After finishing my spear training and sleep, and gaining a point in strength in the morning, I decided to go do some more hunting so I could afford that alchemy book I had

been looking at. I headed off to the gates and prepared to get myself some money.

I was soon walking down the road, waiting for some moglins or moki to show up, and it wasn’t long before some found me. With how I hadn’t tried out ice shatter on them last time, I decided to see how they would react. It took me a bit longer to complete the spell pattern, as it was twice the size of the others, and I wasn’t quite as familiar with it due to not being able to practice it as much due to mana limitations. Even with my mana at full, I was only getting four casts out of it. I lobbed it at the moglins, and watched as it flew towards them, luckily, even though it wasn’t very fast, neither of them dodged, and it landed square on the left one, exploding and impaling them both.

With both of them impaled for a second or two before the ice melted in that unnaturally quick way, I launched an ice spear at each and watched as they stopped moving. I smiled, I’’d now found a far more efficient way to hunt. I continued the day in the same manner, practicing ice shatter on any groups I could find, but when I ran into a group of three, I would frostbite one then ice shatter the other two, leaving the last to practice my spear on.

Today there were quite a few more groups with weapons other than those crude swords all of them had seemed to carry around yesterday. There were a few with spears, crude things without a blade, just a pointed tip, and a couple wielding actual clubs which looked like they would hurt more than the swords. I shrugged, with my current hunting method it’s not like any of them would be able to hurt me anyway, even in groups of three. I spent a very leisurely day or so hunting, collecting enough for three moglin quests and two moki, then headed back into town, I should be able to buy my alchemy book with just that, and while party hunting may have been more lucrative, solo hunting only seemed to collect groups of two or three, which made for a very lazy day of hunting.

The only thing of interest while I was hunting was a moki with a moglin rider on it, wielding one of those crude spears, its three jointed legs wrapped around the moki’s center. It made me giggle as I slowly kited, the moglin not getting off until the moki was dead, then shrieking at me and charging, only to become spear practice.

I arrived back at the town after an hour or so, and quickly went to turn in my quests, getting a very nice 8 gold seven silver out of it. With the money I had on hand, I would be able to afford my alchemy book and then I wouldn’t have to bother buying potions. Hopefully at least, some games had ridiculously complex methods for potion making.

I quickly arrived at the potion shop, and purchased my book from Alva, and while I was there I asked about the mist. Turns out that it appeared with the invaders, and it was what formed the gate between this dimension and the next. If it grew thick enough, it would form a gate that would allow monsters to come through. It also avoided the natural life forms to a bit, making it so it wouldn’t form directly around a person, which is why the city, with so many people living in it, seemed empty of the fog that seemed to be so ever present.

I thanked her, and opened my book on alchemy. Looking through it, I found that while there were some hideously complex recipes towards the back, the earlier recipes were luckily quite simple, but I would need a mortar and pestle, a bottle of glass rather than the earthenware bottles the potions came in to see the color the potion was turning, and some bottles to hold them in. I picked them all up from Alva for the cheap price of a gold and two silver, putting me down to two gold two silver along with the book purchase, most of my money gone in a fast shopping session. I thanked alva and headed out to collect some herbs.

Arriving at the gates, instead of heading off to where the moglins and moki were, I went back to the forest filled with wargs, and started searching for some herbs. After collecting a handful of herbs and slaughtering some of the local wildlife, I looked over the most simple recipe, a basic healing potion. After looking over it, it turns out that the reason the beginner potions had been so cheap is that they were heavily diluted forms of the most basic potion, with one basic potion of maximum possible strength making twenty of the beginner potions I had been using. Figuring that was why the beginner potions had quickly stopped being very effective, I went back into town to practice my new recipes.

While walking around town, I looked over the recipe. For the most basic three potions, health, stamina, and mana, you had to dry out the herbs, either over a fire or air drying them over time, with air drying making slightly better potions. Then you had to grind up the herbs as fine as possible, and add them to clean water while supplying it with mana. Too much mana, and the potions would turn black and be useless, while if you added too little, it wouldn’t turn the vibrant color that you were looking for.

The health potion would be varying shades of pink, the stamina varying colors of orange, and the mana potion would be green. In all cases, you wanted as vibrant a color as you could get without turning it a nasty black.

Deciding that I was going to go for fire drying as that would only take an hour or two, I headed off to the general store I had gotten my traveling rations from. Quickly buying a flint and steel for 5 copper, I perused the rest of the store, and found something interesting. They had something called a ward net, a bunch of wooden tiles attached by a rope, inscribed with runes that would keep anything within the circle you would make it into practically invisible to the monsters so long as you weren’t doing something stupid like shouting at them or sending ice spears their way.

At five gold, it was out of my price range for now, but if I decided to head to the next city, I would need one. Leaving the store, I went back out to the forest to collect some dried wood along with dried leaves as tinder, storing the wood in the main portion of my backpack, and the leaves in the side pocket so that they wouldn’t get lost in the mess my backpack was slowly becoming. I then headed back towards the town, wanting to set up where monsters wouldn’t attack while I was trying to dry my herbs.

Once I had arrived next to the city, I set up a small fireplace, clearing out all the grass on the ground, and finding some stones nearby to help contain the fire. I then took some of the branches I had grabbed, and made a simple campfire, along with a small rack well over the top, where I could place the herbs to dry out.

I then started the fire, the sparks from the flint and steel easily catching on the tinder, which lit up and caught the first of my twigs on fire. As the fire grew, I started adding larger pieces of wood until I had a decent sized log burning on the fire. I then took out all the herbs I had gathered, and put them on top of the little rack I had made above the fire to dry.

While I waited, I meditated by the side, slipping into a fugue where time seemed to not matter whatsoever. After a time that had to be a few hours, but didn’t seem close to that I reached over to check on the herbs. At this point, they crackled to the touch, well and truly dried, so I grabbed them off the fire, and put it out, covering it with dirt so as to stamp out the flames.

I then took out my water skin that seemed to be eternally full, along with my mortar and pestle and my glass bottle I was going to be making the potions in before pouring them into their final earthenware containers. I quickly took one of the endurance herbs, my least important ones to start off with, and started grinding it up.

After maybe three minutes of grinding, I had it reasonably fine, so I filled up the bottle with water from my water skin, added the herbs in, and started pouring mana into the bottle. It didn’t take long until it turned black, and a smell of burning something came out of the top of the bottle. I poured it out, shaking my head in disappointment, and rinsed out the bottle.

I then started on my second herb, this time grinding it up even more finely in case that had an effect on the potion. After getting it as fine as I reasonably could, I added the herb into the water, and this time added as little mana as I could as I swirled the bottle around to mix in the herbs. A while after, it turned a very, very light orange, and I shrugged, adding it to one of my potion bottles anyway, I didn’t have too many herbs, and it wouldn’t hurt to have a stamina potion on hand. I then took my last stamina herb, and repeated the process. This time, I added a tiny bit more mana, and turned a slightly darker shade of orange, but it was still nothing like the mostly opaque color the book had described.

I then started in on the health herbs. My experiments continued,each time getting a bit darker of a shade. I was on to the mana herbs when I found the approximate limit of where it would turn black, one of my potions turning the nasty shade as I did.

Unfortunately, even though I’d found the approximate limit, it didn’t mean that the amount I’d added just before it turning black had turned it into the vibrant shade I was looking for. I tried two more times on my last two mana herbs, but one turned black anyway, and the other was only a tiny bit darker than the other I’d attempted. I sighed, I’d need to practice my mana control it seems. Looking up, the sun had started to set, so I headed off to the barracks to sleep, I’d continue my experiments tomorrow.

While lying in my not so comfortable bed, I realized I wasn’t getting sleepy, so I decided to meditate until I fell asleep. As the mana floated through my channels, I slowly drifted off until I was half asleep half awake, and I simply stayed there, my thoughts completely stopped, just feeling the mana flowing through me.

I didn’t awake from this state until the sun hit me on my face, yet again that damned window waking me. I started, I had been meditating for the entire night, and I had absolutely no sleepiness. Noticing a notice that I had been completely dismissing before, I noted that I had gained a wisdom point.

I wasn’t sure if the lack of sleepiness was just because my real life body wasn’t tired, or if meditating could actually refresh me while sleepy, I headed off to the training room to ask. Finding Olaf, I asked him about it, and turns out that once get to the point where you can meditate but your consciousness starts to fade you can meditate instead of sleeping. He did mention that I had picked this up quite fast for a newcomer, but I was too busy smiling to really care about that. I was excited as hell, I could get in even more training time with this!

Still smiling on my way out of town, I headed back to the forest, I was going to get some more practice on my potion making. I grabbed every herb in sight, and it didn’t take me too long until I had around twenty, enough to practice on. Grabbing enough wood for another fire, I headed back to my spot to continue.

Once I reached my spot, I noticed someone else had borrowed the little campfire area I had made the day before, and was cooking something over it. Curious, I went over to ask what they were doing.

“Hey, what are you cooking there, it smells delicious.”

The man turned to me, and I could see his relatively feminine face, with blond hair and blue eyes. “I’m just cooking up some orb meat, it’s quite delicious. I actually noticed you yesterday with the fire, and decided I could save some money on food with this.”

I hadn’t really thought about cooking my own food, so I was quite excited. I wasn’t a good cook by any means in reality, but I wasn’t incompetent, and I could handle doing some campfire cooking.

“Well mind if I borrow your fire once you’re done? I was hoping I could dry out some more herbs.”

“No problem, it probably wouldn’t hurt to dry them alongside the meat, might add some flavor to it.”

I quickly took out the herbs, and put them on and around the meat to dry out. A few minutes later, the man had decided that the meat was cooked enough, and extracted it from on top of the rack I had made yesterday.

“Want to try one? I’m Chris by the way.”

“Well I couldn’t refuse an offer like that. I’m Rayth. Did you really use your real name in game?”

The man shrugged. “Well as far as I can tell, the game has nothing against duplicate names, and I’m used to being called by my name rather than my gamer tag, so I figured I’d just stick to what I was used to.” He then passed me a piece of meat he had impaled with a sharpened stick before turning to his and starting to eat it.

I took a bit and was very impressed. It had a faint herby smell, which had sunk into the meat giving it a unique taste. The meat itself seemed to be well done, but with the realism, I figured it was a good idea considering the devs had probably included food poisoning.

“How hard is it to make your own potions by the way? I noticed that’s what you were doing and was considering doing the same, every penny saved and all that.”

“Well it’s not hard, but it’s not easy. I can make a potion on it’s own without trouble, but I can’t seem to get the amount of mana right to get the color the book describes.”

“How much is it for the book on it anyway?”

“It cost me ten gold, it’s not too much.”

He didn’t seem fazed about the cost, in fact he seemed quite happy. “Well considering that the non beginner healing potions are five silver, I’ll probably go get one myself.”

I shrugged, and we chatted a bit about different ways to hunt monsters. The man was actually an archer, something I should have noticed from the bow sitting next to him, but he also had a pair of wicked looking knives, one long enough to almost be considered a shortsword. Turns out he was also a solo player, but he’d practiced archery hunting in real, and could usually pincushion most mobs before the got to him. He mentioned how hard it had been to get used to his pair of knives, but said he could use them passably now. He then mentioned something very interesting.

“Have you seen the red moki yet? It’s been hunting groups of people for a while now, it’s all over the forums. Even higher level people heading to other hunting grounds or the next city are getting wiped by that thing.”

“No, I haven’t heard of it. How on earth are people getting wiped by a moki though? Those things are slow as hell, just kite them and they die without any trouble.”

“Well apparently this one if fast as hell. People are saying it can move about twice the speed of them running. It’s probably the boss moki, but it always travels alone unlike the other bosses people have found.”

“Huh, sounds interesting. I’ll be sure to look around for it.”

After our short talk, Chris mentioned he was going to head out, and left me alone to finish my wait for the herbs to dry. Meditating to pass a little time, I soon was ready to make some more potions.

This time, I made sure to keep getting the exact amount of mana it took before it would turn black, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the almost opaque color I was looking for. Regardless, the potions that would come out were higher quality than the ones I’d made before, so I poured out the old ones and filled them up with my new ones. I kept practicing until I ran out of herbs, and by the end of it I could reliably get a decently dark color, but it still seemed off by a few shades.

I then started to consider getting a belt made to hold the potions in, taking them only after battle because they were in my backpack seemed a little silly, and if I could just grab a potion and down it with my free hand during a fight I could handle a lot more.

Deciding that I could consider it after getting some more money, I headed off to do some more hunting, I wanted to get my new spear. I hunted for the rest of the day and once the sun started to go down I turned it all in for another five gold two silver. Heading back to the barracks, I lay down and started to meditate, but couldn’t get to the state I’d reached the night before, and eventually fell asleep.