Master Of None

"Gil, do we really need to sit here as you pull every feather out of the rocs for arrows?" 

"Remey, do we all really need to keep an eye out for herbs everywhere we go?" 

Remey and Gil were butting heads again while Midnight trained her wings on the side. The rocs were a lot smaller than Walker had expected without their feathers. The strength that the feathers had seemed to come from the strong bone like frame that the rocs grew. It was impressive since they felt fairly heavy for a single feather. The wind elemental magic that the rocs possessed definitely helped them fly. 

"Try and stay closer to me in the future. I know you will start to adapt to traveling soon. Being able to fall in to a battle stance at a moment's notice is ideal. That will come with time though. You don't need to always be on edge. The goal is to be comfortable switching to an alert position and trusting your instincts." Since Alice seemed a little more shaken than usual after the roc had swooped down and tried to attack her, Su was giving her advice. 

"Trust us, we will protect you. Once you have the same experience adventuring you can go around by yourself much more easily. Compared to other healers though, you should be able to travel alone much more easily." Walker knew that the other healers would need to travel with guards or with a lot of herbs that deterred monsters. This was because they did not have any way to attack the monsters that would hunt them. Alice was different though, she possessed attack kills because she wasn't a healer, she was a songstress. 

"They are right. I will protect your back but I may need to take the offensive one day." Onyx could tell that Alice had relaxed when he had wrapped around her shoulders to protect her. Yet, he had found that she was not ready for the battle in any way and it had taken her too long to begin to sing. 

Since Alice was inexperienced still she was hungrily listening to absorb as much of the knowledge as possible. She knew what she lacked and she was going to fix these weaknesses sooner than later. Alice hated the idea that she would be left behind by Walker and the others. She wanted to see the world with them even though she had still pledged a large portion of her life to the church so that she could help more people. 

"We should keep moving though. The more ground we cover today the sooner we will get home. I'm sure that a lot more people have arrived in the city since we left." This was more than expected. There were still many people that wanted to build their futures or start anew. 

While the party pushed on, the alchemy guild in Genesis was buzzing with activity…

"Again? How can we change the design of the herb gardens again? The design we had was perfect for water flow. We even have a set of greenhouses being made for desert and snowy growth conditions." Trish was sick and tired of being told that the herb gardens needed to be changed. The herbalists that had come from Remey's suggestions and been interviewed by the old monster alchemist and herself were insistent. Every day it seemed like they wanted another change. 

"Just let them keep going as they want. We both know that by the time Remey gets back here she will want to change things. I'm even willing t bet she had managed to convince some merfolk to come over here and start an underwater herb farm near the river." The old master alchemist knew Remey better than anyone else. He could feel that this was one of her goals and it would be inevitable. 

"I know she will. But for now, we need to figure out why they want to set up a mountain environment. At this rate, we will need to expand the herb gardens again." Trish was just trying to rationalize the gold being sent. The joint finds from the kingdoms, the alchemists, and herbalists was not proving to be enough lately. 

"We can sell some smaller potions in a package to start the news that the alchemy guild will be testing for members. If we start now we can sell a crate of healing, mana, and two unique potions for a sum of gold. We will include a notice about the requirements for members and the process they will go through to test. It will attract the eye of merchants and prove we have high quality products." 

This solution opened Trish's eyes. She had found that the old master alchemist was much wiser than expected. Since Trish rarely conversed with humans she didn't realize that she had developed a poor opinion of their alchemy knowledge. Now that she was working closely with the old master alchemist she knew well that he had many tricks and secrets hidden away. The journals that he had been sharing in trade with her had been more than enough to prove his wisdom. 

"That sounds perfect. If we pursue that method of advertisement we will have funds and begin some small relationships with rising merchants. There will also be those that fight to gain our favor so that we may sign contracts with them in the future." There were a lot of possibilities that came to mind. Trish only had a moment to think of them before her attention was brought back to the storage room she had been working on. 

"We can solve more problems later. These storage rooms need to be adjusted. We need more shelving so we can sell things and take them in. I think we will need to hire appraisers for these rooms." The old master alchemist continued on with another issue they would be solving. 

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