Mike laid in the back of the Chevy, staring into the evening sky he was trying to figure out what to do when he runs out of fuel. He'd tried using a lighter back on Earth, incandescent flames were just pitiful and didn't burn hot enough. If he wanted to dab after he runs out of fuel he had a few choices that came to mind.
Mike considered having a dab rig made, but nails and bubble domes were about as analog as it could get. Mike never liked handling nails, by the end of his personal experiences he had given away his E nail, Rig and even a lot of his old glassware. Dropping a Nectar collector was a horrible experience, Mike always got sentimentally attached to pipes.
One day he had an incident and was left with no choice but to go with a silicone nectar collector. Never again was he plagued with broken glass and it wouldn't need replacing.
"That's what I need, a permanent solution."
Mike rushed to his glove-box and grabbed the pen. He noticed the spell for deconstruction was a method of separation, the chemical bonds of the resin heads and essential oils from inside the pedals would automatically turn to a gel like state.
If he could get hold of oil, crude oil, he could separate the oils into gases a lot faster. That would make pump gas, and even Jet Fuel.
'If I had jet fuel, that would make....' The moment he started thinking about it he rejected it, he's still have a problem getting his pipe heated.
'Heated'
Mike had another thought that made even more sense than others... It was time he went back to the books and read some more about magic. he was the state alchemist of the Kingdom. They had already spent a lot getting the lab ready, Once the first plant was harvested and processed Mike would leave it up for production. It would use a whole plant to do so, but he was sure that if they pollinated an entire plant that the amount of seeds he would harvest would be enormous.
It was approaching time for the first harvest. Mike was really looking forward to it, the buds had grown to the size of soda cans on the lower branches. The cattails at the top were easily a few ounces each. The crown of the plant by the Magistrate Office, was the Main Cola that stood almost 20 inches tall and almost as thick as an arm.
Mike had harvested large plants before, but they usually required supports and frequent bug control. The environment in the City was ideal for growing, it was almost pest free.
While Mike was loafing about near the magistrate he took the liberty and snagged the entire shelf of the magic books. He left a note where to find them if anyone complained that said he would return them when he was done looking them over.
The entire wall of his office had a filing system and one by one Mike went through the books. He wanted to find a spell for either ignition, electrical spark, or even one to simply heat things up. After a while Mike came across a book on fire magic. It allowed someone to spend their energy and use the air around us to change the temperature at the end of their fingertips.
It wasn't fire magic per se, but it was a way that could work for him if all else failed. Mike sank into the book and read the passages over and over trying to commit them to memory. The images of how to express temperature change through his fingers was manifesting into his mind when a knock came on the table next to him.
The Girls had noticed that Mike was busy all the time, he had been working non-stop for the past 9 weeks or so. It was giving them a headache, the girls ended up making sweets and instead of butter they added the extract. The ratios were way off and the pungent smell of hot cannabis oil was all over the crispy looking cookies.
Mike had given them a basic recipe for cookies, sugar apparently existed in great supply in the new world as well. Biting into the cookie he could see all five of their tails wagging intently. They all seemed to really enjoy the smell of the extract, it brought them all to a calm point.
Mike wanted to wrench his face but did his best to hide his expression.
Not knowing whether he should offer them a treat or scold them, Mike just gave up and asked if they had fun cooking.
The girls quickly ran up to Mike for some attention, the whole two months they had listened attentively to what he had said when they first met. All five of them had been trading books with each other until they all read them. In total, they had read more than Mike on the subject of alchemy many times over and it really started to reflect in their attitudes. If only it had manifested into their cooking abilities as well. The girls idea of cooking at times was almost always meat... with more meat.
Mike wasn't finding it easy to memorize the recipes in the alchemy manuals, he was however enjoying the hell out of working through the magic section of the Palace. It was a privilege he didn't want to lose. The commoners would probably lose their minds if they knew the access he was provided shortly after his arrival. In the books, he found a few more gems that really sparked his interest.
Convergence Magic and Centrifugal force.
The Prince was interested in a long burning oil for ground wars. If the army soaked fields with it, it would be a devastating siege tactic. Mike had talked the basics over with Prince Troeg, soon after the Prince gave the go-ahead to try to draw an oil well near a sandy area surrounded by flaky rocks.
Mike wanted to send out drilling teams to look for oil. However, the blacksmiths would take some time to create anything like a hollow pipe for drilling or even an auger. He wasn't expecting immediate results but he thought that he had a source for gas in the future if things panned out.
... ... ...
It was harvest time and plants were so ripe that the resin heads were close to amber.
Mike called the girls out from their studies and closed his own book. Mike had been preparing for the past week to cut the plant down, but waited until just the right moment. The stalk of the plant was 5 inches thick.
Mike grabbed a Machete.
He had the girls cast a clean sheet across the ground to keep it from falling onto dirt and started to chop at the stem.
He was really enjoying the feeling of having to use the machete in his hands to chop down the plant. It was normal to cut the plant into smaller pieces with tiny nubs to use like clothes hangers, but he was going to extract the plant right then and there.
As the State/Royal Alchemist, he had a bit more leeway and was able to get things done faster at shops by simply throwing either money or his title around. Mike came prepared.
With a few strikes he had cut the stem of the plant. Mike didn't want to jostle the plant heavily, so he made clean light strikes. When the plant was freed he had the girls hoist it up in the lab. They had it hung from the ceiling. The Plant was rather tall, it nearly touched the floor.
Mike started expressing a cold attribute at his fingertips and soon a layer of frost came across his hands. He could feel the surrounding temperature in the room dropping considerably. The girls were all enjoying it greatly, It felt like outside, inside... until it didn't. The temperature started to drop faster.
"Boss, its getting cold." Mona heard the pleas of the others and seconded the notion.
"Mike, what's the temperature you need the flowers to be at?"
Mona was shivering.
"I'd like it to get to crystallize, that will help retain flavor, I think." Mike felt his fingers go numb, It wasn't a problem until just then.
Mona was very intelligent, she knew there needed to be a reason. Frozen was frozen.. but.. crystalize meant rapid freezing.
"I think this is it." Mike reached out and touched the tree.
With a clear and visible trail, the plant was eugenically frozen. It took only an instant after he had achieved the right temperature. Mike heaved a sigh of relief and grabbed a Mirror.
Placing the mirror under the tree, he gave it a light flick like a tiny bell. The whole plant shook from the minor vibration and tiny particles and resin heads landed on the mirror. Mike put the mirror away into the storage ring and grabbed a very large piece of glass that was shaped into a funnel. The funnel led to a bucket. They didn't have anything else, and the glass would at least be clean.
Mike had the girls all focus on the deconstruction magic, the separation magic and working together. Casting the separation magic by himself turned out pretty easy, and slowly all the resin heads were beginning to move slightly. The flow created a collective effect that followed as he was milking the flowers for oil. The end result made Mike extremely happy.
Mike took out a honeycomb he had a carpenter make and dipped it directly into the batch. They had taken a 4 square meter plant and turned it into nearly 4 gallons of extract. There was still another, larger plant. Mike dipped his finger in the drizzling cannabinoids and brushed his teeth with it. The taste was a bit peppery, Mike could feel his teeth sticking as he chewed on the paste and used his tongue to play with it.
"My friends back home would lose their minds at this." Mike was happy with the turnout, but Ultimately it barely used any of the equipment that was brought up for the lab.
Back in Texas, it was easy to process but here in this world things were a little bit easier.
Mike had other projects on his mind, so it was understandable that all the materials and gathered items didn't all get used during the harvest. What happened next would be the earmark for success, or failure. Mike had to drop the idea of using petrol products as a solvent for the cannabis oils and resin heads.
If he was in a new world, he needed to think outside of 'every box' he's ever opened.
It was time to go check on the plant by the Magistrate. Mike had left the duties to care for the plant with Prince Troeg. Although the prince wasn't interested in doing the work himself, he was rather fascinated in the gardening methods that Mike had presented. The methods were, if nothing else, unorthodox.
Prince Troeg needed an understanding of the plant that the Elders were so interested in. The Prince could never be sloppy.
Upon arrival Mike and the girls could smell the stickiness of the plant. Its beautiful aroma, became thick and inescapable. It was much larger than the ones that shared a pot. It was larger in part because it had spent so much time by itself and without competition. The plant grew just like a Christmas Tree pine, at nearly five meters it was the tallest plant Mike had ever seen in person. He had grown a few plants that were 15 feet tall... but they were incredibly frail. The towering plant before them was anything but dainty.
'I think we're going to need a bigger room.' Mike was staring at the plant when it occurred to him that it was much, much larger.
"We have to do it here." There wasn't much choice, Mike couldn't hoist that plant up inside the Lab, the ceiling was just too low.
Even if they stored it in the spacial ring and then opened the roof there would be no place to hang it from. Mike didn't have a levitate spell, when he hung the other plant from the ceiling in the lab he had an apparatus that held it in place.
Mike looked at the magistrate office and then at the plant, then back at the magistrates office again.
They were roughly the same size.
"Get a pole and some rope." Mike waited till they returned and tied one end of the stick to the rope and another to the plant to bind them pretty tight.
Using the excess rope, he sured-up the joint between them a bit more. It was knobby, and very low tech.
After Mike was sure he had attached it the way he wanted, he had the girls hold the upper half steady a bit while he hacked at the trunk below the rope.
When it was freed from the stump, Mike quickly put it into storage and made his way to the roof with a bunch of guards who were conveniently watching him work.
"Welcome to vollentold. I need you to stand here at the edge of the building and grab onto the pole. The pole needs to stay up in the air like so" gesturing to show a high angle, Mike instructed them how to hold it.
Mike was prepared to do work, but he felt ridiculous doing this to some degree. Pulling the plant from storage near the edge of the roof-line, it was in the same orientation as before and was about to fall. Mike immediately handed to pole to the guards and all ten of them held tightly. The plant gently swayed in the wind for a moment before it spun around and came to a hanging rest.
Going downstairs was a lot easier than going up, Mike made it to the base of the building and saw the giant Cannabis pinata dangling off the side of the building.
Mike pulled out another deep glass jar container and placed it on the ground. He went through the same process. He cryogenically froze the tree over the course of the next minute, locking in all of its potential. Then, he pulled out a mirror from his storage; flicked the plant just like before and stored it afterward.
Rissa was curious about what he was doing with mirrors, he collected something that came off the plant and quickly put it away once the resonating vibration stopped.
It was hard for the guards to keep the plant upright and not banging against the buildings. They would have to be better prepared for the next time they would have to assist.
Rissa thought about the mirror again and guessed that it must be the good stuff. She wasn't wrong, its value was high. The product that fell onto the mirrors prior to putting them away was almost unnoticeable in comparison. The whole scene with the mirrors seemed a bit too much to be Medicinal dregs.
Medicinal Dregs were usually unusable, and not worth saving, storing or retaining in any way. they were also an incredibly common occurrence in the alchemical practices.
Mike had gone above and beyond what he expected with the deconstruction of the plant, another long stream of golden ooze poured into one long barrel like glass container after another. In all they had filled up four large glass Jars. When Mike did the math in his head from a single plant, none of it added up.
Mike had planted the seed, poured his drink on it and left it alone. It only got water in the morning, so what happened. 'The plant was 5 meters tall!'
Prince Troeg was in charge of keeping the plant safe, but the Prince didn't have to do anything to the plant itself.. he didn't even have to water it.
Mike didn't have a scale, he wasn't even sure one had been invented in the world. The volume he had harvested from a single plant was unprecedented, he simply couldn't believe his eyes.
"Mike taste this one" Jodi came up with a spoon and tried to feed it to Mike.
He almost acted on instinct to pull away but the girls had really warmed up to him and kept trying to get on his good side. He needed to reciprocate.
Chewing on the paste in his mouth he was unable to speak for a moment. She had just fed him a heroic dose of dabs, but he couldn't complain. He wanted to go to bed already, the energy he used to extract was most of what he had available.
'I can't believe I just ate a huge lump of extract, what was she thinking.. a spoonful?' Mike gagged a bit as the big ass lump made its way down.
"Come on, lets deliver this to Prince Troeg before I pass out." Mike was already having problems focusing on what was in front of him, he had over exerted himself a bit but it wasn't anything serious.
The girls were concerned with Mike's condition so Mona ran off to deliver three of the four containers to Prince Troeg. He didn't need all of it, so she felt justified to save some for themselves.
"Lets get him to bed." Jodi and Cara snickered and sat down with Mike as they entered the house.
Rissa and March drew the sheets and laid him down. He was fast asleep, and the girls were crawling all over him in carnal fascination.
[Omitted]
"Hey, Mona is the Boss... at least wait till she gets back" The girls started to argue quietly among themselves with Mike unaware, and completely in the middle.
[OMITTED]
Stopping what they were doing after Mike tossed around in the bed for a moment, all the girls giggled and laid down beside him. Mona hadn't returned, but that didn't stop them from innocently enjoying the moment.