After conversing with both Hops and the blueoak saplings, the latter being able to communicate with him even inside the hoard, they figured out that the already magical plants, like his flowers and vines, couldn’t be bonded with at that time. Considering the restriction of the sub-ability, the elf assumed that ranking up his [Nature Magic] could change that in the future. Either that, or trying to get a [Bond] ability coin, which they all found out couldn’t be swapped or extracted without the bond itself coming into danger.

  While yes, everything had mana flowing inside of it, abilities apparently came from strengthening the plants with dense mana. It was something only either sentients could provide, or there had to be some kind of dense magical phenomena near a plant. Luckily, the farmed plants nearby were kept relatively magic-free, besides the medicinal plants. So Roge put a note in his [Quests] to visit the local farms to see if he can get any other new plants for his hoard.

  The next thing they tried was harvesting the various plants he had to see if he could get more buffs, the blueoaks not minding when he used the effect on them. He saved the tobacco plants for later, not wanting to fill his inventory, especially when he had the next two days off. He’d do it later while dropping off the leaves at the Leaf’s Haunt.

  Roge felt very excited by the haul, listing them out to the side of his inventory to keep track of them in a list.

  The first thing he tried was the [Sparking] ability, taking them out and binding them one at a time to see when he’d get a buff, which he got at five bonded coins, totaling the ten he expected. He then did the same with the [Acid] coins, feeling pleased at the two buffs.

  “Should… should we try for the flame buff?” Roge asked, Hops pausing his writing to give Roge a questioning look. “The icing buff appeared with only one rank one coin. So if my relationship with fire is reversed…”

  “Then it’s probably going to take a hundred of them,” Hops continued, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah hold off on that for now. Check your healing and blueoak stuff, then we’ll get going.”

  Roge nodded, finding the healing coins just as easy, though when he looked at the blueoak materials, he came up short.

  “Um…” Roge muttered, receiving a sigh from Hops as he once again pulled the elf from his writing. “Would the effect of the [Thunder] ability be better for my wand, or the potential buff?”

  After pulling out another book and rifling through it, Hops’ frown became even more pronounced. “Now that’s a hard one. It produces a sound, which is already good, but I assume it’ll also work well with your sparking attacks. On the other hand, if you could make your attacks act more like sound…”

  “The latter,” Marge offered, both of the magic users looking to her in surprise. “You can get more later, and making *all* of your attacks act like sound is better than one sound attack.”

  “Fair,” Roge chuckled, grabbing the coins and binding them to himself.

  “And it did exactly that!” Roge cheered, earning him a high five from a quiet Sean. “Now all of my attacks can be area of effect.” Moving on to the strength related ability, Roge grinned widely when it popped up at ten again, giving Hops the descriptions to write down.

  “And the strength boost gives me… more force to my muscles?”

  “That’s actually really good!” Sean enthused, giving Roge a light punch to the shoulder. “It’s not going to increase your slots, but it will make you stronger as if you raised your strength.”

  “And if we assume ten more will give you a boost to that,” Hops added, writing his thoughts down as well, “then we can increase that even more. If we find all of the boost abilities…”

  “I only have to spend points if I need the slots,” Roge finished, feeling his wings and tail sag. “Is this… too powerful?”

  “I mean… we know dragons get stupidly powerful,” Marge commented, her playful expression falling away at Roge’s hurt one. “It’s not a bad thing.”

  “And I assume there isn’t like an elf, lion, or deer specific class?” Roge grumbled, looking up when no one replied to his comment. All three party members looked to be in deep thought, multiplying the dragon’s confusion. “Has no one ever tried?”

  “Well… the whole point is to meditate on hoarding power when getting a class,” Hops slowly stated, tapping his wand on his chin. “What aspect would fit with the rest of us? Dragons are the only ones who have that lore.”

  Roge opened his mouth at that, a couple of things coming to mind regarding lore behind their species. He then snapped it shut, wondering how he’d explain where he got the information from. It would put his whole secret in danger, and he wasn’t yet comfortable with the party to tell them about what he could remember.

  “Anyway, we need to buy you some stuff,” Hops grumbled, getting up from the couch and stretching.

  “And continue training,” Sean said with a smile, the lion heading straight to the front door. All three moved quickly to get their breakfast meal, Roge trailing behind with a sour look on his face.

  ~~~

  Training that day was a bit different for the dragon, most of it spent getting used to the added effects his buffs gave him. Especially when they figured out he could use more than one on a single spell effect. That meant that his go to attack, his solid fire lightning, could move even faster depending on how much mana was used in that effect. The thunder buff also made the landing of the attack go off like a firework, sending flaming sparks all throughout the air. Even the liquefying buff was very useful, as the liquid effect did not go away as fast, leading to the fire and lightning slowly eating away at the dummy. Even the healing buff, which seemed useless, could make it so monsters wouldn’t target the dragon in combat, as the wounds seemed ‘not that painful’ when he used a small spark to shock Hops. They’d be more worried about the charging shield user than a magic user who seemed to not do that much damage.

  After their training was done, Hops dragged the dragon off to the main market square to the east, leaving the lion and deer woman behind. Seemed the [Wizard] knew where everything was from memory, quickly showing up to their first stop of a fellow artificer.

  “Hey Hops!” the man called out, shocking Roge upon first seeing the massive human. He looked to be nearly seven feet tall and thinner than what looked healthy, his dark brown skin contrasting with his blue eyes and blonde hair. “Haven’t seen you around a lot!”

  “Hi Hurst. And yeah, been training this guy here,” the elf responded, pointing to the still flabbergasted dragon.

  “Never seen a [Firbolg] before lad?” the shopkeep asked, causing Roge’s scales to heat in a blush. “It’s alright. Can honestly say I haven’t seen a [Dragonkin] up close either. What can I get you?”

  “Uh… we were wondering if you had any magic candles and fog bombs for sale?” Roge asked, once again feeling like something he didn’t know was rearing up again.

  “He’s an [Artificer] too,” Hops commented, causing Hurst to give the dragon an assessing look.

  “Makes it even better in my eyes, lad. Just as long as you have complimentary classes to work with.” The tall man looked around the shelves behind his counter, Roge only then noticing that the ‘shop’ was more a waiting area with seats off to the sides. The actual items were all behind the counter, probably to stop kids from blowing themselves up.

  “Here we go,” Hurst huffed, pulling down two boxes. The first box was filled with what looked like normal candles, the other filled with dark grey balls about the size of Roge’s palm. “You got [Identify]?”

  Roge nodded, touching one of each of the items and looking over the screens, feeling a bit of inadequacy travel up his spine.

  “Expensive,” Roge muttered, earning a glare from the shopkeep. “Not that that’s a bad thing. I just… only have enough for one of each if I want to keep on budget.” The glare softened at that, especially when Roge pulled out six silver coins and held them out with his claw.

  After taking one of each of the items, Roge had the feeling Hurst wanted them to leave, giving a short “See ya later,” to Hops.

  “Are dragons… why do people…” Roge muttered to the elf, earning him a sigh in return.

  “Tonight. Not in public,” he replied, dragging Roge down the street. “Next is the farms. See if you get a buff from those while we’re walking?”

  The dragon nodded, grateful for the distraction from his brain trying to tell him that the crowd around them were giving him dirty looks. He extracted the coins in his inventory and bonded them to himself, feeling a bit better when they both gave him the buffs they’d wanted.

  After letting Hops write the descriptions down, they were mostly silent as they walked to the edge of the farmlands, the fields completely encompassed by the wall in the distance. Roge was surprised by the variety of plants that were in the area, his claw twitching as he itched to take everything into his hoard to see what would happen.

  “Can I help you with something?” a deep voice asked, Roge feeling slightly small as the second giant of a man walked up to them. Probably around seven and a half feet, the grey skinned bald man was the opposite of skinny, looking like he had worked every day of his life going by his large build. Roge was distracted by the man’s lack of a hat or coat when Hops responded, giving Roge a bit of a glare.

  “We’re here because Roge here unlocked a Druid class,” the elf said, Roge mostly getting his face under control and nodding. “He needs a variety of unenhanced plant seeds.”

  “With a budget of a gold,” Roge added, the man’s scowl never really going away and making him very nervous.

  “Any plant?” the man asked, Hops looking to Roge as well for the answer.

  “I’m mainly looking for tree seeds, if you have any? Preferably with fruit?” He had to think fast for that one, wanting to get a renewable source of food with the plants and seeing a grove near the wall. “Maybe a pine…?” he muttered, looking around at the snow covered fields and noting a couple of pines.

  “Have apple, cherry, and pine seeds I can sell,” the man huffed, waving them over to a shed nearby. “Can only afford to give ten of each. Thirty silver altogether.”

  Roge looked to Hops before agreeing, the normally talkative elf looking very nervous around the huge man. “That works.” Trading the coins for a sack of different seeds, the two made haste away from the farms, Hops giving a sigh of relief.

  “That guy must have [Intimidate] or something!” the elf complained, Roge mostly focusing on putting the pine cones, apple seeds, and cherry pits into his hoard. He felt his blueoaks welcome the strangely named plants, the ‘Lime Pine’, ‘Gold Apple’, and ‘Yellow Cherry’ seeds fitting in well enough.

  “And another thing,” Hops continued, Roge having missed most of what he said. “I thought you were immune to mental effects! What was that?!”

  “He just seemed really scary,” Roge mumbled, the blueoaks pulling too much of his attention with how much praise they were giving him for getting so many other trees.

  “Oh. An emotion attack. Makes sense,” the elf grumbled, dragging Roge along who finally finished his conversation with his trees.

  “I’m surprised he wasn’t selling more pine trees,” the dragon muttered, looking back at the rapidly disappearing fields.

  “Why would he? The candle industry usually just sells in winter.” Roge stopped Hops at that, a rare chill going down his spine as they almost slipped in the dusting of snow on the cobblestones.

  “Do… I mean… doesn’t something happen next month?” Roge asked, wondering if he would faint.

  “Well yeah, there’s Christmas. But why would you need a pine tree for it?” Roge did end up slumping at that, feeling too tired to answer the elf’s questioning look as he contemplated a Christmas without pine trees. ‘What kind of holiday did it turn into…?”