Chapter 18
Surely a Collector’s Beer
Brewer’s Reputation: 3,040.
Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.
The very next morning, Abigail and I enjoyed hot mugs of roasted chicory tea. My very last supply of the toasted bitter root. The flavor was almost like burnt rye grains.
The day had begun with two groggy greetings. The embers had to be roused from their sleep. I had to poke them with sticks to properly wake them. They coughed flames, until the fire pit which lay like a volcanic eye, finally crackled with much to say. It was hungry too, so Abigail and I fed it the rest of our gathered wood.
Although our bodies were awake and we sipped tea, our minds were trying to shut our eyes like they were window blinds and daylight was an interloper—at least that’s how I felt. Hers were half open too, and she stared off as she absently brought the tea to her lips.
In the quiet of the morning, while the fire slowly lowered its flames, I let the moment fill my senses. The way that the morning dew sparkled in the undergrowth of the trees and on the cusps of all the closed dandelions made me feel as though I could easily be convinced right there that stories of faeries were inspired by glistening morning dew. They had arrived, silent as the creeping of time, and in the coming minutes, they would ride up shafts of sunlight. There were so many, that Abigail and I turned circles to take it all in.
Sunlight combed through the trees and filled the meadow like water fills a pool. The Dew began to vanish. Glistening reflections popped away in silence. The dandelions opened to make the meadow appear like it was tufted with yellow pom poms, as if sunlight was a color and it was filling the meadow.
While sunlight filled the world with colors and the sky lightened, we drank the last of our tea. Other things needed filling. Forged Ethereal Label barrels needed to be filled with goblin spit beer. Even though Thrush had not yet made any new deliveries, I still needed to brew more Ethereal Dungeon beers.
Abigail and I accomplished all those tasks on my Beyond the Cabin ethereal plane. Once more, I tried to brew the master beer of Ethereal Dungeon #4. Even though my Ethereal Dungeon Master skill was at level 810, my system informed me that I couldn’t yet brew the beer. Instead, I used my Clone Ethereal Beer skill on the other three dungeon beers.
[Congratulations! Clone Ethereal Beer has reached silver rank!]
[Clone Ethereal Beer now takes half the mana. When Clone Ethereal Beer is used, the quantity of the clone will be doubled. Containers can also be cloned. You can now clone ethereal gold rank beers.]
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Other skills had leveled up. Brewer’s Chill rose to level 1763, Alchemical Control rose to level 1902, and Foam Cascade rose to level 1466. Still no breakthrough to gold.
At least we’d been able to fulfill double our scheduled production run for the day. Barrels were amassing on my ethereal plane. Forged ethereal ingredients hung in suspension. Nature was growing faster on the plane than in the northern wilderness.
We returned to that wilderness before noon. We gathered our things. We resumed our hike.
The forest was cool and breezy. It was too windy for mosquitos. Ferns were unfurling. Wild flowers were in full bloom. The trillium stacked their leaves like pyramids around maroon, pink, and white flowerheads.
And now cocoons littered the forest. Globs of silver threads rested on roots, tree branches, boulders, and in thick bushes. She poured arcs of libations all the way to the next meadow. A smaller meadow. But sow-thistles grew there. Spiny leaved sow-thistle. Their heads were dandelion look-alikes, but their stems grew up to the waist. There were purple clovers too on little bumps of earth that we used for seating.
We harvested the leaves of the abundant thistles. We removed the spines. Abigail hummed with delight. Foraging brought something out of her. She used Brewer’s Bubble to wash the greens and a touch of Fire and Roast to dry them. I carried salt in my inventory. She carried peaches and oil. Those three ingredients (with the juice of a peach) we mixed together an absolute star of a dressing. Atop our salads, I sprinkled crushed wild walnuts.
Lunch had all the ingredients of a dream: solitude, nature, an impossibly good picnic salad, wild foods, a clean sky, a cool sun, good company. We ate with our hands for the fun of it. For the experience.
But the meadow was too warm to leave. Our seating was too comfortable. I lay back against it, put my hands behind my head, and closed my eyes. I heard the pages of a book turn. I squinted through one eye. Abigail perused her copy of the Brewer’s Guide to Magic Ingredients over crossed legs. She tucked her hair behind an ear.
“You awake?” she said.
I meant to speak, but I only gave my voice enough energy to softly grunt.
“Listen to this,” she went on. “The attribute is called Citrine Skin. Bullhead-lily seeds can turn your skin yellow when brewed in a lager using Alchemical Control. Effects of translucency can be achieved at gold rank.”
“There are some marshes around here.”
“Near us?”
“South of the cabin. Where the cattails grow.”
“This will be my next attribute then. Would you like to try it with me?”
“I would like nothing more than to forage and share beer with you.”
For the next hour, Abigail turned page after page. The crinkle of paper soothed me. Every time a page turned, my thoughts turned into new thoughts. Those thoughts led into daydreams. Daydreams led into dreams.
I woke beneath a sun that had barely moved. Abigail set down a bottle of beer beside 12 others.
“What have you brewed?” I said.
“Amber rye ales. One hundred percent rye. Care to try before we move on?”
[Amber Rye.]
[Gold rank. 02/100 Mythic.]
[Brewed by Abigail Yak.]
[An unusual ale made with the spicebush variety of rye from the eastern farms of Basket Plains. The malt is bittersweet like candied sassafras. Elements of black pepper and subdued clove marry into the beer like cinnamon on foam. Ribbons of sweet molasses and threads of honey swim throughout each sip of ale. Surely one for the books. A true Collector’s item.]