated,” Marge grumbled as they walked up to the wagon they’d be taking. It was simple in design, looking like a standard covered wagon. Difference was that it was a good bit bigger than the wagons Roge was used to seeing, as well as not being one wagon, but three. All of them were chained together like train cars, Roge smiling at the design as a woman walked up to them. She was another fire elemental, though she looked more human than anything else, just with red skin. What gave her away was the flowing hair she had, it literally being made of flames.

  “You folks the ‘Writing Defenders’?” she asked, Roge staying quiet as his team all nodded. “You’re in the middle cart. Standard signals for stopping or turning. Don’t do anything delicate while we’re moving. You pay for anything you damage.” She then looked at Roge, a surprised expression gracing her face before she smoothed it out. “Anything you need to ask sir?”

  “Uh…” Roge looked to his teammates, who looked equally confused. “The only thing that comes to mind is if I can sing songs,” he stated, pointing at the embellishments on his cloak. “I have a bard class that grows from me telling stories and singing songs.” At her alarmed look, he quickly added, “Oh it doesn’t have any spells. Just songs that I make up.”

  “So… a storytelling class?” Roge nodded. “No buffs or effects or anything?”

  “Just lights and sounds when I sing.”

  “Then that’s fine. Just lower your volume if the other passengers ask.” With that, the caravan driver got into the seat on the first of the first wagon, Roge trailing behind his party a bit so he could see what was going to be pulling the cart. To his surprise, the beasts looked mostly like horses, except that one was orange and on fire, while the other looked to be the color of grass. ‘Elemental horses…’

  “I have so many questions,” Roge spewed out once they got in, closing the curtains and giving their space a brief once over. Looked like they had half of the space to themselves, the left half filled with various cargo crates. “’Writing Defenders’?”

  “It’s a work in progress,” Sean grumbled, while Hops and Marge gave the lion glares.

  “It’s been that way for five years. And ‘Mane Runes’ wasn’t much better,” Marge grumbled, taking a seat on the right side bench.

  “To be fair, we can’t think of anything either.” Hops sighed at that, sitting to the right of Marge while Sean sat to the left. That left Roge to sit on the other side of the elf, Sean frowning as he did so.

  “Next question then. Is it going to be very bumpy?”

  “It’s mostly smooth, as long as the driver has a decent dexterity,” Hops responded, pulling out his book again. “Yup, [Smooth Ride] is a dexterity skill, and it comes in no matter what other skills you get. It’s practically baked into the class.”

  “Well that’s good. When do we head off then?” Roge asked, earning him questioning looks from the three. “What?”

  “We already started moving,” Sean said, giving the confused dragon a grin. “What’s your con at?”

  “Twenty six.”

  “That’d do it,” Hops grumbled, Marge giving him a sympathetic look. “Anything below twenty, and trips like this make my butt fall asleep a few hours in.”

  Roge got up from his seat at that, moving to the back and opening up the curtain a bit. The sun was still setting on the lake, though the scenery flew past them at a pretty decent clip. As far as he could tell, they were moving about twenty five to thirty miles an hour, all the while no bumps or shakes could be felt. “That’s… amazing.”

  “Get your hammock set up Roge,” Sean commanded, Roge looking over to see each of them setting one up on designated hooks on the various arches that held up the canvas of the cart. He’d wondered why they had him buy that, feeling a bit too embarrassed and rushed to ask earlier in the day. Now he was grateful for it, hooking up the hammock and settling in for some sleep. He thought it would take a while with the light swinging, but he soon found himself deeply comfortable with it and drifted gently off to sleep.

  ‘I hope things are going to go well…’