Chapter 55

Arthur having paid for his new alchemy equipment, began to temporarily place it within his dimensional bag to the shock of the onlookers. As they watched each piece of expensive equipment disappear into a small bag slung over his shoulder the whispers slowly stopped as everyone turned away. Only a wealthy person or a mage could easily afford such a magical item and no one in their right mind wanted to piss off either.

Arthur then left the store with nothing to note and returned to the Elder Nymph to try out his new apparatuses, on his way up the stairs he gave out a few muffled giggles as he imagined just how much his potions would improve with new equipment.

With the variety of ingredients he had in storage he quickly mixed together as many potions as he could. To most the change wouldn't appear to be all that much given it was only about a five percent increase in potency. But to most experienced alchemists that five percent would make a large difference to both their potions and their reputation.

Soon Arthur used up almost half of the ingredients he kept in storage due to his brewing frenzy and the increased size of his equipment allowing him to distil and brew easily double the potions at a time.

Bottles lined the shelves in his laboratory as he brewed potion after potion, every reaction carefully examined in a trance like state as his skill and proficiency with the new equipment grew. By the time he used up all the bottles at his disposal it was already five o’clock at night.

Arthur slowly returned from his trance like state and as he did he felt his legs slowly give in forcing him to brace himself with the table he conducted his alchemy on. His legs shook as if he had just finished running a whole marathon without any breaks. His head also felt clouded like a veil of fog shrouding his mind.

Arthur slowly turned his head to look at his watch on his wrist and saw it was already past five o’clock. Slowly he slumped down to the floor and took a seat, slowly he took out some of the food he kept in his dimensional bag and scarfed it down like a starving dog.

‘I feel like absolute crap. Whatever that feeling was when I was brewing all those positions clearly has some drawbacks. But for now I probably just need a bit of rest and I can continue on with testing out my new equipment.’

Arthur slowly rose from his seated position and dragged himself to his bedroom and spalled across his bed as he struggled to keep his eyes open. But that did not last for long as exhaustion is an excellent motivator to get someone to close their eyes. ‘Just a few minutes, then I'll get up.’ Arthur thought to himself as he slowly drifted to sleep.

Arthur awoke the very next day at six o’clock in the morning fully refreshed and angry that despite his attempts he did not take “just a few minutes” and instead slept through the whole night.

‘Fuck. What now?’

Arthur sat up from his bed and looked around his small room, noticing that he only had a few sheets on his bed and nothing that was very thick for when it gets cold. While he did not remember what it was called when it got really cold but he remembered just how bad it was.

‘Now I need to buy a thick blanket to keep warm when it gets cold. What else do I need to buy?’ Arthur instinctively clutched his dimensional bag that contained all his remaining money. Both his heart and his savings ached from all the money he had been spending.

‘But I need to do it eventually so I might as well do it now.’ With a loud sigh Arthur sat up from his bed and walked out to his laboratory to check on his supply of ingredients. Last night when he brewed all those potions he wasn’t exactly paying attention to his ingredient stockpile.

But the very moment he got a look he immediately knew that he used a lot, so much that it might take him a whole day or two just to refill to the level it was before last night. But that would need to wait as Arthur was feeling rather hungry, his stomach growled in frustration as he had not eaten anything for over twelve hours.

He didn’t want to but he was forced to eat some of the other foods that he kept in his bag, most of what he kept in there were lunch and dinner foods but with any bars or taverns unlikely to be selling any food at such an hour he had to make do with what he had. When he finished eating a Isicia Omentata squished between two pieces of bread he decided to look around the actual store as he had never actually looked at what Master Calvus sells here.

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Arthur slowly walked down the flight of stairs, careful not to make the boards creak, when he finally was down in the shop he conjured a small flame as a light source and began to look at the items and their labels.

He found a large assortment of different items that ranged from liquids to powders, from harmful to helpful. Each shelf has a category of sorts, although there were several that repeated each stood out from the rest and were evenly spaced around the shop.

The first shelf Arthur looked through contained non liquid harmful items, one that caught his eye was something labelled fire seeds. A few glass jars of these little orange glowing seed like objects stood out compared to the rest of the items on display.

‘These fire seeds must be some sort of weapon that utilizes fire to cause harm, I wonder if they explode or not.’ Arthur walked over to the nest shelf to see what was on display there.

On this shelf were several dangerous liquids, most of which were poisons. Most were not something that would kill someone, rather they had paralysis or hallucinogenic properties, except for one labelled as Rot oil. Three vials of a deep brown liquid simmered as Arthur picked them up to look, they were so dark that they almost looked black in color.

On the next shelf there were far less dangerous items for display, namely several healing salves and other pastes or herbs that could be used to help heal wounds and treat infections. Nothing much stood out as everything looked very useful to a properly trained healer.

On the fourth shelf Arthur found items with more utility uses, the items here were a bit more interesting than the rest as regular people might have more use for these than the others, and it was reflected in the prices with most of the items on these shelves being cheaper than what was on the others. One of the more prominent ones was the phantom ink, with several variations changing what type of light was required to see the ink. There were four types available, fire light, moon light, magical light, and star light. Although magical light appeared to have the least amount of stock present.

Arthur spent a few more minutes hanging around the store looking over a few more products but there was nothing that interesting enough to take note of, so he returned to his bedroom and decided to practice his aeromancy and pyromancy as they were the two evocations that he had the least amount of mastery in.

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Over an hour passed as Arthur practiced his magic when he first heard people outside moving around and starting their days. ‘That explains why everything is already up and going when I usually get up.’ Arthur thought as he looked out one of the second story windows.

‘Anyways, now that it is bright and early it would be a good time to go and collect some more ingredients to refill my stock. I have enough potions to fill a whole store of my own now, so I don’t need to worry about brewing anymore for now.’

Arthur put on his leather overcoat and placed his dimensional bag over his shoulder before he left the Elder Nymph and made his way towards the forest to find more ingredients. But before he left the city he took the time to enjoy the changes that were gradually taking place in the southern district. With all the guards now patrolling the streets everyone that once kept hidden away in their homes now happily walked the streets.

Arthur even saw a few children of humans, elves, and dwarves playing in the streets laughing and screaming out of joy of their game. The sight filled Arthur’s heart with joy as he could see how his actions made a positive impact, he didn’t understand why it did but he didn’t care.

All the guards that he passed recognized him and either gave him a quick nod or even a quick salute. Most of the citizens didn’t understand why they were doing that to what appeared to be a random albeit wealthy looking young man. A few others understood he needed to be someone quite important to garner such respect from the city guard, most of such people were the less than savory type.

“Uncle Lar, why are all the guards being really nice to that man?” A young boy no older than ten pointed to Arthur as he walked down the nearby road.

Lar, the twenty three year old uncle of the boy took a quick look at who his nephew was pointing at and said. “That right there is Arthur of Dom Badaher. He is a freelance mercenary that has been very helpful to the captain by fighting small bands of bandits on his own and bringing a few as prisoners.” Lar smiled as he turned back to his nephew.

“Really? Is he a mage? He doesn’t look like a fighter like you.” The little boy looked to Lar with large puppy dog eyes, the very same when he told him the less graphic variations of stories of he and his squad.

“According to the stories going around about him he might be. Why do you want to ask him for pointers about that magic you are learning?”

The little boy fiddled with his hands out of nervousness. Of course he wanted to, but what would he ask him? Noticing this, Lar decided to speak up to help his nephew. “If you want I can ask him to teach you a thing or two. I should be able to find a moment to speak with him and ask him.”

“Really? You would do that for me?”

“Of course, he might be able to help you, so I'll ask him and see what he has to say.”