25 Gardening

"That's normal; daysprinkles are one of the plants that have spirits living inside them; they don't grow except when they feel like it. Be patient with them, talk te them, and they will start trusting ye enough to grow." I knew that Shina was a dryad, but I had no idea that the seeds that she gave me were basically her babies.

"Have you planted yours yet?" Master nodded.

"A little deeper in the forest so they feel more at home." I was kicking myself. I should have done that. 'I guess it's too late now.' I thanked her for answering my question and headed home. I had gathered up enough ingredients this morning to make Weak Acid, and I wanted to see how it would work with the new arrows that we had made today. When I got back to the house, I found that the group was already preparing for dinner and talking excitedly.

When they saw me come through the back door, they all greeted me warmly. Tim even ran up and hugged me, which was odd for him.

"Hey, guys, what's going on? Why are we all celebrating?" I asked.

"We are celebrating our successes as adventurers and the money that we made off of the Imps!" Grace explained to me.

"How much did we make?" I asked, but before Grace could answer, Derek popped up.

"Four gold man! That's one gold for every two Imps we killed!" I was dumbstruck that was way more than I'd expected for monsters that were only slightly stronger than hobgoblins.

"What, why did we get so much?" It was Tim's turn to answer my question.

"Apparently most adventurers don't think to milk the imps for their venom and sell that too! It has a lot of uses, I guess!" This was awesome. We had a new stream of revenue that was far better than the one we'd had before. I got my lessons mostly through trades and sharing my inventions with Master lately, but this would be great for everyone else. Plus, we could really start fixing this place up!

The whole group was excited at the prospect of finally living a more comfortable life. I decided I would go ahead and make the Weak Acid while I was waiting for dinner. I wanted to have Sarah go ahead and test the new arrows.

I started mixing the ingredients together in a glass bowl following the recipe that the book laid out; after a few minutes of mixing, it started turning a bright green color. The book called for me to lower the temperature to freezing for approximately ten minutes.

After that, a foam would cover the top, and I had to strain the liquid from the foam. The book said that it was perfectly safe until the liquid reached room temperature again, so I figured it would be best to go ahead and strain it while it was still cold.

I poured the cold liquid into one of my glass flasks before using the syringe arrows to pull the fluid into it.

"Hey, Sarah, can you come here for a second and bring your bow?"

"Sure Todd, give me a second!" The archer grabbed her bow and brought it over. I showed her the new arrows, and she was overjoyed. I asked her to test it on a close-by grass target. She grabbed a newly filled syringe arrow, loaded it onto her bowstring.

She pulled back on the string and let it loose with a twang. The needle sunk into the grass target, and the shaft pushed the liquid out into the target. Only a second passed before I could start hearing the sizzle of the acid working on the grass.

Sarah squeed in delight seeing the new combative power that she would be able to use now. Her delight drew the attention of the rest of the group, who then crowded around the target to see what my new invention could do. They were all impressed with the Weak Acids combat potential.

I worried that the chemical was going to keep burning until it hit the ground, but it stopped after about thirty seconds. 'I suppose that's why it's called a weak acid.' Still, It was definitely going to help us in the future.

We decided not to use it on the flying creatures that we were hunting because it might be dangerous if the creature flew into us mad with pain. Instead, we would save the arrows for more massive monsters. I kept the acid that I had leftover in my glass flask and corked it.

I decided I'd stay up for a little while so I could read over the ingredients book some more. Tim decided he'd come over and join me. I was happy for the company, although it did prevent me from reading once he started talking. The Cleric sat down next to me on the grass and looked up at the stars.

"They look different from the ones at home, you know." I looked up at the sky.

"You mean the stars?" He nodded. "Yeah, I guess that means we're a long way from home, huh?" Tim agreed with me.

"You ever think about it?" I looked over at my friend before answering.

"Yeah, but not that often anymore. Keeping too busy." Tim sighed before asking his next question.

"Do you regret coming here?" It was a hard question to answer. I missed my mom and all of the modern amenities of my world, but then looking at Tim, I couldn't help but feel great full to have met him, to have met all of them.

"No, not really. I'm glad that I got to come here and meet you. Plus, everyone in our world dreams about having adventures like this, doing magic, and fighting monsters. I guess in a way, you could say that we're lucky." I wasn't sure, but I think Tim blushed when I said I was happy that I met him.

The man stood up and brushed off his pants.

"I feel the same way. Don't stay up reading too late, ok?" He said as he was walking away.

"I won't, just another hour!" With that, my friend disappeared inside the house, leaving me to my studies. The tag advancement test was just next week, and I hoped that I was prepared enough for it. But a little more studying wouldn't hurt.

I studied for another hour like I said I would and then headed inside to go to bed. The following morning everyone was up early excited about the money we would be making at the end of the day. It didn't take long for each of us to get ready and head out.

We made good time to the Imps hunting grounds and truly began our day. There wasn't much I could do against these flying creatures, but luckily, the three females in our group were kicking butt. Unfortunately, Derek and I were pretty useless.

Tim at least got the chance to heal every now and then. 'I don't think we can stay hunting Imps for very long. We aren't going to get any better like this. At least not half of our party.' We did make some good money by the end of the day, but I felt like I needed to be doing more.

'Maybe Master can teach me an alchemy skill that I can project.' I hoped so cause otherwise, we might have to move on. In this world, the things that mattered were strength and money, and unfortunately, you needed one for the other, and vice versa.

With the money that we made, I bought seeds for about six useful ingredients for potions. I didn't think there was much point in buying ingredients that I could either grow or forage for in the wilderness. After doing a little bit of shopping, we put back the rest of the money to save for our new roof, then we headed home.

I didn't really have a lot of room in the back yard to plant more, especially if I wanted my Daysprinkle to grow to be a decent size. So I went back behind the stone wall and planted my little garden back there. It was nice to get my hands into the ground again; using my spade, I tilled up the soil a bit and separated each type of seed into rows.

I then used my growing skill and watched my little plants reach to the sky. Some of them looked pretty normal, but a couple of them had odd colors or weird fruit growing off of them. After finishing up the rows, I made a small fence out of the Iron Thorns; it was just tall enough that I could get over it when I needed to check on my plants and harvest things that I needed. I was finally starting to put things together as an alchemist. I just hoped that I knew enough to pass my tage advancement class next week.