Arthur conjured up a small table from the nearby earth and he began his preparations for creating more alchemist embers. He placed the two enchanted bottles on the table next to the box of flammable and fire attuned plants. Next up was the large bowl thing, this time however he made the oversized bowl far smaller to keep it more structurally stable. Since it was more stable, more of the surrounding earth could be used to thicken the walls.

‘Now I don’t need to worry about it cracking falling apart anytime soon. I can give more attention to the actual process and understand what is actually happening.’

Arthur dumped roughly three quarters of the plants into the large earth bowl before returning the box to the table. With that out of the way he reached into his bag and pulled out the original bottle of alchemist embers he bought. The cylindrical piece of ember continued to give off its alluring glow and its heat could still be felt even through all of the enchantments of the bottle that held it.

Arthur opened the bottle and tipped it to its side allowing the piece of ember to slip out and into the bowl. With an audible whoosh the embers ignited the plants and singed the surrounding earth, the heat was immense and forced Arthur to cast the tier one cooling spell several times on himself as he watched.

Soon the burnt plants formed into two pieces of ember themselves leaving three in the bottom of the bowl. Although the newest two were rather deformed and misshapen compared to the original. ‘There must be a way to shape them into different shapes with some sort of spell. I will see if I can find anything like that in the library in my next few visits.’

With the three embers in the bottom it was now time to bottle them up and sell them. Arthur started with the original ember and used aeromancy to slowly lift it back into its original bottle, when that was done it was swiftly returned to Arthurs dimensional bag. The other two were a bit more difficult to bottle up, with their weird shape Arthur had to wiggle them a little bit to get them inside like the last time he did this before he added the fire attuned plants. But by the time he was done he was left with three bottles of alchemist embers he made himself.

‘Now all that is left to do is go to the guild and sell them off. Based on what I bought them for I should get around a gold coin for each of these, that easily covers my expenses and leaves me with a little bit of profit by the end.’ Arthur smiled as he looked at the three bottles he placed on the table, the soft glowing warming him and the surrounding area up.

After he was done looking over his creations Arthur packed them up and began walking to the mages guild. The trip over to the western district was very familiar by this point as he had taken the trip so many times, he was so familiar he would immediately notice anything that was out of the ordinary. Something like a small group of men dressed in some simple leather armor and carrying equally simple weapons, those weapons included mostly axes but also featured a sword and a spear.

The group of men were evidently above average in terms of wealth and were slowly watching Arthur as he approached their position, since they were standing at the end of a road that connected into the nearest market many people were walking by. It was also the more direct route to get to the guild from the southern district.

Arthur hoped that it was just his imagination that made him think they were watching him, but as he got within several meters of the group they walked out to block him from passing. They didn't say anything right away as they simply stared down Arthur with their weapons at the ready.

“Can I help any of you?” Arthur asked, wishing he kept his staff out of his bag. Instead he was now forced to keep his hand on his bag to try and quickly retrieve it when they did anything to try and hurt him.

“Are you Arthur of Dom Badaher?” The man standing at the very front of the group asked. The man in question had deep olive skin from spending lots of time out in the sun, he also had a long and thick brown beard as well as brown hair. From the distance Arthur guessed the man was about thirty years old.

“I am. Why do you ask?” Arthur could feel the tension as he answered the question, the four men standing behind the bearded one shifted slightly. They were getting ready for something, and Arthur knew they weren't going to be nice.

“Well we have something for you Mr. Arthur.” The bearded man smiled as he finally drew his short sword from its sheath and readied a small circular shield. “A gift from those you have been a thorn in the side of for some time now with your actions.” The man suddenly kicked off and bolted towards Arthur followed by his four allies with a short delay.

“Terrae fulmina!” Arthur instinctively casted the spell tri earth bolts to strike down his opponent as he ran towards him. But he simply raised his shield and blocked the projectiles and shrugged off the impact.

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Upon seeing this Arthur turned and ran in the opposite direction to buy himself some time to retrieve his staff. He reached in and quickly found it in his grip and began to pull it out, but as he was doing this while running an arrow whizzed by his face just barely missing. They had an archer providing them support for up high. Arthur didn’t even take a moment to look as he needed his staff and he needed it a minute ago.

Arthur pulled the staff out from his bag and with a two handed grip on it he turned to face the oncoming criminals. As it turned out the leading member of the criminals was actually faster than Arthur was even with all his armor, there was only a few meters of space in between the two of them with the other four not far behind.

Arthur channeled the mana within the staff to erect a force barrier halfway between himself and the lead criminal. The familiar translucent wall appeared and didn’t even catch the attention of any of the criminals on his tail. Then the lead criminal slammed face first into the wall and was forced to stop, his fellow criminals slowed to a stop and looked at him.

“Hey, what happened to you?”

“Are you alright?”

But their questions were not answered as Arthur began to cast a second spell as he walked towards the translucent wall slowly. One of the interesting things about the force wall Arthur discovered was that while it does block physical objects and people from moving through things like air and fire are not blocked, an interesting trick that Arthur was about to use to his full advantage.

“Ignis fluctus!” A simple yet effective fire pyromancy spell that conjures a small wave of fire, according to the book he learned it from it was designed to be used against goblins or other similar types of fighters that utilise swarm tactics. The spell conjures a wave of fire that is five or so meters wide and about a meter and a half tall depending on the caster.

The wave of fire conjured by Arthur was a bit small but when he unleashed it upon the criminals they lit up like a bonfire. The fire was clinging to them like they were covered in oil beforehand and a few dropped to the ground and began to roll around.

Arthur dispelled the force wall and conjured several bolts of earth that he then unleashed upon the weakened criminals. From the combination of fire and earth bolts all five of the criminals on the ground died, that only left the one with the bow that was either in or on top of a building.

Arthur frantically looked around at the nearby buildings for any signs of someone watching with a bow. He looked at the windows and then on the roofs but found nothing, it appeared even the people living in the buildings were more than happy to keep out of the line of sight lest they become another victim of the criminals. But to be safe Arthur used the mana within his staff to cast the force armor spell upon himself.

‘I wonder what he was talking about.’ Arthur thought as he stood over the corpse of the lead criminal. The thick head of hair and beard was now reduced to nothing but a little singed hair. ‘Those I have been a thorn in the side of. That doesn’t exactly ring any bells, anyone who has been my enemy has been killed either by my hand like with Saturio Quintilius or they were killed in front of me like the leader of the Rusted Daggers or the vampire lord Darius. I honestly cannot think of anyone else who might want me dead who is not already dead.’

Arthur took a seat nearby as he waited for the city guard to arrive. It would look very good for himself if he ran away from the scene of a crime, especially if he was the one to leave all the dead bodies laying around. Soon enough a squad of guards arrive at the scene with their weapons drawn and at the ready. Arthur was of course the first suspect, but after an explanation from himself and the people that saw the whole thing they allowed him to leave the area but warned him not to leave the city as they were still conducting an investigation. Now Arthur was free to go to the mages guild and down to the alchemy club to sell his self made bottles of alchemist embers.

*********

Like it had been in recent times, the guild was less packed than normal but was recovering some of its clientele as the lines were a bit longer than they had been in the past week. Arthur didn’t pay all that much attention to that though as he just walked by and went down the stairs into the underground portion of the guild. He quickly navigated to the alchemy club and walked right up to Lydus with his alchemist embers in hand.

“Whoa, where did you get those?” Lydus asked as he held one of the bottles in his hands. He appreciated the warmth emitted from it even through the enchanted bottle.

“I made them myself. I wanted to know how much I could get for them if I sold them to the club.” Arthur pushed the other two bottles towards Lydus who took a moment to think.

“Give me a minute to come up with a price.” Lydus said as he took a blank piece of paper and began to write down several calculations regarding profit margins and other business related things. After a minute of this Lydus turned the paper around so Arthur could properly read it, he then pointed to a number along the bottom of the page. “19 silver coins for each of those. Since the market price for them is 1 gold coin we need to make a bit of money to keep funding the club, so the best we can do is buy them from you for 19 silver each.”

‘That's actually pretty good. Since the bottle each cost me fifteen silver and I currently have a way to create as much of the embers I need, that makes a net profit of four silver for each. In total I will walk away with a profit of twelve silver for this, and if I can find someone to sell the bottle for a little less that margin will only grow.’

“Yeah, that works for me.” Arthur handed the three bottles of alchemist embers to Lydus who then walked over into the one side room behind him and returned with a small pouch full of his money. Arthur counted two gold coins and seventeen silver coins out, when he was done he thanked Lydus and left to go and see if Calavia was around. It had been a few days since they had last spoken, and with what happened on his way here Arthur could use a small distraction in the form of a friend.