Chapter 85: Great Tea

Arthur nodded as Spiky got back to work. He was down to five teas and three other-ingredient combos. Now was the point where he couldn’t do anything productive without real majicka expenditures. His majicka regeneration was much better than it had been in the past but fifteen new drinks would take quite a lot out of him. And if most of them were failures, it would cost even more. He was going to be wiped by the time this was done.

A couple minutes later, Arthur poked his head up. “That’s four inferiors, no improvement. And three failures, flat out.”

“Wrong ingredients?” Spiky asked.

“Probably. The class is pretty flexible, so it might just be I didn’t get the mindset right. Whatever it wants, I have seven more chances to get it before I start this step all over,” Arthur said, dreading the prospect of having to do everything over again.

The next six tries were fruitful. The system fed Arthur product descriptions that indicated he was on the right track but not an outright success just yet. His class had never demanded that he go find the most potent ingredients the demon world had to offer. Most of the time, it wanted things that made sense. The failure here was looking more and more likely to be in his visualization.

He had been picturing a starving man, one who was weak from hunger. That piece, at least, felt right. And after that, he had been picturing him fed, hearty, and back to full health. That didn’t seem wrong, but if he was missing the mark, it was there.

Arthur took a deep breath and tried something completely different. He imagined Minos starved, and then skipped ahead a bit, to a Minos who had recovered just enough to make his way home. He imagined him walking through the city slowly, able to get around but nowhere near his full strength and capabilities. But most of all, he imagined him excited to be home. As Minos neared his home, he would hear laughing through the door, a warm light coming out of the windows, and from the street, he could smell the food - the glorious family food that Ella made.

And when he opened the door and saw the family gathered around the table that was filled with delicious home-cooked meals, he knew he was home.

The majicka drain hit Arthur so hard he almost threw up.

Nourishment Tea (Great)

You have infused a brewed cup of tea with the concepts of nourishment and restoration. More than that, you’ve chosen the correct mix of nourishing, energy-dense foods to supplement your goal.

Most important of all, you’ve infused a powerful concept into the creation of this drink. By recognizing an alternate form of nourishment and intermixing it with the more conventional thoughts about food that go into any product of this sort, you’ve granted the drink wisps of a greater effect.

Up to once a day, this drink bypasses normal digestion and grants its food value directly to the consumer above and beyond whatever else they might eat that day. All food eaten within a certain time frame from the consumption of this drink will have a greater than normal effect as it relates to recovery from deprivation and malnutrition.

In addition to these effects, the drink grants a willing consumer some of the intangible feelings and effects they would receive from consuming the same food in the place they feel most at home.

Effects: Large initial caloric intake (bypasses digestion to apply benefits directly), improved caloric uptake from other foods for one day.

Note: The effects of this drink do not apply to those not suffering from the after-effects of deprivation or malnutrition.

“Oof.” Spiky tossed Arthur a towel. “That’s one hell of a majicka deficit. What did you do?”

“Succeeded,” Arthur said as he caught the towel. “Shouldn’t happen like that again. Initial successes are always worse.”

“That was a success and it still did that? Gods, Arthur, what did you make?”

Arthur sent Spiky the description.

“A great? How did you get a great?” Spiky stood up and yelled.

“I think because it’s a relatively simple effect. It only works on a very specific group of people. And maybe because I got lucky and picked the exact right frame of mind. I dunno,” Arthur said, too tired to celebrate.

“Well, dang. Well done. What’s next?”

“Right now?” Arthur swished some water and spit it out. “I clean this up and run this tea down to Minos before it gets cold. It’s too big of a benefit to pass up, even if it collapses the last drink’s effects. And after that, I try to make it so anyone can prepare this.”

“Does that work?” Spiky asked.

“Not well. But it works. With any luck, I can leave some kind of stock for Minos to use after we go.”

—

“So you’re the one. Giving medicine to someone else’s patient.”

“Ah, yeah.” Arthur rubbed his head. “You caught me.”

The fox-demon doctor held out his hand. “Well, let’s see it. At least this time, I can approve it.”

Arthur handed the tea over. The doctor’s disbelieving, almost angry look vanished a moment later as he wordlessly turned on his heel to deliver the tea. A few minutes later, he came back out.

“Gods. What an incredible effect for this condition. You’ve given him more than an extra meal’s worth of recovery today. It’s a shame that your drink will collapse the alchemical effects, but those kinds of pills don’t do much in the first place.”

“Actually, it won’t.” Arthur took the needed minutes to explain to the doctor how his skill worked, and his plans for figuring out how to keep that effect in play even after he left. The doctor was all for it, dragging him immediately to Potil the Cat-Demon to conscript his help in the eventual preparation of the teas.

Arthur went to sleep that night with the satisfaction of knowing that he had completed everything he came here to do. Moral support was given. New tea was invented. He had seen the world, and even helped a little.

And then finally, the realization that he was out of things to do was like a burst dam. He no longer held back thoughts of going back to the city. To Mizu, Ella, Lily, and his friends and family. He was glad to be here, but when he slept, he dreamt of home.

—

The next morning, Arthur woke up with several realizations. It was like his mind had came up with the epiphanies while he slept and then dumped them all on him when he opened his eyes.

“Spiky.” Arthur found Spiky sealing the last of a large pile of envelopes, having finished his writing, drawing, copying and explaining in what was honestly an extremely short period of time even if it did take all night. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure. Actually, let me guess what it is.” Spiky wiped glue on the lip of the last envelope, pressed it flat, and turned to face his friend. “And if I guess correctly, you have to buy me breakfast.”

“Sure,” Arthur said.

“You want me to listen to how you make boba, write it up, and send it around the country,” Spiky said as he added the envelop to the pile. “Actually, scratch that. You want me to tell you if that’s even a thing that’s possible, then the other stuff.”

“That’s about the size of it. How’d you know?”

“Because I came to the same conclusion last night. You can’t get benefit off the shocks but you can for your boba. And even though you have a transcendent lack of caring about leveling in general, you still want people to know about a new food so they can enjoy it. Plus, you realized I’ll get something out of it too,” Spiky said.

“I think you got all the parts of it,” Arthur said. “I’m only concerned it’s too much work for you for too little benefit.”

“Arthur, right now, Milo and I would both do a week’s labor for you, unpaid, no questions asked. This is going to take about ten minutes. Do you really think I care?”

Arthur sat up in bed, stretched, then through his legs over the side. “Is that all? Ten minutes?”

“That’s all. Maybe a half hour at the most. I had to send out a bunch of copies of detailed maps or complex engineering explainers yesterday. That’s why it took all day. Yours is much simpler, probably. And we only have to send it to one place.”

“Where’s that?”

“The cook’s library. They put out a monthly publication that lists new recipes that have been submitted. People send away for them. It’s how cooking knowledge gets distributed throughout the empire.”

“Convenient. Why don’t they have that for what you did?”

Spiky stacked all his letters, stood, and put the stack under his arm.

“They do, if you aren’t in a hurry to get the information out. We were, but I doubt you are. Now go shower and get into some clean clothes. I’ll mail these and meet you downstairs with a pen and paper. We can talk over breakfast.”

Arthur did as he was told. The room they had rented was absurdly cheap, but it came with a good, working shower accompanied by an overpowered heating element that pushed out a seemingly endless supply of hot water. Whatever stress he had accumulated during the trip melt away from his shoulders as the hot water dumped down on him. It might be temporary, but it was amazing and he decided that wherever he landed long-term, he’d prioritize building the shower right.

“There you are.” Milo had joined Spiky down at the table, and waved Arthur over. “We went ahead and ordered. You can pay whenever. I’m freeloading this morning.”

“No problem. Spiky, how do we do this?” Arthur asked.

“You dump everything you know about boba on me in no particular order,” Spiky said. “Ingredients, how you cook it, what it mixes well with. I write it all down, ask a few questions, then I organize it.”

“I can’t make it easier on you somehow?”

“You really can’t. It’s class stuff, Arthur. Plus a lot of practice. I’m very good at assembling information and teaching other people. Just make sure you tell me everything you remember.”

When Arthur began explaining what he knew about his own work, he thought he’d run out of information after a minute or so. But ten minutes later, he was still stuck talking about the various tea leaves and what their characteristics were. That’s when he knew he was in trouble.

Breakfast came as Arthur finally moved on from the tea characteristics to brewing methods necessary to get the most out of each variety, especially when the tea was added to boba. They ate as he continued talking about fruit mixes and cream. Spiky had thought it would take thirty minutes at the most, but after forty-five minutes, Arthur finally got through talking about the basics of preparing and mixing boba pearls to the drink.

“Spiky, I’m worried that if I keep going, it’s going to take forever,” Arthur said between bites. “Just tea brewing is a big subject by itself. There are a lot of details here I’ve skipped or simplified.”

“Don’t worry about it. Honestly. If people want to learn more about tea brewing, that’s information that’s already available. You don’t need to put existing techniques into these, in the same way you wouldn’t explain how an oven works in a cookie recipe. I think we have plenty. Now I’ll just organize what you’ve told me real quick. Drink your juice and give me a minute.”

Arthur worked on his fruit juice while Spiky’s hands moved at a rapid pace. It was easy to forget that his porcupine friend had a class most days. Spiky knew things, sure. But watching him work with information in a professional setting was a whole different thing. He was an intelligence class with some points in dexterity, and this was a task that used both. It was oddly compelling to watch.

“And done,” Spiky said as he scratched out the final words on the paper.

“Already? That was like three minutes, Spiky,” Arthur said.

“What can I say?” Spiky bowed his head slightly. “I’m an incomparable genius of great renown. Now read that, and tell me if I screwed it up anywhere.”

Spiky hadn’t. It was all perfect. He had organized all the information in a flowing, logical way that took the reader step-by-step through the process. Somehow, he had pulled out information that Arthur didn’t even remember giving and placed it in its proper spot. On top of that, he had known where to stop. Arthur noticed when parts of his explanation were missing, but in every case it was stuff that didn’t matter that much, or had to do with general cooking techniques.

“This is great, Spiky. Thank you. Fully approved to send,” Arthur said as he finished reading.

“Now are we finished?” Milo asked. “I feel like we need to go visit dad sooner rather than later.”

“Really? Why?”

“Just a hunch.” Milo stood up, brushing crumbs from breakfast off his clothes as he did. “Let’s get going.”