Waking up in his room at the inn while it was still dark out was a new experience. The last few days the sun had woken him up. Today was different because Synexus wanted to get to The Grove and then head out to hunt with Kumo.

  He got up to get ready while he thought about the encounter with the owl last night. It appeared, it let him add its genes to Genome Library, and then it flew off. The whole thing felt like a dream. He finally got his first animal entry and would now have to do some experiments with it. The more he found out about his class and its abilities, the more he realized it really had endless possibilities, and he would explore them all.

  The sun was just peeking over the horizon as he arrived at the plant market. To his surprise there was a massive crowd around the door of The Grove. He walked up to see what was going on and people started telling him to get to the back of the line.

  Suddenly, the door flew open, and people tried to rush in before Ecclo told them to get back. He ran over to Synexus in a panic barely being able to catch his breath for a single word.

  “Syn...” Ecclo took a few deep breaths. “Synexus, where have you been?!”

  “You told me not to come back until today. I was coming to help you grow more bamboo, but it seems you’re pretty busy.”

  “I said that?! Well, we should have made it an everyday thing. Synexus all these people are craftsmen and shopkeepers looking to buy some of your bamboo. The new variants took the city like a plague. I haven’t been able to keep up with orders with my growth ability. I need you to grow way more than you did before.”

  Synexus was surprised. He had seen a few things around the city in his variant colors, but it wasn’t like everyone had something. How did all those plants sell out already? It didn’t matter, he wanted to help, so he followed Ecclo through the crowd.

  People were trying to push through the doorway. They were all yelling about how their shops were going to be opening late because of this. Ecclo was yelling right back telling them to wait a minute.

  The space behind the store was absolutely empty except for one of each type of bamboo. Synexus got to work propagating and then using Extreme Growth while Ecclo went back to his customers. Every now and then he would come back and request a specific plant first to try and get the line taken care of. It took an hour to get all the orders filled from the people at the door. After that it took another hour to regain mana and another hour to grow the same amount as the other day, which was 10,000 bamboo plants.

  Ecclo came back out and looked relieved to have all the variants back in stock and to have a minute to himself again. “Look” he said. “I know this isn’t part of our deal, but I would appreciate it if you went with my sister, Renette, to our family farm to get much more of this going. I don’t think you realize how crazy it has been here.”

  “Actually, I was going to go hunting with Kumo this morning, can I do it later? Or perhaps I could come up with a better solution. I mean what will you do when I’m gone?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “What if I could give all the variants an extreme propagation property for them to self-replicate quickly?”

  “That would probably work. We would need a few regular ones to cultivate ourselves for those that want them for privacy screens. We don’t need someone complaining that their entire property was taken over.”

  “Alright, I’ll get you set up at the farm then. So, how much was my profit from the first couple of days? I’ve been dying to know.”

  “Oh right. I almost forgot! Here you go!” Ecclo tossed him a bag full of guins. “We sold every plant. I upped the price when I realized how popular some were going to be, so we each made 20,000 silver guins give or take a few. I went ahead and converted it at the bank for you.”

  “20,000 silver guins…Ecclo…that’s 2000 gold guins.”

  “I know right?! People were buying firelight and crystal ones for 20 silvers a piece. It all averaged out to 4 silver guins per plant.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “That’s incredible! I had no idea how popular they would be. I saw some people wearing bracelets or using the firelight as lanterns yesterday.”

  “Trust me, your variants are flooding the city.” He sighed before continuing, “look I was thinking about our deal, and if you set us up at the farm, I think we should make a new one. You’re going on a voyage, but these are your creations. It doesn’t feel right to not give you anything from the sales. Instead, I was thinking of putting aside 20% of profits on your variants aside for you in a bank account here in Gale. Does that sound fair?”

  “I mean this is already more guins than I can spend, but Kumo would probably yell at me if I passed this up. That sounds fair to me. You have yourself a deal!”

  “Great! That’s a relief, my friend. You seem nice and I think other people may have taken advantage of you. I didn’t want to be one of them. In return, can you keep an eye out for more variations on your trip?”

  “I sure will. I’ll even create some more for you. The Grove exclusives.”

  That made Ecclo laugh. “Well alright, my sister is up front and will take you to the farm. Come back the day before you leave to collect your profits from our original deal. I’ll get a bank account set up in your name in connection with the store. Happy growing!”

  Synexus made his way back to the front of the store and sure enough a woman was leaning against the wall. She looked like Ecclo but was taller and held herself more confidently.

  ” You, Synexus?” She said abruptly.

  “Yes, I am and you’re Renette?”

  “I sure am. Let’s get going. I want to get this done.”

  Synexus liked how to the point she was. He followed her without another word and thirty minutes later they arrived at a bamboo farm. There were acres and acres of different kinds of bamboo. They walked through row after row until coming to a massive open plot of land.

  “This is where Ecclo wanted them to grow. I can help, but my growth spell is better for one plant at a time, and its slow.”

  “That’s okay. Just give me one second to figure something out. “

  He grabbed some regular bamboo seeds that she had on her and focused on the extreme propagation of the hybamboodra. They probably had some around here somewhere, but he didn’t want to go look for it. Once he homed in on the gene, he pushed it into the genome of the regular bamboo. It was relatively simple but still took a few minutes.

  Once he had it done, he added the genes for the color he wanted. Ecclo mentioned the firelight and the crystal were the most popular, so he went with the firelight. The seed started growing rapidly with Extreme Growth and in seconds there was a full-grown firelight bamboo plant in front of him. He then used Extreme Growth again, but this time he focused on the extreme propagation gene and after only a minute there were a hundred firelight bamboo plants all self-replicating at a ridiculous rate.

  He repeated this process for each of the different variants and because he didn’t have to grow every plant it only took him about two hours. The empty plot was now a massive bamboo forest of different colored species, and they were all constantly replicating still. There wouldn’t be neat rows, but he figured they would be able to work with it.

  Renette had watched the whole thing, and she was now staring at him like he had something on his face. He looked right into her eyes and said, “You said you wanted it done.”

  She laughed hard and said, “My brother was right about you. You’re a goldmine. It doesn’t look like that bamboo will stop anytime soon. We will have these variants in stock forever now.”

  “That was the plan we talked about at the store. I’m glad it only took a couple of hours or so. I need to get hunting.”

  Renette nodded and led him back to the market. He thanked her for the escort and the directions to the front gate. She went back to The Grove and Synexus left to join the hunt, but first he had somewhere to stop.

  ***

  Out in the woods, the nearly forty class chosen were cleaning up the monsters that had gotten close to the city. With so many people fighting, you often didn’t get that much experience. It was safer though, which was the most important part.

  Kumo had just diced some type of insect monster with her cloud blades when she turned to see Synexus standing there with the cloud dimension bag she wanted from the store.

  “You didn’t steal this did you?” She said in a joking voice.

  “Nope, I bought it. I ended up making 2000 gold guins from my bamboo.”

  “2000?! Synexus, that’s a lot. I mean that is like noble level wealth.”

  “That’s what I thought. Oh, and you’ll be proud of me. I made a deal with Ecclo, so even when we leave, he will set 20% profits from my variants aside in a bank account for me. I surmise a bank is a place for holding guins.”

  She smiled, “Yes that is what a bank does. That’s also a good deal. I think you may be learning.” She looked around to make sure there were no monsters before speaking again. “Thank you for the bag. You didn’t have to do that, but wow it looks good on me, don’t you think?!” She turned like she was modeling it.

  “It does except for all the monster blood.” They both laughed with each other, getting some looks from the other class chosen. “I went ahead and put all your stuff in there from my thief plant.”

  “Well, it sounds like we need to do another shopping trip. This time hit the equipment shops for some enchanted items. I bet 2000 gold guins can buy us some good stuff.”

  “We will. By the way, what do you know about taking care of owls?”

  “Uhh, what? You didn’t buy an owl, did you?!”

  They both turned towards a shriek in the woods and rushed towards it. Tonight, they would catch up more, but right now they had some hunting to do.