Chapter 34: Tea of the Rock-Thrower

“And what do these do again?” The wolverine commander was glaring at Arthur out of his one good eye. Probably. It was possible he just always looked like that. Arthur tried hard not to take it personally.

“It’s a small buff to vitality and dexterity. Not much, but I can make a lot of these.”

Having dragged his wagon to the bottom of the wall, Arthur was now dealing with a problem he hadn’t expected. It was also one that made perfect sense. A random new demon showing up at a battleground with a cart full of unproven things was bound to raise questions. Not everyone understood Arthur’s story that the round balls of dough could do magical things.

And he had an absurd amount of boba pearls, and had light-flavored tea to make barrels of finished product. For it to be useful, though, he had to convince the commander that they would help in the defense. And there was a real effect. The system said so.

Tea of the Rock-Thrower

This tea was made specifically with the unskilled thrower of things in mind. With this drink, the sore back and weak eye of the amateur David are mitigated a bit. And every little bit helps.

The drinker of the Tea of the Rock Thrower gets both a slight boost to their stamina and a very slight boost to the effects of the dexterity stat when throwing a rock of some kind. On an individual level, it’s not much. Spread out over large groups, the effect can add up quickly, slightly improving the flow of a battle, so long as that battle largely consists of throwing chunks of local granite.

Effects: Slight increase in vitality, slight conditional increase in dexterity

Effect duration: 30 minutes

Cooldown: Two hours

Arthur thought about asking the wolverine why the system knew about an Earth hero, then decided against the question. Apparently, he couldn’t just flick an item description over to someone else without a merchant-class skill, and the wolverine didn’t have a way of reading the description either. So Arthur needed to focus every aspect of his being on the worst possible aspect of any job.

Sales. I guess you can’t avoid sales.

“I can drink this,” the wolverine said. “The problem with drinking it and verifying your frankly unbelievable sales pitch is that I’m currently running with buffs provided by something like two Majna’s worth of pills and potions, all carefully selected to not clash with the others. And this…”

He motioned at the pile of goods Arthur had spent the better part of an hour carting up to the wall.

“Will likely upset that apple cart and replace all of them. If I drink this and it’s just some over-enthusiastic bid to get class experience… I won’t be pleased. And I won’t forget the lost coin. Is that a liability you really want to take on?”

Arthur’s hand went instinctively to his money pouch. He had about that much money. But if the wolverine didn’t see the value in the drink, he’d be out almost all the money he spent on prep, plus the little he had held back to restock his shop once this was all over. It wasn’t a small risk.

Screw it. If there was one thing Arthur knew, it was that at least one of his friends would be willing to help. He nodded more weakly than he liked, and pushed the sample cup of boba towards the wolverine.

The wolverine took the drink, eyed it cautiously, then took a sip.

“It’s sweet.”

“It has to be. The syrup keeps the pearls fresh longer.”

“And it’s not working.”

“You have to drink the whole thing.”

Fine-tuning the amount of boba had proved to be a tough nut to crack. It turned out that when he blessed the pearls, the number of pearls he put in determined the potency of the brew. It took an hour’s work to determine the minimum viable dose to make the damn stuff work.

The wolverine sucked up some of the pearls through one of the dozens of extra straws Milo had put together for him the night before, then apparently decided it was too much trouble. Tipping his head back, he dumped the entire contents of the cup into his mouth, pearls and all, and swallowed it. He didn’t chew. Arthur suspected he didn’t even taste it.

For a moment, the wolverine looked both smug and angry, and raised his finger to point at Arthur accusingly. Then, just as quickly, his eyes widened and the finger dropped.

“Hell.”

“You got the buff?” Arthur asked.

“Yes.”

“I know it’s small but I figured over a large enough group it might…”

Arthur’s sales pitch dropped off as he noticed the wolverine wasn’t listening. He was staring at the cup in his hand, his eyes darting back and forth slightly as he did some kind of obscure mental math. Suddenly, he snapped out of it.

“Cat! Stealth cat! Come out of stealth right now. Come here.”

Suddenly, just beside Arthur, a cat dressed entirely in black was there. Not materialized, just there.

Of course, it’s Corbin. Does he spend his entire life in stealth? I almost forgot he existed.

“Hi, Arthur.” Corbin waved weakly. “And yes, sir? What can I do for you?”

“This boy is going to make you nine cups of tea. You’re going to carry them all the way around this damn wall and give them to the other commanders.”

“That’s going to take hours.”

“Then it’s going to take hours. Arthur?”

Arthur scooped out boba into ten cups, poured tea in them, and set them out on the table. The commander rooted around his supplies until he found a crate just big enough to hold the ten cups, crammed everything inside, and sent the cat on his grumbling way.

“Does he… does he have to wear all black like that? It makes the stealth skill work better?”

“No. That’s a choice he’s making.” The commander watched the cat go, then shook his head and turned back around. “Your drink didn’t reset my other buffs.”

“It didn’t work? Then why…”

“No, listen to me. It didn’t reset the other buffs. It went on top of them, additively. The cat said your name was Arthur?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know why I’m a commander?”

“No, sir?”

“I was chosen for this position because I have at least one skill that shares some of my stats with the people around me. It stacks on top of whatever buffs they might also have.”

“Ahhh.” It was beginning to come together. “So even if only you drink this, it helps the overall effort.”

“I can’t do the math on the total effect, but it’s not nothing. It matters.” He looked down at the empty mug again. “Weird that it didn’t mess things up. Stacking alchemicals is a complex thing. It should have at least cancelled one of my other buffs.”

An hour later, Arthur was dishing out drinks as fast as he could make them, giving them to people as they arrived and circling the wall with crates when he could get away from the prep process for a moment. That deliver-delay was costly though. For every trip he made, he lost the chance to complete more drinks.

As he finished his next crate of drinks, turned off his heat sources, and got ready to make his next delivery, he looked up to see the crate floating in the air. Someone else had already grabbed it and was beginning the delivery run.

“Lily, you shouldn’t be here,” Arthur huffed when he saw the owl girl. “You are supposed to be in bed. Resting.”

“Nuh-uh. The doctor came by. He said I could do light activity, now.” She threw her shoulders back in smug defiance. “Said I had to.”

“And this is light activity?”

“It is. Ella said so.” Somehow, the little ball of trouble had read the relationship between Arthur and Ella well enough to know that Arthur more or less felt like he had to do what Ella said. He could see it in her smug little owl eyes. “Only for a few hours, though. She said I have to come back for lunch.”

“Well. Okay. But you stop the moment you feel the least bit sick?” The help would be nice, provided she didn’t faint doing it. “Is the normal pay okay?”

She looked at him like he was stupid.

“It’s wall day. For a monster swarm. People don’t take pay for that.”

And then she was off, carting the drinks to anyone who didn’t have one yet, bringing back empties, washing them, and overall doing everything Arthur needed outside the actual batch cooking of the beverages. He had almost got used to not having help, but having his helper back was such a breath of fresh air that he could almost feel the stress-knots coming loose in his back.

“Arthur. More drinks for the commanders.” Hours later, the wolverine was back, now with both the cat and another fast-looking feline demon of a more cheetah-like variety. “These two will take them.”

“I just got back!” Corbin whined. “Just now.”

“Quiet,” the cheetah commanded. “You and I both know you stealthed the whole way. How many levels did you gain.”

“One,” the cat said. “And most of another.”

The cheetah looked at him, almost offended. “And you’re complaining?”

“Well, yeah. Force of habit, I guess.”

Once the drinks for the commanders were gone, Arthur moved to get back to drink prep.

“No, not yet. Take a break. Come with me.” The commander moved back to his table, passed it, and stood looking over the wall. “Look at that.”

Arthur did. Where there was once a mass of monsters gnawing at the stone wall, there was now a much sparser presence of enemies. More were coming in, of course, but all the build-up was gone. The commander pointed off to the left, where a not-Karbo hunter was cutting through a much denser accumulation of enemies. As he broke through to the area Arthur had been supplying with drinks, the warrior paused for a moment, as if confused, then sprinted past the area to the still-dangerous area on the right.

“I don’t want to overstate things. The drinks you’re supplying hardly help. To someone like Karbo, they’d be more or less useless. But as a resource in a war of defense? It’s a huge difference.”

“Are we goofing off now?” Lily was returning with a box of drinks. “I can still work, you know. But not forever.”

Arthur glanced at the commander.

“Go, go. I just wanted you to see what your drinks are doing. And see me after your shift. I’m working on something.”