True to their plan, the party restarted their training with the guard the following day, followed by weapons training.

Willow had spent about an hour visiting with Prit and just made it back home planning spend some time reading through Oscar’s notes.

As she walked through her new house, Arden came out of the bedroom with arms full of some of Oscar’s things. “Hey dad, do you need any help?” she asked.

“Naa, I’m good,” Arden said as he set his load down in a chair. “How’d your visit with Prit go? Do you know all about goblins now?”

Willow dropped her eyes, “No sir. He wouldn’t talk to me. He just sat there and ignored me.”

“I thought that might happen. Tell ya what, when you go back tomorrow, take some jerky or some other food with you and offer it to him. Just set it in his cell and eat some of it yourself. Greet him, give him food, and then just sit there. Do that for a few days, I bet he’ll start talking.” Arden leaned in and gave Willow a hug and then picked up the items he’d set in the chair. “I’m going to store these in the basement and then I’m going to go get Ewen.”

“Have fun,” Willow said as walked to Oscars lab and sat in her chair. After a deep breath she grabbed a bundle of notes and picked up where she had left off previously. She learned that Oscar had been a chemist on Earth or wherever he was from. Once he finished doing his experiments to verify if certain elements existed and in what quantities, Oscar had moved on to checking if acids and bases reacted the same on Traum. It was during this point that Oscar met an alchemist named Jake who was fascinated by the experiments he was performing. Soon Jake invite Oscar to his lab to show him how he performed alchemy. According to his notes, Oscar went along with it not expecting much but hoping he would get a chance to run tests on the resulting potions. With Oscar watching, Jake had crafting a healing potion. Seeing the disbelief in Oscar’s eyes, Jake cut his own arm and poured a bit of the potion on the wound, causing it to heal up. Oscar still didn’t believe it so he took a knife and cut himself and watched as Jake poured some of the potion on his wound. This was when Oscar first began to believe in the magic of Traum. Oscar’s notes that evening showed a clear excitement that made the handwriting difficult to read in places. But the entry included how Jake had made the potion, step-by-step.

This was what Willow was looking for! She quickly went through all the vials, jars, and containers that Oscar had and found each of the ingredients. Within twenty minutes she was attempting to make her first potion. It didn’t work. And there was no ambiguity about it either. The system literately told her that it failed. But she still earned some experience for the attempt. After her fourth failed attempt she decided to back to reading Oscar’s notes. And she was soon glad she had as a few entries later Oscar discussed some of the basics of making a potion, including maintaining appropriate temperatures, the correct way to blend potions, as well as how and when to infuse one’s mana into the creation. "No wonder it wasn’t working. I wasn’t putting any mana into it,” Willow thought to herself.

Willow quickly set everything up and again attempted to make a healing potion. Again and again. She was on her ninth attempt when things seemed to finally start to click for her. And on her fifteenth attempt, Willow was finally successful in making her first potion.

[Congratulations, you’ve created your first potion and have embarked on the path of an Alchemist! +1 to Mental]

[Congratulations, you’ve created a Trash ranked Healing Potion]

[Skill learned: Brewing]

[Skill learned: Brewing - Potions]

[Skill learned: Mana Manipulation]

Willow stared at the prompts on her screen for several moments as a smile grew on her face. She’d done it! Who cares if it’s a trash potion. It was her first potion. She quickly put the vial in her pack for safe keeping. Willow then checked her supplies and saw she had enough for probably another thirty attempts but after thinking about it she decided she should probably read more of Oscar’s notes to see how his first attempts at making a potion went before risking her ingredients.

The next several entries in Oscars notes were super helpful but Oscar was clearly frustrated when he wrote them. Evidently Jake refused to teach him how to make any other potions until Oscar learned the “fundamentals” of alchemy. Evidently Oscar listened but his notes about these fundamental were pretty sparse. Willow did learn the name of the levels for potions. Trash was the lowest, which she’d already discovered. Then the order went Inferior, Basic, Enhanced, Fortified, Epic, Legendary, and Mythical. Evidently the highest she could make at her level was Basic and the odds of that were about 10%, which, oddly enough was the same odds she had of making a Trash potion. So in theory, about 80% of the potions she makes should be inferior until she reached level 10 in alchemy. At that point the bell curve moved over and now the odds were 80% she’d make a basic potion. But this was assuming she was focused and paying attention. Oscar was clear in his notes that if you didn’t pay attention or follow the proper steps, then you were most likely to fail completely.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Willow continued reading Oscars notes until she had about two hours left her in free time. She then prepped everything to try and create another healing potion. After a few minutes of work she got the prompt she’d been waiting for.

[Congratulations, you’ve created an Inferior ranked Healing Potion]

“Alright, already doing better. Let’s try it again.”

Willow made five more attempts and made four more inferior healing potions. Her last attempt failed and she knew it was because her mind had started to wander and she hadn’t controlled her mana well enough during the creation. Still, she’d created her first six potions today and only one was trash.

⚷

Nolan was glad that Nicolaus was willing to let him work in the forge. Even if he was just doing simple items most of the time, that’s exactly what he needed. The repetitiveness of the work helped him to clear his mind and even meditate. As he hammered the metal on the anvil, he started to process recent events. He’d been in this new world for forty-one days. In that time he learned new skills and improved old ones. He had cast magic spells, which was still wild to him. Not to mention the conversation he had with an actual god. For forty-one days he had not needed to report to a job or pay a utility bill. He hadn’t had to stress about money at all, for the first time in his life. “That’s not right. I haven’t had to stress about money in years. But I still did because it’s all I’d known for so long,” he thought to himself. “But now I have literal gold coins. Enough to last me for years. I’m in a new world. I have skills and powers I could only have dreamed of on earth. And my only requirement is to help others. I could do just about anything now. I could become nearly anything.”

Nolan let his mind wander a bit and enjoyed imagining himself in different roles. What if he decided to start studying and became a powerful wizard? Or he could continue to train as a monk and eventually open his own dojo similar to what he had ran back on earth for a dozen years. He did love teaching. And he could teach kids marital arts here and they’d get levels instead of belts. “I wonder what level would be equivalent to a black belt in Shuri-te Karate?” What if he invested all this gold and just got a nice little home near a city and spent his days reading books and learning whatever interested him? That sounded like a good life.”

“Hey Nolan,” bellowed Nicolaus, “Didn’t you say you had to meet up with your friends about this time?”

Pulled from his daydream, Nolan looked around and realized the sun was near setting. “Damn, I got in a rhythm and totally lost track of time,” he said as he started putting up tools and cleaning his work area. “Thanks Nicolaus! They’d be mad if I was late.”

Laughing, Nicolaus replied, “No worries. I’ve done the same many times. You all be safe with whatever craziness you have planned tonight.”

Looking back over his shoulder as he headed out, “Nothing too crazy. Just working on raising our hiding and stealth skills.”

“In the dark. In an area known to be frequented by goblins. No, not crazy at all.” Nicolaus teased while shaking his head. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow!”

⚷

Arden sat in his usual spot at the Busted Ax Inn with his grandson Ewan, talking with the owner, Jacob, as the rest of his group arrived. Willow was first to arrive, followed by Hazel, and then Nolan. Once everyone was there, Jacob went into the kitchen to fix everyone’s plates.

“So how’d everyone’s day go? Did you all enjoy your free time?” Arden asked.

“I totally forgot about the free time and just worked at the forge until coming here,” Nolan answered. Willow and Hazel quickly agreed, having done the same.

“Did you at least enjoy whatever you were all working on?” asked Arden

Hazel and Willow both attempted to answer simultaneously but Willow waved for Hazel to continue.

“I spent the day working on that flamethrower spell you asked for, dad. I’ve managed to get the flames to fire out of my hand but I need to do some tweaking on it still. It isn’t going far enough so it gets really hot near me.”

“Congrats on getting this far, honey. That’s awesome. I think it’ll be a quite useful in future fights.”

“Me too. I think I’ll be able to finish it up tomorrow.”

“Awesome! Proud of you. Willow, how about you?”

Willow just smiled and set a healing potion on the table and announced, “I’ve created my first healing potions.”

Nolan and Arden started to congratulate Willow, as did Hazel but not as excitedly. As Nolan continued to ask Willow questions about the potion, Arden noticed Hazel start to withdraw from the conversation completely and thought he knew why so he changed the topic to try get Hazel to reengage. “What’s the plan for this evening, Nolan?”

Nolan was caught off guard by the abrupt change in topic as he and Willow were still discussing alchemy but quickly switched gears, “Let’s go to the fields south of town and let Willow work some magic there and then I thought we’d slip into the nearby trees and start to practice hiding and see if we can’t unlock stealth for you all.”

“Sounds good,” Arden answered while turning to Hazel, “You wanna drop of Ewan at the sitters or bring him along?”

“If it’s okay, I’d like to bring him along. It’d be good for him to get levels in hiding and stealth.”

“Works for me. Alright, everyone grab your gear and let’s get to it.”