Roge remembered about harvesting his tobacco plants when he woke up the next morning, his emotions feeling worn out as he quickly left the shared room. He wondered if his extreme reactions the previous day were from his pushing those emotions to the side too often, finding he didn’t care very much as he sat at the tavern’s counter. He even shoved away a couple of notifications he’d woken up with, not even bothering to look at them as he looked to the tavernkeep. Even the man made of living flames failed to get a reaction from him as he requested breakfast.

  “How’re you feeling?” a voice said next to him in the middle of his meal, Roge looking to see Sean seated next to him with a concerned look.

  “Like shit,” the dragon grumbled, shoveling more food into his mouth without tasting it.

  “That tends to happen when you repress your emotions.” Roge gave the lion a glare at that, though it quickly softened as the numb feeling snuffed his anger out. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Then help me to. Someone has to be there for you Roge.” The dragon felt a spark of another emotion at that, feeling his eye prickling with tears. Sean wrapped him in a hugs at that, causing Roge to let out a small gasp.

  “It’s so hard,” he mumbled, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “Not knowing anything. Being constantly surprised by unfamiliar things. I just want to move on with my life.” He left the rest of it unsaid, how he felt like an ant under the thumb of a machine. Sure, he *felt* like he had agency, but they’d change the color of the moon. Was his mental immunity a lie under that kind of power?

  “You know you can ask us anything. We’re here for you.”

  “I know. It’s still hard, though.” Roge sniffled at that, letting the sadness and anger wash through him. “And I don’t want to fall apart on the streets like that. People already don’t like me.”

  Sean sighed at that, a small growl vibrating through Roge. “Yeah. Hops mentioned that. Seems we’ve neglected something important.”

  Roge listened to the quiet growl as Sean continued to speak, telling him of the history of [Dragonkin]. Apparently he was the only one they’d heard of who wasn’t a noble, the powerful Draconic classes allowing dragons to rise to the top of the hierarchy. Due to the prestige and power that dragons tended to accumulate, arrogance and rudeness was commonly seen as an innate trait. Nothing good came when a dragon visited someone’s shop.

  There was even a competition being held during the next solstice celebration, the dragons in the capital vying for a place in the royal advisers cabinet. The King, a very old and massively powerful dragon, hoarded the strong from each generation and placed the weak in noble positions in other cities. Roge felt surprised that he hadn’t met the other dragons in the city, but Sean explained that they generally kept to themselves. Only the servants were seen around town, fulfilling orders for the ruling class.

  “That’s so… unfair,” Roge whined, Sean guiding him up to their private room once people started filtering into the tavern. “People just expect me to be mean? Stuck up? Just from looking at me?”

  “I know. We’ll help you through it. I promise,” Sean grumbled, leading Roge to sit on one of the couches. “You’re not alone in this.”

  “Thanks,” Roge muttered, wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his jacket. “Being alone would just make everything worse.” He spent a bit longer just being held by the large lion, accepting the comfort and letting his sadness and anger drain away.

  ~~~

  Once Roge felt ready for other things, he pulled away from the lion, pulling up his hoard screens and activating [Harvest]. As he scrolled through his gains for the day, he decided to pull out one of the packs of cigarettes that Madam Madrid had given him, Sean giving him a disapproving look when he noticed it.

  “It’s fine. Made it non-toxic,” Roge said, lighting the end with his flaming spark wand. He picked the blue ones to start on, the smoke a nice shade of neutral blue as it came off the end and out of his snout. Feeling the calming effects spread through him, and opening the window next to them to let the smoke out, he tried planting all of the seeds he’d gotten from his plants. He stopped when he felt a heavy, pulling sensation, looking over his plants and products with a frown.

  Counting everything took a minute, but Roge soon realized he could only have ten of each plant in his hoard. Any more and it felt like he was going to burst. Pulling up his [Farm Hoard] didn’t show him anything, leading him to think it was a restriction that just wasn’t said. At the very least, he had tons of petals to play with, grinning as he looked through the blueoak materials he was able to get.

  He felt his existing blueoaks welcome the new seeds, feeling their bond with him grow. He’d see what he might be able to get from them later, as the bond felt really slow at that moment. In the meantime, he deconstructed five each of the bark, root, and acorns, binding them to himself and feeling the effects go through him.

  Looking at his stats with a small grin, he decided to bind another five of each of the roots, wondering if the reward increased linearly or exponentially. Thankfully, it seemed to give an extra buff every ten, rather than needing to go up by twenty or thirty to reach the next one. That put his strength at twelve, constitution at twenty six, and wisdom at twenty five.

  “Welp. Those boosts from yesterday are going to just keep getting better,” Roge commented, Sean turning and giving him a smile. “Every five coins, I get another boost.”

  “We really need to find the other ones…” Sean grumbled, Marge coming out of her room as he said that.

  They had to explain what happened with the boosts, including Roge’s limit on plants. “Though it seems to be only with the same species?” he remarked.

  “Probably will go up when your skill hits ten,” Marge said, the deer woman lounging perpendicular on the other couch. “Tends to be how that stuff works.”

  “Makes sense. Otherwise my buffs would just grow out of control. This way, I can only use so much.” Roge thought on that for a moment, letting out a sigh. “And I can’t do too much. These will be useful in potion form too for you all. Speaking of…” He pulled the coffee table closer to his couch, placing his new cauldron and recipe book onto it with a large grin. “Let’s see what potions I can unlock today.”

  ~~~

  After flipping the book to the healing potion recipe, while hia party members went down for breakfast, Roge made sure to look through all of the steps first. Shockingly, he’d already done one of the steps, that being putting the quartz into bottles.

  Seemed simple enough, though Roge found out quickly that it was not. While the inside of the cauldron had line indicators for one to four liters, he had forgotten to get any water for the process. As he was about to head out and get some, an idea occurred to him. ‘What if I just use my breath ability?’

  After focusing on his fog breath for a few seconds, he blew it out into the cauldron, making sure that he didn’t spill any of the gas onto the floor. Thankfully, since his fog was colder than he air around him, it sank right to the bottom where he tried his next step. Using the acid buff to liquefy the effect. The cloud condensed right into water, splashing a bit in the container before settling right at the one liter mark. After checking his resources, he found that he’d used exactly ten mana for the process, repeating it twice more to get almost exactly the three liters required. That is when he turned on the heat, pulling out a random bowl his previous self had, the required petals, the spoon, and the ten bottles of quartz dust.

  The rest of the process went pretty smoothly, though Roge nearly forgot to turn down the heat before adding the petals. On the one side of the cauldron were three runes, each labeled as ‘Low’, ‘Medium’, or ‘Hot’. Touching one would switch the cauldron to that setting, while deactivating any of the other runes. Tapping an active rune would shut the whole thing off, Roge grinning at the utility of it. While he didn’t have a timer or anything, his [Status] did have a clock on it, which allowed Roge to keep track of the ten minutes needed for the petals to cook. Overall, the cooking process smelled like strawberries for some reason, though Roge didn’t mind the smell. After all of the bottles were filled and corked, each sizzling and shaking slightly, he put the cauldron and spoon back in his inventory, hoping that he’d be able to magically clean them. ‘At least time doesn’t pass in there…’

  By the time the party came back up from breakfast, Roge was already done with the ten potions, leading to him get all of the notifications he’d ignored the previous day.

  “Why the frown?” Sean asked, Roge looking up and giving the lion a quick smile.

  “Nothing too bad. Just got a cooking skill and it locked everything up.”

  “Oh shit. Do you have the free points for it?” Hops asked, clearly going over the numbers in his head.

  “Did that automatically. Dexterity now up to forty without me doing anything. Just wish I could choose whether or not to spend my points, but I guess that’s fair.”

  “That’s a good thing to know!” Hops crowed, pulling out another of his books and writing the information down.

  “Anyway, you all are here just in time for me to make bombs!” Both Marge and Sean gave him dirty looks at that, the dragon chuckling. “The [Alchemist] said it was possible. So I’m going to try it out.” That was when Roge remembered Judson’s promise of giving the recipes, but he shrugged as he extracted the needed coins from his petals.