Once they got back to the inn, Proton pulled Roge and Alton out into the back, having pulled up some of Roge’s screens. Marge continued to follow them, pulling out normal arrows and shaping them as she kept watch. “Now that you have those six new creatures bound, it’s time to finish up the upgrades,” Proton said, not looking away from the screens. “First, we add the abilities to the animals you just got. Pull up the screens, Master?”

  “I’m glad I’m not going to use them to fight,” Roge muttered, humming the theme song that instantly came to his mind under his breath. “I wanna be… the very best…” He first started out my deconstructing another of the [Glow] and [Fog] items, slotting the latter on the fox and the former on the rat. Apparently, fur could take the abilities pretty nicely, though the [Fog] ability was more difficult. ‘Guess that’s what he meant…’ The final adjustment was adding [Inscribe] to the penguin, the feathers instantly taking the ability.

  “Almost done Master, at least for now,” Proton stated as he watched the progress, standing up straight and stiff when Roge looked back at him. “Now, I want you to bind thirty of the bottles to yourself.”

  “What am I going to use-“ Roge cut himself off as he thought about it more, smacking himself in the forehead as he realized his mistake. “The bottles can give me a buff…” he muttered before Proton could respond, the dragon adding the bottles and looking for the new buff.

  Roge felt a spark of irritation run through him as he looked at the second buff, having not even realized he had it after making ten of the molds. He looked to Marge at the description, though his next question was not to her. “Is it possible to gift a buff to someone, Proton?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Not that I’m aware of, Master. But you’ve been able to do much that I’m not aware of,” the butler responded, Marge looking confused at Roge’s stare. “You already have a rudimentary bond with her. Maybe focus your next skill in [Draconic Doppelganger] towards it?”

  “The next skill is going to be used to try and free Alton,” Roge responded, the while minotaur letting out a huff next to him. “And I can already share one buff through the protection of the world tree effect. Is there any way to edit the wording of the effect?”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Marge asked, a small frown on her face.

  The two kobolds ignored her as they continued talking, too invested in the line of thought. “There… may be a way, Master. While I have never heard of such a thing, you might be able to make a sub-ability for [Draconic Magic], similar to [Hoarding Bonds].”

  “… I’ll try and do that later,” Roge grumbled, though he did finally acknowledge the fuming deer woman. “It’ll be a surprise for later, if I can get it working. First, though, I wanted to run an idea past all of you.”

  ~~~

  After communicating his thoughts to the group, Proton gave Roge the go-ahead to try out his idea, though everyone besides Alton stayed far away in case things went wrong. Roge’s idea was very simple, as when he looked over his inventory, he finally noticed that some of the bottles weren’t stacking. The ones he’d used to make bombs had degraded in durability, some of them even being on their last legs. It made sense, as the description of the items *said* it weakened the glass. So Roge wanted to try out an experiment with making his own bottles, having gotten the idea from the arrow-making process.

  ‘Just hope it still falls under a potion…’ Roge thought to himself, bringing out two of his bound bottles to start shaping them. The first bottle he left mostly alone, wanting that to be the inside mold for his idea. He did flatten the neck a bit so he could seal it off, not wanting the potion to go inside, but *around* it. Next, out came some of his staple blueoak branches, the dragon using two of them to shape around the bottle as he tried to keep it to the same thickness as the glass itself. Wood was a lot easier to shape for him and the process moved even smoother than before, not being surprised at the notifications he received once he had the bottle shaped object.

  The process of coating the bottle only took up one of the branches, and so he used the other branch to elongate the wooden neck, knowing that the solidification process took a bit to finish, and so there’d be extra liquid during it. He had some wood left over, which he fashioned into a cork for the final product, moving on to the last two glass bottles, Roge pulling out another as he realized he needed more glass.

  Before proceeding, however, Roge paused as he looked at the plain wooden ‘bottle’, knowing that the smooth surface looked nice, but he could do better designing it. After thinking on it for just a moment, he decided to add a symbol to the one side, replicating the one he used all the time online. It was the power button symbol that most computers had, a circle with an opening on top and a line going through the gap. Not satisfied with just that, he then worked meticulously around the edges of the wood, marring the smooth surface with a scale pattern. Not only would it make the finished product look nicer, be he could feel that it would allow better grip on it as well.

  He finally moved on to adding the glass on the outside, making the glass mold over the wood to capture every detail, the dragon feeling very glad that his liquefying effect translated to his bottles to make the process easier. ‘Wonder if I can make *myself* liquid,’ he mused, shaking off the thought as he did the final step. The wood instantly disappeared back into his inventory, leaving a glass bottle mold in its place. Thankfully, he’d thought to adhere the two bottles together at the top of the first bottle’s neck, chuckling at the image of it wobbling around inside if he hadn’t.

  This was the part of the process where he asked Marge for one of the ice bombs back, taking the potion and some sap from his ash tree, and combining the two together in the mold. He knew he couldn’t go wrong in this part of the step, Roge sitting there as he watched the corked mold percolate. He couldn’t look away from it as he watched the entire process, the dragon still worried that something could go wrong. Nothing did, however, Roge pulling just the mold into his hoard as he looked at the finished product.

  What he was left with was a solidified potion that was in the shape of a bottle, the ice blue potion making the scale pattern stand out. With a quick flick of his mind, he made the power button symbol a darker blue, the exact color of his scales. ‘Now for the main test…’ He pulled out his cauldron and materials and began work on making another batch of ice potions, getting into the zone as the petals and water finished cooking. Putting the lapis dust into the solidified potion bottle, he cringed as he added the mixture to the bottle, corking it immediately with a blueoak cork and looking at the mixture in trepidation. He thought he was fine for just a moment, before the bottle shook in his claw and exploded.

  ~~~

  “That could have gone better…” Roge grumbled, glancing at his cauldron and seeing that, besides having a layer of ice on the edges, it seemed to be unharmed like himself.

  “And that’s why you do experiments with elements you’re immune to,” Proton stated, folding his small arms and giving Roge a glare. “And to think you wanted to start out with the fire bomb.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah…” Roge grunted, thinking everything over in his head. “I’m guessing the reaction reacted with the bottle?” He guessed that that might happen, none of the group members having known much about alchemy to confirm his guesses. “And I can’t make it out of wood, as that would degrade too fast…”

  “Why not add [Warding] to it?” Marge asked, sighing as Roge gave her a questioning look. “[Warding] is designed to resist magical effects, at least in armor. So if you put it on the bottle, it should resist the reaction, right?”

  “It’s a good idea,” Proton grumbled, looking over the misting ice spread over the grass. “Try adding it to the potion first before solidifying.”

  Roge did just that, adding one of the [Warding] coins to another bottle of the potion. To his surprise, the bottle started shaking and boiling when he did so, blue flames appearing around the item before it settled.

  “Oh…” Roge muttered, immediately pulling out his recipe book and looking over the new recipe that had just unlocked. Like he expected, it used quite a lot of petals and wood pulp to make, as it was a tier one potion, but Roge couldn’t contain his excitement. “I can make elemental resistance potions?!”

  “Oh… yeah. They’re usually really expensive…” Marge muttered, her eyes laser focused on the bottle. “I assume it takes a lot of materials?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Proton interjected, the butler looking at his claws as he buffed them on his jacket. “There’s a reason I want you to upgrade your plants. Once the petals have five ranks of the ability, you can use five times less of them for the potions. As long as the numbers add up the same, rank wise.”

  Roge and Marge looked shocked at that, as that would quintuple the dragon’s potion output. “Oh…” he muttered, feeling like an idiot for not having done it sooner. “Thank you Proton.”

  “Happy to help, Master,” the kobold purred, waving to the potion setup with a claw. “Now shall we try again?”

  ~~~

  As Roge tried the experiment again, he knew it was going to work better, the final product soon sitting in his claws as he grinned at what he saw.

  “Excellent, Master,” Proton praised, the kobold looking with avarice at the bottle.

  “It certainly looks pretty. And packs more of a punch,” Marge commented, grabbing the potion and feeling it in her paws. “Better to grip too. I’m shocked that you doubled the extra damage. The normal ones only say plus nine.”

  “I’m surprised by that too. Can I have the other ice bombs?” Roge asked, the deer woman quickly handing all of them over. “It’s going to take twice as many ingredients, but it should be too bad. Especially now that I can automate it in my hoard.” He placed everything back into his extra-dimensional spaces, setting up the process to make seven more of the enhanced potions and one final bottle.

  “Can you upgrade all of them, actually?” Marge requested, Roge grunting as he juggled the hand-over of all of the tier zero bottles. “We’ll leave the up-grading for the better ones at some other point. I’d rather have some on hand just in case.”

  Roge nodded as he set the process to start working, sighing as he realized that he’d need to make more molds to make the process go faster. He had more thoughts on the new potion bottles, thankful that his skills seemed to think of the bottles themselves as part of the process of making the bombs. ‘What would it do to the buff and healing potions…’ he mused, unsure if that would even work. ‘What would be a resistance to health? Decay?’ He was pulled out of his thoughts by Hops and Sean coming out of the inn, the dragon smiling as he sensed when the lion had entered the yard.

  The new bond between them felt both comfortable and unsettling, Roge’s awareness of Sean dwarfing that of the other two. He’d thought about trying to get better bonds with them as well, but he didn’t want to push it. He needed to get used to the stronger bond and get more effects for it, as at that moment, it didn’t seem to do much. He hoped he could turn it into a perpetual buff sharing, like he’d said earlier. It’d make almost everything easier, especially when he had his enhanced buffs the next day.

  The elf and lion chattered excitedly about a restaurant they’d found, Roge’s ears perking up at the word ‘smoothie’. He’d loved getting smoothies after a hard day of work, and excitedly joined them as the group headed off.