Chapter 102: Breaktime Boba

An hour later, everyone had wandered off in their own pursuits. Milo grabbed a shovel and went out to search for metal, pulling along a scavenger class who wasn’t specialized for ore-locations but who still might just get a ping on one of his skills if they were a foot or so from uncovering some useful vein. For Milo, who was always paranoid that he might stop digging one shovelful of dirt away from the mother load, the scavenger class was a reassuring force.

After working with Milo for about half the day, the scavenger would then go out looking for naturally occurring forms of foods and resources that weren’t metal related at all.

It hardly mattered what he brought back, since the camp needed everything. Any extra food, wood, or particularly shiny rocks would be very much appreciated by everyone, and would be put to use almost immediately in building up the local area.

The librarians would spend a bit of time preserving their books, making sure they stayed bound, intact, and mildew-free. They’d then mill around the area, sketching out larger and larger circles into the wild, looking for any insights, data, and observations worth writing down.

Arthur had long since learned not to stick too close to Mizu once she got seriously into her well-digging. She’d often get lost in the work and forget he was there entirely. It was still fun to poke his nose over the lip of her trench every once in a while, but for the most part, she had her own stuff to do, and he had his.

“Are you making the full rounds today?” Lily said, bouncing up on her toes. “Everyone?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Arthur said as he straightened his back. “About half. Today we start on the terrace, remember? I’ve been staring at that hill for a week. It’s time. Just as soon as everyone gets their drinks.”

Arthur took a bag of root-flour out of a carefully sealed crate, untied and unrolled the top, and measured some out into a bowl. As he added hot water, he let the majicka leech out of him into the product. At this point, if he focused, he could make a specialized boba pearl that anyone could cook to make a minor medicinal effect. Or, if he focused harder, he could impart a larger specific effect, something that would push someone’s performance to a higher level in a focused way.

Here, though, he decided to split the difference. As he added water to the flour mix, he mentally focused on the idea of a busy day, one spent doing things that were productive because they were fun, and fun because they were productive. He thought of feeling a midday slump coming on, then the satisfaction of beating that same slump with a well-timed infusion of calories and refreshments. He imagined just the exact thing a person would want midway through their meaningful work to do even more of it.

As soon as he had a large enough lump of dough mixed, the system took a moment out of his busy day to let him know the results. They weren’t half bad.

Breaktime Boba (Minor)

Working hard is the first step to getting a lot done. The people who accomplish the most are usually those who put the most minutes and muscle into the task, pushing hard towards their goals with a focused mind and heart. But for those who mix wisdom with dedication, they find that another factor beyond endurance and zeal exists, and it’s just as integral to success as single-mindedness and enthusiasm.

That factor is rest.

The shadow of devotion is burnout, and the dark side of effort is exhaustion. Once consumed, a drink prepared with these boba pearls eliminates the seeds of both burnout and exhaustion, pushing back the negative side effects of sustained work.

Effects: Very slight improvement in stamina, slight mental refreshment, and slight reduction of accumulated stress in the physical body.

All those slight and very-slight effects might sound small, but Arthur knew better than to write them off. The boba was a hedge against the negative effects his friends would go through as a natural result of their work on the new town. Over time and without proper precautions, those types of negatives would build up in them. All by itself, this boba would work to keep that from happening.

“Huh.” Lily took the dough from Arthur and started using a small scoop to carve out lumps of boba pearls from it. “This feels more charged than usual. I think. The system still isn’t giving me much, but it feels… calm.”

“That’s pretty close to what it is. Sort of a mini version of the anti-anxiety teas I used to make.” Arthur pulled out his box of teas and started taking out small amounts, loading them into little mixing-cups that Rhodia had made just for this purpose. Each cup got a different distribution of leaves, formed by the personal tastes of the people who would be drinking them. Some people’s preferences he knew better than others, but Arthur had drawn at least a minor bead on everyone in the new town.

“Is Milo’s… different? The color looks different. Or something. Lighter,” Lily asked as she stared at the tea leaves in Milo’s cup.

“Yeah, I reduced the pep content a bit. Milo’s been overdoing it a bit lately. I wanted to get on top of that.” Arthur glanced down at Lily quizzically. “I don’t know how you knew that. It was supposed to be subtle, so he wouldn’t notice. I’m weaning him off.”

“I don’t know.” Lily bounced Milo’s cup in her hand, feeling the weight. “It just seems different, somehow. I’ve been around your tea a lot, you know. I might just be that good at it now.”

“Well, good on you. For now, let's just get this cart loaded up. I want to get done as soon as possible. Today is a fun workday, but only if we have enough time.”

The tea cart was a thing of beauty, something Arthur absolutely needed and almost wasn’t able to get all the way out to the frontier. Back in the city, he asked a woodworker, an enchanter, and Milo to all work together to get the cart light and strong enough to do what he needed it to do. It had built-in holders for heating elements, kettles, cups, and ingredients. That was just par for the course. The biggest part wasn’t what it could hold, but where it could go.

Arthur pushed the cart forward and back again, feeling the wheels gliding on perfect little bearings and moving around little bumps and inconsistencies in the ground on their shocks as smoothly as if he was rolling it down a bowling alley.

“Good to go?” Lily asked.

“Yup. Let’s get moving, Lily. People need their drinks,” Arthur said.

Arthur rolled the cart down the road as Lily trotted along. In theory, they could ask people to come back and get their drinks themselves, but Arthur didn’t see enough value in his own non-tea-making time to justify that. As a community, they were still light on resources, better housing, and more consistent supplies of food. Everyone was making sacrifices to set up the town as fast as they could, and Arthur’s big contribution was to support everyone in their work. Later on, when people had more time for leisure, he could transition back into more of a shopkeeper role. For now, he was back to cart-work, bringing the drinks to the people rather than the other way around.

He didn’t have a shop yet, anyway. They were so far from any non-dwelling structures that he could only daydream about what he wanted his next shop to look like.

“So who first?” Lily asked from Arthur’s side.

“Milo, I think. Unless we run into Spiky and Leena first. We’ll see.”

The town was built into what amounted to a small peninsula, bordered on the two long sides by high rock cliffs with soil slopes at their base that descended to the valley bottom. On the narrow, sea-side end of things, it terminated in a beach. If people wanted to leave the valley, that left only one direction, a narrow, river-cut mouth that they’d need to bolt doors onto for safety against monster waves.

Lily kept up just fine. The difficulty of Arthur’s near-effortless pushing more or less matched their speeds, and she was able to dog trot alongside him without losing a single step.

The area around the entrance was clear for miles, at least for now. The convoy that had brought them extra supplies had seen to that, making plenty of noise and utilizing scouts to clear whatever local monsters there were. Which meant that even the least combat-oriented people could walk around safely in the town for now. That wouldn’t last forever, but for now, they had a bit of territory to play around in.

They did find Leena and Spiky first, after all, and the couple looked a lot like they were barely resisting distracting themselves from their work. As Arthur’s cart went over a particularly big bump, Spiky noticed them, shook his hand out of Leena’s, and turned.

“Arthur, come here,” Spiky said. “Look at this moss. It might interest you. It’s used in food, sometimes.”

“Really?” Arthur poured some ready-to-go hot water into a cup, tossing a handful of Breaktime Boba in for good measure. “How so?”

“A thickener, among other things. They say it tastes earthy. You’re supposed to dry it first, although I have no idea how. It’s on a ton of the trees around here, so I doubt you’d run out if you find a use for it.”

Spiky reached up, pulled a long strip of the moss from the tree, and handed it to Arthur before taking his cup of tea and blowing on it. Leena took hers as well, taking a small sip before setting it down on a rock and pulling open her book.

“Look at this, Arthur. We have a dozen known plants of some use or another that we’ve cataloged today. This place has hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of plants. I have no idea how it all can grow here. And that’s just now, during the cold season. Imagine what there is during the hot season.”

“Well, it’s delta soil, right?” Arthur said, putting the final bits of his Earth knowledge into play. “The river dumps all the nutrients it gets over its whole course here. That makes the land fertile and it should grow almost anything.”

“Huh.” Leena made a note in her book. “Decent idea. I guess once we get a farmer out here, we can find out for sure.”

“So who’s next?” Spiky asked. “I doubt you’ll find the hunter. He was moving pretty fast when we saw him. He said he’s still looking for milking beasts.”

“Milo and anyone else we find on the way.”

Arthur and Lily left Leena and Spiky to their work and romance, giving them their privacy as they rolled into the distance. The going was slow. There still wasn’t anything that you’d call a path, besides the narrow trails that the local beasts used to get around. Eventually, they’d widen those out, maybe even gravel or pave them. It would make traveling around the town ten times easier and faster once it happened.

But for now, Arthur would make do. People needed tea, magical or not. They needed the things that made life possible to live, but they also needed things that made life worth living. And it was his job to deliver the latter to them.