For the next few weeks James stayed at home constantly brewing recipes. Wilbur visited often showing up whenever it was the worst possible moment and ruining batch after batch. But James didn't mind. Wilbur always showed up with his five little friends and the matriarch in tow.
You might think that Wilbur was the king in this situation, but instead Kareen, the matriarch continued to display her dominance. In fact Wilbur was often running back and forth to the mouse dungeon to find little items for the matriarch.
It turned out that quite a few if not all of Wilbur's friends also seemed to have the same space control ability that the matriarch had. And it became very confusing who was who. Especially now that even the matriarch had returned to the flush of youth. Eventually James gifted each of them with a small bit of cloth which they proceeded to where around their shoulders as a shawl.
Of course the longer James acclimated to this novel experience of so many pets all at once the more he was able to explore and understand the inherent gifts the mice gave. The main benefit was to his senses. Previously, Wilbur had only seemed to give him heightened hearing. But now with all the mice as his pets he gained a larger benefit to each of his senses.
In fact his senses gained a stacked benefit. This meant that each contracted mouse gave him a small boost to one of his senses, but each benefit was stackable. In effect he might even better sense then the mice themselves.
There was a catch though his senses were mouse like. In other words his eyes became near sighted, his ears became geared for high pitched sounds, and his sense of touch became triggered by his hair follicles. Without whiskers his sense of touch was not so effective, but even so all of his hairs became more sensitive. It was extremely uncomfortable.
Learning how to ignore these super senses became the primary purpose of staying so long with his family. Well first and foremost he just focused on staying sane. But within a few days he was able to maintain his human consciousness with ease. After all the contract was supposed to be beneficial to the master. It was the mice who really changed. Their side of the contract endowed for more weight to human tendencies than mouse tendencies to James.
He could see some of the effects just by how Kareen acted within a week of coming back to his parents house she began to wear a purse. Yes, it can't be described in any better way.
It was the same an any other simple purse, but it did have two straps. One over her shoulder and another to brace it around her chest. The extra strap allowed her to easily move from all fours to standing on her back legs while keeping it positioned and out of the way.
Inside it she began to collect things that she would need through out the day. And then pretty soon after all the mice were wearing purses, fanny packs, or back packs. It was strange to see such tiny beings carrying around these human type accessories.
As for James he found that studying alchemy was surprisingly beneficial. It was true that he started just running the stamina pill over and over again just to remind himself of his past life and to discipline his mind. With every run he was remembering more and more. It was restorative and calming to say the least. Alchemy was a demanding art.
Yet as he worked he found that he was having too much success. Much of alchemy is just preparing, roasting, stewing, and burning ingredients to just the right result. Without him understanding at first he was becoming better at judging when the ingredients were just right to go on to another stage. Don't misunderstand he still failed 90% of the time. But he was supposed to fail 99%.
After a week of work focusing on each run and on the human logic of processing ingredients sequentially James finally took a step back to allow himself to think about why he had those extra nine successes. It was the first time he had thought about something besides the stamina pills. For that first week he had only about himself, his memories, and his goals in life.
It was only when he could review everything that had happened over the last week with perspective that it clicked for him. His mouse senses were heightening his alchemy ability.
His nose told him when a material's scent was putrid or healthy. His ears told him when a herb had been toasted to just the right crispness. His taste gave him feedback after the fact. Touch gave him a little bit of finesse when it came to handling and manipulating his instruments and herbs. His newly near sighted eyes did wonders for him up close. Performing alchemy was perfect for his near sightedness.
Once all his stocks were used up he had to go out and buy more herbs, materials, and supplies. Intentionally using his new senses for the first time to buy these goods was a huge mistake. No sooner had he tried to use his nose to discover which herbs had the highest quality then he was overwhelmed.
James naively assumed he could control his own sense of smell. What he didn't understand was just how sensitive a mouse's nose was, especially to herbs!
Finally he found some herbs that didn't make him gag and want to vomit. Humans unknowingly wrapped dying herbs with fresh. Even the slightest bit of rot made his mouse senses flare up. A mouse would have no scruples about eating rotten food especially if it was hungry which wild mice usually are. No it was a combination of the mouse nose with his human fastidiousness.
Once he was back home and back to his comfortable desk he dived back in and decided to use his mouse senses to their fullest. Which of course resulted in an absolute tragedy. In the next week he was only able to successfully concoct two batches of stamina pills. All told he had less than a hundred pills from two weeks worth of work.
Most of these pills were substandard only barely making the grade due to rotted, burned, or unprocessed ingredients. Only a few made the fair grade, which meant that they could be sold for the normal price. These were the pills that normal people expected to be able to buy at apothecaries.
It was pitiful. Hopefully these pills would fetch some kind of price in the market. Even the substandard pills could be sold, if only at a deep discount.
So in a delusion James went to the bazaar in the middle of the city excited to see what his first pills would sell for. They weren't the first pills he made just to be clear, but in the past he hadn't tried to sell anything. The reason for that is that the pill market was strictly regulated. Without an alchemy license and being underage it was impossible. Now he could sell as long as he could prove he had graduated from high school. Which wasn't a problem.
The school had issued a graduation certificate. He had 'passed'. Which said nothing about his college entrance examination results. But these test results hadn't come out yet.
What he didn't expect was that even if he could technically prove his legality no one would buy his pills. No one would even look at them. Regalia City was known for its alchemy masters and so there was a glut of alchemists in town. Why would the pill shops sale pills from a barely graduated boy like him when they had plenty of perfectly sound chemists with high quality merchandise. It was a no brainer and the various shops were trained and ready to kick out any salespeople selling substandard products . Evidently this sort of thing happened often.
Suffering an attack on his confidence James wondered if he should pursue alchemy. He was already too old to be an apprentice and if he couldn't sell his products he wasn't going to get very far.
In the end he decided to go ahead and buy more ingredients and supplies anyway. It wasn't about becoming an alchemist for him right at this moment. It was about keeping his sanity and training his senses. This was not something he could just give up on. Even if he went into debt. Even if it wasn't really what he was passionate about.
In the end he found an herbalist who would barter his pills. Not for consumption, but for fertilizer for his plants. It was really embarrassing, but in the end the herbalist made a good profit and threw in some extra herbs to sweeten the deal.
All James could do was chuckle as he walked away with fresh ingredients.
'Hey, at least I am moving forward!'
The third week James became much better more than half of the stamina pill batches came out. It became ridiculous. In the last day of the week James only failed once. And that was when Wilbur appeared suddenly out of a space pocket and then was pounced on by a terrier that had snuck into his room.
Accidently everything burned. By lunging from his desk to catch the terrier James snagged the terriers tail just its teeth were about to snap shut on poor Wilbur. Instead James whole room was trashed as the dog and the mouse jumped over and scurried under anything and everything in the room. Even the desk was overturned. The result of which was a small fire was started.
"James! What is that smell!"
His mother called from downstairs.