Chapter 38: Rise Together

The buying hour was magical. Arthur’s pocket money was light compared to a few days ago, but by the time he had spent his last coin, he had replenished his stock of starch, the teas he generally used, a few spices, and even bought an upgraded icemaker.

With Lily’s help, he pumped out a bunch of boba in record time, then ran downstairs to help Ella with her preparations. The entire kitchen was in use. Every heat source was busy either baking bread, roasting meat, or toasting crackers. Dozens of bowls were lined up on the counter, all with different sauces, glazes, and dips.

“Mom’s house is a popular stop. Not just because of her cooking. She has a lot of friends,” Milo said. “Between you saving the town this time around and all our friends, it’s going to be crazy here.”

As Ella finished cooking her food, Arthur and Milo left to wander around the city, Lily in tow.

On every street, people were grilling meat, making snacks, and opening up their houses for anyone who might come by. Arthur saw dozens of demons laughing and shouting on a large porch, definitely violating some kind of maximum occupancy building code.

“We used to have these things where I lived, they called them art walks,” Arthur said. “All the galleries would open up, and you could go look at the paintings, and sculptures, and… usually just a lot of art. This reminds me of that.”

“That sounds about right. Except that here, you’ll see people who don’t even talk while they enjoy this thing, they just make a beeline from one grill to another, packing it in until they can’t stand up straight.”

“Milo! Arthur!” Rhodia yelled from down the street. “You working, or walking?”

“Walking, for now. You?”

“Walking, but also doing this.” She balled up her fist and punched Arthur hard in the center of his chest. “You! What in the hell did you do with my mugs?”

“Ow, I had to give everyone boba, right? And…”

“Not that. I understand that you did that. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Warn you?”

“Arthur,” Milo said, “you know that levelling up is a big deal, right? And that all the classes are more or less balanced in how hard it is to gain a level. Do you know how potters level?”

“They make ceramics? And have people use them?”

“Yes, but how they use them is a big part of it. Mostly, potters just give people their cups and hope they use them to take a drink from time to time. Like they’ll sneakily put them in other people’s cupboards for that.”

“And what, Arthur Teamaster, do you think happens,” Rhodia said, “when dozens and dozens of people use some of your glasses on the same day?”

“I…”

“And those people are some of the highest level people in the city?”

“Well…”

“And that somehow, you manage to get them to use the cups in a way that has significant tactical importance to the survival of thousands and thousands of people?”

“Okay, enough, enough. Lily’s going to murder you if you keep yelling at me like that.” It was true. Off to the side, Lily was glaring at the mouse in an oddly effective way. Despite the owl’s small size, Rhodia recoiled slightly, as if she actually felt danger. Arthur hurried placed a hand on her head. “It’s okay, Lily. Rhodia’s mostly joking.”

“Only mostly. Milo, I’m assuming you had the same problem?”

“Yeah. Mine happened at night when I was trying to sleep. Ding, ding, you got another level. Ding, someone made a metric ton of boba pearls for the fifth time tonight, your skills are better. Ding, ding, ding! All night long.”

“Exactly. Try that but when you’re trying to chuck failure pieces of pottery down at a monster horde. I almost fell off the wall.”

“Get anything good, though? I got a class level, and a bunch of levels to my mechanics skill.”

“I wasn’t as high of a level as you, so two levels. And a bunch of upgrades to my pottery skill. And…” She spun around in place, throwing her arms up in the air, palm up, to display two badly flawed but overall shiny beads.

“No way.” Milo’s eyes went wide.

“What? What is it?”

“It’s glass. Glassmaking skills are… like my mechanic skill. A slightly rarer variant of the main thing. Her career just got a lot better.”

“Yes it did. Thanks to you.” She suddenly hugged Arthur. “What I don’t get is why. Usually, you don’t get a skill like glassmaking unless you’re actively grinding for it, which I wasn’t. Or if you tried to do a job with the wrong tools, which I wasn’t. Cups for liquid. It’s pretty simple. It’s not like you always secretly needed glassware and kept it a secret from me.”

“Oh, well, so….” Arthur blushed a bit. He hadn’t had the heart to tell Rhodia that part of the appeal of boba was seeing the little pearls swirl around at the bottom of the cup. He absolutely hadn’t had the heart to actually buy or commission glassware from someone else and leave one of his few friends out in the cold.

“Arthur, you idiot.” Lily was the one hitting him, this time. “You don’t DO that. You get what you need to do your job right.”

“I was just being nice!”

“No, you weren’t. Or you were, but you weren’t.” The mouse visibly considered hitting Arthur too, then decided Lily was doing a good enough job. “Arthur, we help each other. We absolutely don’t hold each other back.”

“But if I didn’t, then…”

“Then she would have found another way to level, Arthur,” Milo said. “And it would have been fine. Although she probably wouldn’t have gotten glass.”

“Is that a problem? Like I forced it on you?” Arthur was suddenly filled with visions of being the guy who ruined Rhodia’s build, and felt himself starting to sweat.

“No, it’s not like that. The system wouldn’t force it on me, and it’s something I wanted to learn. Except now, I’m going to have to start making dozens of glasses this week AND learn how to make glass lids. Milo, can you…”

“Glassblowing stuff? Absolutely. And maybe a press for the glass, or something. We can talk about it.”

The three of them finally continued on, snacking and picking up friends as they went. Spiky found them first, followed by Chuck, and then Corbin. They cruised, finding food everywhere. All the while, Arthur’s eyes were peeled for Mizu, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. That problem suddenly solved itself when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“Those we released, we released without recompense for their imprisonment.”

“Oh, hi, Mizu.” He turned to see Mizu smiling, eyes sparkling, looking as pretty as he had ever seen her.

“You used my water. You used a great deal of my water.”

“Oh, yes. Barrels of it.” He winced as he remembered the beating he had taken from Rhodia over using her ceramics in unexpected ways. “Is that… okay?”

Rather than immediately answering, he suddenly found himself in a hug. A warm hug. The kind where his arms were over her shoulders, her arms were curled around his torso, and her head was pressed against his chest.

“Yes, it’s okay. I like that you used the water.”

“It’s good water.”

“Really?”

“The best.”

The hug lingered for a few moments until both of them suddenly realized the rest of the group was, to their credit, doing their very best not to stare at them. But they weren’t doing a great job looking away.

Arthur and Mizu shook loose from each other, and everyone was nice enough not to mention anything. The night continued, with everyone finally circling back to Ella’s house for what was undoubtedly the best food of the night. They stuffed themselves again with all the baked goods and meat they could handle, and Milo got out every single failed weapon he had ever made to hurl at a wooden target he hastily erected.

Arthur was terrible at it, to the point where the much-more-accurate Mizu took pity on him and showed him how to do it better, which saved Ella’s poor fence from his throws. Eventually, Arthur was press-ganged into making everyone boba, a feat for which he was now much better equipped.

Level 16 Teamaster

Stats:

STR 5

VIT 8

DEX 10

PER 17

WIS 19

INT 5

Primary Skills: Teashop Brewmaster (Level 9) Food Scientist (Level 10) Medicinal Brewer (Level 5)

Achievements: Shop Owner, Mass Prep, Buffer Against the wave, Rise Together

Rise Together (Achievement)

Again and again, you’ve tied your victory with the success of others. Far from riding coat-tails, you’ve helped anyone you could, regardless of whether you knew them well or not.

If it were just once or twice, this might go unnoticed. But you’ve done this enough that helping others isn’t only a common occurrence for you, but the defining feature that the majority of your friends know you by. They understand that you feel obligated to help others, in a way they don’t quite understand yet.

Because of this, your fate is now tied to those you help in a more direct way. As you help others progress, your progress also grows a small amount. There’s only one catch: this perk won’t work with knowledge that it exists. It’s a reward for altruism, and nothing destroys the altruistic impulse like knowing there’s some kind of eventual benefit.

If you’d like to claim this achievement, you must first agree to forget about it. It will exist, working in the background of everything you do. If you don’t, you will gain a significant amount of experience as with most achievements, but nothing more.

Arthur understood the logic. The system had seen something it liked and wanted to reward him for it. But the act of rewarding him for it would mean he would have an incentive to game the process, helping people out for his own gain instead of the niceness that the system wanted to reward.

It bothered him that he’d have to forget the achievement, but everything else about it seemed just right to him. He wondered how many more hidden achievements like this were floating around, rewarding people on the sly like a more tangible form of karma.

He smiled and gave his assent for the memory wipe, and a second later was left with no recollection of the achievement besides a faint, unexplained sense of happiness.

“You gonna stand there smiling all night, or get us tea?” Milo yelled. “Mizu said she’s going to die of dehydration any minute now.”

“I did not say this.”

“He knows, Mizu. It’s just fun.” Lily explained.

“All right, all right,” Arthur surreneder. “Let me get my stuff. Don’t eat the rest of those cookies without me, okay?”