Roge sighed as he entered his hoard, unsure of how he was feeling regarding the situation. He knew hiding away wasn’t the best solution, but he had no idea how he felt about what he’d just been told. ‘I mean… was the old me gay or ace…?’ he thought to himself, walking over to his alchemy station and letting out another sigh.

  “ Roge…?” Sean called out, Roge freezing as several emotions ran through him.

  “ I get why it took you a while to tell me but… can we hold off on the discussion for the moment?” Roge asked, looking over his inventory and feeling overwhelmed all over again.

  “ I feel like that’d be a bad idea,” Sean said, smiling ruefully as he joined Roge at the alchemy station. “Can I just explain things first, that way you can use the time to digest things?”

  “ Fine,” the dragon kobold huffed, hopping up to sit on the blue wooden table. “So… how exactly did you and… him start dating? That might be a good place to start.”

  “ Well… it certainly took a while.” The lion joined Roge on the table, bumping him with his elbow. “He was an incredibly stubborn dragon and I didn’t even realize he was pining after me for the longest while. I knew him for around ten years before we became more than friends.”

  “ That’s… and how long were you together?” Roge was shocked at the span of time, having assumed that the group had known his previous self for only a few years.

  “ Around six years, though our relationship wasn’t the classic one. He had just been disinherited by the [King]-” Sean stopped at Roge’s massive confusion, giving the dragon kobold a small grin. “It was when he was around twelve. He never wanted to talk about it, and we were warned to never discuss it by the [King’s] guards, who escorted him and your dad to the city. The most we could find out was that there was some disagreement between noble houses that Roge got caught up in, and in order to keep the peace, disinheriting was the deciding option. We never could figure out what he lost, but it seemed to be a lot, including his classes.

  “ Yeah… I did wonder why his class and skills were incredibly low when I first woke up…” Roge mumbled, remembering the gardening class that had turned into his druid class.

  “ He was angry and depressed at the world. I think the only reason why we got together was because he had needs that he needed to fulfill.” Sean chuckled at that. “He was always the surly dragon who hung out with us because he couldn’t admit he didn’t want to be alone. So while we did have a physical relationship for years, I barely got close to him in that time.”

  “ That… doesn’t sound healthy…” Roge mumbled, grimacing at his previous self’s behavior. “Is that one of the reasons why people back in Centerville didn’t like me much? Because he was mean and standoffish?”

  “ Standoffish is mild. He didn’t talk to anyone except our team and Fred.” Sean sighed, leaning back and nearly bumping into one of the cauldrons. “Speaking of that wolf… he said something that he probably shouldn’t have before we left…”

  “ Oh…?” Roge asked nervously, scratching at the back of his neck.

  “ He said you are the opposite of him in more ways than can be first seem,” Sean replied, grimacing all the while. “Where the previous dragon had no interest in romance, he said you have no interest in sex.” Roge squirmed at that, giving Sean a guilty look while the lion just smiled. “While I would have liked to have heard it from you, is that true?”

  “ Well… pretty much,” Roge replied, thinking over the conversation he had with the wolf all those weeks ago. “While I’d still like to get close to people and like to go out on dates every so often, I don’t have that drive people talk about. The… activity never really interested me. And for a while there, that was a deal breaker for the few people I dated in the other world.”

  “ I can see why it might be for some, but not for me,” Sean growled with a smile on his face. “I know us getting together wouldn’t be a now thing, but if you ever want to try, I’m happy to have a solely romantic partner. It doesn’t bother me too much, as long as we discuss things first.”

  “ I… I need some time for it,” Roge stated, grimacing. “This world is still so new to me and I need more time to get used to it. I don’t want to have to add juggling a relationship on top of it.” Roge growled as he looked to his cauldron, giving it a complicated look as his stubby tail lashed out. “I still need to figure out if I want to use the upgrade I got recently, level up some more, get my hoard to where it needs to be, and so much more.”

  “ And I get that. There’s no rush on your decision. I’m more than happy to continue being your friend.” The lion looked around the forest of trees as he thought something through, smiling as he finally looked back at the dragon kobold. “I need some time to get used to this too, anyway. Plus the more you wait, the more I’m going to get comfortable teasing you, my Dragon.”

  “ Stop that!” Roge groaned, ignoring the lion’s chuckling. “So… unless there was more you wanted to discuss there?”

  “ There’s still the topic of why I’ve been a bit of an ass in regards to mind control, but we can save that for later. I can already tell you’re close to getting overwhelmed by what I’ve told you already.”

  “ Okay. Well…” Roge then pulled up his fairy traveling effect, showing Sean the various options.

  “ Seems my skills and effects are pushing me towards a crafter slash merchant style role. While I don’t mind the crafting portion, I’m not really cut out for the cashier role.” Roge placed his muzzle in his claw at that, looking over the effect screen a bit closer than he had before.

  “ Looks like it could be interesting. And you know that the rest of us wouldn’t mind manning the stalls, though I’m not exactly sure what a ‘cashier’ is.”

  “ It’s basically the person that mans the stall and handles selling the products and collecting money. Money back in my world was referred to as ‘cash’. Thus, cashier.”

  “ I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing what the food stall has to offer,” Sean mumbled, showing a frustrated frown after a moment. “It won’t give me more information, so we’d have to see about summoning it.”

  “ Well, can’t do that in here,” Roge chuckled, sending a message to Hops to see if it’d be fine if they left soon. “What are you thinking of cooking?”

  “ Well… it would require an oven, but I’ve missed my mom’s baked mac and cheese. She recently moved down south due to her old age, so I haven’t been able to taste it recently…” Both of them jumped at the sound of their stomachs growling, though their surprise was quickly replaced with laughter.

  “ I didn’t think that could happen here!” Roge exclaimed, feeling Hops’ permission to exit come into his head. “Let’s head out and see if we can see what the stalls have to offer. At the very least, it should make it easy to cook better on the go, since I highly doubt it wouldn’t include *some* tools.”

  ~~~

  “ Roge is feeling a lot of complex things, so they’re at least talking it out,” Hops grumbled, having just given Lore a quick explanation of Roge’s memory loss. The wolf stood with them in thought while they talked, seemingly thinking some things over. “Now, the quests I gathered asked for several one hundred potion ingredient bundles that have the four basic elemental abilities and the resource abilities. I think we should at least talk to the person requesting them, as he might be interested in buying Roge’s empowered plants.”

  “ There’s also one or two extermination quests we could undertake. Though I doubt Roge is going to want to include them in his collection,” Marge muttered, grimacing as she looked one of the papers over. “Seems to be a bandit camp nearby filled with some intelligent, but feral, monsters.”

  “ Yeah that might work out better to increase Roge’s dodging class.” Hops grunted as as he got a communication from the dragon, quickly writing down the quest name and guiding Marge and Lore into an adjacent empty meeting room. “They’re ready to come out.”

  Once they brought back out the dolls and gave Roge a heads up, they were soon joined by Sean and Roge once again, both Marge and Hops giving the lion a hard look.

  “ He explained well enough,” Roge said, a large grin on his face. “Though don’t stop the ribbing on my account.”

  “ Thanks,” Sean grumbled, glaring at the dragon kobold. “So have we decided on some quests?”

  “ We first need approval from the dragon to reliquinsh some of the unsanctioned items in his hoard.” Hops paused, giving Roge a critical eye. “I mean inventory.”

  “ Yeah yeah… how much are they wanting?”

  “ One hundred ranks worth.”

  Roge looked over his list at that, frowning as he compared it to Hops’ journal. “That’ll work for my elemental stuff, but the resource flowers are producing a lot. And this would only shave off twenty of them each.” Roge groaned as he had his idea, grumbling as he pulled out his own book. “So I guess we need to work on making more drinks to offset the ones I already have. So…”

  “ Market stall time?!” Lore cheered, jumping in to peek at Roge’s recipe book. “Oooo! I can think of several drinks we could try making!”

  “ So, I guess that means that you can turn in the resource item quests. Your skill said you have access to my inventory, right?” Roge asked, Hops nodding in response. “Good. So Sean, Lore, and I can work to see making some more drinks. Any place we can do that without being bothered too much?”

  “ Well… there is an adventurer alchemy stand we could see about getting you access to,” Hops mused, putting away his journal and heading to the front desk.

  “ Well what does that leave me to do?” Marge asked, the deer woman looking a bit irritated.

  “ Well… there was something I was trying to see if I could make for you,” Roge mumbled, pulling out the wooden gun he’d made earlier that day. “I wasn’t able to test it, but it should work with flex to create a magical projectile. That way you have more options than using arrows.” They’d made it to the receptionist desk at that point, Roge letting Hops do all of the talking.

  “ You just want to not have to make as many arrows,” Marge accused, softening her words with a small smile. “That does make sense, though. You already use a bunch of resources to make the improved bombs.”

  “ Yeah… speaking of, I need to talk to Alton about that. If we improve the flowers before we go to bed, they’ll hit rank nine in the morning if we do it again. So it’ll increase my yield five times over. Might make this thing useless, but I still thought I’d try.”

  “ Okay! They have a time slot ready for us in a few hours,” Hops reported, Roge just then noticing the bags the receptionist was collecting. “I also took the liberty to sell the petals, netting us five silver in total.” Roge winced at the low amount, knowing that he could sell one of his potions for up to a silver if he wanted to. “I know it’s not good, but it did get us closer to grade C, which is going to be better in the long run.”

  “ Fine…” Roge grumbled, waving everyone along as he walked away. “Let’s head to one of the sparring rooms, then, and see if my new weapon is a flop or not.”

  ~~~

  Roge took a look at the ironwood gun he’d made, [Inspect] still refusing to show him anything about it. He’d set up a bit a ways from everyone, just to make sure any explosions wouldn’t harm them. He knew it wouldn’t as even Lore had a higher cold resistance due to their demonic nature. ‘Going to have to ask more details about that later…’ Roge mused before shaking himself to get back on task. Pointing the gun with one of his claws, he focused on the target dummy with laser precision. He needed to make sure his intent was understood by the system, as well as use his flex for the first time.

  With that thought, though, Roge frowned, looking at his [Status] once again. ‘[Inspect] is a wisdom skill. So If I push a bit of inspiration into it…’ He tried to feel around for that resource first, wanting to get used to distinguishing them before he sent the wrong one into the gun. His mana always felt like a well of power, and he could easily feel his health, as it made him feel healthier, for lack of a better term. His inspiration was a bit harder to find, though, Roge searching his body until he noticed something odd. His health felt more concentrated in his scales, almost skimming along the edges of his body to better protect him, while his mana rested in a ball in the center of his chest. He then tried to focus on his head, knowing that inspiration was supposed to be about wisdom. ‘And wisdom is all about making connections in the world…’ With that, it was easy to flood the energy in his eyes into the [Inspect] skill, jumping as a screen popped up in font of his face.

  Roge frowned at the rather… impersonal message he’d gotten. Rather than worry about it, though, he just flicked it towards Hops and took aim at the target once again. ‘Image, intent, and resource. I got this...’