Success

Success wasn't something Alex expected to gain immediately, so when he eventually failed, he did not let it sour his mood.

With one Spiritual root wasted, he moved on to the next one he had. 

Half a day later, he failed there as well. He did, however, learn from each of his two failures, so the next one was most likely going to take him closer to his desired answer.

Since he was out of the old man's Spiritual root to test on, he walked out to meet him and told him the situation.

"You want me to regrow my spiritual root?" he asked.

"Yes," Alex said, revealing the two spiritual roots he had used up. "I ended up changing them but they are still not right. I need to tweak my recipes a few more times until I get the energy right, and then you can eat it. But until then, I need to test it outside."

"Can you not test it on me?" the old man asked.