It was not a dud.

Arthur’s brief attempt at a dry description of his majicka-storing boba was a flash bang, fully shocking the room awake. The majicka boba was something only he could do, for the moment, but the fact that he could do it without explicit involvement from his class meant that anyone might be able to. That was interesting. That was particularly big for, say, an alchemist who might want to store majicka in a commonly used filler ingredient for later use in pills.

And if the battery boba were a working bomb, the Portable Arthur announcement was a full Castle Bravo Incident. It blew up bigger and hotter than he could have possibly imagined, a charging Littal level instant controversy that immediately got away from him, sprinted down the road, and turned a corner before he had a chance of getting reins on it.

“You’re telling me this tea can package an effect your class can pull off and hold it indefinitely?” an old, robed crocodile rasped at the stage. “And you can choose any effect? That is then performed by anyone, of any class?”

“Well, yes,” Arthur said, trying to sound bland. “But I don’t have to choose which skill. That’s the customer’s choice.”

“What?” an alchemist rat in the front row nearly screeched. “It packages your entire class?”

“It’s… a very weak effect. And my class isn’t nearly as powerful at medicinal effects as an alchemist is in the first place.”

For the first time ever, Arthur wished that one of his skills and abilities had stayed worse. Originally, the Portable Arthur didn’t do medicinal effects. It was limited, reasonably so, to things like increasing the pep in a drink or creating an effect that helped people get more comfortable.

And then Talca had a week of bad headaches, just a few days after Skal started to have worse-than-average pain in his aged joints. Arthur had felt bad for them. He poked and prodded the skill a dozen ways during his off hours until it gave way and included his medicinal effects in the overall package.

The skill read much differently, these days.

Portable Arthur

This drink abstracts the essence of your class into a product. If that sounds unusual, know that every crafting class does this to some extent. In a small way, every smith, tailor, tanner and baker leaves the imprint of their class on their work.

Where your tea differs is that where those other classes send out the completed version of their work, you’ve managed to store a primitive, weakened and ultimately incomplete version of what you do. The product waits to resolve itself, in the same way a spring lengthens once the pressure constricting it is released.

When a user brews Portable Arthur with a particular goal in mind that your boba tea can accomplish, the tea will do its best to finish the job you started and satisfy their goals. This effect is unprecedented in the more mundane, day-to-day classes that make up the world’s preparers of food, and is balanced by coming with severe restrictions you have only managed to slightly circumvent.

Portable Arthur makes poor use of the majicka supplied to it, giving only a fraction of the same effect a tea prepared by your own hands would give, even when seeking the exact same goals. It can’t be used to enhance stats or abilities.

With a specific intent to do so, Portable Arthur can be created in a form that allows for medicinal effects. When it does, it enacts an absurdly high majicka cost on both the production and consumer ends of the process. As the creator, you will experience a massive majicka draw to create a small amount of the tea, and the user will now experience a severe majicka cost in preparing the tea if a medicinal effect is desired.

Despite these restrictions, Portable Arthur allows a customer to take some of what you do home, for use on cozy days reading by a window or late at night when shops simply aren’t available to meet their needs.

Of course I couldn’t let well enough alone. I just had to help Skal feel better on cold days. The fact that his good intentions were both appreciated by Skal and likely what made the system allow him to bend the rules in the first place were only small comforts now.

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“I don’t think you understand. Not fully.” The crocodile stood and pointed his cane at Arthur. “You can create a product that allows an augmentation on top of a fully layered alchemical stack, with no disturbances. You can then put that effect in a jar and send it anywhere. Anywhere at all, to be used by anyone at all, to almost any medicinal purpose.”

“Well, yes,” Arthur said. “But it’s a small fraction of a small effect. How much is a percent or two going to really do?”

“Arthur,” Itela said, sternly. “Do you know how many people suffer, or even die, for want of a percent? There are a lot of demons in the world. You should know better than anyone how much a small improvement can help.”

“Ah. Of course.” Arthur had once made a great city stronger by a few percentage points and helped it to defeat a monster wave a bit quicker, which was one thing. Itela wouldn’t have cared that much about that. But later, in a way that was smaller to most, she had invited him to help the chronically ill, people with ailments that magic couldn’t quite cure. And his tea had helped, in small ways. “I remember your people, Itela.”

“And yours. It wasn’t much more than a percentage or two that saved Mizu,” Itela added.

“Point taken,” Arthur said. “And I’ll admit something to all of you. I’m young enough or naive enough that I don’t really understand the potential here. So what I’ll do, if it’s okay, is talk a bit less about these skills themselves, and a bit more about how I created them. That’s probably the useful part.”

It wasn’t quite as simple as that when all was said and done. Arthur was able to talk about his visualization-driven creation process quite a bit, but it was interspersed with the older and wiser people in the group asking about the particulars of just how much majicka it took to pull off various versions of his tea. He could almost see the math whirring behind their eyes, calculating just how many various needs he could fill.

“There’s only so much you could do as you are now, I suppose. Of course, with a couple dungeon crawls,” a large, armored woman said, “we could fix some of that? An extra five levels never hurt anyone.”

“Disagree,” Eito said, firmly. It wasn’t impolite, or even a forceful statement. It spoke to his reputation that the woman backed down immediately, nodding in deference to his opinion.

The questions on all fronts continued to come in hot and heavy. The few that were actually about boba, the drink, were precious to Arthur. He clung to them like floating chunks of wood after a shipwreck. The good news was that, at some point, the next talk would start. He’d be rescued then.

“Bad news,” Philbin said, pulling Arthur aside for a moment. “Well, bad news for you. Great news for me, but I’m not a jerk like that.”

“What?” Arthur glanced at Lily, who was once again raiding the snacks table and appeared to be in good health and spirits. “What’s the problem?”

“The next speaker showed up to give his talk fifteen minutes ago,” Philbin said.

“That’s actually great. Where is he? I’ll apologize to him and get him up on stage,” Arthur said happily.

“No, see, that’s the issue,” Philbin said. “He’s an alchemist. He asked what all the hubbub was about and got caught up. He’s that snake demon over there.”

Arthur decided to not groan. He was a grown-up. “The same demon who has been asking me questions for the last fifteen minutes?”

“Right. He’s voluntarily rescheduled his talk to make sure you have plenty of time.”

“Okay.” Arthur took a deep breath. “Do me a favor. Find a little table and my stuff. I’m going to try this a different way.” He turned back to the crowd as Philbin brought over the table along with Arthur’s materials. “Everyone! Stop asking questions for a few moments, please. I figure this might answer more questions faster than just talking.”

Under the watchful eye of the whole room, Arthur heated water, added root flour, and slowly began the process of creating the little starch-balls that drove his drink. At the appropriate time, he drove his majicka into them, draining himself to create his majicka-containing pearls in a way that everyone else could see.

“Did everyone catch that? If not, ask someone else in the room what went on. Preferably someone higher level who can explain it better than me,” Arthur said.

An older rabbit demon woman in the back raised her hand. “I’m an analyst librarian class of sorts. I got a pretty good idea of how that works. Would you be offended if I wrote something down and added it to your expo notes?”

The room got oddly silent at that moment. Arthur wondered if the woman had committed some social faux pas he didn’t understand, but he knew at the very least that he certainly didn’t care about that kind of thing.

“Yes, of course. That would be very helpful. Could you run it by Eito and Lily after you are finished? They’ll check it for accuracy. Nobody understands me better.”

“Of course.” The woman bowed her head slightly. “That’s very wise.”

“Well, then. I’ll get started on the Portable Arthur now. Does anyone happen to have some tea leaves on them? I’m running low.”

Several brewers in attendance did have small quantities. Arthur lumped it all together, getting about a pound in total and adding some of his yet unused Powerplant Boba to the mix. It wasn’t necessary, since he could do the mix with mere tea leaves. But the boba pearls would relieve some of the burden of actually creating the stuff, and he welcomed any help he could get.

Somewhere in the process, he felt a wave of majicka hit him, and turned to see Lily wincing as her own power ripped away to add to his. He could have hugged her. He was going to have headaches from this, but at least he wouldn’t be woozy now. With the extra help and a couple of flourishes, Arthur finished enhancing the pile of tea leaves and began his demonstration.

In the end, one Portable Arthur stood proudly on the table.