“Now that that is out of the way,” Proton ground out, Roge nodding the kobold to continue. “I suggest getting a fire-aligned Form from [Inspect]. It will allow you to handle fire and heat-based environments a lot easier. At the very least, it will make it so you don’t melt in the spring and summer.”

  “Maybe we could find a kobold?” Roge asked, thinking a few things over. “I plan on making kobolds be my ‘normal’ form, as people seem to accept them better.”

  “…You don’t need to do that if you don’t want to, Roge,” Marge stated gently.

  Roge responded with a small smile, saying, “It’s alright. I like the kobold form better anyway. If I need height, I can just shift back, or grab a taller form if need be. Grabbing feral forms with my hoard ability might even work better.”

  “That is another thing I wanted to mention,” Proton interjected, Roge seeing the code of the system sprawled out in front of the butler. “I think you should be able to hoard the forms you get from your [Farm Hoard] effect. It may not seem like much, but increasing your [Analogue Hoard] with physical forms will infer the coming upgrade to either the ability or skill. That way, the skill will incentivise copying physical forms rather than stealing them.

  “It will also allow you to use the species benefits, like I mentioned before. That’s the advantage of using physical forms with your hoard skill. It’s main benefit is to buff you with their memories, abilities and skills, and species benefits. Since you are not able to use the mental aspect, and you seem to be hesitant to steal others’ skills and abilities, using the physical aspect will be the main benefit.”

  “So… With the [Inspect] effect, will I be copying someone’s form exactly, like I’m doing with the [Wild Forms] effect?”

  “From what I can see, no. You will be making a unique Form that uses your physical characteristics as a base.” Proton tapped his chin at everyone’s confused look. “It will look as if you were born to that species.”

  “Okay…” Roge said, feeling a bit hesitant as he focused on his two forms. Putting them into his [Analogue Hoard] was pretty simple, the skill already wanting to share them with his [Farm Hoard]. Immediately, he could feel something about his current body changing, looking down and seeing his scales turning the same golden color as Proton’s.

  Roge frowned as he looked at his [Status] again, not seeing the [Metal Magic] anywhere on the sheet, nor the [Subservience] ability. “So… do I only get the resistances?” Roge asked.

  “For now,” Proton confirmed, looking over more of the code for his skill. “The [Analogue Hoard] skill doesn’t show it in the description, but it might update that at some point. For now, you get the resistances from a physical Form, though at rank five, you should get all of the scale ability.”

  Roge experimented a bit, using his colored flower buffs to change his scale color back to sapphire and emerald, looking to his sheet and seeing the golden scales still being on his descriptor. “That’s nice. I assume these new colors will stick, even if I swap forms?”

  “Precisely.” Proton checked one thing off in a book be pulled out, looking over what looked to be a list before tapping on one of them. “Next, we need to work on your [Draconic Breath] ability. You’ve only really been using it as a source of water, when it can be so much more.”

  “Like… what?” Roge asked, looking at the ability, unimpressed.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Use your [Storm Magic] to make lighting breath? Ice breath using [Ice Magic]? Or changing the effect with one of your buffs? You have a viable attack that doesn’t rely on your items, and you really haven’t used it when you fight.” Roge froze as he listened to Proton’s words, feeling excitement brewing inside of himself. “Besides, if you get it to rank five, it might even allow you to do more. Practicing with it in various ways will unlock more options for you.”

  “Wow… he’s really going hard,” Hops commented, grinning at Roge’s glare. “It was bound to happen. I’m just glad Proton is here to make sure nothing in your [Status] gets left behind. It tends to happen to everyone at some point, though definitely earlier for you than most.”

  “We could go to one of the training halls to see what you get,” Marge suggested, giving Roge a pat on the head. “I’m excited to see you have options other than your tools.”

  ~~~

  The ice and storm variants were easy to get, Roge simply choosing to funnel the different magics into the ability, similar to how he unlocked the [Nature Breath] to begin with.

  The flow of magic seemed to be effected by his intelligence attribute, Roge calculating that with his fifty intelligence, he had a flow of fifty mana per minute. The effect started out with building the mana inside his lungs, before bursting out of his mouth at his command. The ice mana came out in more of a beam, similar to his glow buff, freezing anything in its path. His storm mana, though, acted just like his [Fog Breath], billowing out of his mouth to make a mini lightning cloud. Roge could already see some useful applications of the sub-abilities, even using one of them by making a beam of electricity with his glow buff.

  “That’s enough for now, we’ll unlock more later,” Proton cautioned, his gaze still focused on Roge’s sheet. Roge grunted as he looked it over as well, noticing the notifications he’d minimized during the training.

  “Finally!” Roge cheered, slumping his kobold body onto the ground. “I don’t need the damned bottles for crafting anymore.”

  “Certainly useful, Master,” Proton replied, tapping his muzzle as he looked more of the status over.

  “Now that that’s done, can Roge make my bow better?” Marge asked, grinning down at the dragon kobold.

  “I… think I can get it up to nine in each?” Roge muttered, looking at his inventory and wincing at what he saw. “It’s going to cut into the same materials I use for your arrows, though.”

  “That’s fine,” Marge waved off, the deer woman pulling back out her bow. “It’s a one-time increase, so it should be fine.”

  Roge grabbed the offered bow, looking back over its description and pulling out the materials he thought he’d need. To get the rank one version of each of the abilities, he’d need one samara and one [Wind Magic] coin, pulling out one of each to see if he could increase the effect without using his hoard ability. Pulling the coin out of one of the samaras, though, seemed to push him over a threshold, his [Screen Hoard] skill going up a rank. ‘Going to need to try to increase the [Storm Body] skill soon,” Roge mused, knowing that he needed to get it up to rank five to increase his level in [Draconic Sorcerer]. Once he? had both items, he tried to focus on increasing the ability of the bow, frowning when the process didn’t work.

  “I… don’t seem to be able to upgrade it like that,” Roge muttered, wincing as he realized he would need to make sixteen bows to fully upgrade both abilities to nine using his hoard. “Maybe I can get the next tier of them? That way I can just apply that upgrade…?”

  “It was nice of you to try,” Marge sighed, taking the offered bow back.

  “I mean… I can try and see if I can get other bow abilities to make you some more. Besides [Accuracy] and [Thrust], what else is there that you could add to it?”

  “I’m… not sure. We’d have to ask Hops to get books regarding bow enchantments. I know he’s already trying to get sword enchantments, so it shouldn’t be too much of an ask.”

  “Why does he have so many books?” Roge asked, thinking over the elf’s love of knowledge. “Does he have a librarian class or something?”

  “Something like that. It’s a class based around knowledge that lets him store more books in his inventory. Don’t know much beyond that,” Marge commented, pulling up her own inventory and glancing over everything. “Speaking of inventory, can you make me some mundane arrows? The magic arrows are nice, but I want a stockpile of ones that don’t have an elemental punch to them.”

  “You got it,” Roge said, looking through his inventory and choosing some blueoak branches and leaves to use. “I could even make some out of ironwood if you need heavier arrows.”

  “That’d be nice.” The two of them headed off back to the tavern, Roge wanting to eat some before he started on a crafting session.

  ~~~

  Proton trailed behind the two as they sat back down at their table, Roge’s meal coming out a moment later. The butler looked over the list of things he wanted to improve with the dragon’s loadout, deciding that he’d wait a few days for the upgrades. ‘Want the current ones to settle before he binds more coins. Hopefully tomorrow he can get the drake’s form from its corpse.’ He snapped the book shut and headed over to the receptionist’s desk, accessing Roge’s inventory to bring out five silver coins that he placed on the counter.

  “I’d like to post a quest,” the butler intoned, the receptionist handling the task for him quickly. Roge wanted a fire-aligned kobold form after all, and even though they’d need to get through the current situation before the quest could be fulfilled, Proton was nothing if not proactive.

  ~~~

  Crafting with his nature skill made things even easier for Roge, the dragon sighing when he crafted his first arrow after only a minute of concentrating. He was glad for the ease of the task, but he slumped forward when he looked at the arrow’s description.

  He’d used a blueoak branch and leaf for the crafting, having not expected the abilities of the materials to effect the final product. He felt a bit of an uptick in his [Magic Tool Creation] at that, leading him to think it was a normal part of crafting the arrows. Marge, though, looked delighted, giving Roge a large smile as she held the arrow.

  “This is actually perfect!” she cried out, looking a bit too excited at the arrow. “The arrow and bow enchantments don’t stack, but that means you can upgrade my bow with this!” She was right, of course, Roge making three more arrows to get the right amount of ranks. He then harvested them and put them into her bow, grumbling as he started work on making other arrows for her to use. He concentrated on not including any magic in the next blueoak arrow he made, sighing when the process actually worked. He then set out to make a total of twenty blueoak arrows, breathing in slowly as his focus narrowed. Once he had a large amount for her to use, Roge then went to his other wood types, wondering how that would effect what abilities the arrows would gain.

  Marge, of course, wanted twenty of each, though Roge warned her that he was not upgrading them. “I’ll upgrade your bow for more effects, but any effects the non-potion arrows get are staying as they are.

  “That’s… fair,” Marge grumbled, Roge not exactly liking her pouting face. “At the very least, can I have the higher ranked potion arrows only? The tier zero ones are nice, but they pack a similar punch…”

  “But they’re easier to make right now,” Roge countered, looking at his hoard and noticing that he didn’t have anything queued up. “Speaking of, I’m going to make ten of each of the rank one elemental kind. While the rank nine ones are nice, it takes up a lot of materials. So we’ll stick to normal crafted ones and rank one elemental ones for now, because I can just set that off to craft in the background.”

  “Fair.”

  “Don’t sound too glum,” Roge chuckled, looking through his hoards with a smile, though he immediately frowned as soon as he noticed that he didn’t have enough samaras to complete the crafting that day. He queued up five arrows each, leaving himself with five potions he could turn into arrows the next day. “Once I get higher ranked plants, it should be *way* easier to make the tier one arrows.

  “Speaking of, how’s the [Cervid Magic] treating you?” Roge asked, frowning at Marge’s complicated expression. “What’s wrong?”