The Runic Alchemist

"Are you paying any attention or not !? You see that\'s why you are so dum-dum. You don\'t pay attention to people when they talk..."

Dum-dum Damian finally came out of his reverie and glared at the annoying brat in front of him who had just finished casting the [Air tornado] spell and was fishing for the praises. Damian had yet to decide whether suffering like this was worth it for just few spells or not.

"Yes.. yes... That was amazing ! Sheela is the coolest....!"

She puffed up her chest and smiled like an airhead which she was. Fueling her ego from time to time Damian made her do all the spells she knew from the book which were just three. [Air tornado], [Water whip] & [Earth golem]. She was really bad at the [Earth golem] one and took three tries to finally succeed.

Damian had to draw all the runes and structures really fast since the chanting despite being too long wasn\'t long enough to draw in peace. But he managed it, all the rune drawing experience had made his drawing really fast. Damian wondered whether this could count as writing for [Scribe] skill or not.

But all in all he was happy with today\'s haul. And he was really excited to try them away from the nosy girl. Of course he had to do acting of learning to chant the spells and get roasted with insults after insults by the annoying girl but he suffered through. At last after an hour of abuse Damian proposed to go back to library to which she agreed.

According to her, he was too \'weak\' in remembering words and needed more practice !!

"Intermediate spells takes so much mana.... You should learn Basic spells first.. I could show you ton of those. Intermediate ones suck me dry..."

"You know more intermediate spells, that weren\'t in the book..?"

"Of course I do, but you are not ready for them. From tomorrow on you will learn Basic spells that I will teach you..."

"I will...?"

Damian had never been in a situation where a person was forcing him to learn spells and even that for free. And she even decided all this on her own..? Who was this brat !!

But it wasn\'t a bad thing, not like he was doing anything important. Until Damian could think of a way to make some money, learning spells in exchange for some dumb flattery was not a bad deal. Going back to the library Damian got another batch of books and settled as far away from the strange girl as possible.

After reading for hours about this and that mainly things related to spells, runic tools and some martial arts techniques it was already evening outside. Almost everyone had left the library and Damian also picked up his stack of books and walked back to each shelf to put them back. Just as he put in the last book Damian read one title that made him really curious and an idea came to his mind.

The book was named [Herbs & Potions].

Damian immediately picked up the book and just started checking the contents and it really was what he was looking for. A genuine guide to identify and uses of various herbs and other vegetations specifically found in Faerunia. There was also a common method to make Basic healing potion. Damian had seen first hand how effective & valuable these potions were.

Of course the Basic ones won\'t be as powerful as he had seen Lucian use but it was a start. With his advance knowledge of chemistry, this was his natural field.

Jotting down all the information about various different plants and ingredients that were necessary for it and were available in nature, Damian spent the whole evening there till the natural light was gone and it was way too hard to read any longer. Finally Damian closed the book and finished his initial plan as to where he would start this little crafting project of his.

A shadow suddenly covered him whole as Damian sensed a familiar presence behind him.

"You are really reading your money\'s worth huh..?"

It was the librarian lady, she was the only other person still here anyways.

"Come on! You can come tomorrow, it\'s time to go home."

"Ahm.. Yes."

Damian gathered his things and left quietly before the librarian lady could find something to lecture him about.

The next day Damian got in the line to go outside the city walls in the early morning. There wasn\'t much crowd in early morning so he got outside in just 20 minutes. There wasn\'t any big forest or anything outside the city but there was a big green field for miles and it had everything in it from plain grass to plants and even some cluster of trees here and there.

And of course with so much greenery the unranked monsters were also there. Damian could actually hunt for these creatures and get magic stones out of them which were always in demand but it was a very time consuming and tiring job, not to mention it was totally dependable on luck and with his 3 LUC points he was doomed to fail.

Making potions on the other hand required no luck, just pure skill. The first and the most common ingredient for potion making in general that he needed was Glimmergrass – it was the kind of grass that had high amount of mana in it according the book, so it glowed in the sunlight.

Many a children and women were tasked with gathering this type of grass and that\'s how they made money but same as hunting for magic stones it took too much time and effort.

Not something worth risking your life for in this open field with monsters roaming everywhere and yet Damian had seen many a women and children in the line when he was standing in line before, who had come outside just like him to do this.

It may have been a tiring task for common people but for Damian it wasn\'t a big deal. It was also one of his reasons in deciding to do this. Damian with his natural mana sense could easily pick up the faint magic in these seemingly almost impossible to differentiate Glimmergrass, that looked exactly same as the normal grass with just a bit bigger in height.

Damian started collecting these Glimmergrass that was almost everywhere around him with just a few steps away from one another. Gathering it in a big pile Damian stored it all in his spatial tool, then started again.

With this one ingredient, Damian was also looking for another magical ingredient that he had never seen in his old life before something called an Earthheart root which was necessary for the healing potion. They also had mana in them and a way more compared to the Glimmergrass so those also weren\'t that hard to find.

Along with these two magical ingredients Damian also gathered willow bark, comfrey, chamomile and some lavender flowers which were surprisingly very easily available here. They were all traditional ingredients related to healing and relaxation.

It was as if with magical ingredient no one was paying any attention to the natural ingredients at all, which could prove really wonderful for his little business idea.