Roge just sits there and breathes for a moment, finding himself unsure of what just happened. ‘Maybe it was just a dream…’ he thought to himself, before realizing that the feelings he was getting from his hoard begged to differ. The fairies missed him, while the trees were happy to bask in his presence. ‘It makes no sense… How does that even work…?’

  “Hey Roge, you okay?” Sean asked, Roge jerking when he focused and found Sean kneeling down in front of him.

  “I’m… yeah. Just a weird dream,” Roge mumbled, his statement doing nothing to ease the concern of the lion. “Sorry. Is the wagon still…” He looked over to where he had summoned it, a smile coming across his maw as he found it still perfectly summoned. “Awesome.”

  Hops joined them as Roge got up from the ground, Roge noticing an empty bucket in his hands. “I guess that means, once we get a cover for that thing, we don’t have to take caravans anymore.”

  Roge chuckled as he realized that the others were talking about the cold, Roge still feeling mostly comfortable in his jacket. “At least I can see about training my hoard skill more with it. It’s still stubbornly refusing to go up to rank ten.” He cut the link with the wagon at that, it slowly disappearing as Roge stretched. “Well. I’m going to look over the elements book. See what I can get up to the next tier.”

  ~~~

  Reading over the book throughout the day brightened Roge’s mood considerably, as the book contained the next steps to making better wands and potions. ‘Well… I technically already had most of it,’ he thought to himself, pulling out his wand and giving it a grin.

  Since he didn’t want to overload himself with buffs too quickly, he decided to extract the materials he needed in his inventory. It was a bit of a juggle to make sure he didn’t fill up the slots, but he made it work, especially since some things tended to stack when he wasn’t expecting them to. Besides, he already had all of the wands filling up space, so he’d just use that as a template.

  First thing he did was craft an explosion wand, having already had the recipe for it. Next, he took his bonded wand and tried something he hadn’t been able to do before. Combining two abilities at rank five each. He’d tried adding [Icing] and [Acid] together before, but only with the rank one versions. His book wasn’t sure why it was the case, but apparently the new ability needed at least ten ranks to manifest, unlike the other tier two elements. Those were, of course, [Flaming Spark], [Explosive], and [Frost Fire]. They could all apparently go up to rank nineteen, something he hadn’t tried due to his lack of success with the base elements.

  Roge could feel that that one was one he was going to use often, though he was a bit disappointed there also wasn’t an ice lightning variant. The more he grew in power, the more he found out that his affinity for water and cold effected his effects. He could put more intent behind the effects, and they worked a bit better than the fire ones. He would still use his fire aligned items, but only when the ice, acid, and spark ones were ineffective.

  After thinking on that for far too long, Roge went and upgraded all of the ‘Tier 0’ wands to rank nine. He was unsure if Hops would use them, as he had all of the tier 1 options, but he’d keep them in case they came in handy. Next, he upgraded all of the tier one wands, as well as making the final one for Hops, which took a lot of ingredients to make the rank ten version. He’d debated on keeping some for himself in case he needed to swap things, but he had a better idea for that.

  Next he looked up the process of making a higher tier health potion, the book recommending that he go out and search for the recipe himself. But it also conveniently told him the proportions of what abilities were needed to make the effect. Even though normal alchemists didn’t get [Constitution Boost] from trees like he did, it was still known and used by them. And in order to make a higher tier health potion? He just needed six ranks of [Healing] and four ranks of [Constitution Boost], which he could easily do in his bonded wand.

  Swapping things around with the healing wand he planned to give to Hops, he worked on the last wands he wanted to give to the elf. Maybe he was giving him too many options, but he wanted to make sure Hops had contingencies in place if needed. Besides, it allowed Roge to get some experience in his skills and abilities, as evidenced by his Draconic and item abilities going up in rank.

  Next was the boost wands, though Roge only had one option for upgrading. As he didn’t have mana and stamina potions that restored mana and exhaustion, he was only able to get both of those wands up to nine. Blighting fire was the same, but his constitution wand he could upgrade using healing. Just with the opposite ratios.

  Roge flinched at the increased cost for the wand, grumbling about exponential increases. With nothing he could do about it, though, he put all of Hops’ wands to the side, though his eyes snagged on how samey they all looked. Sure, the crystal ends glowed different colors, but the blue wood made them all look too similar. So he decided to spend a good half hour changing the colors on them, using the colors the effects had as a base. Flame got orange, icing got a light blue, spark got yellow, and acid got purple. Each of the combination wands, he decided, would have swirls of each color, making them look a lot more distinct than they were before. Besides changing the health wand to a pink color, he decided to leave the boost wands alone, as he wasn’t sure what colors to use. It also made them stand out now that they were the only ones that had that deep blue color.

  Next, Roge went into brewing, wanting a variety of potions for Marge’s enchanted arrows, finally, as well as keeping some she could throw if needed. Before he started brewing, however, he decided to upgrade the items he’d already made, not happy with just the rank one items anymore, now that he could get them up to nine. He had also figured out why he could only make the potions at rank one and ten. Apparently, alchemists had access to a skill that allowed them to edit their recipes, adding in more petals to concentrate the effect more. He could skirt around that, though, with his [Screen Hoard], bumping all of his tier zero potions up to rank nine with ease. He then took one of each and added in the combinations, smiling at the improved bombs before frowning at the recipes. ‘One hundred and fifty petals of each element for ten potions?! Don’t have that quite yet.’

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  He rubbed his forehead at that, looking through his farm hoard some more to see how he could remedy the lack of supplies. He decided then to add in the seeds to bring each flower up to twenty like he did with his icing flowers. It would use up his slot for his friends’ advancement rules the next day, but it was worth it to make sure he had enough materials for the potions. He also made the new bomb he hadn’t had the recipe for, though he was feeling rightly pissed about the recipe showing as very expensive again.

  The last thing he decided to work on was seeing if he could make mundane arrows, though he wanted to ask Marge about it first. After handing off the wands to an excited Hops, he went over to the deer woman, who seemed to be practicing her aim on one of the trees. “Hey Marge?” Roge called out when she had just fired a shot.

  “Yeah?”

  Roge explained his idea to make more mundane arrows for her, wondering if she wanted arrows he could make faster and easier. He also handed over all of the potions and arrows he’d already made during the discussion. “The problem is that it’s looking like the regular arrows will eat into my wood and leaf supply. I already have a feeling from the skill that it just needs a branch and leaf to make the regular version.”

  “And I assume you need those materials for the enchanted arrows as well?” she asked. At his nod, she sighed, looking over the various items. “The problem is that the enchanted arrows don’t come pre-sharpened. So I have to spend time making them better. If you could make the mold shaped better, I would just ask for the magic versions, personally. With my practice on some, they’re reusable, so it’s a lot better if I always do more damage.”

  Roge pulled out his beaker-mold-thing and looked it over, before an idea sparked through his head. “Can I have one of the sharpened arrows?”

  Molding the glass and wood, which for some reason was still alive, around the existing arrow worked a lot better, Roge putting the arrow in his inventory when the mold was complete. The beaker now looked very odd, the edges of the ‘arrow’ shape making it look unstable. But fortunately, he was able to mold the wood to reinforce the glass, though there was one worry going through his head. The top part of the beaker, where most of the potion was going to be resting as it reacted, might fill up slightly with the solidified potion. That might make it have a bulge on one side of the arrow, though Marge waved off his concerns.

  “If the system knows you’re trying to make an arrow, it won’t let imperfections like that happen. Kinda like with the normal magical arrows. The shaft is always in the center of the head, so the system must be adjusting things for it to work right.” It felt a bit unfair to Roge that it worked that way, but he trudged on with his crafting. Making ten of each tier zero potion took a good while, but he finished them and juiced them up to rank nine before starting the arrow making process.

  ~~~

  Unfortunately, Roge only realized after making the first batch of potions, that he didn’t have enough materials to make all of them rank nine. He felt a little bad at that, but saw that there was nothing he could do until he harvested more the next day. At the very least, he was almost guaranteed the materials needed, as with each plant being at thirty, the materials he would get would skyrocket. ‘Thankfully the scaling seems to work out okay for that…’ he thought to himself, looking over his various materials before sighing. I’ll also have to wait until tomorrow for my other plans. Oh well.’ With nothing left to do for the rest of the day, he decided to go through the alchemy book once again. He found it an interesting read and Roge wanted to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.

  Once sunset hit, everyone started packing up their stuff, Roge’s group only needing to deactivate their campsite card to pack everything up. Roge had remembered to hook up his cart an hour beforehand, most of the passengers giving it a curious look. Since he’d be sleeping in it to make sure it had the right weight, Roge placed his bedroll inside before sitting on top of it. Sure, it was still a few hours before they were to head out, but Roge didn’t mind the cool evening air coming from the lake.

  “Hey. Dragon guy?” a voice called out, pulling Roge’s attention away from the water. It was the minotaur from earlier, this time looking sheepish as he scratched his head with an overly muscular arm. “I wanted to apologize for earlier today.”

  “It’s-“ Roge cut himself off, realizing that the situation wasn’t really ‘fine’. “It’s over. I’m just glad you listened to the others.” It was the first time Roge was seeing the man up close, the dragon realizing that he was most likely over six feet tall with heavy muscle and fat everywhere. For some reason, he was only wearing pants, leaving his furred chest exposed. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “I should as you the same, but I assume you have cold protection, like me.” He held out a large hand, easily twice the size of Roge’s claws. “Name’s Alton. What’s yours?”

  “Roge,” the dragon replied, taking the offered hand and shaking it. “How long have you worked for the caravan?”

  “Oh not that long. Looking to get off this job actually. Thanks for the opportunity.” Alton grins at that, Roge flinching back at the malice on his face as the grip becomes crushing.

  The world blurs around Roge, his eyes losing focus as his body flops to the bottom of the wagon. He tries to fight back, pushing through the feeling as he wonders what the fuck the minotaur is doing. That’s when he notices the shape of the minotaur’s head, it changing from bovine to… reptile. Roge fires off an [Inspect] at the scales growing on Alton’s face, shivering as his vision starts blacking out.

  ‘Oh shit…’

  ~~~

  “You need to fight back!”

  “We can’t lose Master like this!”

  Roge slowly opens his eyes, the organs feeling encrusted as he gazes up at a dark sky. Moving anything is hard for him, but he doesn’t have to as a wolf pup moves in front of his vision.

  “You need to wake up Master! It’s draining you! You’re stronger! You need to fight back!”

  But Roge doesn’t feel stronger. The effect of whatever the snake was doing felt too strong to fight against. Like its connection to Roge’s body was more powerful. ‘Like it’s able to connect to people better than me.’ At that, the dragon’s eyes flick back open in determination, flipping open his [Status] as he tries to wake up from the hoard dream he’s obviously in.

  ‘I don’t know how high its charisma is, but if it’s its highest stat, that must be what it’s using on me. It’s how the fairy dust worked, after all.’ He felt like he was making a lot of assumptions, as it could just as easily be wisdom that the thing was attacking with. ‘But knowing a tomato doesn’t go in a fruit salad…’ His thoughts stuttered, remembering the old adage he’d learned in Dnd. ‘Charisma is how well you can sell a tomato. It has to be the stat that deals with people.’ Without any other options, he flicked his mental assent, putting all of his free points into the attribute and pushing as hard as he could to wake up.