After quickly calming down and explaining to Hops that it was just anxiety over not knowing something, which was half true, he got the full story of what Christmas was like. He still felt a sinking feeling that his favorite holiday didn’t exist anymore, but he felt a little reassured as the elf spoke.

  Apparently the feast still existed, though it was at the end of December, lasted three days including one day in January, and didn’t involve gift giving. Instead, people painted various drawings on their homes in the beginning of the month, to be inspected by the city government in a sort-of contest. Though, as soon as Hops mentioned it was to celebrate the winter solstice, Roge felt slightly confused and asked for clarification.

  Turns out, there were thirteen months instead of twelve, an extra month having been added between June and July called Midsummer, when the summer solstice was celebrated. Each month had exactly twenty eight days, minus December that had twenty nine for the solstice. Leap years occasionally made it thirty, but by that point Roge started feeling a headache coming along. He waved off more of Hops’ explanations, grateful that they’d just arrived at the nearby alchemy shop.

  “Well well well! Been dodging me Mr. Youngston?” the shopkeep called out when they entered, Roge smiling at Judson, the Church’s head alchemist.

  “Why exactly do you run a shop?” Roge asked, dodging the question while looking around at the various alchemical items littering the shelves.

  “It’s my side job. Half of my stock goes to the Church, but I found people really need an expert [Alchemist’s] touch.”

  “Well I’m an [Artificer], so no need to try and convince me more.”

  The goblin grumbled at that, rolling his eyes and stepping down from the chair behind the counter. “Figures. What apparatuses do you need? I assume that’s why you’re here?”

  “Strangely enough, we need a cauldron,” Hops interjected, though most of the elf’s focus was on the various products. “Roge just got a potion recipe and we need to-“

  “WHAT?!” the goblin screeched, making both Roge and Hops flinch back at the high pitched noise. “How does an [Artificer]… That doesn’t make any sense! The class is too broad!”

  “I um… got the additional recipe effect. Should it… not have worked?”

  Judson snapped his mouth shut at that, looking to be in deep thought before sighing. “Yeah that’d work. Potions are magic items, so it’d fall under the category. But damn Mr. Youngston. How did you get at least five recipes before rank five?” He paused at that, smacking himself in the face. “Oh. Your broken Draconic class.”

  “Pretty much,” Roge chuckled, pointing to the door to the back of the store. “So… cauldron? And anything else you think we’d need? I’m going to try the same trick with the healing potion to get the elemental potions too.”

  “Alchemical bombs,” Judson grunted, getting more of Hops and Roge’s attention at that. He walked into the back to get the items, raising his voice to still be heard. “Yes, a good choice to have. If you finagle them enough once your cap is above one, you can even use them to make resistance potions.”

  Roge looks to Hops with a grin, the elf having a similar excited expression. “That sounds amazing.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not going to get any of the bonuses an [Alchemist] gets,” Judson replied, coming back out and placing a small, gallon sized cauldron on the counter. It was a solid black, Roge assumed cast iron, with a tap at the bottom to fill bottles. “No bulk making, so you’re going to be limited to ten potions at a time. No modifications to recipes to enhance the effects. And no advanced alchemy like distillation and such. Just basic potions of each tier. You good with that, dragon?”

  “Should be fine,” Roge muttered, a few ideas how he could bypass that already coming to mind.

  “So this puppy,” the goblin said as he smacked the cauldron, “Is self heating. Needs mana to function, but you already have that I assume?” At Roge’s nod, he pulled out a large wooden spoon, the grain almost pitch black. “Alchemically treated spoon. Doesn’t react when you cook.” The last item he pulled out was a leather bound book, which Roge raised an eye-ridge at. “Recipe book.”

  “But the recipes are already in my skill…” Roge muttered, earning him a glare from the [Alchemist].

  “And how do you expect to be able to share recipes?” Roge frowned at that, earning him a sigh. “You’ve unlocked potions and another item. While you can’t learn recipes about other magical items, you *can* with the ones you already have. Trading recipes is the cornerstone of [Item Creation]. Bind this book to that ability, and all your recipes will be written down automatically. Then, we can trade copies of our recipes, and I can give you the bomb recipes. That way you don’t have to experiment.”

  Roge stared wide-eyed at the book at that, his mind churning before glancing at the cauldron and spoon. “Should I try and bind these too?”

  “Well duh,” the goblin huffed, giving Roge a sharp smile. “You use any tools for your other item?”

  “Nope,” Roge said, pulling out his healing wand. “Just made it by hand.”

  “Lemme see,” Judson said, grabbing for the wand. Not seeing any harm in it, Roge handed it over, the goblin looking at it with a critical eye. “Seen interesting wands before, but this takes the cake.” After a few minutes of looking at it, which Roge took to look over the three items he’d be buying, Judson finally looked up and gave Roge a smile. “I’d recommend taking it to a glassblower though. It’s useful I’ll give you that, but try holding it from the bottle end and see how it feels.”

  Roge blinked as he took his wand back, taking the advice and holding the bottle rather than the stick. It was a bit awkward, the teardrop shape not fitting in his claw well, but he quickly funneled his mana through it to see what would happen.

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  Immediately, the bottle shone even brighter, his nature mana quickly transforming into healing mana and suffusing the blueoak branch. The effect that came out seemed brighter than before, though Roge used the same amount of mana as before if the flow stat not changing was any indication.

  “Thought so,” Judson smugly said, Hops moving over to take a closer look at the wand himself. “Blueoak tends to strengthen anything it’s made out of, so I suspected it’d help here.” Roge tilted his head at that, remembering the [Strength Boost] ability the branches had. He also remembered that while before he couldn’t alter the shape of his bonded items, since he’d tried, he’d gotten a few other effects he could now use.

  With the acid buff, the glass quickly felt like putty, molding to his hand and shifting to his design. He pushed a good bit of the clear quartz from the bottle to the tip of the wood, solidifying it into one big chunk while making the branch taper off on the end. The rest of the dust stayed in the ‘bottle’ portion, looking more like a vial attached to the base of the wood, most of the glass forming a comfortable grip around the wood. What he was left with was a thin, elegant wand the size of his forearm, quartz dust glowing in a vial on the base, a glass grip right above that, and the wood tapering off before transitioning to a pure quartz crystal.

  “By gods dragon. How in the bloody hells-“ Judson was cut off by Roge flicking the acid buff description over to him,? ? the goblin rolling his eyes. “What a broken ass class…”

  “So how much do I owe you?” Roge asked, chuckling as Hops snatched his wand to look over.

  “Twenty silver for the cauldron, five for the spoon, and the recipe book is on the house. I’m beginning to think I’ll be getting more out of you that way.” Roge quickly handed over the money, putting the cauldron and spoon in his inventory before looking at the plain looking book. “Don’t over think it. Just fill it with your mana, and [Item Creation] will do the rest.”

  Placing a claw on the leather, Roge did exactly that, pushing his nature, Draconic, and spacial mana into the book, feeling a flutter in his chest as popups ensued.

  Roge groaned at those popups, Hops giving a wide eyed look while Judson just had a confused one. “I assume it’s *normally* supposed to be called ‘Recipe Book’?”

  “Did… did you not get that…?” Judson asked, looking down at the book and jerking in surprise. Instead of a leather bound book, it now more resembled a hardbound tome, with a blank coin, gem, and ingot arranged in a circle on the cover. Roge willed it to flip open, thinking of his healing potion recipe, which it quickly flipped to, showing what looked to be a baking recipe. He then flipped to the effect list, finding it listed all of the effects he knew about, though since he currently had all of them, it didn’t show him much. Flipping over to the healing wand, it had also apparently updated with his new wand design, showing the elegant wand instead of the clunky bottle tipped one.

  “That’s… How did…” Judson grabbed one of Roge’s screens, looking over the ability and groaning. “[Spacial Magic]? What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s… complicated.” He pulled up the ability and skill description so the goblin could look over it, willing the recipe book into his hoard for safe keeping.

  “And now I have to try to get a class with that…” Judson muttered, giving Roge a glare. “You going to be giving the information on how you got it?”

  “Have it all written down,” Hops responded, putting a hand on Roge’s shoulder and dragging him towards the door. “I’ll send it to the Church to look over.”

  “You better!”

  ~~~

  Hops dragged Roge all the way to their training room, looking a bit frustrated as he immediately got started on writing. Roge dutifully continued to work on his aiming and moving around, Marge giving him a questioning look which he just shrugged at. By the time training was done for the group, Hops finally closed his book and answered their questioning looks.

  “I’m trying to write down a guide for getting some of the stuff Roge has been getting,” he sighed, giving the dragon a half-hearted glare. “I knew people with your condition got weird abilities, but you’ve gotten so many odd ones. Besides, like the [Alchemist] expressed, people are going to want to figure out how [Spacial Magic] works. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “That’s fair,” Roge muttered, kicking some snow out of the way as they entered the League’s front courtyard. It had already fallen to night by that point, the training going late due to the late start. “I’m not *trying* to frustrate you.”

  “We know,” Sean said gently, putting a paw on Roge’s shoulder. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “At the very least, you’ve done things completely right.” Hops gave Roge a grin at that, the dragon chuckling before noticing something odd. The light from the streetlights was a soft yellow-orange color. ‘So… why does Hops look so red-‘

  All his thoughts ground to a halt as Roge looked up at the sky, it being a perfectly clear night for once. He couldn’t see very many stars, but he could see the crescent moon quite clearly. Even as his friends started asking his what was wrong, he couldn’t look away from the bright pink moon staring at him, only broken out of it when Sean clapped a paw around his face to block out the sight.

  “The moon is… pink?” the dragon muttered, looking at his friends with a bewildered look that they all mirrored.

  “Well yeah. December has the Pink Moon. Did no one ever mention that?” Marge asked, giving the moon a normal, curious look.

  “It has… other colors?” Roge asked, feeling the panic attack he’d been avoiding about how much his world changed finally building up in his chest. Over the moon of all things.

  “Well yeah. Starting with January, theres the Crimson, Red, Orange, Gold, Yellow, Lime, Green, Teal, Blue, Royal, Violet, Purple, and Pink moons. Each full moon has a different color, and since we’re coming up on December’s full moon, it’s Pink,” Hops explained, only Sean’s paw rubbing Roge’s back keeping him from panicking fully.

  “Oh. Okay…” he muttered, looking back up at the moon and taking deep breaths. It looked quite pretty, actually, though the stark pink light messed with the colors of things a bit. ‘Really hoping this is not a sign I’m in a Matrix thing…’ he thought to himself, allowing his friends to cart him back to his home.