Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

After getting the new quest, Thomas gave a soft sigh. It was a good thing there was still plenty of time in the day for him to work on the quest since he would need to take many breaks in order to extract the 'heart' from each Blood Root. As he thought about that, he wondered if he could also extract the 'heart' from the Mending Flowers as well... Shuddering at the thought of that, Thomas pulled up his character sheet and instantly invested some of his experience into his Magic attribute.

Thomas poured 2,550 experience into his Magic attribute to instantly rocket it up to 30. As soon as he confirmed the change he felt a powerful flow of energy through his body as the power of his mana increased by fifty percent. There were no hard numbers for him to view, but he could feel that his mana had increased drastically. After reveling in the feeling of his expanding mana pool for a few minutes, Thomas closed his eyes and emptied his mind to activate his 'Serenity' ability.

After about twenty minutes, Thomas felt like his mana had been completely recovered. Taking a deep breath he moved over to the table and placed a single Blood Root into the mortar to pulp and extract the juices from. After pouring out the initial juices out of the mortar he focused his vision and began to once again extract the 'heart' from the Blood Root's remains. He could feel mana gushing out of his body as most of it was once again lost into the air while he maintained control of around a fifth of his mana.

After extracting the 'heart' of the Blood Root he poured it into the beaker and emptied the mortar. He once more used his 'Serenity' ability to recover his mana. Every twenty minutes Thomas repeated the cycle until he'd extracted the 'heart' from five of the Blood Roots and added it all to the beaker. By the time he finished with the Blood Root his 'Transmutation' and 'Mana Control' had both reached rank five while his 'Serenity' had gone up to rank ten. Though Thomas couldn't feel any actual change to his work from the increased ranks in his skills and abilities. The only positive change was that Thomas didn't feel like he was going to bottom out on his mana after extracting the 'heart' from a single Blood Root, though he definitely did not have enough mana to do two before needing to take a break.

Thomas began the next phase of his work by dropping a Mending Flower into the mortar and grinding the flower into pulp to extract as much of the sap as he could. Compared to the Blood Root, the Mending Flower provided much less material to work with. Once the initial bit of sap was extracted, Thomas activated his 'All Seeing Eyes' and used his 'Transmutation' to pull every last bit of sap out of the decimated flower. The flower required more visual focus as it was much less material to work with than the roots had.

Thomas manipulated his mana to wrap it around every scrap of sap he could find within the flower. Thomas was rather annoyed that it took far more effort and control to extract what he expected was the 'heart' of the Mending Flower. Even with his increased mana pool, it took over eighty percent of his mana to get the job done. After all of his effort, after straining his eyes to the point they throbbed with pain, he extracted a single extra drop of sap from the Mending Flower.

Wiping the copious sweat from his brow, Thomas took a seat and once more used his 'Serenity' to recover his mana. So far it had taken him three hours just to extract the hearts from the five pieces Blood Root and a single Mending Flower. Doing the math, Thomas would barely have enough time to finish the quest. After he finished recovering, Thomas once more cycled through the steps needed to extract the heart from the Meding Flowers to add to the mixture. After another two hours, he finished with the hard part and began the much easier task of turning the magic crystals into powder to add to the mix.

After five grueling hours of hard work, the majority of which was spent using 'Serenity', Thomas finally placed the beaker onto the formation plate and channeled his mana into it to purify the mixture into a finished product. After the last of the black smoke-like impurities were removed from the potion it flashed once again. However, this time the light was much brighter and lasted for a couple of seconds instead of a single instant. Ricktor looked over in surprise and then let out a sigh of appreciation.

Thomas retrieved the funnel and began to carefully pour the potion into five equal parts. Once the first vial was filled and corked he got his first notification for the current batch of potions.