“Rubber ducky, rubber ducky, you’re the one.” I bounced Trixy as I sang while doing some light yardwork that I only needed one hand for. “You make bath time lots of fun. Rubber ducky, I’m awfully fond of you.” She giggled as I sang the rest of the song while watering the plants. 

Trixy had cow-like ears like her mother, while Hall did not. It was a part of having mixed-species children, where the child could inherit one or none of the traits from both parents. The stronger the race/person, the more likely their traits are to be inherited. So it normally took seven or more generations for a dragon’s blood to be diluted enough for them not to be considered a dragon. 

That was happening more and more, as many of the dragons would rather breed outside their own species than with other dragons, the number only going up every year, while less and less pure dragons were born. It was mostly random, though, which you could tell by my children so far. Hamy and Niel both took more after their mother, even though they were only a quarter kobold, while Samson took on mostly human traits, with Trixy and Hall taking after one parent each. 

Cherry was close to popping any day now, Olivia not much further behind her, while Sophia still had a month or so left. Elves were also in a weird spot, where two pure elves having a child was both extremely rare and took over twelve months to finally birth them; elves having children with any other race tended to take after their partners' birth times. 

“Oh no, it looks like a goblin coming to bite your ears!” I play bit her ears, which drew even greater giggles from her as I made eating noises. “Om nom nom nom. Oh no, the goblins are going to your other ear. Om nom nom nom. Watch out for their tickle attack! Tickle, tickle, tickle.” Her squeals of delight grew even louder as I kept her busy while doing light work.

Watering the peppers, I pointed them out to her. “Look, Trixy, these are really hot peppers that make us a lot of money. We have them in this hot room so they’ll grow; otherwise they won't.” I showed her the other greenhouses as I explained what they were. Explaining even further. “Right before winter comes. We’ll make one of these farm plots a greenhouse, which will let us grow more/fresh foods in the winter. So you’ll be able to eat your mashed carrots instead of that yucky parsnip mush instead. Yuck, ptwee.” 

I made fake spitting noises as I talked about the parsnips; it was another thing I didn’t really like, but because I grew so much of it during winter, it became another staple product the wives around the village used. And they got creative with what they made with it. A carrot cake tasted like delicious cake, a parsnip cake tasted like sweet, gross parsnips. At least when it came to me, Tems and her kids ate the shit out of that cake.

“Alright, now we just have to check the dandelions… What’s this?” I felt my heart skip a beat as I walked toward the dandelions. I kept walking but didn’t feel it again. I looked around before I felt the feeling again, this time facing to my right. I kept moving toward it, trying to figure out what the feeling was as I felt the ping come from behind me, so I passed it up.

Slowly, I worked through what I was feeling. My herbdar was pinging, there was a herb around here… But the only thing it could be is my dandelions… It finally clicked in my mind. ONE OF MY DANDELIONS BECAME A HERB!? It wasn’t something that happened, at least for hundreds of years. The ingredients for alchemy hadn’t changed for hundreds of years. The last real alchemist who made any new herbs was a legendary alchemist who made five before his experiments got him killed.

I kept locking in further and further, until I noticed one of the dandelions was different. Its petals were orange instead of yellow. I almost picked it from instinct before I snapped out of it and backed off. Even my daughter knew something was up because she had stopped making baby babbling noises as she looked at me curiously.

I had to be extremely careful with this; if it had the same method of seeding where it allowed them to float along the wind, it wouldn’t be good for me, because it can blow up to miles away. I needed every single seed I could possibly get, and might lock this herb down for a few years to hold the monopoly. I also thought that experimenting with these herbs might give a benefit to leveling my alchemy.

I pulled out my shape-changing multitool I got for myself after seeing how useful it was to Sarah, and started to dig it up… The main question now is… Who should I tell about it? I knew I was telling my family that was a given, but what about the villagers? Possibly Millicent, the village's alchemist… The mayor, so if someone does notice, he can help defend my family from the backlash of monopolizing a new alchemist herb.

That’s how rare it was, I had no doubt that every single faction vying to put their piece as king would want the sole distribution rights of this herb… But did I want any of them to have it? No, one of the biggest drawbacks for alchemists was the missing starter herb. An alchemist had to painstakingly use normal ingredients to make alchemy items, purchase the difficult-to-grow herbs, which would be extremely difficult to ever recoup the initial cost of buying them.

After a few years of selling whatever alchemy items I could make with the herb, I’d sell the seeds at a significant markup at first before slowly lowering the price to a more reasonable one over the course of a year. This could be the most profitable item I have ever or will ever create, it was that big of a deal… 

It dawned on me that this was still only a few weeks into the spring of the third year of my farming… And I made a never-before-seen herb that could fundamentally change the class forever, giving beginner alchemists a better chance of not falling under the merchants' cabal. That wasn’t even thinking about the possible items alchemists could make. 

Cheaper potions of any type would reduce the casualties of beginner adventurers. I would have to be extremely careful with it. Trixy kept reaching for the plant as I carried it toward one of the greenhouses. “No, no, honey. This plant will help pay for all the food you and your siblings will eat for the next ten years. We can’t eat it before we get seeds.”

She started crying; she might not have been able to know what I said, but she knew I wasn’t going to let her eat the pretty flower in front of her. “Here, we’ll go to your mommy so she can feed you, and I’ll take care of the VERY VERY valuable plant so you don’t eat it.”

I took Trixy inside as I decided not to tell my wives until they were all together what I accomplished. That wouldn’t be until dinner tonight… Until then, I was going to sit the plant down… And watch it so it doesn’t run away. That’s how worried I was over the herb; I was going to guard it until I told my family, so everyone knew how important it was.