The party was excited when I came home and showed them what I could do with alchemy now. I told them that I couldn't mass produce them, but we could make a little bit of money off of them here and there when we are struggling. The prospect of a little extra income brought the group's mood way up, but Laura was the most excited out of all of us. More than once, she had run out of mana while trying to trap larger numbers of monsters.
I decided I'd make a few more and show them how the process was done. I gave them to Laura and Tim, but the Cleric handed his potion back to me.
"Sorry, man, I can't use mana potions." That didn't make any sense to me, so I asked him about it.
"Why not? Is it like a rule the Clerics have to go by?" Tim laughed.
"No, it's nothing like that! The gods grant clerics our mana we pray to every day or make offerings to them. The more deities that we have a connection to, the more powerful we become." I had no idea about any of that.
"Wait, you said offerings?" Derek chimed in. "Like... sacrifices?" Tim shrugged his shoulders.
"Sometimes, yeah, like I could buy some meat and offer that to a God, but I haven't heard of anyone actually having to kill something for them." This just brought on more questions from the group. I was glad to be learning a little bit about Tim's job.
"So, have you made any offerings?" Sarah asked.
"No, not yet, I can't really afford to offer the gods extra food or money just yet. It is a shame, though, because offerings are an easier and more effective way of building mana and currying favor with them. I just make do with my prayers." I couldn't believe my ears.
"If we'd known that, we could have scraped something together for you to make an offering!" Grace exclaimed.
"What kind of things would they take?" I asked him.
"Just about anything of value honestly, food, clothes, money, items." I smacked my head.
"So you could have been giving them anything of value? We have a backyard full of Moon Lilies you could have been giving them!" Tim looked at me, puzzled.
"Moon Lilies are those the flowers that glow at night?" I nodded eagerly. "They're valuable?"
"To alchemists, yeah, although I don't know why yet. But you should try giving some of them as an offering! Go grab some, and we'll take a trip up to your temple!" I looked around to the others to see if they wanted to come. Grace, Derek, and Sarah had all made the plans that they'd spend the day training, Laura wanted to come, but she thought she'd take her potion to her magic teacher and see if she could get anything out of it.
"Guess it's just you and me then." Tim smiled at me. We went outside and plucked a few of the white flowers from their roots. Once we'd had enough, I planted some more seeds to replace what we'd taken, and we were on our way. The Cleric temple wasn't very far, just past the Guild in fact. I was surprised that I'd never noticed it some of the other times I'd visited the Guild.
It was a tall white structure with intricately carved statues of men and women in robes. If I had to guess, those were probably the deities that people in this world worshipped. We made our way up some stairs and through the statues. There was no door on the temple. It was a wide-open space inside where you could see many people in robes kneeling down and praying to this statue or another.
There were a number of people in robes that looked like Tims. We kept walking while avoiding the people on the floor, praying. We arrived at a small statue of someone that looked like a little girl. Tim explained that this was Dayana, the wild healer.
"She is the first goddess that granted me power." He bowed his head and begun praying to her. I sat there silently and watched on. The prayer went on for a good ten minutes, and at some point, I could have sworn I saw the statue smile. But I figured it was just a trick of the mind.
After he finished praying, Tim picked up the flowers and placed them on the altar. As soon as his hands left the offering, they burst into a white flame and disappeared. I jumped up, wondering what happened.
"Did she reject your offering?" Tim didn't say anything for a second.
"No, she was actually very touched at the offering; she said that not many people had brought her such a valuable offering in many years." I was surprised to hear that. 'Just what the heck is so special about these flowers?' I thought to myself. I just added it to the list of questions that I kept forgetting to ask my Master every time I saw her.
"Do you feel any different?" I asked. Tim took in a deep breath and smiled widely at me.
"I've literally never in my life felt better! She increased the amount of mana that I can hold, and she taught me a skill!" 'That statue really did all of that?' I didn't see anything happening. 'Must be a Cleric thing.'
"What's the new skill?" I asked. He gave me a wicked smile.
"Subjugation. I can now take control of one weak enemy and make him fight for me!" He lowered his voice and continued. "It's especially rare for Clerics to receive something like this; it's a step towards changing the class of Cleric I am." My jaw dropped.
"You can do that?"
"Of course! It's just a specialization. With a skill like this, if I continue down this path, I could become a necromantic cleric. Just where in the heck did you get those flowers?" I told him that they had just been some cheap seeds that I got at the botanist's store. I guess those guys really didn't know what a gold mine they were sitting on. I felt a little bad, but not bad enough to let them know. After all, I would need to buy some more of those seeds again one day. I didn't need the price jumping through the roof.
"So, what do you mean by specialization?" It was something that I hadn't heard about yet.
"All jobs have them, for Clerics, you have specializations, like combat, defensive, pure, and the rarest of all of them necromantic." I was stunned.
"All jobs have them? Why haven't I heard of this yet then?" Tim shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. Maybe it's different for Alchemists, but I do know that all of the rest of the party has them in their jobs. We just haven't learned enough to get them yet; you have to be at least a gold tag adventurer to be considered for a specialization." He might as well have told me that we wouldn't get to pick one for another five years, at least.
"That sucks... Do you really think we'll be here that long?" I hadn't thought about it in a while, but I couldn't help but wonder if there really wasn't a way to get home. I loved my friends, but I missed my Mom, and I didn't know if she would last that long. 'What if I don't get to say goodbye? What if I already missed my chance?' Tim seemed to read my mind, though, because he immediately started to try to cheer me up.
"We should go get another drink tonight to celebrate, what do you think?" I remembered the last time we went to the little pub, and how it hadn't ended very well.
"Are you sure?" I asked him.
"Yes, and if Boro or any of his friends try to start a fight, I can try out my new skill on them!" I laughed, thinking about the scene of one of Boros cronies leaping on top of their leader and trying to take him down.
"Sure, why not. Let's celebrate your success! Maybe the others will want to join us too." Tim scrunched up his face.
"Do you think the three underage guys should drink?" I rolled my eyes.
"If they can go out and fight monsters all the time, I think they can handle a beer or two." We shared a laugh over this. Tim agreed, and we headed back to the house so that we could invite the others when we got back though, the others were the ones to invite us out.
It turns out that Grace had traded her Witch Fire for another lesson. This time she steered away from area of control skills and learned a more combative one. She did stick to her ice theme, though. She learned, "Ice Spear." We had her show us the skill outside against one of my homemade targets. The spike went clear through the target and stuck into the wall behind it.
"Dang, girl! That's some power!" Grace gave Laura an energetic high five. Shortly after that, we gathered up what we needed to and headed to the bar. The three younger ones decided they wouldn't drink, though. They said something about following the rules and waiting for the right of passage. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but still, I was happy that they were good kids.