Kurt had a lot more time on his hands without Talia around so began to refocus on making better potions, this time he was going to try to improve the goblin's fireball. This one was a bit more difficult as with a paste you can mix fairly easily but it appeared it needed a really dry power. The three plants used also had various components to them, and figuring out which part to extract was proving difficult. Kurt had bought some more books on the subject at Salbine city, but humans didn't really make fireballs without a mana spring.

Since the goblins usually used a portion of the entire plant, it could come from the leaves, the bark, the stems or the seeds and fruits. In some cases it was obvious in others, not so much. Kurt was taking some of the liquid from the stem of one of the plants and exposing it to a high alcohol solution, which made the liquid dissolve into two separate parts, discolored from each other. Next he would take each of them and dehumidify through a low heat until there was a dry crumb like substance left. Kurt figured he could start by trying to get the most pure part of everything he could. Though they had various sands of crushed rocks as well that were much easier to make, just crush it.

He was experimenting with certain acids and bases as well, but felt he needed to start finding the right combination before he went much further, but their ability to dissolve. Joe was there with him.

"So I've noticed a lot of goblins seem to be moving around more than usual."

"Yes, there is an exploration party."

"Really?"

"There are some ingredients we can't find here, so we have to go looking. It's a larger party because the trip will be longer. It was all at Princess Layla's request of course."

"Really not the warlord, or Simon?"

"I'm sure they were involved, Simon and Thomas are leading after all. Warlord Travis is to stay here to his displeasure I assure you. I'm surprised no one told you sir."

"I guess I don't exactly keep up."

"It's a normal thing, we have a new brood they should get their legs working, and arms moving."

"I guess that's true. What about you three?"

"Ohh now our party was stationed to stay here, your stuck with me for a little bit more," said Joe.

After a few hours waiting for the last parts to evaporate. It was time to start figuring out what was needed and what wasn't, thinking that should be enough to significantly improve the spell.

The first thing was to try each individual source material by itself, then the various pairs, to see if that made any difference. But apparently all three were necessary for the spell to activate, there was a lot of trial and error this time. Once that was established they gradually removed each ingredient one at a time, until they found the five main ingredients in the purest form they believed worked. This ended up taking up most of that day, so they would return again the next day to continue.

The next day it came down to figuring out ratios, it seemed like it was much more straightforward than they originally thought. If they added more of a particular plant's ingredients the fireball could turn blue and be a lot hotter, and a different one would create a large ball all together, the final ingredient was found to have to be there, but larger or smaller quantities didn't seem to affect it other than there had to be enough for the entire thing work at all, a minimal amount, sort of acting like a glue in Kurt's mind, it needed size and heat, and a way to combine it, no heat no fireball, no size to it no fireball, but either alone wouldn't be enough either, without some sort of nexus combining them it didn't seem to work either.

"Hmm this is actually quite fascinating, because goblin shamans are actually known for their heat or size, maybe the whole time they've been doing some to the specific plant," said Joe, "it actually is starting to make me rethink some of my casting too. And now I might have to carry extra bags."

"Don't be doing too much of that during these experiments we need a good base line," said Kurt. "If you want to practice the technique, do it on your own time, please just do this as regularly for each one as you can, try not to change anything."

"It's hard not to do it now, I can do a couple rounds, can't complain much."

It doesn't really come out that Kurt made two agreeable options, larger fireballs had their own use, and so did hotter more precise ones, and he considered what he was doing a great success. Now that he also knew what parts were really important there may be a few ways to improve those techniques as well. As well he thought he was starting to grasp some of the basics of potion making. Over the course of the next few days the powder turned into three major types, basic, large, and hot. It took a lot of time to figure out the exact mixtures of the five ingredients, the ratios for each were specifically with the four ingredients that affected size and heat. But they had ended up with something they were pretty happy with. Since making a large, hot fire ball simply required too much material to work, as generally you wanted less than a handful.

"Is that why the whole ground sands?"

"Yea that allows a lot more material to be used at once, and the patterns are important to that as well, but of course you can't be making these things in the middle of battle. But it does give me a whole other avenue of what we used here and that there, in some spell works, like if I had a whole mixture of large fireballs as my sounding, but my core I use to actually cast, what would be the result? And vice versa."

"Or if a completely different mixture works best?" said Kurt. "Wait, I have an idea."

Kurt had found some clay mud, taking a tiny bit he took some of the high temper mixture, and was able to knead a handful into it, currently it was just a powder, take a small amount of the cleaned mud little by little until he had a mound with all the powder. He then rolled it into a cylinder, and found a life starting to cut out coins. He did the same for the larger one and basic versions as well. Then took the wet coins and began another drying process. About another hour later it came out dry and solid. "Here, try this."

Joe took a single hot burning coin. Joe began to chant, and the coin hovered in the air in front of him, after the chant ended, a white ball of flame hotter than any they had made before exploded forth, hitting a target they were using, the ball then didn't simply spread out into a fire, but held, shrank, and made a decently sized explosion. And that was one coin, and there was a lot less. Normally the fireball wouldn't cause much direct physical damage, it was more a heat and melting effect.

"Yes, this one I like," said Joe.

"Yeah I figure we can make markings on the clay, and you can keep them all in the same bag."

Joe picked one up, "they seem a bit brittle though."

"We can adjust, and adjust that's basically all we do."

"Maybe different shapes as well, if we only need this much, I think more like marbles might be better as well, that gives us flatter and more oval designs as well, making finding the right one I think be much easier."

Kurt had really just thought the idea of spell coins was cool, but Joe was much more pragmatic. The combined effects of multiple hot burns made the explosion bigger and bigger and somehow hotter and hotter, the big fireball where now much bigger, and had a little more heft to them. Both extremes combined though produced a similar effect to the basic one, it may make the basic version obsolete before it even became in production. They found out the effects were producing a bigger or thicker version of the coin as well, so it still came down to how much material was being used.

"I want to try something," said Joe. Placing a coin on the ground and walking away. He began chanting something that sounded a little different, and a flame blue flame column shot up to the sky. "Very good!"

"What was that?"

"Well you see there is a trap spell that uses the same ingredients, and here it is. That's good to know as well."

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