It turned out that the mineral was listed in one of the alchemy reference books and indeed had alchemical properties. However, none of the formulas we had reagents that needed it. Still after some experimentation, Mr. Dellucci found a use for it. He developed a small almost useless potion, but somewhat suitable for training beginner alchemists.

“How do you develop a potion?” asked Otto one time.

“Is not that hard. Anyone can do it actually. Just throw some reagents together and you have useless, possibly dangerous for your health potion. In our case Mr. Dellucci managed to make a formula that was still useless, but required some proper alchemical skills to be made. One had to manage the fire properly and supply the cooking process with mana. Also some of the steps were the same as those, oftentimes used in proper potion making, and thus very beneficial for training.”

“Is it that simple?” asked Otto.

“Well it's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea.” I smiled.

So on the morning of the second day, I took a group of alchemists to where I had left the chests and helped them carry it to the edge of town.

"Meridin, you've been starving for days after fighting demons and yet you haven't forgotten about us." cried Mr. Dellucci with crocodile tears.

"It's nothing, it's nothing. No need to praise me so much, Mr. Dellucci. Patrick, please help me."

"Yeah sure," Patrick chimed in. "You deserve our help. How about a massage? Or maybe a glass of water?"

"I didn't mean that, dammit."

Patrick smiled slightly and patted the old Alchemist on the back.

"Mr. Dellucci sir, maybe while we're here, we can ask Merdin to help us find some of those rare zombie parts from the experiment you and old Josephpe started yesterday? I'm sure he will be willing to help us here..."

The Alchemist's eyes lit up, and I started looking around in a panic.

"I, urghm, I am busy!" I said. "I left my tent open and my potted herbs are going to get cold... See you soon!"

With these words I dashed for the central parts of the city, leaving the laughing alchemist behind.

***

As I said, over the past few days, my skills have been improving at a great speed and I have been accumulating a lot of currency units. Moreover, I managed to finally find a magic chest. Not that surprising, considering all the constantly scouting summons I had.

The chest gave me a set of thick magical robes and an amulet that increased my protection from spells and my mana regeneration. The most important thing was that the robe could clean itself and didn't need to be washed. Something especially important in this world that had no soap and no modern washing machines!

Also, the fabric of the robe was quite durable, hard to penetrate, and resistant to tearing. It was capable of regenerating some of the damage done to it each day. Thus, it could protect me from weaker blows or scratches from the zombies.

"This robe is fitting me quite nicely," I said to myself as I looked in a broken window. - Besides, it goes well with my new boots. I'm sure I'll get a lot of envious looks tonight from the other mages."

My hard work throughout the past days was bearing fruits and I finally collected enough currency units to improve my summoning skills! Since this wasn't going to be an ordinary training session, I needed a whole 650 currency units!

As I was heading home, late in the day, I met Garat Bragg's group.

"Hey Meridin, you got some cool robes there." greeted me Tori Victa, one of the new sorceresses in the group.

"Hi Tori, thanks," I replied with a smile. "They increased my protection from spells and my mana regeneration."

"We have something to brag about too" Mariella chimed in.

"That's right, we killed a miniboss today!" boasted Garat. "It was a huge black zombie surrounded by a bunch of those nasty zombies that shoot fireballs! We ambushed them between two buildings and sent Oliver's skeletons to lure them in."

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Oliver was a Necromancer who was able to revive and use the corpses of the dead. He also studied summoning, and was one of the small group of summoners with whom we gathered from time to time, to discuss various theories of our craft. Most summoners, necromancers, and other types of casters, that didn't have to fight their opponents in person, were pretty strong. The reason for this was that the personal fighting skills of the summoned or animated creatures surpassed those of an average human from our modern and civilized planet.

There were some especially talented fighters for whom this wasn't true, but on the whole, the bear I summoned was stronger than most close combat fighters. At least for now. That's why such classes were especially popular. Followed by most types of elemental mages.

"The mages and archers were on top of the building, and we…” Here Garat pointed to a part of his group. "..we had gathered in one corner. There we had piled all the debris from the nearby buildings into a sort of barricade and there we met the monster.

It was incredibly strong, and we were barely able to keep up with it, even though there were tons of arrows and spells pouring down on it every second! Plus, we had a lot of trouble with the other zombies that accompanied it and their magical fireballs. However, me, Otto, and Smith managed to briefly get out of the boss battle and attacked them at close range."

"With that huge halberd, it must have been pretty bloody. I know you can kill a normal zombie in one, single blow." I said, fascinated by the story.

"That's right, if they line up for me and let me take aim I could even kill two!" Garat joked. "Anyway we successfully charged the magical zombies and when we got close we chopped them up in seconds. Then the boss was easy." finished my big friend.

"Now we will celebrate. We even have a double celebration - today is Garat's birthday," Mariella said.

"We will buy alcohol from the store." whispered me Otto.

"You're invited! Half an hour after dark at the restaurant by the river," Garat said.

"Thanks for the invitation, I'll definitely come. Also, congrats on the boss and happy birthday, Garat. By the way, how do you measure the time here though? With all these separate dimensions, training and stuff.."

Then Garat started explaining his calculations to me and we got into a discussion. I joined their group and after some more hunting, the night time came and we went back to camp.

If I didn't want to be late for the party, I had to quickly unload the alchemical reagents I had collected in my ring today, and after I had done that, I met briefly with George Bristol. He told me that strange humanoid creatures had been seen in the eastern part of the city. They were well known to us - from mythology, fantasy movies and computer games - Orcs.

"Are the creatures in the tutorial made according to our culture, or is our culture influenced in such a way as to have those creatures?" I wondered.

The party that had spotted them had counted the creatures and we estimated that the group had a couple hundred orcs. According to the eyewitnesses' description, they were green humanoid creatures, about five foot tall (meter and a half) on average, but some of them were considerably taller than that, reaching up to six, seven or even eight foot!

They were armed with heavy medieval weapons, shields and some armor. According to the witnesses they easily swept away all the zombies they had encountered and marched into the inner city.

The party that spotted them had decided to keep an eye on the area and continued to hunt close by, and after a few hours they saw the orcs returning, but with their numbers greatly reduced and most of them wounded. The eyewitnesses speculated that the orcs had lost more than a third of their number.

"A group of hundreds of orcs, armed with weapons? That's quite a force. We are only a thousand people and far from all of them are fighters. We have so many classes that rarely hunt, or even have proper combat skills." I said.

"I see you understand how serious the situation is. That is why we need to step up the speed of our development. We need more people to explore the forest, as well as currency units to pay for the construction of walls and fortifications for our camp. If these orcs or anything else attack us tonight, there will be a huge amount of casualties."

After we talked and made some plans, I hurried to visit my acquaintances, enticing them to join in a forest exploration mission tomorrow, as well as in the construction of fortifications.

Time was flying and I was significantly late for Garat Breg's party. However, when I finally went, they greeted me and someone immediately handed me a glass of strong whiskey.

I joined the celebration and talked briefly with Garat about the orcs and George Bristol's plans for them.

The price of alcohol was quite high and therefore there were barely two glasses of whisky for each one. Although some of the group had taken their own alcohol. I thought about getting some as well, but gave up since I needed the currency units to improve my summoning skills.

In the middle of the party I had a chat with the sorceress Tori Vikta and she told me about the spells she was using, as well as about her ways of meditation and developing energy channels. As the night progressed, we talked about various topics and had a lot of fun.

***

The tower spirit looked at Nathan with a thoughtful look.

"Things aren't looking good for our bets. Humans as a race have proven to be quite weak."

"That's true," Nathan agreed. "I think if something doesn't happen soon, their planet will be in danger. I don't even know if they'll be able to get independent race status. They don't have the physical strength of the huge titans of Ganymede Eight, nor the intelligence and group instincts of the three races of Sector 28."

"Nothing can be done. The stakes are already on the table."

***