Waking up in the morning he was excited. He carefully carried the boxes down 10 at a time, then made his third trip for his herbs. Piling them all up in the corner of the living room he noticed his mom’s reproachful look. “Come and eat first, you can skip the martial training, but you need food.”

After a breakfast that consisted of enormous eggs and fresh bread, Kael and his mother moved into the center of the room. Alavarah took out a small pouch identical to his father's. Pulling out what looked like a wok crossed with a cauldron she laid it on the floor. Pointing to it she said, “This is the best way to make powders. The firewood goes in the bottom of the cauldron part while you mix the herbs on the top. Now go get 4 parts sage and 1 part hoelen.”

Kael dashed over to the pack and carried the entire thing back. Dumping it out he sorted it into sage and hoelen. Handing his mother 4 parts sage, 1 part hoelen he looked at her expectantly.

Taking the herbs, Alavarah looked at them with a dejected sigh. “It looks like I need to teach you how to pick herbs.”

Scratching the back of his head, Kael said, “I tried to do better as I went on, honestly there is a mixed bag of badly damaged to barely damaged. Dad pointed out to me that my dreams just gave me book knowledge, not practical action knowledge, sorry mom.”

Looking at her sad son she said, “It’s ok, let's sort them out, in the future when you go to pick new herbs I will accompany you to teach you.”

After sorting out the herbs and salvaging the good parts they ended up with 60 piles of sage and 16 piles of hoelen. Alavarah was slightly surprised at the dramatic improvement seen in the herbs gathered. Little did she know her son could compare his skills digitally as he picked them, making it much easier.

Taking out a stone bowl and a pestle, Alavarah handed them to Kael. “Put the herbs in there and start grinding. You want to crush them into a rough powder, it should not be too fine.” Following his mother's instructions, it took him only a few minutes to prepare them.

Error, soul failed in refining materials, material damaged by 30%.Waste reduced by 40% due to talents, 12% material saved.

Experience will be granted at the end of refinement.

“Uhm, I finished, but it looks like about 18% of it is no good. What should I do now?”

Alavarah looked over into the stone bowl and roughly guessed about 20% was waste. Surprised at her son's eyesight for the ones smashed too much she said, “It’s fine, next time grind a bit lighter. Now heat up the cauldron. Powder creation is really easy. If you notice the logs your father gathered last night are all the same size, that is only important in making actual dans, but a good habit. They should be about the size of an adults forearm. For now, just grab 4 or 5 and heat it up until water drops sizzle and burn off immediately.”

Grabbing the wood, Kael loaded it up into the cauldron and lit it on fire. It took about 10 minutes to get to the proper heat. During this time Kael mused, In the future, I need to get the fire going first, this is a boring wait. Once the cauldron-like wok was good, Kael scraped the mass of herbs onto it. Under his mother's instructions, he used the pestle to stir up the herbs every minute or so. When he noticed a chunk that was too big he would grind it down carefully. After only about 5 minutes his mother shooed him away.

Error, soul failed in refining materials, material damaged by 30%. Waste reduced by 40% due to talents, 12% material saved.

5 experience granted to the alchemy talent tree.

Taking over Alavarah said, “See these handles on the top of the burning space? They are not just for carrying, the left side can slide the entire top.” Giving a careful yank to the left side handle, the entire top slid out and upward, lowering the right side so it was horizontally flat. “Now, if you pull the right handle down it will open a trough to push the herbs out with.” Pulling down on the right handle it created a sloping trough just as she said. Opening one of the boxes and placing it under the trough, Alavarah used what looked like a small handheld hoe to scrape the powder into the box.

Closing the trough and shifting the top of the cauldron back to where it was she said, “Almost done, now just carefully grind the baked herbs up. They should end up the consistency of sand.”

Taking the pestle back, Kael grinded away for another 10 minutes before he got another notification.

Congratulation, you have created a new object: Wound Recovery Powder. Mortal tier alchemy production, total dose available for creation, 20.

First refinement wastage of 18% (Grinding)

Second refinement wastage of 18% (Baking)

Item creation, initial potency of 125. Potency wastage of 45, remaining potency of 80. Base doses of 20, waste of 5 overall potency, 6 potency per dose.

Converting 80 potency, remaining 13.33 doses. Each dose value of .5 experience, soul granted 6 experience to alchemy talents.

Holy shit balls, that is complicated. I need to be careful or I’ll get screwed on xp. Looking up to his mom he said, “Ok, it looks like I made 13 doses, I wasted 7, I need you to walk me through this again so I don’t waste so much.”

Looking at her son so concerned about what she used to consider a worthless powder, the reality of her current life really hit her. “Ok son, we will both be careful until you get the hang of it.”

Continuing with extra care the duo started to pump out wound recovery powder. Kaels skill steadily increased, after the refinement of the 4th batch of herbs, he increased his subcomponent talent again, making a 60% reduction in waste. This helped him refine the herbs by a lot. By his 6th attempt, he was refining 20 doses at once. He also cut the time down to just over 10 minutes a set.

After 10 hours of grueling work, Kael’s arm was sore. He made 60 sets of wound recovery powder for a total of 1,164 doses. His mom congratulated, “You did really well son, I expected you to end up with less than 800 doses.” Thinking about what his mom had said, He wondered what the alchemist ranks would help with. He had made 558 experience which was added to the growth talent for the 20% extra exp per rank. He did this as he went along scoring him a total of 722 experience. He managed to finish the third rank of growth and dump 1 point into the fourth.

Looking at the 11 boxes which had 100 doses of powder in them each, he began to wonder what to do with it. His father, thinking along the same lines said, “Tomorrow morning before the hunters leave; go through the village and trade 1 box for a combination of 12 parts bupleurum or cinnamon. If anyone has it, you can trade it for 6 parts stone coat. When you are done, spend the rest of the day picking those herbs. You want 1 stone coat to 4 bupleurum and 4 cinnamon. Excited Kael quickly ate dinner and fell asleep.

The next morning and afternoon blinked by. Kael traded for 6 stone coat, 72 Cinnamon, and 48 bupleurum. Spending the entire day he picked 10 stone coat, 24 cinnamon, and 48 bupleurum. The stone coat was much more difficult to find and when he was about to give up he found a huge patch that yielded 4 pounds. Interestingly, the stone coat being a primary herb gave 7 exp to start instead of 5. He gained a total of 308 experience which he spent in growth as he went along. After gaining the 4th rank he used karma to bounce it to rank 5 to get that sweet modifier of 2x talent exp. Deciding he would finish his quality subcomponents before figuring out if he should increase in alchemy rank or finish talents. He dropped 2 more points into subcomponents before he finished with the day.

Getting home and showing his family his heist as he called it, his father did not know whether to laugh or cry. Not only did his son bring home a huge amount of herbs, but he forgot the boxes again. “Son, you really need to take better care of what you pick. You should have brought the boxes to store them.”

“Dad, the boxes don’t bend, so you can’t stuff them in the backpack like you can herbs. Also, the herbs will be refined in a day or two anyway.”

Sighing, Iradin said, “Kael, I told you about the little details and habits before, this is the same. It is a good habit so start doing it. These herbs are not worth much, but if you had found something rare and ruined it, you could be out millions of gold.”

Kael accepted his lecture, taking to heart the part about losing millions of gold. Finishing dinner he went up to his room. Before going to sleep he took out his character sheet and looked at the alchemy section for in-depth details. Finding the alchemy skill he realized it was a bunch of messed up math again. It broke down to half the average of his mental attributes, and half the average of his talent/perception added together. It came out to 11. His rank 1 alchemy gave him +1 for a total of 12. He saw the skill needed to make wound recovery, which was the most basic recipe one could find, was only a 3. Deciding he was good for now due to his high attributes, he went to bed in anticipation of experience explosion number 2.