Chapter 58: Melder and Powershot

In all honesty, Arthur was cheating a bit with the new menu.

With so many permutations, the average customer to the boba shop would probably get confused. Some would still sniff out their favorite drink, and that would be helpful in identifying various combinations he should offer regularly.

But by making such a big menu that would intimidate some people, he could make more recommendations and push his Empathic Host skill forward faster. Of course, that wasn’t entirely selfish. All the better shopkeeps he did business with had similar skills that helped them point him in the right direction, and it made the experiences he had in their shops much better and smoother. He wanted that for his customers.

On the other hand, the menu was much more streamlined than his first attempt. It was clear what the choices were, and customers could make their way through, picking whatever they wanted. If he was right, it would be a better experience for everyone.

And, as the weeks went on, he could add more flavors, rotating in new fruits, new spices, and different, more unique kinds of boba. For the time being, he was set. As much as a person could, he knew his customers would be well-served by what he’d created.

Of course, he still had no idea how to push forward the snacks side of things. Somewhere deep in every dream he had ever had about the shop was the idea that people could eat while they drank boba. He didn’t want a full restaurant menu, but he wanted cookies. He wanted little cakes. He wanted biscotti, dammit, and he’d have it eventually, no matter what it took.

—

“Mmm.”

Onna and Mizu hadn’t been around at all for the testing phase of things. Now ,they were experiencing the full impact of the new menu all at once, complete with Arthur’s recommendations to both of their tastes.

Most demons, Arthur had found, didn’t have food tastes that reflected how they looked and acted. The biggest, strongest infernals often liked the sweetest, most candy-flavored drinks he could make. Onna was an exception. She was a strong, brash personality, and wanted the exact same thing out of her drinks.

“It’s good?”

“It’s really good. It’s like my mouth was in a fight. What’s this, again?”

“It’s umbra with Ella’s blend spice boba, and something my class added in.”

As soon as he started making the new drinks for actual paying customers, his class had responded with new brew enchantments. Each cup now had a more specific effect, similar to the anti-venom tea he made for Mizu. It took only the slightest push of his own will to create them, like the system understood what the drinks were trying to do and was just waiting for his permission to help him do it.

Warming Sip

Drinks empowered with warming sip sink comfort into the very bones of the drinkers, driving out cold, stilling shivers, and smoothing goosebumps back down. Warming sip is a set, limited effect that will not improve with your stats or skills and cannot warm a person beyond what is personally comfortable to them.

Melder

Melder uses your Teashop Brewmaster skill to blend all the flavors into a beverage into a more cohesive whole. It is not a definitive improvement and might not be to every drinker’s tastes, but melded drinks are much more finished, defined products that carry their own more-than-the-sum-of-their-parts character.

Powershot

Powershot drinks are stronger in every respect. If they are pepped, they become peppier. Strong flavors become stronger. Spices stand out more and tastes kick in sooner while lasting longer.

Even medicinal effects get a slight boost, but all this comes at a cost. Powershot has a significant majicka drain that increases in cost depending on the initial effects it's trying to improve.

Onna’s tea was both warmed and powershoted. His tea-selection skill had sworn that was the right choice, and her reaction confirmed it.

The only downside was that all the new effects came with a significant majicka cost, and powershot left him feeling especially drained. Arthur responded by pouring what was left of his majicka into Mizu’s light-flavored, pepped melon drink, giving it a warming effect and melding together the flavors into a spiced, mellow whole.

“And you like yours, Mizu?”

“Yes. It’s very good, Arthur. I’m so warm now. I almost don’t want to go back to the wells.”

“Liar. You love it down there.”

“I do.” Mizu smiled and drained the last of her tea. “But it’s cold down there. Freezing.”

“Does the water freeze up? As it goes through the city?”

“Not if we keep it flowing fast enough. But that puts strain on the system, and…”

“And it’s more work.” Onna broke in. “She’s always majicka drained when she gets home. People don’t understand what wellers put into this city. They think the water just comes out like magic.”

“It sort of is magic, if you think about it.”

“Tell that to me when I want to go shopping after work and this one comes home and passes out every day.” She patted Mizu on the head, affectionately. “She needs a vacation.”

“I don’t,” Mizu said, furrowing her brow a little. “I’m behind on my work.”

“Don’t listen to her, Arthur. Her boss actually told me he’s been trying to get her to take some time off and she won’t,” Onna said.

Arthur shot a probing look at Mizu. She smiled at him, looking a lot like she always did. Even now, she was a hard girl to get a read on. To all outward appearances, she was always calm like water. Given that, Arthur decided to cheat a little. He focused in on her with his empathic host skill again, getting confirmation on what it had told him when she first walked into the shop that day.

Give her tea that soothes overwork. That’s what the skill is saying. But I don’t have a tea that can force people to relax. They have to want it.

Arthur let the conversation move on a bit as he thought about what to do. As far as he knew, Mizu’s vitality was higher than his, and he could work almost indefinitely as long as he got a few hours of sleep a night. So in that way, being overworked probably wasn’t a physical thing where she was tired. One way Arthur had described burnout in his past life was that it wasn’t because of the absolute amount of work. Rather, it happened when a person’s motivation to do said work was lower than their actual workload. So he needed to focus on the mental side of it, on getting her some distance from her work.

There was just one problem with that.

The city was living evidence of Mizu’s work. Everywhere she turned, she was reminded of her work from big things like foundation, and small stuff like faucets. And each time that happened, she’d shift into a professional working mode, where she’d talk for a while about the particular well that powered the contraption.

If Arthur had any chance of getting Mizu’s mind off of work, he needed to get her away from anything that would remind her of the wells.

But that means leaving the city, and I barely ever do that. Where would we even go?

And then, suddenly, it occurred to him. He knew what to do.

—

“Milo. We need to go camping,” Arthur said.

“Camping? We’re going on a trip? To where?”

As soon as the shop closed down, Arthur ran home to start planning. But as he got started, he realized that he needed to gather some social momentum so that when he presented the plan to Mizu, she’d actually go instead of shutting him down flat in favor of spending more time at work. So that meant Milo. And Rhodia, if she could be roped in. And probably getting a bunch of other friends on board.

“What do you mean, to where? To camping. Maybe the forest? Maybe somewhere else?” Arthur said.

“I get that, but on the way to where?” Milo asked. “You camp when you go somewhere, Arthur. It’s an in-between-places thing. Where are we going?”

It took Arthur a moment to rule out the idea that Milo was just screwing with him. That meant another possibility, something that was absolutely shocking if it was true.

“Milo. Question. Is it the case that people don’t go camping for fun in this world?”

“Camping? For fun? I have a house, Arthur. With a bed. Why would I sleep outside for fun? And what if a bug bites me? Those itches can last for days.”

“Alright, so maybe the sleeping part sucks. And the bug part too. But it’s… you know, it’s different.”

“Plus, now that it's the cold season, everything is frigid and miserable,” Milo said.

“You get away from the city and try something new,” Arthur tried.

“And give up our full kitchen to cook food over… a fire?”

“I’m reliably informed it builds character. But it can be fun. You look at stars.” Arthur could see that his words were getting nowhere, so he switched tacks. “You could do arguably stupid things with fire…”

“I’m listening now.”

“You could sneak off with your girlfriend into a naturally beautiful environment.” Arthur was in sales-mode, and he had enough Milo hours logged to have a good idea of what would work with his friend.

“Okay, fine. I’m mostly sold. But it’s cold out there, Arthur.”

“There’s wood. We can build a big fire. And like I said, we cook over it. And everyone brings tents. Actually, do you have tents?”

Milo shrugged. “Most people have at least one for travelling. And they aren’t expensive. You could buy a couple for a few large.”

“Okay, done. But I do need your help to get other people on board with this.”

“Yes, you do. And probably Rhodia’s. But I think we can sell this as ‘the weird offworlder wants to do weird offworlder things’ and get people interested.”

“You think that will work?” Arthur asked.

“It got you a girlfriend.” Milo smiled.

“Point taken.”

—

Milo asked for a few days to build momentum on the trip, and Arthur agreed, asking that Milo keep the trip a secret from Mizu until they had built up enough interest among their peer group that it would be tougher for her to say no. Arthur himself told Onna, who was an easy sell. He thought she would have agreed to almost anything that would have made Mizu slow down a little. Lily was also on board as soon as Arthur asked her and began helping with the plans.

His next few days became an odd mix of frantic pre-trip planning in the morning and slow, normal life in the afternoon. He’d scramble around the city to buy tents and one-size-fits-most cold weather gear for anyone who didn’t have it. Then, he’d open the shop and casually chat with his regulars.

The weirdest part of the process, as far as Arthur was concerned, was that somehow, he had become reasonably well-to-do in this new world. Sure, he didn’t pay rent, or have a family to support. But even so, something like outfitting an entire expedition of teenagers for a cold-weather trip was something that put only a medium-sized dent in his pocketbook. Goods were so cheap here relative to the level of income of most demons that necessities were almost an afterthought, and a reasonable amount of disposable income was almost universal.

So he bought coats, just in case, opting for a down-filled kind that compressed down to almost nothing so he could stick several in his pack. He bought gloves. And he very, very gladly bought an entire set of ultra-warm clothes for Lily.