“How much for these herb surprise packs?” Aleister asked in a loud voice, making sure they could hear him over the bustling crowd.

“There are three different tiers,” responded the stout yet astute looking female wood elf. “The first tier only contains a bunch of still grimy herbs that I wasn’t able to identify. The second tier contains a mixture of low and high rarity grimy herbs. The third tier only contains rare grimy herbs. I made the price of the first two tiers are the same at two gold pieces a pack, and the third tier is four gold pieces a pack.”

“And how do I know you aren’t ripping me off?” he asked.

“You can only trust my word,” she responded.

“Very well then,” Aleister said. “I will buy all ten of the first tier herb packs!”

She looked at him with one raised eyebrow. “Hoping to get lucky.”

“Aren’t we all?” Aleister said as he let out a warm breath and a smile.

“Then I will offer you all of my surprise packs for thirty gold.”

“Hm? That sounds suspiciously gold?” Aleister questioned.

The wood elf shook her head. “That is because my surprise packs don’t sell at all. Which is a problem because I created them in order to sell off the grimy herbs that no one wanted to buy in the first place.”

“And why didn’t they want to buy them?”

“Most alchemists don’t bother to clean herbs because of the process taking extra time,” she answered. “Doubly so for some of the more delicate herbs as you don’t want to destroy and ruin them.”

“Then I’ll do forty gold for all the surprise packs if you throw in that herb cleaning kit,” Aleister offered.

She counter-offered. “Forty-five.”

“Forty,” Aleister said adamantly.

The wood elf contemplated the offer for a moment. “Deal.”

“Great!” Aleister opened his coin pouch and dumped forty gold coins into her hand, which she promptly put away. “Not going to count?”

“I don’t believe a man of your stature would dare to shortchange me,” she said while wrapping up all of his goods.

Aleister couldn’t help but let out a wry smile as he thought about how much change and turmoil his life had undergone over the past several years. Yet he seemed to end up in a similar situation.

“Such is fate,” Syn said after reading the expression all over his face.

“Perhaps,” Aleister murmured.

The wood elf held his package up and asked, “Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing, I was just talking to myself,” Aleister said with a chuckle as he grabbed the package. “Well then, enjoy the rest of your day!”

“May Niltia bless your harvest,” she said.

“I didn’t think you would go for the pure gamble method,” Syn said, hovering close to Aleister.

“My thought process was this,” he said, flipping his last gold coin up and down as the other two pieces were used to purchase a variety of street food, much to Syn’s objection. “It’s good practice and training, as I can get familiar with identifying and cleaning up different rarities of herbs. If any of them end up useful, I can either use them when creating potions or sell them off to recoup losses.”

“And what if all of them end up being completely useless,” Syn asked.

“Not possible,” Aleister said. “Just because they are super obscure, doesn’t mean they can’t be used to create something new. Besides, in the worst-case scenario, I’ll just substitute them in recipes that require different ingredients and record the outcome.”

“Creating new potions and recipes is supposed to be done after you understand the fundamentals,” Syn said.

“Well, everyone learns differently,” Aleister said.

“This is why I wanted you to use your money to buy resources to create talismans.”

Aleister stopped dead in his tracks as the gold coin landed in the palm of his hand. “Ah, damn. I totally forgot about that. You should have reminded me about it way earlier.”

“You should have remembered in the first place,” Syn objected. “I didn’t tell you because it wouldn’t have stopped you from buying all of those herbs in the first place.”

Aleister shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it would have.”

“You don’t need to lie to me,” Syn said. “Luckily, the method you’ve chosen will yield you some gold return and more importantly experience in a more important field, so I couldn’t oppose your decision too much.”

“Fair enough,” Aleister said. “Now the question is, what do I do with this last coin?”

“Save it?”

He squinted his eyes and shook his head back. “No thanks. That would be a waste of resources.”

“And all the coins you spent on purchasing random food were not?”

“Personal maintenance and wellbeing is a very important part of this training process.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t stop it from being valid,” Aleister said.

He finished wandering around the marketplace, and while there was more than a handful of goods that caught his eye, all of them were far too expensive for him to afford at this current moment.

“Do you think offering this coin to a god would benefit me in any way,” Aleister asked.

“Depending on the god and your intentions, there might be a weak and temporary blessing imparted to you,” Syn said.

“Sounds good enough for me,” Aleister said.

“And what god do you plan on donating to?”

“Seeing that I’m currently in the capitol of the Lillium Empire—it should be quite obvious.”

“You being a citizen of the Empire is enough for her to collect faith from you.”

“I know,” Aleister said. “But like you said, this is about intent.”