73 Potion Barrels

Eisen looked around the different requests on the pinboard that seemed to be roughly sorted by professions and ranks, which once more seemed like a big difference to the Adventurer's Guild, that simply seemed to post whatever request at a place with free space.

It would probably be a good idea to choose a request that was quickly completed and would fit together with his goals for the near future. So, Eisen mentally went over those goals once more.

A part of what he had been planning for a while now was to start making a few shoes or boots for him, Bree, and of course Caria. But since this could be done in a small space, this should probably wait for after Eisen made the most important part of his plans: The Carriage. For that, he would also need some kind of animal to draw it. He was thinking whether or not to make more Automatons like Aulu for that, but since it already took quite a while for a wolf, it would take quite a lot longer for a larger animal like a Horse.

On the other hand, it would definitely come in handy. After all, if they had something that didn't have to rest that was drawing the carriage, that would be an immense help in saving time. There might also be the possibility that, and Eisen couldn't say this for sure, that an Automaton would be stronger and possibly faster than a regular horse, so that was also a plus point.

He would also need to prepare quite a large amount of supplies for traveling, and things like dried meats or fruits would be perfect for that, and he might need some more potions as well, which worked perfectly with one of the requests that Eisen found hanging on the wall. He reached up and pulled the piece of paper off the pinboard before handing it over to the Dwarf standing next to him together with his new Crafter's Guild Tag.

"Alright, Sir, I will process this for you right away." The Dwarven Guild Employee said with a smile, quickly rushing behind the wall of counters. It only took another minute until he returned once again.

"Here you go, Sir." The dwarf said with a smile.

[You accepted the Crafter's Guild's "Low-Grade Health Potion" request]

"Thank you for joining our Guild." The Dwarf said with a smile after giving Eisen the request sheet and identification tag back. And just like that, Eisen joined his second guild.

But just before he wanted to go toward the third guild that interested him, Bree stopped him. "Eisen, I don't think we need to go to the Merchant's Guild."

With surprise openly written on his face, Eisen turned to her with an asking smile while scratching his beard. "What do you mean? Why not?"

"You see, there are a few different guild types. The ones that these international guilds are usually classified as are either Active or Passive Guilds. Active Guilds are for example the Adventurer's or Crafter's Guilds, since you need to actively get requests and fulfill them to rank up there, but the merchant's guild is a passive guild. That means that every trade you make is automatically registered through your guild tag, although I don't know how they do that, and over time you will be able to rank up." She carefully explained, not resolving Eisen's confusion, although it was quite useful information.

Either way, he would trust in Bree's decision, and as such decided to make his way down the slope they were currently on, and while they started to walk asked his next question. "And why shouldn't we go the Merchant's Guild then? Can't we sign up like usual?"

With a smile, Bree nodded and held her hands behind her back while skipping next to Eisen, which seemed quite unreal considering the giant backpack she wore. She really had monstrous strength for such a small girl.

"Mhm! The Merchant's Guild requires you to either have a small reputation in independently selling items of a certain quality, or to have finished an apprenticeship with a merchant already part of the guild, as far as I know. There may be other ways to join, but I'm not really aware of those then." Bree swiftly told Eisen, who nodded in response.

"I see, that makes sense. Then joining that Guild will have to wait for a while. Anyway, I think it would be a good idea to get started with these requests right away. We can just go out to gather Amran, and immediately process it into the health potions. Do you know where they grow?" The old man asked and looked at the first of the two requests that he was holding in his hands.

"Mhm, there are a few patches every once in a while in forests, and there are a bunch of areas where a lot of them grow not too far away from town." Bree explained while apparently looking at the information she gathered about the area and saved inside of her database skill before turning to look at Eisen again. "I know the way, so should we go now?"

"Yes, let's do that. You have my backpack and a few regular jute bags, right? Let's put the Amran inside of there then."

"Alright~!"

After deciding on their plan of action for right now, Eisen and Bree made their way to the tunnel immediately leading to the forest outside of Melroe. The place where Bree remembered Amran flowers to be wasn't all that far away and it only took about a 20 minute walk.

"Oh, there are actually quite a lot of them! Do you know how many we can take of these?" Eisen asked Bree while starting to pick some of the bright red flowers on the floor in front of him and placing them into a jute bag.

"I'm pretty sure we could take all of them… Forests are usually saturated with natural magic, so they should regrow in a day or two!" The Fey-kin explained and squatted down onto the ground as well.

Shortly after starting to gather the Amran flowers, Eisen grabbed Caria from his shoulder and set her down onto the ground. "Alright, let's see this as part of a lesson, okay? These are important plants for me and a lot of other people, so we need to pull them out of the ground and take them with us. Do you want to help?" Eisen asked her, and the small Myconid shook her red cap up and down in a nod before pressing the ends of her arms onto the stem, trying to rip the flower out of the ground with all her might.

"Come on, girl, you can do it!" Eisen cheered her on, which only seemed to pump her up even more, and after a few seconds of pulling with all she had, the stem finally gave in and Caria was now holding her very first self-picked flower.

But immediately afterward, she seemed to collapse from exhaustion while hugging the flower tightly. "Haah… so you really have a pure magic focus, huh?" Eisen sighed with a smile and placed Caria back onto his shoulder to let her recover, before continuing to gather all the amran flowers that he could.

---

About an hour later, Eisen and Bree returned to town once more after gathering two jute bags worth of amran flowers.

Deciding that the best spot to work would be Morrom's shop, they made their way over there and saw the Dwarf-Elf Halfling sitting at the counter in the front of the store. "Ah, Eisen! Nice to see you again! How did that thing you needed the spinning wheel for work out?" He asked curiously the moment that he laid eyes on the old man.

With a soft chuckle, Eisen walked further into the shop to greet Morrom with a proper handshake. "Everything worked out quite well. Here, take a look." Eisen said and jerked his head slightly toward the Wolf-Lady Automaton standing behind him.

Morrom looked at Aulu with a frown, even walking all around her to see if he could see anything that had to do with magic strings or fabrics, but simply sighed when he couldn't find it. "Erm… you used magic string to somehow tame a wolf with golden fur?"

"Haha, no, that's not it!" Eisen laughed loudly and slapped Morrom's back while he was at it, before simply explaining what Aulu really was. Of course, he even roughly told him about Ailren and the tests.

With his jaw basically glued to the ground, Morrom simply stared at Eisen for a while without knowing what to say, until he simply sighed. "Eisen, that's… amazing. I really don't know what to say… But erm… Why are you here right now?"

"Glad that you ask! Basically, I wanted to use some of your tools to make potions, if that's fine with you. Ah, and I saw some large wooden barrels standing in the corner of your workshop, I would like to buy those off of you." Eisen quickly explained, and Morrom simply shrugged.

"I guess that's fine, yeah. I don't really need those anymore anyway. Do you need Amran or Byron as well?" Morrom asked while leading Eisen to the back and bringing forward two large wooden barrels, and four more smaller wooden barrels around a quarter the size of the large ones.

"Maybe later, yeah. For now I was planning on making two of these small barrels' worth of health potions, plus a little extra for a Crafter's Guild request. It couldn't hurt to make mana potions either. And I wanted to put the excess water from distilling the potions into the large barrels. I would like to use those for something else I've been thinking about for a while now. Actually, where can I buy these small barrels? They would be good to re-fill some stuff into."

"Hmm, usually you could get this kind of stuff at a woodworker's place. I have these because some of my herbs were delivered inside of them, though."

"Alright, thanks. I might just make some myself, though… Could be cheaper and I would get proficiency in my woodworking skill. Anyway, can I use that table in the corner over there?" Eisen asked, and once more, Morrom simply shrugged.

"Sure, go ahead. I'm not too busy today anyway, just finished a new item, so I'm brainstorming a bit. Tell me if you need anything, I'll be in the front."

"Thanks!"

Eisen cracked his knuckles and sat down at the table that he asked to use, pouring out the two bags of amran onto it. The first part of the work was to split off the petals off of the stems. This wasn't really hard, and didn't take long either considering that Bree helped him as well.

Thus, they quickly reached the second step. It was time to dry the amran so that it could be turned into a powder instead of pulping up when Eisen would try to grind it down. Usually, this would take a while, but luckily Bree could use a pretty useful 'Dry' spell which accelerated it to only take about five minutes.

So, this quickly, they had a mountain of freshly dried Amran petals lying in front of them.

Next, Eisen got out all of the different tools he would need and grabbed the large containers that Morrom had inside of his workshop and began to get to work. First, Eisen ground down some of the petals and poured them into the largest glass flask that he could find before grabbing some of the piles of mana crystals that Eisen owned, which were quickly ground down as well before being added to the amran powder.

And at last, after pouring some water from the self-filling water cup into it, Eisen mixed everything together finely and connected it to the distillation system, the output of which he already connected to one of the large barrels so that he wouldn't need to pour the water inside from a different glass container.

After Eisen began to boil the water away, he repeated this process until he had enough health potions to fill out one of the smaller barrels.