Chapter 95
Burnt Potatoes
(Hawkin)
Brewer’s Reputation: 455.
Potatoes baked in the embers of the fire. The flames were low. Only a couple of logs slowly burned.
And while the Sheltering Bubble attribute kept the vicious blizzard still at bay, Abigail and I brewed beer. She was diligently working on her Thewwy’s Puncheon tap quest. Her grain of choice was amaranth.
She pulled out a few bottles of mana beer and set them on the log between us. “Here goes. New skill.”
She took a deep breath and snapped her fingers. There sounded a pop and a tinkle of liquid and a hush of foam. Suddenly, in her hand, was an amber bottle whose label was etched into the glass.
“Ah, that was more than I should have done,” she said, and she looked suddenly exhausted.
“Did-did you just brew that?”
“Flash Brew is the skill. Level one for me.” She rubbed her temples. “I should have started at 100ml.”
Her posture slackened and she let out a heavy breath. Then she popped off the cork from one of the bottles of mana beer. Blue foam sizzled out and ran down the length of the bottle, then over the round of the log. As Abigail drank, she straightened her posture.
“All right,” she said, “five thousand three hundred and ten more shards to go.”
Quite the skill she had. If that was only the beginning of diamond rank, what else was in store for her? I was eager to be there with her to find out…as much as I had the time to.
As Abigail returned to brewing amaranth beers using gold rank skills, I focused on brewing Loved One libation ales with remains that Dellia had been leaving in my inventory.
I used simple lager recipes with ethereal ingredients and bottled them with the corresponding name to each item. My 100th libation was a small pendant that had been sealed and which probably contained ashes. The pendant belonged to a Joy S. Thus—
[Ongoing Quest: Brew 100 Loved Ones Libation complete!]
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[Reward: 1 rare silver ranked Brewer’s loot chest. 1 rare silver ranked Planes Cutter loot chest.]
[New quest objective: Brew 150 Loved Ones Libation ales for Dellia Lucerne.]
[Reward: 1 gold ranked Brewer’s loot chest. 1 bronze rank Cooper loot chest, 1 rare silver rank Planes Cutter loot chest.]
[Quest Level: 1]
All 100 bottles vanished from my inventory. Dellia would probably be rushing those libation ales out to her followers at her newest temple. Where did she say that was…
I supposed it was also time to pass off Loved Ones libation ales to Thrush and therefore to Evon as well, so I opened a bottle of dreambon ale to call the furry beast.
He cut through the world and arrived soaked. His mouth was wider than usual; his lips were like the top and bottom of an oyster shell. His eyes held abalone colors in their sponges. His claws were as crusty as barnacles, and he was shorter and wider than usual. His tongue was the color of a scallop. Of course, there was always his red stripe.
As water dripped from his fur and ran over his gigantic eyeballs, he smiled. “Hawkin, Abigail, good timing. I’ve missed my smoker.”
“Welcome back,” I said. “I’ve got potatoes in the fire. I’ve also got those Loved Ones beers for you to pass off.”
“Yes,” he said. “I should also retrieve more Elodon meat from Eileen and Hiccup. Good, good timing indeed.”
As I prepared a large shipment of beer, Thrush made fire in the offset chamber of his smoker and laid out various chunk of meat that would have had me struggling to lift on my own. Once I was ready, Thrush—who was purring—collected the shipment into his inventory, and cut through the world.
“Potatoes are burnt,” said Abigail.
I took the blackest ones and let them cool before breaking the blackened skin off. Chips of potato skin flaked away. Steam rose from the cotton colored flesh. There was also cabbage salad to be had with dreambon vinaigrette. The dreambon was a salty one with flavors of plum. We tossed in chopped chestnuts, sliced peppers, and apple slices.
Thrush returned, just as we washed our bowls.
“Abigail,” he said. “I’m near out of Anti-gravity ales.”
“I’ve been working on a whole new batch for you,” she said. “I’ll bring them down.”
For the next several minutes, Abigail went back and forth from Gift #1 Ethereal plane, and brought back barrel after barrel of Anti-gravity ales. Every time she disappeared, Thrush’s mammoth eyes looked to the sky as if he were following the trail of a bird. He purred the whole while and put every barrel into his inventory.
When Abigail was done with all the back and forth, the three of us huddled around Thrush’s smoker while he tended the fire and sniffed non stop.
“I have something for you,” said Thrush.
He closed the harpoon-handled smoker door, and then withdrew a firkin of beer.
A parchment label hugged the whole thing. On it was an illustration of red moss in the shape of a skull.
“I’m scared,” said Abigail.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know if he’s been brewing with gravy, cheese rinds, mustard, leeks, or what else…he’s always brewing the strangest things.”
“...She says, after a morning helping me brew ptooey beer.”
Abigail laughed, and then said, “I’ll still try it of course! I’ve just got to mentally prepare myself.”
Thrush held the firkin in one paw, like it was a mere ball—not something made of metal that had to be hugged to lift—while I poured the three of us tankards full.
I brought out my Collector’s Journal, we clinked tankards, and then we sipped.