‘Thankfully coffee still exists here…’ Roge thought to himself as he brought his mug and plate to his desk, the next morning hitting him like a truck after the previous night’s events. After scarfing down his morning meal, he moved on to [Inspecting] the various items on his shelf, wanting to see if something in the materials caught his eye that he could use at work. Several of the items had… *interesting* abilities on them, but once he moved some of the things to the side and saw the ink and pen sitting in the back of a shelf, he knew he needed the things they gave.

  Taking the black [Pigment] out of the ink bottle was tempting, but he instead left it alone to look at the [Inscribe] ability, pulling it out of the pen with no remorse.

  Deciding to stop by the art store once again before work to get more, Roge looked at the pile of ash and the ink bottle. ‘Now it didn’t say that it had to be an alchemy bottle…’ he thought to himself, taking a quick peek at the description for the buff to make sure.

  He first tried to see if he could just… add the ash to the bottle by thinking about it. Then if the bottle needed to be put in it. When the ash on the table seemed to not be reacting to his skills at all, he moved on to his second method of testing. Putting the pile of Primordial Ash into his hoard, he then picked up the bottle and tried to infuse it that way. Surprisingly that idea worked, Roge feeling a unit of the stuff traveling down his arms and infusing into the bottle and making it glow blue for a moment.

  The feeling he had in that moment couldn’t be explained with words, the dragon feeling as though the glass bottle was *him* in some esoteric sense. A long lost friend coming home to the fold combined with gaining a new limb to play with. Placing it on the desk and letting go did not hinder that feeling at all, though he found he couldn’t move it whatsoever. He couldn’t feel anything… special coming from his shirt from the previous day, which meant, in Roge’s mind, that the Primordial Ash did something extra than the description said. Deciding to turn on his [All Seeing] effect to see if he could read more turned out to be a bad idea.

  It didn’t give him any type of headache, but the amount of pure *code* the ability gave him was almost too much to parse through. Lines and lines of code, some even being in another language altogether, to describe the Primordial Ash. He noticed the hoard progression function appear within the wall of text at the very least. But he didn’t have the mental energy that day to try and parse through the hundreds of lines, instead pushing that project to a later time and looking back at the ink bottle.

  Strangely enough, when he focused in it, the ink inside the bottle also seemed to be malleable to his ‘hoard senses’ as he called them, though to a lesser extent than the bottle itself. Changing the color of the [Pigment] property was as easy as thinking about it, the pure black liquid changing to a bright yellow.

  ‘Does that mean I can edit a potion’s property…?’ he asked himself, contemplating that thought before shrugging and putting the ink bottle into his inventory. Much more expectedly for the dragon, the whole bottle, ink included, went into his hoard menu. Trying the same thing with his dirty shirt, however, found the object in the normal inventory screen. ‘Really need to add more notes to the ash description…’ he thought to himself, hoping that the [Inscribe] ability would help him do that.

  ~~~

  Coming into the shop for his normal shift after stopping by the store, Roge couldn’t help but think of the *other* issue he’d been avoiding thinking about. Thankfully, Madam Madrid seemed content to let him slink out to the back and tend to the plants, the distraction of potentially upgrading his first class to something better brightening his mood.

  Deciding at that moment to make it more of a Draconic class, which would synergize well with the two styles of magic abilities he had, his first step of enhancing the plants certainly would lead to that. His next step would be to see if he could add his [Draconic Magic] to the [Novice Gardening] skill. ‘I mean…’ he thought to himself, moving his claws through the various leaves, ‘If it’d be similar to my second class, wouldn’t I just add Nature things to my hoard…?’ Strangely enough, the plants didn’t seem to want to budge even after he’d poured some ash into their roots, leaving Roge puzzled as he looked at the [Color] and [Purify] plants.

  “This doesn’t… these should already *be* a part of my hoard, right? Is it mindset?’ He thought back to his first reaction to having magical abilities, feeling the pure joy leak into his body. ‘I really… *desired* it. Is that the key?’ Pulling up the code for his Draconic class gave him even less hints, the code thousands of lines long for that one.

  ‘Or I could just be limited to one,’ he thought dejectedly, feeling a weight pushing down on his shoulders. He was about to head to the store room to finish the projects for the day when an idea came to his mind, the dragon moving back to the [Colored] plants. He’d already put in the first [Detox] session for each of them, knowing he could change the colors of the purified ones for free, but he wanted the smoke color changed as well. ‘No need to do things half assed.’

  If he couldn’t put his [Draconic Magic] into his first class, maybe adding [Nature Magic] to it could change it. He thought about how he used the [Novice Gardening] skill, feeling that he needed a set of tools to tend to the plants. It felt like something was missing and preventing the skill from working, which is where he started to focus on his magic. He pulled it from his core, like how he usually did when he was preparing to see his [Draconic Breath] ability, but instead, he pushed it towards what [Novice Gardening] was missing.

  Energy flowed through the part of him that seemed to house the skill, Roge feeling it filling up till it was ready to burst. He wanted to get the strongest upgrade he could get for it, packing as much of his mana as he could before releasing it towards the red tobacco plant. And the plant… disappeared. Along with the dirt it was rooted in.

  Scrunching up his face in confusion, Roge looked at his claw that had been touching the plant. He’d been trying for something like a *regular* druid and somehow, without trying, he’d obtained a second Draconic class. Looking for more information on how exactly that happened, he pulled up the descriptions for his two classes, sighing as he noticed they’d been changed when the ‘child lock’ had been taken off.

  Seeing nothing very helpful there, he moved on to his new skill, sighing in relief as it wasn’t as long as his other hoard skill.

  Roge slapped himself in the head at that, feeling rather dumb as the description spelled it out for him. The first time he’d used mana to fuel his [Draconic Breath] ability, he’d only had [Nature Magic]. Feeling out his mana some more, he could feel both Nature and Draconic aspects to it now, meaning the two magics combined inside his body. ‘And when you add both of them to Gardener, of course you get [Draconic Druid]… Why did I think my hoard was the only way to add that type of magic to things.’

  Looking back at the various plants in the greenhouse and looking at his skill again, deciding that the magical plants would best be stored in his [Farm Hoard]. After transferring all nine of them, as well as taking one of the fertilizer bags to feed them, he looked over yet another list he needed to keep track of, grateful that it seemed to have combined with his previous list.

  Roge nodded at the sparse, but concise list. He wasn’t sure how many units each of the plants used per day, as well as being unsure how much product they would produce, but it was a good start.

  ~~~

  Moving to the front of the store, Roge tried to walk as casually as he was able. Even though he was not ready to talk about other matters, he still needed to let Madam Madrid know about where the missing plants went.

  "Hey boss,” the dragon said, trying to make a casual smile. “So… my gardener class upgraded…”

  “Oh! That’s wonderful darling!” she cheered, clapping her hands and jingling the bangles on her wrists. “What did it upgrade to? [Farmer]? [Magical Gardener]?”

  “[Draconic Druid], actually,” he muttered, bringing her joy to a dead stop as she looked him over, her green skin turning almost mint as she paled.

  “So help me, if you unlocked a spell by accident-”

  “No. No. Nothing like that. It gave me another hoard skill.”

  She paused at that, looking slightly confused. “Well… that’s good at least. Never heard of a druid, but from what you can do with the other hoard skill…” She trailed off at that, giving Roge a thoughtful glare that he turned away from. “It allows you to store my plants, doesn’t it.”

  Roge winced, causing the orc woman to sigh. “I’ve left your regular stock alone and plan to replant the purified versions…”

  “I guess you’ve thought this through. But if you don’t follow through, I will be asking for *my* plants back.”

  “Obviously,” he said as he waved off her words, looking back to his hoard and taking a deep breath. “I’m going to try and harvest from them now.” Focusing hard on the [Harvest] section of the skill, he could feel a pressure inside of himself release with the gentle nudging. He only meant to use the effect on the purified plants, and to his surprise, more than the usual amount of leaves appeared in his regular inventory.

  “So. How’d it go, boy?” Madam Madrid asked, the dragon feeling his scales heat in a blush as he realized how that probably looked.

  “Oh.” He cleared his throat at that, trying to appear unfazed. “Fine. Got more than usual out of it, though.”

  “That’s what happens when you have a more powerful skill darling,” she tutted, waving him to follow her back to the storeroom. “I assume your fancy new skill has no way to tend to the *normal* plants in my greenhouse, does it?”

  “No…” Roge swore, pulling up the description again and swearing again.

  “No need to fret,” Madam Madrid said, patting him comfortingly on the arm. “Just means I have to hire someone on to do that. Your experimentation is more valuable than your abysmal tending skills.”