Marigold – A LitRPG

On other day Hans had already left to try to level up and I stayed behind in our house with the Little Bee eggs, this looked a lot like a family from the 80s, where a man left the house while the woman stayed behind to take care of everything, I felt a little bothered by the similarity between the situations but I really had no way to deny the similarities.

After Hans left I started creating honey with different flowers in the region, I tried to find some that had the trait of super nutritious like the [Boungain Honey] but I didn't really find anything interesting in the valley, there have flowers with honey that had unique tastes but none that had an effect that was worth my atention, there was a wide variety of flowers all over the place but none of them is really special at all, but I could do use them as a generic honey and in large quantities.

While I was thinking about the exhausting work it would be to create a new honey tank entirely from scratch I started thinking about the [Ball of dirt], the ball of dirt was exactly what it claimed to be, a ball of wax with dirt, but the system didn't say it was "a ball of wax with dirt", it classified it as something new, as if it were a mixture of the 2 items into something new, so if I mixed other things into a single mixture would I get something new? If I were to use things like honey, water, nectar, pollen, leaves, petals, sap, roots, and anything else within my reach, could I essentially create unique blends? Maybe even potions?! But I think to create potions I need a cauldron and fire...

"But it's worth to try!"

Since I had this crazy idea I believed that I seriously needed to at least test all the possibilities, after all i hade a lot of time! When the workers broke out I would have nothing to do but give orders, of course counting on the fact that the workers can handle all the work.

 

 

After gathering the maximum of nectar and a little of pollen inside my chest I hurriedly returned home and started creating a small basin with hard wax, different from the jugs of the workers this basin wans't stuck to the floor and could be easily moved, after a little craft work I got something satisfactory, then I used what was left of wax in my chest to create small balls that I kneaded to create a small bowl that I could use as a container for my mixtures, at the end of everything I finally left excited in search of some ingredients to test my ideas while letting the everything dry up.

After a few trips back and forth i had get some pollen of various flowers, generic honey, nectar of various flowers, some pieces of petals and leaves, a few drops of stiff sap that were in the bark of the trees, and my chest that was full of water from the river and a small branch for me to use as a spoon. For my first attempt I started by pouring some river water into the basin and mixing it with a little bit of everything, I crushed the leaves and petals and broke the stiffened sap with a small stone, then I threw everything into the basin along with everything else and in the end I had a basin full of random things that seemed unused, I tried to mix all together with the branch but it didn't seem to improve the situation and in the end I ended up with something useless.

 

 

That clearly went wrong, it doesn't even have a [Quality] tab so it's not even a real item it's just a bunch of useless stuff. After throwing this shit out the door and washing the basin with a little of water I went back for my next attempt, this time I tried grinding the rose petals with a stone and one of the wax bowls and then threw all on the basin with some honey and pollen from various flowers, this time I wanted to try to create a homogeneous blend to ensure my chances of creating something, and I really did create something!

 

 

I created a strange jelly! I doens't seem to have any ultility, perhaps because I used the pollen and petals of several flowers? Maybe if I just used a flower with a specific effect I would get a jelly with a specific effect, but what was that Jelly for? Loking at it i was sure that she would rot very quickly, so without special effects it wouldn't be worth just bothering me to create it, maybe it was a form of medicine? If that were the case, what would be the advantage of creating a jelly with a healing flower, rather than simply consuming the flower? Was the effect amplified? or maybe this jelly is an ingredient to create something else?

I decided that I would mark this on my list of future experiments, now I needed to try to create other things with the ingredients I had, I added the small amount of flower jelly in another wax bowl and tried to create another blend, now with water, crushed leaves and nectar, I tried to use leaves of only a single flower that had a mint smell, this time I wanted to try to create some drink that was recognized by the system.

 

 

Actually really managed to create a drink, but despite using specific ingredients to try to achieve a special effect I ended up with a drink with no efects.

I wanted to drink this mysterious liquid and see if at least is delicious, but my chest was still full of water and I couldn't afford to waste ingredients, so I put some of the liquid in another wax bowl and threw the rest away, for my next attempt I wanted to try using only things like crushed and crushed leaves, petals and sap to create a unique paste and see its usefulness.

 

 

This paste seemed to be a processed ingredient, so I could use it to create other things?, but what? What could I do with a green paste?! And another thing that is annoying me is this description, why this always need to make it clear that "it was created by a low-level bee"! No one needs to know who created the ingredient! Unless it was a very important factor? Maybe ingredients created by specific beings have specific effects, or maybe the fact that I create things of poor quality is because I am a low-level bee? If I evolved to higher levels would the quality go up? But that doesn't make sense! The levels shouldn't influence the mastery which the items were created, it should be a matter of skills! A level 1000 human shouldn't be able to create honey with the same mastery as a Level 1 BEE, just as someone of a high level shouldn't be able to create items of superior quality against lower level masters who have years of experience. But maybe it wasn't a question of levels on the person, but a question of [Skills] levels? In the old days the Honey I created was only of [Bad] quality no matter how hard I tried, but nowadays with the skill of creating honey at Level 7, honey always comes out with the minimum quality of [Good], so there must be a unique [Skill] to create these special blends with hight quality?

Deciding to continue with my research I remove much as i can of the paste with another plate of wax and leave some in the bottom, this time I would be mixing honey, the paste and crumpled petals into one thing to try and create something new.

 

 

OH! This is incredible, I used items without specific effects to create an item with an specific effect, of course, the effect wasn't good, but that was a good thing! This meant that the ingredients reacted with each other and created unique effects, I didn't need to find something with a specific effect, I could create mixtures with specific ingredients and get the effect I wanted.

Doesn't that mean there really are potions in this world?!?

The iconic well know potion with miraculous and unique effects, but how did I create them? did I need a specific [Skill] for this, or just throw a bunch of stuff in a cauldron? And the mixtures that I created were just things that could be created anywhere by anyone? If i really was going to try to create potions i basically going to need a full kitchen, with fire, many dishes and various tools to help me, but where would I find fire? where would I get a cauldron that didn't burn up in flames?

I was really excited about the idea of becoming a kind of witch Bee, I had crafting skills that would help me create unique ingredients, and by doing that I could even create potions and items for Hans and the others, that would really help them so I wouldn't have to get stuck into the routine of an ordinary Bee's work, I just needed to find a way to arrange the basic utensils and a way to make a fire, so i can start boiling all these mixtures, melt wax and even get other unique ingredients!

While I was excited I was suddenly inundated by notifications of Hans's slaughter, this time the report came in compressed form, perhaps because I was not paying attention before, the system gathered all the data in a single notification.

 

 

After a look outside I could see the sun high in the sky which indicated a time around 12am or 1pm, I still wanted to continue the mision for my new dream an hope, but the workers were going to hatch early tomorrow, I needed to at least gather a significant amount of honey until tomorrow to be able to feed the hungry larvae.

---

 

The day was ending now, the sunlight was already going away, and the bright plants began to demonstrate their true nature, in the meantime I had created a honey tank with ordinary wax that was stuck to the ground and sealed with wax, this tank wasn't permanent like the old Honey tank I had created in my old house, but I thought it would be the best option, since I could easily remove it later, I already had filled the tank of reasonable proportions with large amounts of ordinary honey, and created a small pile with about 30 honey crystals for Hans and placed next to the tank, Hans hadn't returned yet, but after a brief analysis in our link I could feel that he was fine and would soon return, after all this work with honey, I managed to reach Level 9 in creating honey, and I realized that using [Flake creation] helped me level up in [Create Honey], even though they were 2 different skills, most likely because [Flake creation] wans't a unique skill, but a sub-product of another skill.

The expectation of what is going happen when I reached Level 10 of honey creation made me a little nervous, the skill seemed to have a level limit of 10 like all my skills, but I didn't know what is going to happen once I reached the maximum level of this skill, maybe I gain an evolution in the skill [Honey making], or just another sub-skill? Maybe i even not going to get anything more than a production bonus like the previous levels...

Curiosity was eating away my mind so much that I wanted to fly out and start making honey until I got to level 10 in the skill, but it was getting too dark and it would be dangerous being there, since Hans hadn't come back yet I gave a tug in or link to say that is already time to come back, and I could feel Hans's response in approval, really annoys me how how Hans is able to use this link so much better than me, but I couldn't do anything about it for now.

After about 20 minutes Hans finaly had came home, he looked fine as always and right when he came in, he looked at me and started swearing the same words as always.

"Mom, I'm hungry again..."

Baby I'm back! Where's dinner?

"Hmmm, I made some honey Crystals for You Hans, they are right there near the honey tank, eat as you wish."

"Thank you mom!"

When Hans got to the pile of honey crystals he just started eating them one after the other like popcorn, even though those crystals were so hard they could blind someone if thrown on their head.

"Hans... I wanted to ask if you found fire while you were away, I was doing some experiments and now i want to create some blends and mixes with the things I have around here, but for that im going to need a cauldron that is immune to fire, and fire itself..."

Hans who was eating quietly until now stopped eating when I mentioned the fire and turned visibly perturbed to me.

"Fire?!"

"Y-yes Hans, what's the matter with fire?"

"Fire is very dangerous mom! We can't get near that! He's gonna kill us!!"

"T-that's not true Hans, fire is a very useful tool if used with care..."

"But Mom, I saw from our link how dangerous fire is! How this consumes and destroys everything it touches! We can't get close to something so dangerous!"

Hans, the giant in armor was afraid of fire? Thats because of me? Did my death in a fire cause Hans to instinctively fear fire? Or was it a mixture of your bee instincts and my bad memories about the fire? Or will it be some effect of the trait [Fear of burning]? This trait affected my resistance against fire, but never really made me feel afraid of fire, I could still think clearly about its uses, but maybe our link was transmitting characteristics of my [Traits]?.. Probaly not, the link should only be able to transfer memories and things like that, he shouldn't work for transmiting [Skills] and [Traits], if not Hans could very well use my skills and I use his, which is not really realistic, the [Traits] and [Skills] seem to be unique for each individual and cannot be shared, or maybe they could? If there was a skill that only works in a group, wouldn't that be a way to share a skill? And what about a skill that copies or steals other skills? And what if there was a [Trait] that could do similar things? and if-

"Mother!"

"Hans!? I-I get distracted again..."

"Mom please don't mess with fire, it's just too dangerous for us to take the risk!"

"Hans the fire has many uses, and I don't want to be stuck in this place without being able to do anything all day, I would really like to be able to do these experiments with the mixtures."

"But... How about using flowers instead of fire?! I saw a flower to the South that glowed like fire and was hot when I approached, you could use it to create these "potions"."

"OH! Is there such a flower? Do you think it's hot enough to boil water?"

"I - I don't know Mom, they were hot when I got close, but I didn't get that close, they grew inside a strange cave among with several red crystals so I didn't go too deep into the place because it looked suspicious..."

"Maybe this can work Hans! If the flowers are the right shape I can even use them as cauldrons for the potions, how far south are they?"

"About 10 minutes of flight mother, near the mountains."

Mountains? The mountains I had seen were very far from here, several kilometers at least!

Hans could get there quickly, but I would need probably a full day to get there!

"That's too far for me Hans... And we can't afford to go there and leave the workers alone here, do you think we could move to there? How is the region there?"

"Mom... The mountains are cold and full of rocks, there are no abundant amounts of food or resources like here... I don't advise leaving this place to live in the mountains!"

It would be selfishness

That's what he meant, if we left this promising place just to satisfy my desire for the fire flowers that maybe couldn't even be able to use as I wanted, it would be selfishness, Hans and the workers would surely follow me, but they would be the ones who would suffer the most from my bad choices.

"I Understand Hans... There's nothing to do, I'll try to create a little fire tomorrow and find a cauldron I can use."

"This is very dangerous!"

"I'm not going to give up just because of that Hans, my other option would be to move near the flowers, or bring a living flower here!"

"...I understand mom."

"Don't worry Hans, I promise I will take all the care in the world, now try to rest as much as you can, tomorrow the workers will hatch and we will need to feed them."