Chapter 83: Nourishment Tea

AN: Just one chapter today, but it's a nice one.

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“Seems pretty simple,” Arthur said as he finished the brochure-book. It was really short, to the point where the leather covers seemed like a waste.

“That’s because it is,” Milo said. “It was revolutionary. When it came out, there was a worldwide boom in leveling. For an entire generation, people were breaking their bottlenecks left and right. Since then, the average level has been rising steadily every year.”

“Just from that? It seems obvious.”

“Which is why we are all gaping at you. It isn’t obvious, Arthur. Not like that.” Milo looked like he wanted to shake Arthur. “Everyone reads The Goose Sage, and then spends their entire life trying to believe it. I sometimes think about how much higher my level would be if I really did believe it. Which is almost ironic because I need to stop thinking about leveling to raise my level.”

“The closest I know of to reaching the Goose Sage’s ideal, Arthur, is Milo’s mother,” Minos said. “I’m not even close to her mindset. And here you are, just thinking that way naturally. Just in the mindset of the sage from birth, more or less.”

“Right. If it helps, I wasn’t that way on Earth,” Arthur said.

“From everything you’ve told me, you hated your work on Earth,” Spiky said. “Here, the only time I’ve seen you care much about your level is when Mizu was sick.”

“Yeah, because it was important. And I also cared about my class skills.”

“You cared about your class so you could start working. You cared about baking so you could give people snacks. And you cared about making medicine to make Lily feel better.” Milo remembered something and turned to his dad. “Oh, yeah, you kind of have a daughter, too.”

“Really?”

“It’s complicated.” Milo sighed. “Anyway, Arthur. I wondered before why you were at level 20 already. And this actually helps a lot in understanding it. I want to punch you, of course. But I understand better now. You just want to make tea.”

“The tea!” Arthur said, starting up from the side table and leaping back to his stuff. “I’m so glad I didn’t get it steeping before you guys distracted me.”

“Gods, I’m glad you got your class before you really got things rolling with Mizu,” Milo said with a laugh.

“Yeah?” Arthur asked as he began the process of preparing his tea.

“Yeah. Or else your class would be in making comic mistakes with women and keeping a lagged understanding of everyone’s feelings. But then, your level would be in the triple digits.”

Arthur snickered and went to work combining the ingredients, steeping the tea as well as he knew how. As he did, he tried to focus his majicka not on feeling full, but on being well-fed, which was a concept that was pretty hard to get a bead on. He tried to feel like someone who knew where their next meal was coming from, and who was still benefiting from their last one. Not a glutton. Not a gourmand. Just someone who had eaten enough to be healthy and get their work done, and knew it.

When the majicka dumped out of him all at once, he knew he had succeeded. How much was a matter for the notifications.

Nourishment Tea (Inferior)

You have infused a brewed cup of tea with the concepts of nourishment and restoration. While the overall effects of this tea are weak due to insufficient support from the ingredients used, the drink provides a slight nourishing effect greater than the energy contents of the ingredients should supply.

In addition, all food eaten within a certain time frame from the consumption of this drink will have a greater than normal effect on matters related to recovery from deprivation and malnutrition.

Effects: Large initial caloric intake, improved caloric uptake for five hours.

“Here. Drink this,” Arthur said as he added a straw to the cup and carried everything over to Minos.

“Sure.” Minos took the drink and started working on it right away.

“Just like that? No questions? No having your doctor check it out first?” Arthur asked, a bit taken aback at how quickly Minos accepted the drink.

“Arthur, I’m an explorer. I dodge dangerous beasts for a living. I go places there’s no food and there might not be any water and just wander around. I think I can handle a delicious snack.” He took another drink, draining about an eighth of the glass in a single gulp. “This is really sweet, though. Not that it’s bad, just a bit more than I’m used to,” Minos said.

“I don’t normally make them that sweet,” Arthur explained. “I figured the sugar would help.”

“Oh, so does everybody. Mostly they’ve been feeding me grain mush with cream and sugar. They say it’s the most food they can pack into one meal. And then they supplement that diet with meat,” Minos said.

“Sounds… terrible, honestly. Even though I like all those things,” Arthur said with a smile.

“Yeah, every meal is heavy. It gets old after a while. This is good, though. What’s it supposed to do?”

“The drink itself is juiced with more food value than it should have. And you get more nourishment out of the same amount of food that you eat in the next five hours. I can probably improve it a bit more with some practice.”

“That’s a handy effect. Thank you, Arthur.” Minos took the lid off the drink and downed the last of the pearls. “Too bad I can’t let you stay longer. These would probably speed things up a lot.”

“What do you mean, can’t let us stay?” Milo lowered his brow. “We set aside time for this.”

“I know you did. And I know you want to help,” Minos said as he placed the drink on the side table. “But I’ve been through this with your mother before, years ago. I go out, I come back hurt or beaten down, people come out to meet me and nurse me back to health. And it eats up weeks that they could have spent working or resting. It’s not fair to them.”

“I can handle not fair, dad,” Milo said.

“Maybe you can. But I can’t. It would hurt me much more than the waiting. Which I’m used to, by the way.” Minos sighed. “Of course, you’re a grown demon. I can’t really tell you what to do anymore. Might not even try if I could. But what I want is to see my son for only a few days, have some laughs, and then meet him at home back in the city when I’m healthy.”

Milo thought about it for a bit. There was conflict in his face that Arthur could have seen even without his perception stat. The expression was hard to miss even if Arthur tried. And then it broke. Milo had decided.

“Fine. I understand, I think,” Milo said slowly. “I’m not sure I would want Rhodia dropping everything and giving up her work every time I got back. If I was an explorer, I mean.”

“Wait, who’s Rhodia?” Minos said with a sudden surge of vigor. “Is this a girlfriend? Forget the whole going home argument. Tell me about this girl.”

The next twenty minutes or so went by with Milo trying to explain who Rhodia was to him without embarrassing himself, and both Arthur and Spiky doing their best to ruin those attempts. It was fun. In a way, it was family. That was even true for Spiky, who had his own parents and siblings. By the time Minos kicked them out so his doctor could do his morning examination, everyone had been in pretty good spirits for hours.

Once Spiky had broken away to go see if the stationary shop was open yet, Arthur turned to Milo.

“Feel better?” Arthur asked.

“I do. That was better. Not to seem ungrateful, but I’m not even sure if it had anything to do with what you said. None of the same problems happened that time, at all,” Milo said.

“Well, you had some time to get used to things. So did he. I think it makes sense, either way. You both love each other. You’re both trying to improve things, but sometimes, it just takes time as well as effort.”

“Look at you, sounding like a cleric.” Milo slapped Arthur on the back as they kept walking. “Actually, that wouldn’t have been a bad job for you. You’re like a quarter of a cleric now, kind of. And a twentieth of an alchemist. A bit of everything, kind of like a bartender.”

“Eh. I don’t think I could have handled it long-term, really. I don’t know how Itela does it. If it wasn’t for the actual help those skills give people, I’d almost wish I didn’t have them. Sometimes I wish my class was just about snacks. A lot less stress.”

“And with the help that those skills give?”

“I absolutely wouldn’t trade it away. But it means I have to think about the pain other people are in a lot. And it sort of hurts me in a small way.”

“Is that how it works?”

“For me, yeah. I don’t know how it is for clerics, and I doubt it’s that way for alchemists. But my skills work a lot better when I imagine how people feel better after drinking the tea. And to do that, I have to first imagine how they’re feeling right now. Sometimes, that’s not the most pleasant. Like with your dad. I had to imagine being completely exhausted, and a few other things, and then imagine myself getting better thanks to the tea. In all honestly, that wasn’t so bad. But when it’s… I don’t know, when it’s someone’s joints aching all day, every day, because it’s cold. Or having a headache so bad you can’t see. It’s tough,” Arthur said, trying his best to describe his conflicted feelings.

“I, for one, am glad you are there to help those people. And I’m sure they are too.”

Arthur took that in. Milo wasn’t wrong. There was a net-good happening for sure. The only cost was that it hurt him a little.

“I guess it’s just… selfish. I want to do the good thing, I want to help people, but it hurts a little,” Arthur said with his thoughts a bit more in order. “That doesn’t mean I mind, exactly. I think I just wish it could happen without the hurt. But for Itela, who holds up the entire city on her shoulders, it just seems worse. I wonder who she talks to.”

“Karbo?”

“Maybe, but I doubt he’s the type to really get into the weeds on complex emotions.” Arthur thought about it a little, then stopped. “Hell.”

“What?” Milo asked.

“She probably does have someone to talk to, but it’s possible she doesn’t, and because I thought of that, I’m now pretty much obligated to check. With the highest level person in the city. Who probably doesn’t even take me seriously. Right?”

“Sounds about right, buddy,” Milo said. “And sorry. That’s why I’ve warned you not to think so much. It almost always brings trouble.”