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  There was just one thing that bothered me… “Enrichment fruit? I don’t think that was mentioned in the herb guide.”

  “Oh? Dear, we’ll need to fix that, then. It was likely an oversight, since the only medicinal use it has is for beginner mana potions. Otherwise, it is just a rather delicious fruit. Its appearance is spherical, with thick brown skin. If you bite into it, it tastes particularly sweet and gives an instinctive feeling of happiness due to a chemical reaction.”

  Wait, that sounds a bit too familiar… Reaching into my inventory, I retrieved one of the chocolate oranges and showed it to her. “You mean this?”

  “Hmm? Yes, that’s right. I see you already have one, then. Now, something you should know about mana potions. Unlike most, they have a unique reaction when you first make them, and will suck the mana out of the area nearby. If you mass produce them, that will mean that the mana might dry up enough to impact your natural recovery rate, until nature balances itself out.”

  I nodded my head, accepting that. “Alright, and how much would you be willing to buy mana potions for?”

  She gave a small smile, before nodding her head. “As long as they are of decent quality, I can buy them for twelve coppers each. In other words, I could buy a full batch for exactly two silver, if I supply you with the vials.”

  Hearing that made me smile slightly as well. “Can you clear off an area for me to work, then? Also, I’d like to buy enough vials for two batches, and I’ll sell you half of the second.”

  With a light laugh, she led me into a back room, which was mostly empty. There were various shelves, though they were currently void of any objects. “This is where I keep the surplus potions if I get bored and brew in my spare time. You won’t be disturbed here.”

  I nodded, and called the two lovebirds off my shoulder to give them some instructions. Since they have been able to listen so far, I had high hopes that this could work. Pulling out one of the spider caps from my inventory, I attempted to communicate that I needed more of these. The two birds looked at the mushroom curiously before shrugging their shoulders and flying off.

  I could have had them bring me more ‘enrichment fruit’, but I still had plenty of that in my inventory, same with the blood weed. But, I only had a few of the mushrooms. So as they left to go gather the plants, I sat down and got to work, pulling out the mortar and pestle, as well as the bunsen burner and beaker.

  Now that I had Water Manipulation, I was able to pull in some of the moisture from the air to fill up the beaker, which thankfully we were in a forest so there was ample humidity. Then, with a touch of mana, I started up the burner while pulling out the ingredients I needed to make two batches of potions. She didn’t say how much juice I would need from the enrichment fruit, so I assumed two for each batch of potions. Aside from that, I also had two stalks of blood weed, and the one full spidercap.

  First, as she said, I cut the spidercap vertically in half with my Chain Dagger, before putting it in the mortar. Since it was so much thicker than a simple weed, it took longer to work it into a powder. By the time that the powder was ready, the water in the beaker was already boiling. Next, I simply used my Plant Manipulation to remove the skins from the two fruits, and held one over the mortar.

  With Plant Manipulation again, I had it gradually drip the juice from the orange into the powder. It would seem that I underestimated how much juice a single fruit contained. I held the fruit in one hand and gradually mixed the powder and juice in the mortar with the pestle in the other. By the time that the mixture had become a thick paste, there was still plenty of juice left in the fruit.

  Reactivating the burner again, I snatched a bit of flame from it with Fire Manipulation, and tossed it into the mortar. This part took a considerable amount of control, as I had to sustain the flame until the paste became hard again. Once done, however, I dismissed the flame and tossed in one of the blood weeds, again crushing it all into a fine powder.

  With that done, it was a simple matter of pouring it into the boiling water and watching as it switched between shades of blue. I kept my Mana Sense on the concoction the entire time, because there was something that I wanted to try for the second batch. Once it got to the shade that Lisara had shown me, I poured nearly a hundred mana into the mix all at once, causing the potion to instantly stop changing colors. Out of curiosity, I activated my Aura Sight to watch the next part, and could see as the beaker of liquid took on the appearance of a vortex, causing a lot of the ambient mana in the room to rush into it. I even felt a slight pull on my own mana, but was easily able to resist it.

  Calling back out to Lisara, I let her know that I was done. While she came back and gathered the potion, pouring it into twenty small vials, she nodded happily. “Very good. Most people can’t get the right shade on their first try. But, I suppose you’ve had a bit of time to practice controlling your magic, so it shouldn’t have been that hard for you.”

  I smiled slightly, saying nothing as I waited for her to be done extracting the potions. To my surprise, Yin and Yang had not yet returned, but they likely had to go out a ways to find the mushroom. Even then, they might not be able to pick one while keeping it intact. Though, I was able to sense that they were safe, so I wasn’t really that worried.

  Once Lisara was done, she returned to the front of the store. Meanwhile, I simply sat there and let my mana finish recovering. My next experiment would require quite a bit of mana if it worked, but if it did it would save quite a lot of time in the future.

  After allowing my mana to recover, I placed the remaining fruit, half of the mushroom, and the blood weed in front of me. At the same time, I filled the beaker with water again using my magic. However, this time I did not activate the burner. Rather, I relied on my Manipulation abilities to conduct Alchemy this time.

  For the first step, I reached out with my Mana Sense to isolate the medicinal qualities of the three herbs. Then, rather than using Plant Affinity to control the plants themselves, I used my mana to gently pull those sections of the aura out of the plants, before pushing them together as one. In a corner of my mind, I used Fire Manipulation to pull in fire mana to the water, making it quickly start to boil.

  The next part was going to be tricky, as I pushed the medicinal aura from the three plants into the boiling water. Using Plant Manipulation and Water Manipulation, I did my best to adjust the aura of the water with the aura of the plants, until it matched what I had sensed from the mana potion earlier. This ultimately caused a series of things to happen.

  First, the plants I had pulled the auras from quickly shriveled up. Next, the potion did actually turn blue, just like the previous one. Finally, there was that same vortex of mana, however this time my own mana found it hard to resist. If anything, that was likely because I already had such a deep connection to the mana in the potions.

  But, to my great surprise, the batch of mana potions stabilized, which got me thinking about a few things. If it worked like that, then why wouldn’t it work if I just copied the auras from the plants? I gave it a quick experiment, copying the auras of the three familiar plants in small quantities, and pushing them into water created by the Water Manipulation ability. However, the two refused to properly mix no matter what I tried.

  Maybe it’s a matter of the plants being natural creations, and me copying it still isn’t a good enough substitute? Shaking my head, I called Lisara again, telling her I was done.

  Alchemy has advanced to Basic!

  She seemed quite surprised that I was done already, since it took less than half of the time of the previous batch. Meanwhile, I was surprised by the smooth transition to Basic level Alchemy. Was it because I conducted my own experiment, and figured out how to bypass the more archaic brewing process?

  I shook my head, and collected the total of two silver and eight large copper coins from Lisara. With this, I at least had a bit of spending money again. At the same time, I looked towards the door of the shop, as two birds slowly flew in. I could fe
el that they were a bit depressed over the link, and soon saw why. In Yang’s tail feather was most of a poorly harvested spidercap, while Yin didn’t even have that much. It would seem that it was truly hard for them to accurately gather herbs with their body types.

  With a shrug, I walked out of the alchemy store and went back over to Harlan’s. He was a bit surprised to see me twice in one day, though laughed slightly when he heard the reason. It seems that he had actually been wondering why I was still using normal arrows, when there were so many other options available. Most fields of magic apparently had some way to supplement ammunition, or enhance it in some way.

  Since the packet of seeds was a one-time purchase, rather than something that customers had to come back for every time they ran out, the price was two silver. When I asked, apparently a full quiver of arrows only cost a tenth of that, so it was a bit understandable. I also asked him about the different properties of the vine, and it turned out almost exactly as I had been hoping for. The only thing missing was the poison, which I could add myself.

  As for the seeds, each arrow vine could produce a dozen seeds after it got up to two meters long. And growing it to such lengths took just over a week, so it was still affordable in terms of mana. As long as I did not use every single seed in a single fight, I’d easily be able to regrow more.

  With my business taken care of, I went back out to the edge of town, heading towards the grove. Like I had decided before, I still wanted to test out my wolf form on the way back, so I stopped just a bit after leaving the elven village. Carefully recalling the aura from the wolf I had studied, I shifted my own aura to match it. Like when I turned into a bird, I did not feel much in the way of sensations, however this time I kept my eyes open so as to see the effects.

  My body slowly hunched forward onto all fours, my size decreasing slightly as fur sprouted all over my body. My limbs all narrowed, my legs shortening to match my new frame. Next, my back narrowed a bit as well, and my face elongated. The last things that changed were my senses, which became surprising sharp despite some colors blending together.

  With my body now fully shifted into that of a wolf, I slowly took a few steps forward. It felt weird having to walk with my arms as well as my legs, but I managed to adapt fairly easily. This was still nothing compared to flying with four wings. Taking a glance at my mana pool, I was somewhat surprised to find that it had only drained 400 mana, rather than all 500 like I had expected.

  Once I was finished coordinating myself with my new body, I ran off into the forest, doing my best to ignore the almost nauseating mix of smells that permeated the air. If I wasn’t afraid of looking entirely too silly, I’d have shifted my nose back to that of a human. Instead, I just increased my running speed, eager to get to the pond and shift back as quickly as possible.

  It took less than a minute running at full speed before I finally arrived in front of that pond. Nearby, Sharon was staring at me in shock, and a bit of joy as she saw a strange wolf run up next to her. However, after I cancelled my transformation, she pouted slightly, mumbling something under her breath that I caught just before my senses returned to normal. “Looked so fluffy…”

  Chapter 27: So long, farewell

  Looking over to Sharon pouting because I was no longer a fluffy wolf made me smile wryly. I had the feeling that she really did try to befriend every animal she came across. I looked once around the pond, and noticed that Jarl wasn’t there again, so decided to sit down and chat with Sharon for a little while until he got back. The only thing I was still here for was to see if I needed any additional training before I was ‘released unto the world’, so to speak.

  Honestly, I felt I was already far stronger than I had previously been, before I received my druid abilities. Even if accidentally, I managed to kill three fully grown bears, when before I would have run away while emitting a rather foul odor. Anyways, talking to Sharon! Must not get distracted.

  “So, you really seem to like animals, huh?” I smirk over to her as I watched her pet the fluffy white menace of my early days.

  She nodded her head happily, looking over to me. “That’s right. I’ve always wanted a pet, on the animals in this game are just so real… They’re so adorable.”

  I chuckled, thinking about that. “I take it you’re not virtualized, then? It’s pretty rare for someone your age to go through the process.” I wasn’t really sure how old she was, but given her looks and personality I figured she couldn’t be much older than twenty, at most. And most people who became virtualized were in their thirties at least, people who had already experienced some of what the world had to offer.

  She nodded her head. “Yeah, that’s right… I take it you know about what’s been happening with the Seeds, huh?” At that, she looked over at me, making my smile dryly.

  “Yeah, happened to my own, too. Even got a special call from the police to verify the information.”

  She seemed a bit surprised at that. “Ah, so you too, huh? Small galaxy.” She smirked slightly, making me chuckle in response.

  “Well, thousand starter Seeds, I figure that with all the races out there we might be the only ones that chose the wood elf home world. And we can count ourselves lucky that neither of us chose something too far from human.”

  She giggled slightly at that, then looked down to her chest. “Yeah, but elves have their disadvantages as well….” After saying so, she blushed slightly, focusing her attention on petting the bunny. My guess was she had a larger chest before, but being an elf shrank it. Elves with large busts must be truly rare.

  I couldn’t help laughing at her reaction, which only made her face even more red. “Hey, look at the bright side. At least you still only have two arms, two legs, and one head. I imagine that once the rest of the Seeds are released, with the information known about the races being real, almost nobody will pick a non-humanoid species. Though, someone might play a drake just so they can fly around as a dragon.”

  She thought about that, and nodded her head. “Yeah… though with magic entering the world, you never know… Some people dream of being something else.”

  “Well, they’ll get their chance. I think the world is in for a big change.”

  Again, she nodded her head, and brought up a point I hadn’t considered. “I looked around a bit, and the Seed seems to be the source of magic, at least in my house. It was always slightly denser around it than anywhere else. If more Seeds appear in the world all at once… wouldn’t it be like what happens when we add an element to our grove? The shock of adding it all at once spreads it out to make it a natural part?”

  I blinked a few times as I thought about her words. “If that did happen, then the mana in the real world would be at least as dense as here. Jarl said that monsters were spawned out of pure magic in the world, so monsters might appear out of nowhere. Magical beasts would also be able to start evolving, though they’d have a slower time of it…”

  “Right… I think, once the Seeds activate… one of two things will happen… either a single, tremendously powerful monster will be created to balance out the mana… or a bunch of small ones. Either way is bad for us…” She looked down to the rabbit sadly.

  I nodded my head at that. If what she guessed turned out to be true, and the shock of a large amount of mana made our world naturally generate and adapt to it, then either of those would be the best case scenarios. Worst case, both happens, and it keeps happening.

  It was at that point that Jarl decided to come back, noticing the depressed mood, and looking at me. “Did you ask if she was a vegetarian?”

  I blinked again at his question, before laughing lightly. For some reason, that seemed to help. “Sorry, stopped by to ask you a couple things.”

  Jarl nodded his head, seeming to have expected this. “You wanted to know if there was anything else I need to teach you before you go off on your own, right?” For the third time in just a few minutes, I was left briefly speechless, making him smirk. “It’s pretty obvious, given your g
rowth. Actually, both of you are about ready to move on. I’d suggest that Sharon stay a little longer, until she is able to house some of her animals in her grove first. Once you’re in the city, you’ll need your animal companions to either remain in your grove, or wear special collars that show their status. It’s how people recognize them as not being wild.”

  That sounded pretty realistic to me. I mean, a wolf won’t stop looking like a wolf just because you tame it. After seeing me nodding my head, he continued. “However, it’d probably do you good to stay here for a few more days as well. Right now, your grove should count as just a small garden, but if you cultivate for a couple of days, it will be big enough to start growing more herbs.”

  I thought about that, and had to agree. Right now, I was barely able to hold a few herbs in my grove, so it was inconvenient if I were to go to another planet where the basic herbs were different. And there was no real penalty for me in waiting a couple more days. After all, I’d only been in the game three weeks, and there were still two more before the Seeds were released.

  That, and it was getting pretty dark out by now, as today had been a fairly busy day. After eating another enrichment fruit, I cultivate my Plant Affinity for about an hour before falling asleep. By that time, my Plant Affinity had managed to rise another percent, and my grove had expanded by half a meter.

  The next two days, I decided to actively cultivate my Dark Affinity, after seeing the increase that had happened in my grove when I added plant mana and considering that I’d need it eventually anyways. Likewise, Sharon was also cultivating the same element, since a day/night cycle was important for her animals. On the second day, after I had increased my Dark Affinity to 7%, I condensed the Seed of Darkness and ingested it.

  Immediately, I meditated to allow my consciousness to enter my inner grove, and found it rapidly expanding, while a sliver of darkness fought back against the light, until each covered half of the tiny sphere. Unlike what I had been expecting, the grove expanded a total of four meters, bringing its radius up to 12 meters. Maybe it expanded more because what I used was a primary element, instead of a secondary one like plants?