As the merge began, Merrick couldn’t shake the sudden intense feeling that something was watching him. He realized the feeling had started when he’d been battling the bramblekin and had slowly ramped up in intensity. After a second thought, however, he figured it was probably just the adrenaline of the battle followed by his sudden feeling of vulnerability showing off his innate skill for the first time in a long time.

  Gods be willing, it would be the first time he showed someone how it worked. Or even that it worked. After five years of failure, he’d finally be able to prove his worth.

  He, unfortunately, didn’t realize how greatly his alchemical concoctions had actually been perceived by his peers and those who came in contact with him. In Merrick’s eyes, they were nothing more than recycled failures that barely kept him afloat and his lack of self confidence had prevented him from ever trying to make an actual living as an alchemist. That, and his pride. Had he been able to accept his failure of an innate skill, he could have paid off his loans in all likelihood.

  He cut off the train of thought, and focused wholeheartedly on the merge happening in front of his very eyes. Happily, he realized that it was taking much less effort than he usually needed to apply to get the goodberries to merge. Usually, he’d had to force his merge ingredients together to force a combination, but this felt much more like the coins had. Almost as if they wanted to be combined, though there was still a slight resistance he’d not felt with the coins.

  [Merge Successful. One Tier 2 Goodberry Merged]

  [SML: ::88%, GRW Mod: 7%, GTR Mod: 0%, RFN Mod: 0%, CFT Mod: 0%]

  [Total 88.7% Potential. No Excess Detected. No Personal Blessings Detected. Variant Change +/- %.5. Standard Output]

  In Merrick’s outstretched hand, a berry not unlike the cluster of goodberries he’d just combined appeared. It looked much like a goodberry, eight segments combined into a round berry with a green stem. Instead of being a couple fingers thick, however, the berry was the size of Merrick’s palm. It was also a deep orange color rather than the previous dark yellow.

  “What in the hells!” James wanted nothing more than to mock Merrick and call him a liar. He’d know the man to be an un-blessed alchemist with cheap goods and was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that not only did Merrick have an innate skill, but it was obvious of a higher caliber than his own.

  “May I see that, Merrick?” Mary’s voice was absent the flirtatious spin she’d been putting on it when speaking to Merrick so far that trip. She didn’t sound angry, however, just extremely serious. Merrick, lacking a reason to deny her, passed the berry to her. He watched as she closed her eyes and channeled some variety of identification spell through her hands, glowing softly green.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” Mary asked Merrick after finishing her spell.

  “Uh, I [[Merged]] a second tier goodberry?” He tested.

  "Wouldn't that just be a Betterberry? No, wait, a Good-er berry!" Rod jested before getting pinched by Mary.

  “You’ve created a plant like that is, as far as our Stronghold knows, unique. I mean that, Merrick. This has never been seen before, my father paid for the church to allow me access to all their plant identification jades after I unlocked my skill. I’ve got every variety of plant, tree, seed, and fruit that they’ve got logged stored within my head and my skill. It is pulling up nothing but a partial match to goodberries. A berry unique to the Mullberry Dungeon of the Steelhearth Stronghold.

  “Not only that, it’s reading that every similarity it shares with goodberries has been concentrated and intensified and there are unknown medical properties as well. This one berry is almost certainly worth more than fifty goodberries.” Mary began to look a little manic. Merrick could identify the look in her eyes as he’d seen it many times in his mirror.

  “I think you’ll find it’s only worth three goodberries,” James harrumphed.

  “Not if you know what's good for you and keep your mouth shut,” Rod towered over the blonde man, seeming unafraid of his hand on the hilt of his sword. ”The only reason Merrick showed us his innate is because you wouldn’t stop crying like a little bitch, about loot you weren’t even entitled to. If you go running your mouth about how his skill works just to drive down the price of his products, I swear that is all that holy you’ll find out why you can’t find a single bounty hunter that has ever declared themselves number one.”

  “You think I’m afraid of you, wildling?” James’ pride wouldn’t allow him to back down, even as his hand started shaking on the hilt of his sword. He was well aware that people went missing in the dungeon all of the time but was confident that Rod wouldn’t do anything to him.

  “Could you two relax? I haven’t even figured out how my power works yet, this was probably just a lucky fluke.” One thing that Merrick had never disclosed to anyone was the existence of his Skill Log. He hadn’t heard of any other Innate Ability giving its user numerical feedback and therefore had not wanted to make himself more of an oddity. That was before his first success and the presence of percentage based feedback and a Skill Log upgrade had not changed his stance on talking about it.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Rod?” Mary asked. Before even vocalizing her request, Rod was already handing his second goodberry to her to give her a total of three. She then passed the three berries, as well as the Tier 2 version that Merrick had merged, back to Merrick. “Could you please try to make another for Rod and I? I know you said it might not work all of the time but I think we’d rather gamble on that than take these three and sell them for coin.”

  “I can give it a try, gladly. I’m still collecting information on how this might work though and my running theory is that the items I’m merging might have to be identical clones of each other.” Merrick took the three from her and observed them. All three wildly varied in shape and weight, though they were ripe and would therefore still demand the same price.

  Unfortunately, after channeling his [Merge] ability, the three berries failed to combine with each other. His message, however, was far more verbose than previously.

  [Catastrophic Failure … 20g Corporis Dust, 10g Anima Dust, 10g Futex Dust Returned]

  [SML: ::42%, GRW Mod: 7%, GTR Mod: 0%, RFN Mod: 0%, CFT Mod: 0%]

  [Total 42.7% Potential. Extreme Deficit. No Personal Blessings Detected. Variant Change +/- N/A. Failure.]

  The berries faded away into dust before the party’s eyes and Merrick sighed to himself. After so many years he’d thought he’d become immune to the disappointment of a failed experiment but it appeared that he had subconsciously convinced himself that that was over.

  “Ha! Ha ha. Now nobody’s got any loot outside of a few paltry coppers. If you’re excuse me, I’ve got fletching materials to gather. I’ll find my own way back.” James finally decided to split from the party. The schadenfreude on his face was evident for everyone to see and his laugh cut Merrick deeply, though he tried not to let it show on his face.

  “It’s okay Merrick, like Mary said we knew it was a gamble. Only a fool expects success from every gamble. Besides, what the idiot didn’t realize before walking away is that your skill is still a goldmine. At least, before the scholars catch on.” Rod had a very mischievous smirk on his face.

  “You can’t mean-” Mary didn’t even finish her statement as she realized that Merrick had already likely come to the same conclusion as Rod. Why else would he have brought that bronze coin of his into the dungeon.

  “Yep, we pick up a bunch of dungeon unique stuff and try to brute force some successes. If what you said about your identification skill is correct, we’ll rake in a ton of gold in finder’s fees before they catch on and change their policy. We can just tell them we stumbled into a new area of the dungeon after James split from us.” Rod let out a huge belly laugh. Although he didn’t have a large need for coin with his lifestyle, quality leatherworks and arts still cost money so he wouldn't turn down a get rich quick scheme.

  “I can tentatively agree to your scheme, as long as we don’t do anything with that coin. Honestly, you should chuck the cursed thing in case James tries to rat you out. Counterfeiting, even with skills, is still extremely illegal and can occasionally get you a death sentence like being shipped off to the frontier. We’re not turning that in.” Mary exclaimed, missing the cringe that quickly swept its way through Merrick’s face at the mention of her idea of a ‘death sentence’.

  “Sure thing. We should probably split up, stay on the same floor though. I’ll avoid all of the spots you two identified hostile floranids. There are still plenty of mundane and slightly magical herbs to collect here.” Merrick let out a sigh of relief after his friends declared they wouldn’t hold his failure against him. Better yet, they were volunteering to collect samples for him!

  Being mindful of the time and knowing he had to leave soon if he were going to catch the caravan as soon as it portaled out, Merrick decided he would only spend an hour collecting things before heading out so he could still catch some sleep before the morning.

  Roughly thirty minutes into collecting samples, however, he heard swift footsteps approaching him while he was slowly peeling a lair of moss off a particularly round stone.

  “Hells, there you are!” James’ voice caused Merrick to jump backwards and swiftly pull out his sword. He couldn’t think of a single reason that James would separate from the group just to try and find Merrick alone.

  “Fuck! Relax!” James shouted as he scrambled backwards. Crashing out of the brush behind him was Mary and Rod, which caused Merrick to lower his guard.

  “What’s going on?” Merrick asked, internally feeling his anxiety rising from the looks on their faces.

  “Tell him what you told us, James.” Mary said with a scowl on her race. Rod put his arm on her shoulder and squeezed lightly.

  “Our path out is blocked.” the blonde knight-to-be declared.

  “Another cave in?” Merrick asked quizzically.

  “No. A threshold boss. The fucking Poison Plantaconda.” James said with a deadpan look on his face.

  A quick look back and forth between James and the actually trustworthy members of his party told him that James wasn’t telling some cruel joke. Somehow, one of the bosses that is meant to guard the threshold between the first strata of the dungeon and the second had climbed at least five floors and tunnels just to slither through the cave they were in and block their exit.

  A boss, if Merrick was remembering correctly, that required extensive preparation in terms of gear and antipoisons as well as a group of at least 5 individuals at level 10 or higher with a high level of party synergy.

  Merrick had exactly one anti-rash ointment in his bandolier, no class, and was level two by merit of expanding his skills alone. Unless he missed his guess, his party members weren’t even level 10 yet, speaking nothing of their ability to do combat together.

  “Fuck.”