Thomas and Snowlily enjoyed their lunch together before they immediately got to the most important part of preparing for a trip. Shopping! Thomas still had well over fifty thousand gold in his pockets and had just doubled the available space inside of his inventory. It was time to put some nice things inside of that space! He had no intention to fill it completely but he did want to see if he could find some, or all, of the ingredients required to make the thread that could be used for enchanting. It would be impossible to forge while he was on the ship so he could work with his lesser-used skills in Alchemy and Tailoring.

He'd been neglecting every aspect of Alchemy aside from Transmutation lately and he felt a bit bad about it. It wasn't like learning or spending time on Alchemy was a waste. Potions could provide excellent short term buffs along with their usual healing and mana recovery options. Now that he wouldn't be able to forge, no matter how much he wanted to, he could spend the time making a stockpile of potions. He planned to focus mostly on buff and utility potions. He was especially interested in making potions that would let him breathe underwater for a short time. He was about to be traveling on the ocean after all!

He also wanted to get supplies for tailoring and making the enchanting thread so that he could make enchanted clothing. Imagine having a tee-shirt with as much defense as plate mail armor while mana was supplied to it? Useful little things like that could always come in handy to just about anyone. He wanted these things because he was slightly worried about setting foot in Solvikia. He remembered the warnings about the nobles there and their attitudes. He was pretty sure he'd end up pissing at least one noble off.

Thomas started his shopping spree by buying a pair of storage rings with a volume of three cubic meters each. He packed both of them with various materials that would be useful in his Alchemy and Tailoring. Bolts of cloth, spools of thread, collections of sewing needles and so on. As for his Alchemy supplies he made his way to the largest Alchemy shop in the city to get what he needed.

Thomas was interested in seeing about transmutation circles that might be for sale in the shop but he felt those were secondary to getting the materials he needed. More options for his Transmutation ability were awesome but he also needed to make sure he got all the ingredients he needed. He also felt that if he dropped a large amount of gold for a large purchase he would be in a better position to ask about the circles. They weren't a commonly sold commodity after all.

Thomas started by purchasing dozens of different ingredients in various quantities to match the number of potions he wanted to make. Unlike the low-level Alchemy he had performed before, mid and high-grade Alchemy used not just plants and mana crystals, but parts from animals too. Every Alchemy ingredient was stored inside of his inventory to preserve them as much as possible. Mist Grass, Bubble Tea leaves, Bear Gallbladder, Kobold Fangs, Goblin eyes, Rock Root, Powdered Sun Tree leaves, and more were purchased and stored safely away. All-in-all, Thomas spent over thirty thousand gold on ingredients alone and packed the perishable items into his inventory and non-perishable items into his new rings.

Thomas couldn't help but feel exasperated at the fact that he spent forty thousand gold to double the size of his inventory and it still was nowhere near enough! His goal was achieved though. After spending so much money the people working inside of the shop were looking at him like he was a walking gold deposit. When the purchase was complete and the gold was counted, Thomas looked at the young man helping him and spoke, "I was also interested in a few Transmutation circles."

The young man had an awkward look. Such things were beyond him so he gave Thomas a polite smile, "I can't say anything about that, but if you wait a moment I can get one of the shop's owners to speak with you."

Thomas nodded and the young man quickly went to get someone higher up in the food chain to deal with him. Technically speaking Thomas didn't even need to purchase the transmutation circles, he only needed to use them once or twice to get a feel for it. Once he did he could easily replicate it with his Transmutation ability. As he was pondering an older woman followed the young man back to the counter and smiled at Thomas, "Jerrom has told me that you wish to purchase transmutation circles from us. I'm sorry to say that we don't sell them to the general public."

Thomas wasn't really surprised. Monopolies were not illegal within AoG so people would horde knowledge and guard it viciously. He put on a face that said 'that's inconvenient' and pretended to think for a moment before asking, "Would it be possible to rent them temporarily and use them to make a few potions then? I require at least a mixing transmutation circle. If you have extraction, conversion, and alteration circles though, that would be a big help to me."

The old woman looked surprised and then shook her head, "I'm afraid that only the highest class Alchemy shops and government-sponsored ones would have access to conversion and alteration transmutation circles. We do have mixing and extracting but..."

She had a look like she was being put into a difficult spot. In reality, she knew from the young man that Thomas was a big fish. He'd spent tens of thousands of gold without batting an eye. There really was no reason not to let him use the transmutation circles. They were far too complex for anyone to memorize by looking at them. If he pulled out paper to copy them they could just beat the shit out of him and kick him out. It was even possible for her to get the guards to arrest him for attempting to steal from them. After pretending to think about it for a while she let out a deep sigh, "For a distinguished customer such as yourself we can make an exception, just this once. It will cost you one thousand gold per hour to rent the transmutation circles you require."

Thomas smiled and acted appreciative to the old woman. An hour would be more than enough time for him to make a few potions using the two circles. He was honestly surprised that they had two of the four he was missing. He'd felt he would be lucky to just find one of them. Conversion and Alteration were definitely the higher tier more powerful transmutations and would be harder to locate. He would find them eventually though! Thomas dug around a bit and pulled out the thousand gold to set on the counter while acting appreciative, "Thank you very much. This will help me a lot!"

He wasn't lying at all. He'd make as many potions as needed to make sure he understood how the circles worked. Once the money was collected and counted the old woman led Thomas into the back of the shop where potions were crafted. About half a dozen people were working and Thomas got his first look at the new transmutation circles. They were at least twice as complex as the ones he had worked with so far but that didn't bother him at all. The old woman left Thomas to go speak to one of the alchemists. When they finished she returned to Thomas and smiled, "Once Oscar is done with his work you can use his station for the next hour."

After she introduced Thomas to Oscar she left. Oscar didn't really say anything and continued his work for the next fifteen minutes. When he was done and his blue-colored potion was corked and set aside he just gave Thomas a nod to let him know the station was his. Thomas immediately got to work. He'd already picked out the potion he intended to make as it used both extraction and mixing. Just making this potion would give him everything he needed to learn.

Thomas began by laying out all of the ingredients he would need for the potion. He set out Minotaur Horn, Fury Aniseed, Livid Broadleaf, Bitterweed, Fermented Bleak Bayleaf, and a mana crystal he'd just purchased. Having to buy a mana crystal actually really annoyed him. Not that long ago he had over a hundred sitting inside of his inventory and now he had to buy them. One of these days he would get himself into a dungeon again and slaughter some monsters just for the mana crystals.

Thomas retrieved the alchemy tome from his inventory and flipped through it until he got to the recipe he wanted. He'd wanted to make this potion since he'd seen its title and even more after reading its description. With everything ready, he immediately got to work. The first step was using the extraction transmutation circle to extract all of the liquid from the Fermented Bleak Bayleaves. These leaves emitted a bit of a chill when held and contained minimal amounts of liquid inside of them. Following the recipe, he placed six of them into a small vessel and set another vessel beside it on the extraction circle.

The point of the extraction circle was similar to purification only kind of the opposite. Purification would destroy everything but the purest form of the material. Such as when he used it to create heart iron by destroying all but the iron molecules in the ingots. In the case of the leaves, purification could destroy components of the sap and ruin what he needed. Pounding the leave to extract the sap would introduce pulp from the leaves into the sap. Not to mention it would be near impossible to get all of the sap out with such a brute-force method. Extraction would easily pull out just the sap and pull out all of it.

Thomas placed his hands on either side on the transmutation circle and channeled his mana into it. The lines on the plate began to glow as his mana flooded through them and went directly for the bayleaves. His eyes began to glow with blue light as he activated his 'All Seeing Eyes' and watched the process as closely as possible. After going through the circle his mana entered the leaves and began to 'grasp' the minute traces of sap within the leaves. Once the sap was extracted the tendrils of mana wiggled over and deposited it into the other receptacle. The whole process was fascinating to watch.

It took a couple of minutes for the mana tendrils created by the circle to pluck out the nearly microscopic bits of sap residing in the leaves. The small amounts quickly added up and before long there were a few drops of bright blue liquid sitting inside of the once empty receptacle. The leaves were now completely dry husks but were still in excellent shape. The process had merely dried them out instead of destroying them. He picked up both of the containers and was surprised when he touched the one with the sap inside of it, it was ice cold.

He set them down at his assigned area and got the next ingredient. The next step was to extract oil from the Fury Aniseed, perfect. He went through the same process to extract the oil into an empty container. Once again he watched the little tendrils extract and transfer the oil with his eyes glowing blue. After this, he was confident he could do this on his own with his Transmutation ability. The scent from the oil was like a mixture between anise and cinnamon, it smelled delicious. He briefly wondered what would happen if he cooked with it.

He took the oil from the Fury Aniseed and the sap from the Fermented Bleak Bayleaf over to the mixing transmutation circle. Following the directions, he poured the sap into the oil and immediately channeled his mana into the circle. His eyes glowed once more as he watched the process. His mana transformed into small tendrils again and began to wiggle madly through the two substances to agitate and combine them. Enhancing his vision further, he magnified his view and could see that not only were the tendrils swirling the two liquids but they were leaving behind small amounts of mana that further mixed the liquids into a more harmonious and perfect balance. He watched until the whole process was completed and left him with the final product of the mixing process.

Once again he used extraction on both the Livid Broadleaf and Bitterweed to extract their sap. In the order they were extracted they were mixed together with the Fury Aniseed and Fermented Bleak Bayleaf mixture. By the time all four ingredients had been extracted and mixed, Thomas was certain that he had a firm grasp on how to perform the tasks with his own Transmutation. He grinned happily but continued to work on the potion. He wanted to finish at least the basic version of it before going overboard.

With the wet ingredients all extracted and mixed together, he picked up the Minotaur Horn and a grater. The grater was used to grind the minotaur horn into a fine powder. The whole horn. By the time he was finished, the powder from the horn was significantly more than the liquid extracted from the four plants but this was how it should be. The next step was using the mixing circle to turn the liquid and the powdered horn into a thick, mostly dry, paste. The mixing posed no problem and he was left with somewhat moist minotaur horn powder in a container. That left only a few more steps.

First, grinding the mana crystal into powder and just adding it to the paste. Easily done with nearly zero effort. Next was adding some water, also simple and easily done. Once the mana crystal powder and water were added he carried the mixture over to the basic purification circle and set it down. Once he started to channel his mana changes began to happen to the potion mixture. Like his previous potions, a thin cloud of a black smoke-like substance started to flow out of the bubbling mix. As more of the impurities were removed by the circle the potion slowly changed from an ugly brownish color to a dark blood red color.

Once the smoke-like substance stopped coming out of the potion, he poured it into five small test tube-like containers and corked them.

System Notice (x5): You have created a Magical grade Rage Potion. Quality: Above Average. You have gained 372 Magitech Engineering experience.