1975 Thank Your Friends

Alex walked out of the room a few minutes later and handed over a 66% pill to the man who had been waiting for him.

"Huh? This looks like the one I just gave you," the man said absentmindedly.

"It's the same type of pill after all. It would look the same," Alex explained.

"Huh?" the man said. "I should eat it now then?"

"Yes, eat it."

The man ate the pill and pulled out the rope that was tied around his shoulders where he had lost his arm. His arm slowly returned to him, healing from the base until his fingers appeared.

He moved his fingers around a little and smiled. "Thank you!"

"It's just what I do," Alex said. "You can lose your arm again if you want now."

The man grimaced a little. "I'll try not to," he said. "I shouldn't have gone into the forest to begin with."

He turned to look at Alex. "Speaking of which, I don't have many spirit stones to pay you. Do you accept other forms of payment by any chance?"

"What other form?" Alex asked.

"I gathered a few herbs while I was foraging around in the forest. Will you take them instead of Spirit stones? That's the only way I can pay you."

"Herbs?" Alex tilted his head in question. "If they are Immortal grade, I can make use of them."

"Great!" the man said and brought out a few random alchemy ingredients from his storage bag, none of which were even kept in proper containers.

Alex looked at the ones that he brought out and realized that they were good ingredients. The man had quite the eyes for ingredients.

"These are quality ingredients," Alex said.

"Of course," the man replied. "I did mention that I worked in an Alchemy garden before, didn't I? I know how to do these things."

Alex nodded. He took the ingredients and judged if these were worth it for what he had done. Getting rid of someone's Pill poisoning when pills didn't work was a tough task, clearly worth over a thousand spirit stones.

But the man was clearly very poor, so Alex didn't want to get too much from him.

"Where did you say you got these ingredients?" Alex asked.

"The forest to the south," the man said simply.

"The Darkspine forest or the Mirror woods?" Alex asked. There were two decently sized forests to the south, one closer to the mountains and one more toward the plains.

"Darkspine," the man answered. "Terrible place. I barely got out with my life and even then I lost my arm there."

Alex nodded. "Thank you for the warning," he said. "These ingredients will do it."

The man glowed up with a wide smile. "Great! Thank you."

Alex gave a smile back.

The man turned to leave, and as he did, Alex remembered something. "Wait a second!"

The man stopped and turned. "Yes?" he asked.

Alex took out a talisman and handed it over to the man. "Here, I wrote down some important information about Alchemy. These are the most important things in alchemy and see if you can get these. If you do, you will improve tremendously."

The man curiously took the talisman and read inside. Slowly, his eyes widened.

There were simple tips like getting a good cauldron with quick heat transfer features, but there was also information about how well one needed to maintain temperature, how far it needed to be changed, and all other sorts of information that a self-taught Alchemist would've surely missed.

He also gave the man the Immortal Pill forming technique, which would help him a bit more than whatever he was using at the moment.

Knowledge of things like recipes and ingredients still depended on the man and how much he managed to learn, but with this, he at least knew what he needed to do and what he shouldn't do.

A look of gratefulness appeared in the man's eyes. "You don't even know me," he said. "Why would you do this for me?"

"I'm just doing what I would want someone to do to me if I were in your situation," Alex said. "This doesn't hurt me any bit and it helps you a lot, so I should absolutely help you."

The man bowed deeply. "Thank you, sir Alchemist. I will never forget this. I will speak the tales of your shop all over the city."

Alex smiled. "That's alright. You can be on your way."

The man nodded. "And please thank your friends over at Gale's True Apothecary store. I would have never known about your shop if not for them."

"Huh?" Alex didn't understand what the man meant.

"Hmm?" the man responded to Alex's confusion with his own.

"Gale's True Apothecary Store? What do they have to do with my store?" Alex asked.

"They're the ones who told me to come here," the man said. "I went to their shop first, but they said I needed to come here. I'm sure I didn't hear them wrong."

"Hmm…" Alex frowned a little.

Gale's True Apothecary store was a shop just like his own, but much larger and with many alchemists working inside of it.

Alex couldn't understand why those people would ever send a patient his way at all.

"Is something wrong?" the man asked.

"No, everything is alright," Alex answered. "You can be on your way."

"Okay, I'll be leaving then," the man said and walked away.

Fang Yuxie looked at Alex from the side. "What was that all about?"

"I don't know…" Alex said. "Have we been in contact with the Gale's True Apothecary store recently?"

"Nope. Not even a run-in on the road," the woman said. "Aren't they like one of the bigger stores outside of the guilds?"

"I believe so too," Alex said. "Why would they send a patient our way?"

"Maybe they were busy and couldn't take more patients?" Fang Yuxie said. "Or maybe they were trying to look out for our new store."

Alex looked at her, watching her sly grin. "You don't believe that, do you?"

"Of course not," Fang Yuxie said. "My mind goes to the bad things all the time. If they sent you a patient, then it was to gauge how well you could do with such a patient."

"So they are testing me," Alex said softly. "But why?"

"That I do not know of," Fang Yuxie said. "My best guess, is they are trying to recruit you. They must've learned how good of an Alchemist you are from your guild result."

"Maybe," Alex said. "I pray it's something that good. I don't want any trouble with a big store like theirs so soon. I'm not even that strong yet."

Fang Yuxie shrugged. There was nothing more to say. All they could do was wait and find out.

The door opened and a woman walked in. "Is this free?" she asked. "My son is sick."

Alex turned to look at Fang Yuxie. "We'll talk about that later," he said and turned toward the woman.

"Please come in."

The woman walked in with her son and Alex proceeded to check on the young child and give him some medicine. More patients came in and soon enough, he stopped worrying about anything else.