Jason decided he’d put his alchemical cooking skill to use. After all, he now had a wealth of new food options thanks to the deliveries he’d had made directly to the house, and enchanted food was a major staple of videogames. His thinking was, why not have some fun with it?

So Jason prepared what he considered to be something of an MMO staple: Surf and Turf. Usually, this was a platter made from beef steak served alongside greens and some sort of shellfish. Jason didn’t have shellfish, but he did have plenty of beef since since many of the farmers had been forced to slaughter their livestock, and as for seafood in general, he had what might be the next best thing: frogoid steaks to grill right alongside the beef.

So Jason grilled up several beef and frogoid steaks and worked his alchemy into the seasonings and sauces, and set it to broil slowly at a low temperature for a while while he briefly prepared what would end up being desert. Then, removing the steaks from the oven, switching in the desserts, and arranging the steaks alongside various greens, he served the meal to everyone in the den on individual plates. He labeled it “Arnvale Surf and Turf”, which in addition to turning out to be quite the successful meal, also happened to provide a small increase to might and fortitude that would last for a few hours.

“So, let me get this straight…” Aldin said. “Of all the specializations you could choose from, you chose the ability to turn food into the equivalent of eternal potions? Why?”

Jason grinned at him. “I’ll show you why. It should be done now.”

He got up and returned to the kitchen briefly, returning with another large serving platter. He set it down in the middle of the table.

Lumi let out a short laugh. “You didn’t…”

“I totally did.” Jason replied. On the platter sat numerous cubes of partially transparent, solidified gelatin, some colored red and some yellow, and all covered in a light coat of sugar and honey.

Lumi laughed delightedly, clapping her hands together. “You made Apple and Lemon Gels!” She snatched a red one up from the pile and shoved it into her mouth, chewing rapidly and making noises of appreciation. Shortly, she was enveloped in the telltale glow of a healing potion kicking in.

Curious, Ravs picked a red one up from the pile and after examining it critically for a moment, stuck it in her mouth. Her eyes grew wide, and she quickly followed Lumi in making a squeal of happiness of her own. She too was enveloped briefly in a green glow.

“I made both flavors with least healing potions,” Jason said, “so it’s safe to eat multiples, and it seems like the cooking process dilutes them even further, so go nuts.”

Kera quickly snagged several lemon gels for herself, and Aldin decided to try one of each. Everyone had a few. Kera even gave one each of the apple gels to Echo and Ceri after confirming with her analysis and lore skills that they’d be safe for them.

“These are lovely.” Ravs said at one point. “What even are they?”

“What I want to know is where you got the sugar,” Lumi added. “Or the gelatin for that matter.”

“Well to answer Lumi’s question,” Jason began, snagging a candy of his own, "I made it. Sugar’s pretty easy to make if you know the basics, and Arnvale had plenty of honey and beets and fruit available. It’s just your basic crystallization process. It also turns out that I can use a mix of synthesis and my cooking skill to speed the process along rapidly rather than wait days for it to happen. Same for the gelatin, which you might be aware comes from livestock bone, more or less.”

“This was made from bones?” Ravs asked. She didn’t seem disgusted, just merely surprised as she picked up another candy and examined it closely.

“Not exactly,” Jason said. “It’s not like ground up bone or anything. It’s more like how you make chicken stock by boiling the carcass when you’re making fortified soups. The bones themselves aren’t used, just stuff you leech out of them with water. In fact the normal process isn’t too dissimilar, but I get to cheat.”

“Anyway, since I’m guessing candy must be pretty rare around here, think of it as being like a tiny bit of beeswax mixed in with lemon and apple juice and honey, heated until it congeals into a solid mass, and then coated in more honey and fruit juice. There’s some other stuff in there, like the sugar is actually a mix from beets and crystallized honey, but it’s all ‘food’ stuff.”

Ravs stuffed the candy she was examining into her mouth, rolling it around in her mouth with her tongue instead of chewing. She closed her eyes and sighed happily.

“Now there’s a rare expression.” Aldin snickered.

Ravs managed to stick her tongue out at him without spitting out her candy first. She didn’t even open her eyes.

“And these work like least healing potions?” Kera asked.

“Should do, yeah,” Jason replied. “I suspect they’ll restore a little bit less, but they sure as hell taste a lot better, yeah?”

“I’ll say,” Aldin said. “Hell, you should market these. Are they even labeled as potions or anything?”

“Nope!” Jason said cheerfully. “Part of the plan to conceal what I’m really making, even. I figure I can make packages of these and sell em for a decent chunk of cash as being some kind of unusual charged consumable. People will just assume the ‘duration’ probably extends to how long it takes for the food to go bad, which might even be true. Not that gelatin candies are going to go bad anytime soon.”

“What, you think people will actually fall for that?” Aldin asked skeptically.

“Of course they will,” Ravs said with a snort.

“Even Aurion said he wouldn’t have believed Jason’s claim to making eternal potions if he hadn’t just seen him do it.” Kera commented.

Aldin held up both hands defensively. “Ok ok, people are gullible idiots who’d rather believe a lie than an ‘impossible’ truth.”

Jason shook his head. “It’s not so much lying to them as it is giving them a story they’ll believe enough of that they won’t think to ask if there’s more to it.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m guessing everyone’s taken a liking to these? I’ll see about making some different flavors for different things, yeah?”

“Ooh, dibs on pineapple for Stamina!” Kera said.

Jason laughed. “I’m not sure where I’d manage to get pineapples in a temperate northern woodland, I’m afraid.”

“Bah.” Kera huffed, but with a smile.

“So now what?” Lumi asked, sprawling back in her chair.

Jason considered. “Honestly, I was thinking I ought to hit the books for the rest of the evening. I’ve already gotten a lot of work done with the refining, but I still need one last thing before I’m really ready to start enchanting heavily, and that’s earning [Inscription]. One of the books Jerrik gave me teaches that skill, and I’ve got several points to spend.”

“Inscription? Don’t you already have Engrave?” Lumi asked.

“Sure, but it’s not good for everything,” Jason explained. “I mean, take those rune tattoos Reis had. That'd be a less savory example of something Engrave can't do. If you tried to physically carve runes into someone, the healing process would ruin it. Likewise, it’s difficult to carve runes into say, a piece of cloth or a sheet of paper; you’d just be destroying the object.”

He gestured to Kera. “For instance, I’m pretty sure I can now make a clothing enchant for Kera so that her clothes alter shape to fit each of her changeling forms, but I don’t currently have a way to apply it. Nor can I make scrolls, which are a pretty big staple consumable, though I suppose with the way [Infusion] works I don’t really need them.”

“I get the idea, though,” Lumi replied. “If I’m including you two,” she said with a gesture to Ravs and Aldin, “we’ve got four unarmored casters and being able to enchant people’s clothes and robes is a pretty big deal.”

“Mine already are,” Ravs commented.

Aldin grumbled under his breath.

“Don’t be jealous you lost the flip,” she said.

Jason eyed Ravs' rather elaborate dress, the looked at Aldin with a raised eyebrow, who shrugged.

“Hey, enchanted is enchanted,” was all he said in reply. “Can always get an alteration done.”

“Well let me know if there’s something either of you would like done once I get started in on what I owe the Mayor. I’ll be doing a few side pieces for us as time permits, depending on how much each of us need it. Kera’s clothes are at the top of the list, followed by some armor for Lumi and my greenhouse pots so I can hopefully get new traits. After that…..”

“Wait, greenhouse?” Aldin asked. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned that before.”

“Oh. I uh, got this big package of [Rare Seeds] as a reward awhile back,” Jason explained. “I’m hoping they’ll sprout into stuff that I can use for Alchemy since it was a class reward. But I doubt we’ll be staying here long term, you know? So I want to make a sort of… greenhouse in a bag of holding with enchanted pots and dirt and stuff that make the plants grow either instantly or really fast.”

“That sounds…. ambitious,” commented Ravs.

“It is,” Jason confirmed, “which is why I’m taking it one step at a time, like the modular enchanting thing. That’s on the list too.”

Jason ran a hand through his hair. “Ugh, so many things I want to try or do but I’ve only got so much time…”

Ravs snorted. “Prioritize.”

“I know… I know.”

—————————-

Jason did end up spending the rest of the evening reading his books. Unlocking inscription turned out to be a relatively simply affair, seeing as he already knew numerous runes. It was merely a matter of applying a basic spell absorption sequence onto a sheet of parchment so that it could accept a single spell’s mana that could then later be used to cast the specific spell absorbed. A spell scroll, in other words. Jason didn’t even need to waste time learning new runes; for a basic low-end scroll he already knew everything he needed, so he used some of his magical ink to paint the runes onto a sheet and then had Lumi imbue it with her Sharpen spell.

Then Jason dumped four skill points into the skill, bringing it to a total of five ranks. He felt that should be plenty for his needs, for now at least.

Afterwards, Jason switched over to reading more of his enchanting primer. While he didn’t learn any new runes this time, he did learn more about how you could draw the same runes in different ways, linking them to other, similar runes or doubling up on multiple complex versions of the same rune to compound a rune’s effects. Doing so would result in drastic increases to required materials, space, and mana consumption, but it was what differentiated a simple bag of holding or handy haversack from something like say, the Adventurer Lodge Vaults. The Vaults were basically the same enchantment, but on a grand scale.

The following morning Jason prepared breakfast for himself and the girls and then headed down to speak with first Jerrik, and then Tersk. Both had shipments of basic equipment ready to be delivered to the house so Jason could begin the process of of churning out minor enchantments. While he was there, he requested some odds and ends that neither of the two understood, but were able to manufacture easily enough, and had Tersk do take armor measurements for his right arm and hand.

Tersk also informed Jason that he should have the special ores and powders Jason had ordered ready for pickup in a few days time.

With his business for the day taken care of, Jason headed back to his home and got to work. First, Jason saw to Kera’s robes. At first he was afraid that he’d have to enchant each individual piece of clothing for her, including Kera’s underthings, but despite Kera’s willingness to allow him to do so, it turned out to be unnecessary: simply having the enchantment on a major part of the outfit seemed to cause the enchantment to cover the whole of your person.

“That makes plenty of sense to me,” was Kera’s response to the discovery, once she’d changed clothes and shapeshifted into a strange amalgam of life-touched and kitsune. She swished her tails around behind her, a gap having opened in the back of her dress to accommodate them as she transformed.

“I mean, a suit of plate armor isn’t all one solid piece, right?” she said. “It’s lots of little bits all strapped together with belts and buckles and joints. It would be pretty impractical to need to enchant every tiny piece separately. Why shouldn’t clothes be the same?”

“You may be onto something there,” Jason said, considering. “In fact, I wonder if for something like the mana conversion stuff we talked about yesterday, would it need to be something that I wore on my hand…? I wonder if a suit of armor or a full-sized set of arm plating might work as long as it was somehow connected?”

“Worth a try, right?” Kera replied, shifting into a tall, bulky minotaur, then glancing down at herself and pulling at her clothes in various places . “Hmm… blue and silver doesn’t go very well with brown fur, does it?”

“I’m afraid not,” Jason said after a moment’s examination. “In fact, I don’t think it will go particularly well with some of your other forms, either. You might consider using one of our armor dyes, the ones we got from the compensation package.”

“Nah, I like blue and silver and black,” Kera replied. “It’s grown on me. Besides, those are sort of Ceri’s colors, you know?”

She closed her eyes, appearing to concentrate, and her fur rippled and turned black, with small swirls of a silvery white running along her arms and legs. Then she touched the gemstone activator Jason had sown into the neck of her dress to be the mana storage for her clothes’ enchantment. It also served as a manual activation, and the lower portion of her dress flowed together into a single, solid robe with a slit leg, something more akin to a classic sorceress’ dress than the three part split she’d had before.

“How about now?” she asked.

Jason eyed her up and down. If she wanted his honest opinion, he’d oblige. “Hmmm…. not bad. More elegant that way, and suits the taller build, I think. Yeah that’ll do.”

“You going to be a minotaur for awhile?” he asked.

“Just today, I think,” Kera said. She flexed her legs and took a few steps, tapping her overlarge hooves against the floor. She looked down at them. “That feels weird. Walking with hooves, I mean. I feel like I’m wearing the world’s largest plats but I can feel through them, kinda like when you tap a nail against a table.”

“I thought new experiences were the point.”

“They are,” Kera insisted. “I wasn’t complaining, just commenting.” She reached out and pulled Jason into a big hug. “Thank you, by the way.”

Jason returned her hug, and then shooed her out of his lab, for he still had plenty of work remaining.

This largely consisted of repeatedly enchanting an array of various swords and spears with minor elemental enchantments. Since these weapons were meant for the town’s defense, this meant primarily fire, since the weapons wouldn’t be taken into the dungeon’s water-mana heavy environs.

After having enchanted roughly a dozen assorted weapons, he switched to working on a handful of breastplates and shields. Jason tried a few different enchantments on those, from barriers of churning water that should turn aside arrows, to shields that could project a flash of blinding light into enemies’ eyes, to simple enhancements that would bolster the defensive properties of the armor.

When Jason finished his eighth defensive piece, he gained a level in [Artificer]. Along with the normal message about gaining new points, he received an unwelcome, if not entirely unexpected, extra notification.

Warning: Secondary class level may not exceed primary class level. Re-arrange equipped classes or XP loss may occur.

Jason sighed. Ever since Lumi had seen that she couldn’t equip [Spellblade] as her primary until she’d gained a few levels in it over [Knight], he’d expected this might happen at some point. It was too bad, really, since he much preferred the idea of the class that provided him more flexible skills, namely discoveries, as being his highest level class, but it seemed like at least for the time being he’d have to switch. Grumbling internally a bit, he switched [Artificer] to his primary, and went ahead and assigned [Golemist] and [Engineer] as its subclasses.

Then he placed [Alchemist] as secondary, and got back to work.