“Pete! I need a clean here!” Aqua shouted from across the tavern.

I groaned from where I was cozied up in front of the fire. “Do I need ta? Ask Rosie!”

“She’s busy!”

“Get Kirk to just store it!”

“Just get up, ya lazy bum!”

“Fiiine.” I heaved myself out of the cozy chair and made my way to where Aqua was standing over a big spill and a mess of pretzels.

“[Spot Clean].” I grumbled, envisioning the mess as I did so.

The ‘mess’ vanished with a *whorp* and a flash of light. I walked over to the bar and with another *whorp* the mess was deposited into the garbage can sitting under the bar. It was my newest Milestone for completing the More Brews Quest/Milestone. It was super handy, but threatened to turn me into a lazy slob. It even did laundry!!

[Spot Clean] - You seem to have an obsession with cleanliness, let the Gods help! When you use [Spot Clean] you can clean one cubic meter and place the removed material into a dimensional storage space. You can store up to one cubic meter of Matter, and can eject it at any time.

This ability can be used once per minute.

It was a great Ability, and definitely more useful than the Ability I’d gotten from completing the 6th level of Gnomish influencer.

[Sense Poison] - You are able to sense poison within food or drink.

Maybe that would be useful when we won the contest and I became some high and mighty noble. For now, though? Bleh. Plus, alcohol was technically a poison so it was always going off. Double bleh.

Gnomish Influencer now required the same million as Dwarven Influecner, and More Brews was now at level 2, with a much higher reward for completion this time.

Quest: Gnomish Influencer Part 7/10!

The gnomes need your help. Influence 1,000,000 gnomes with your otherworldly alcohol knowledge.

Gnomes influenced: 35,530/1,000,000

Rewards: Karmic Reversal x 1

Quest: More Brews Part 2/5!

More! MORE!

Invent sixteen new drinks. Mixes don’t count.

Drinks Invented: 1/16

Rewards: +1 Strength

I still hadn’t used my first Karmic Reversal, and wasn’t even really sure how. I just knew that it would ‘reverse fate’ for a moment. At least More Brews was going to ramp right up now that Annie and I were testing a new brew roughly every two weeks. It felt good to be really brewing again!

I gave Aqua a lazy salute then made my way up to the raised section where Annie was doing some paperwork.

“Need me for anything?”

She frowned. “Do you have 600 gold lying around?”

“Hmmmm… for an additional 10% stake in the tavern?”

“Har, har. Just sit and wait.”

I waited patiently as the tavern was cleared out and Rosie barred all the doors before putting up the ‘closed’ sign. Bando and the two elementals were set to cleaning up while Richter did a sweep for magical listeners.

And so it was nearly an hour later that the whole crew, including Opal, Balin, and even Malt this time, were finally seated around our impromptu tavern office waiting for the meeting to begin.

“Why are you here, Malt?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve been very circumspect.”

Malt shrugged. “I’m tryin’ to play both sides here Pete. It can’t look like our beards are braided together, or they’ll all ignore what I’m sayin’ ‘bout ya. In this case though, as the Guildmaster of Minnova, it falls within my duties to know what our brewing champion is up to for the competition.”

“Uh huh. Yer just curious about tha next stage.”

Malt nodded vigorously. “Oh, aye! Certainly!”

“And what have you been saying about us? I noticed that there’s been a downtick in protests from the brewers recently.”

“Only good things, I assure you. Mostly I’m trying to keep them focused on Copperpot. I don’t think you realize that you’ve started a fire there that’s garnering a lot of attention. Copperpot and I are managing to heap all the negativity on him, but,” Malt’s voice grew quieter and more serious, “if you keep handing out Ancestral Seed, you’re going to get in real trouble. That could lose you your license, you know.”

I paled. “How do you know about that?”

Malt rolled his eyes. “Do ya really think the Brewer’s Guild doesn’t keep an eye on illicit brewers?”

“And wait, lose our license?? There’s nothing about that in the Brewer’s Guild Code!”

“Wouldn’t matter. The members can give you the boot for any reason with a 64% vote, and you’d probably lose under those circumstances.”

“Would they really do that? With us in the contest??”

“Oh, absolutely! The majority are willin’ to play ‘wait and see’ right now, but if you start impingin’ on their monopoly you can believe they’ll come down hard on ya!”

Well, that put the kibosh on that. I’d need to think of a different way to get people proper brewing yeast.

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Then again… did I?

I pondered for a while and activated [Flash of Insight]. The germ of an idea was forming in my mind, but I was interrupted as Annie called the meeting to order. She went through our financials, the current state of the menu and finalized our decision to stop brewing new brew in favour of more tanks of liquid gold.

Everyone clapped, and Annie waited for silence before she continued.

“Now, I know what you’re all really here for!” She held aloft two large, red-filigreed envelopes and we all cheered. “That’s right! We have the instructions for the quarter-finals of the Octamillenial here! For Bran and us! Pete, do you want to come up and do the honours?”

“Aye! More than happy to!”

I hopped up and practically tore the pair of envelopes away from her. She gave me a sardonic look and stepped back.

“Alrighty everyone! I know you’re all dying to hear about the contest, but I want to clarify the format first,” I said.

There was a round of boos, and Johnsson catcalled.

I continued unabashed, “In the previous round it was a free-for-all with secret judges, but this time it’ll be us versus one other brewery. We’ll have two months to brew something that meets the required theme, and the populace will have those two months to send a vote to City Hall for whichever of the two brews they prefer.”

Aqua cackled. “The whole city? For each pair of contestants? For all the different contests?? They’ll be swamped!”

“Good question. Malt, do you know?”

Malt nodded. “Aye, they’ve made a whole new department of voting to handle all of it. It’s quite ingenious actually; they’ve set up magical safeguards to ensure everyone only gets one vote and started building these ‘voting booth’ thingies.”

I was struck by how much that sounded like a modern democratic process, and made another mental note to figure out who was behind all these contests. Between all the change, how much some of the contests resembled modern game shows, and now this, the possibility of them being another Chosen had gone up another tick.

Surely it couldn’t be the king, could it? How in tha nether would that be fair!? For now I'd ask Johnsson to start giving me the daily gossip lowdown from city hall; see if I couldn't connect some dots.

Richter held up his hand. “Don’t dese rules give an advantage to da brewery with da first beer?”

I nodded. “Yes, yes it does. We’re definitely incentivized ta get a new brew out as quickly as possible. Now, fer tha grand reveal, drumroll please!”

There was a pregnant pause before a collective grumble and then drumming of palms on various bits of armor and furniture.

“Thank you. The theme fer tha next round is… brew tha most valuable beer!”

After everyone had digested. Aqua was the first one to talk. “What kind of theme is that?”

“I mean, it’s better than ‘the brew that most exemplifies a dwarf’.” Malt put in. “That was a nightmare!”

There was general agreement.

“This is just going to be ‘everyone puts gold in the brew’ again, isn’t it?” I sighed.

“To be fair, it is via vote.” Annie hedged. “And we all agree that gold is gold.”

“I’m not sure that would win.” Opal piped up. “In a city as big as Kinshasa, gold is gold. Other things hold more value.”

“Aye, like clans.” Balin said, reaching over to clasp Annie’s hand. She beamed back at him.

“Or knowledge.” Richter held up his latest textbook.

“Or good socks!” Johnsson added unhelpfully.

Bran held up his hand and I pointed to him. “Something valuable to add, Bran?” I asked.

“Aye. Yer all welcome to think on the theme all you want, but I want to know what Darrel and I will be doin’ in the kitchen while you’re all makin’ beer that makes you burp, or glow, or somethin’.”

“We aren’t – “ I spluttered.

“Just gimme the envelope.” Bran held out his hand and I passed it over. “*Ahem*, for us lowly [Chefs] the next round is the same as you lot. One versus one with votin’ and whatnot. We need to make… a salty food.”

He blinked.

We blinked.

Darrel choked back a laugh that turned into snickers. “You should see y’alls faces!”

“Like goats to a piper!” Rosie guffawed.

“That’s… it?” I asked, goggling.

Bran raised one eyebrow “Didn’t ya read it already?”

“No, I wanted ta be part of the fun.”

“Well, that’s what it says.”

“Why salt??” Johnsson asked, sounding as confused as I felt.

“It’s Kinshasa’s main export.” Richter said, professorial. “They provide salt fer most o’ Crack. The nearest other salt mines are even farther east than Minnova.”

“Aye,” Balin added. “Just like Greentree Dungeon gives Crack most of its wood and veggies, one o’ tha first regions o’ Deepcore Dungeon is Whitehall. It’s all white quartz and salt. And tha dungeon keeps makin’ more.”

Ugh. Kinshasa naming sense was just… Whitewall, Whitehall, Darkwater, Deepcore. I could sense a pattern – adjectivenoun. Gods, we were Thirstygoat. We fit right in!

“Well, that explains the contest,” I said. “I did notice all tha food we’ve been eatin’ locally was a bit salty.”

“And why tha’ fools kept askin’ fer more salt in their food!” Bran grumped. “Woulda thought they'd learn to stop askin’ the first time I thumped ‘em!”

“At least they didn't ask for ketchup,” I sniggered.

“Whuzzat?”

“I'll tell you later.”

“I’ll be able to help, dear.” Opal said, smiling. “I’ve spent enough time in Kinshasa that I have a good idea of the locals’ tastes.”

“That’s good. Does your letter say who you’re against Bran?” Annie asked.

Bran read his letter again. “We’ll be against Eastern Eats. Dunno ‘em. What does yer’s say?”

I scanned our letter. “We’ll be competing against… Lucky Jean’s.”

“I don’t ‘tink we went there. Did we, Pete?” Johnsson asked, frowning. He and I had gone on a pub crawl with Richter to most of the other competitors over the last month, but I didn’t recall the name.

“No, I don’t think so. They may have been one of the breweries in Yellowwall. We never went out there. Hmmm… is their name referencing Lucky Jean Herder?” I’d just been reading about Jean. I suspected he was an ancient Chosen Catalyst and was on the search for more information on him! Wouldn’t that be a happy coincidence!

“Sounds like it?” Annie said, taking the letter from me to read. “I wonder if they’re the brewery from Blacktar?”

“Didn’t Jean die in Blacktar?” I asked.

“He had family there,” Richter said, “Might be related.”

“You think they could be his actual descendants?” Kirk asked, his tone incredulous.

Richter shrugged. “Dunno.”

We sat in silence, mulling over that for a while.

Annie broke in with a thunderous clap. “Well, no matter if it was Lucky Jean himself, we have a contest to win! Everyone, brainstorm what qualifies as the ‘most valuable beer’ and we’ll convene another clan meeting tomorrow night.”

We all split with various thoughtful expressions, though Bran and Darrel bee-lined to the kitchen discussing excitedly. It was very late, but they’d probably be up till morning excitedly cooking.

I’d hit my cave, then take tomorrow to go check out the competition and consider what would make a ‘vaulable’ beer.

*Bing!*

New Quest: The Octamillenial Part 2/4!

Keep on Winning! You got this! I believe in you!

Quarterfinals Won: 0/1

Rewards: +1 Intelligence

Do you accept?

Yes / No

Yes, the race was on!