Roge felt his brain freeze up as the human continued to cry, forcing away the impulse to use his new wand to force him away. He was saved from making a decision as the human was ripped out of the embrace, floating through the air and landing in front of a very angry looking orc woman.

  “Roge. Storeroom. Now,” she growled, the dragon immediately following her commands and rushing into the back. He ignored the shouting conversation as he continued to the greenhouse and sat down at the workstation with a huff. To take his mind off the matter, he used his [Draconic Breath] on the plants to help juice them up before returning to what he was doing in his inventory.

  Pulling out five bottles filled with dust and the four types of petals he’d harvested from the flowers, he started work on what his [Magic Tool Creation] was telling him. Once he was paying attention the previous day, he found that the skill had what he called a ‘recipe’ built into it from him making a bonded tool. In fact, it had three, one for each of the types of variations he’d made to it.

  The first he got started on right away, pulling out one of the blueoak sticks and putting it into the opening of the bottle. His harvest effect had already stripped the slip off branches and leaves from the stick, leaving plain, smooth wood he could use. Once it corked the bottle well enough, he blew [Nature Magic] right at the stick, ignoring the popup of that ability ranking up as he focused on growing the stick how he wanted. It took him far less time to make it, mostly from his [Mana Manipulation] skill. He even figured out he didn’t need to use his breath ability when he had to add more energy to the creation. ‘Better still use it, though, for the rank ups.’

  After five minutes of focusing, the item lit up with blue flames, telling him it was complete. That and his skill ranking up in the process as well.

  Sure, the item was crap compared to his bonded wand, but any person could use it as long as they had the skill. Which made it infinitely more sellable. Moving on to the next two, he placed three of the five fire petals into one of the bottles before sealing it, while two flame and two spark petals went into the other one. A few minutes of breathing mana on them and shaping the wood made the two magic items glow with blue flames as well.

  Satisfied with the result, he placed them off to the side before pulling his flaming spark wand out. He still had two of the spark petals left, but he knew he couldn’t make a wand out of them before making his bonded item have it first, due to the only recipes showing up being from what he’d already made. So he decided to inspect the petals, smiling at the description showing exactly what he expected.

  He paused as he saw that last part, furrowing his brow as to why it didn’t show up for the plant itself. Peeking at the plant’s [Inspect] box, he saw it showed up there too, distracting him enough to pour over his [Status] to find out why.

  ‘So… if [Inspect] is treated as being rank eighteen… then the next sub skill is going to relate to what effects brewing the items has?’ he guessed, feeling unsure about his assumption until he got [Inspect] to fifteen. Either way, he extracted the spark coin from one of the petals, swiping up the ash for later use and looking back at his wand. It took only a moment of focus to swap the flaming spark ability for spark, unlocking a new recipe for him to use later. Using one of the icing petals in the same way took only a moment as well, Roge not wanting to loose the icing buff by using the coin. Surprisingly, though, once he had more than one type of icing coin, his hoard finally showed the rank for each coin, though it went away as soon as he made an icing wand.

  ‘I can live with that,’ he thought to himself, moving on to the acid version of the wand before turning back to his two remaining bottles of quartz dust. He had three types of petals, though he was down to one of each with the sparking and icing ones, so he couldn’t use those. ‘Or… can I?’ he thought to himself, placing the rank four acid coin and the rank one spark coin into his bonded wand. His negative assumption was proven wrong as the wand lit up with blue flames, the dragon feeling elated at the item’s description.

  Roge frowned at the wording of the effect, not wanting to mess around with explosions a foot away from the end of his arm. Especially not in a greenhouse full of plants. He promised himself he’d test out the icing buff on it later, but at the moment he swapped it back out for the healing effect just in case. He couldn’t make a non-bonded version with only one of each of the petals (and he wasn’t sure if he should even sell such a dangerous product), so he moved on to making an acid wand and another healing wand. The extra healing wand he swapped out the healing ability with the leftover rank one icing coin, leaving him with one of each of a healing, flame, flaming spark, acid, and icing wands to potentially sell.

  He knew he could have made the regular spark wand, but he thought that the combined effect would work better to show that a combination wand was possible. These were made to show off potential new products for Madam Madrid of course, though he suspected she would refer him to another shop. Wands didn’t exactly fit in a smoke shop, though he had several ideas for other magic items when he could make more variety.

  “Roge, I am so sorry,” Madam Madrid said as she walked in through the door, the grinding of her teeth sounding as the dragon looked at her. “I had to call the guard on him, though the most I was able to do was to ban him from the store.”

  Roge sighed at that, not looking forward to when he head to head out for training. “That’ll have to be good enough. Thank you, Madam.”

  Her face softened at that, patting Roge on the shoulder and looking at the wands. “Anytime my boy. Now. Are these… new plants?”

  “Oh! No, sorry,” Roge stated, pulling out the harvested leaves and placing them on the workstation. “Still working on making new plants and don’t have anything more then purifying and colored purified ones.” The orc woman nodded for him to continue when he paused, fanning his claws to showcase the wands. He understood her confusion, as all of them were upside down with the bottle resting on the table. “These are wands.”

  He demonstrated the glowing pink one by pushing mana through it, the pink particles small as they slowly healed Madam Madrid’s exhaustion. “Wait… all of these…” she trailed off, Roge assuming she [Inspected] each one as her eyes unfocused. “I mean, they’re really weak, boy. It shows promise, though. What class did you get to make them? That priest alchemist said he was trying to get you his class.”

  “[Artificer],” he replied, grinning at her shocked look. “Hops recommended I get it, and since I recently picked up a buff that lets me bond glass bottles to my hoard…”

  “I assume that lets you get the class easily?” At Roge’s confused look, she sighed. “Son, I’ve only researched classes that work in my business. I don’t have time for random researching for no reason.”

  “Fair, I guess,” the dragon huffed, handing each of the wands to Madam Madrid one at a time. “I thought you could see if any of you business contacts would be interest-“

  “Of course I can help with selling them,” she huffed, Roge giving her a dirty look for interrupting him. “Oh don’t look at me like that. You don’t think the sprinklers are magical? Or the drying machine? I happen to know a [Tinkerer] who has a magic item shop, and I pay him to fix things when they wear down.”

  “Fair again,” Roge chuckled, pulling out the rank one icing coin to fidget with. It, surprisingly, had what looked to be an ice cube on it instead of a snowflake. “I promise the next tools I make will be able to be sold here. I’m planning on making a throwable potion, which I think I can easily turn into things like magical fertilizer, scented oils, etc.”

  “All of which could be useful, yes.”

  “I’m just not sure when I get my next bonded item slot. I’m limited to one right now,” he said, grabbing his better healing wand, “and so anything I make for other people has to be a bottle wand. But once I can make more than one, I can make other types, which unlocks more recipes.”

  “Oh! And I also have some seeds for you,” Roge excitedly stated, pulling out the now empty sack that used to have the quartz and putting the seeds in. “Seventeen regular, two red, 2 yellow, three blue, four black, and three white. That should make it so you can propagate them yes?”

  “Oh this has already been worth it sweetie,” Madam Madrid cheered, exchanging the bag of seeds for six wooden cigarette boxes. Besides the colors, they all looked the same, the spread starting at uncolored wood, and going through the colors of leaves he’d handed off the previous day.

  “That’s exactly what I was expecting. You planning on advertising them today?” Roge asked, tapping a finger on the boxes and feeling tempted to take them to use for himself. He’d been an avid smoker before, but after seeing the effects the previous boxes had, he didn’t dare.

  “Of course dear. Got enough for several boxes of each.” She waved at the boxes on the table as she inventoried the leaves and wands, giving Roge a smirk. “Though I expect you to pay for any more than those. A silver each. Speaking of…” Madam Madrid tapped on one of her screens, the dragon noticing the coin count in his inventory go up by fifty silver. “There’s your pay for the week. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  “Thank you Madam,” he muttered, only frowning once she’d turned her back to him. ‘And now to try and find some place that will cost half of that or less…’