“So you are trying to sell ya things to us, bub? I warn ya up front we take only quality, even if we are cheap with our prices.”
Honest but grumpy. Stereotypical cook, but seems to have dedication. Well I already like his wife, so he does not bother me too much with his honesty.
“And quality we have. Please have a look and decide for yourself.”
Putting out the radish, onion, beets and fruits he scrutinizes them thoroughly. His frown deepens more and more, and after a while he sighs.
“Not interested…”
“Wait, why?”
“The quality is out of our price range and those produce smell like some kinda scam. We can not gamble with our Money for a supposed gain, bub.”
So he is more afraid to be scammed right out of hand. Well I can understand him. Those things are rather high quality and would bring a nice price on the open market.
“The price is rather low, as I am the producer, and if you do not want to pay up front then you can pay at delivery, I just ask the Peddler King to make it contractual obliged.”
“Peddler King? Ya have rather interesting connections, bub. So, next question. Why us?”
“To be honest we were looking for other Restaurants, but they all held their nose high after seeing us eating… crude.”
Snow blushes a bit, but I am not better. We are not really Noble, I just know what I could scrounge together and what I knew of my old Worlds.
“Ha! Let me guess, they excused ya with some flowery speech about how busy their higher ups are, bub?”
“Yep, and they did not deign to look at our things, so we just did not care. We want honest buyers and not some Idiots who would annoy us to no end.”
“… I like ya, bub. But the price will still be an issue.”
“I sell it to the Peddler King at Five large Gold per Kilo, but will lower the prices to four in a while, when the Farms give more. I make an appeal to our contact to sell it at most at five large Gold per Kilo for you.”
“...This would help immensely. A Kilo would be two dishes worth with extra ingredients. We would make rather bank with that, but what do ya get outta that, bub?”
“You are honest and would answer the question where you got the ingredients. With that, the word of mouth would go around and my contact would make more Money and I would sell more Ingredients.”
“Rather clever for a small Noble, ain’t ya bub?”
“I am not even from this Kingdom, so not even Noble to begin with. What I am, is an owner of a rather large plot of land, and I it happens to have extremely high Mana inside it.”
“Lucky one. We would like to buy, but only a small margin at first. Our life depends on a steady stream of produce, and we cant give ya our lifeline, bub.”
“Completely understandable. Would you like to buy a bit for testing? I give it for 3 Gold for the first selling, as you might need to experiment with the Products.”
“If ya have some, we would like to buy what ya have to see how they will taste.”
“Can I say something too, you bloke?”
Oh, so long silent, now the Wife is fed up with it. I can understand how she does not like how her husband takes the whole discussion to himself, as she said earlier she was the financial head.
“Sure, Sweetie. You can crunch Numbers better, but if he is honest, that produce can make us some cash.”
sigh “Let me jump in. We would like to buy some of your Produce, when they are available. If my Fanatic of a Husband not even has anything to complain about the quality, then they must be pristine. How much do you have with you, so we can try them out with our current menu.”
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The bargaining is rather complete. I do not want profit from them, rather want to have word of mouth. Advertisement in this World is horribly outdated, so the telling of my Idea to Rendlar made him look at me like a total genius.
With that we left some Cockatrice Meat, an Egg and many different Produce for them to wonder about. The Egg itself made them gawk and telling them I could sell them two each Month was igniting fire in the eyes of Marcus, the Cook. He might know way better ways than just cooking it for two hours to make it a delicious Meal.
Prices are set to a rather humble margin, as they are asked to be our advocates, when someone asks, and how honest they are, they will even tell if they are not asked. A nice Family business getting produce from the Farmer of their trust. Sounds nice!
…
“Only the basics are publicly available. If you have someone, who can use Magic, then you should find a Caste to take him in to learn from them. We highly dissuade from learning Magic alone, as it has many dangers, which might be not only dangerous, but can lead to deadly accidents.”
“I understand this, but it is only for testing their aptitude and maybe early start before going into apprenticeship.”
That was a lie, but she does not need to know that. In front of me is an elderly Woman of the Bookstore in Magus. I had to try my luck with at least some Books here about Magic.
They have one Book for the public, it is expensive with a massive and fully made out of Gold ‘E’ at the front. A Mitril for a book, with just the basics as she said it. The Book is huge and rather convoluted written. So many theories and not many real spells.
While we eat the first test dishes of Marcus, I skim a bit. It is true, Magic is dangerous, but as far as I can see, because of their traps they put inside. The first training regime makes the person aware of their Mana flow and moves it. Ones with static Mana will not only writhe in pain but even injure themselves, maybe even irreparably.
Basic movement of Mana is even usable with static Mana, as I already know. The training is way easier, if you learn how to eject Mana from your body with your will. The Body gets into equilibrium on its own without any repercussions. What they write is a dangerous test for making the unable suffer without reason.
The first spell I see is a rather simple Wave of pure Mana. Just throwing Mana like a gust of wind to maybe dust a room, but nothing really worth it. The way is ejection and kinetic change, interesting.
...
“Father, there is a occurrence you should see. If you have time, could you maybe focus on the Kitchen?”
Black three has messaged me. Well we are right now in the middle of testing the taste of Marcus’s work. He uses the Egg white and yolk separately in containers and only uses it for flavor in different combinations, genius!
Oh! The Kitchen in the Castle, of course.
‘I am on it. What is going on?’
“We have a… Visitor? Maybe a new being in the freezer. The children kept telling there were Fairies in the Freezer and something really is there.”
Fairies? Wait, the little bug humans which dance on flowers? What does she do in the freezer? There are no Flowers there…
‘Oh. Um… Hello?’
cling cling
Her… or his? Looks female, so her… Her way to speak is bell sounds, or rather ice resonating. She is not a fairy, rather an… Ice sprite?
‘Where do you come from?’
clong
You dunno, huh… Well I can see that you are harmless and out of my taken over miasma…
‘Let me try something, maybe I can understand you then better.’
cliling
Affirmation huh? Okay now touching her with my presence. Not too much to take her over, but having a small frail connection.
‘So, you are a recently born creature.’
I feel her affirmation. The time she is living might be two weeks or maybe a little bit more.
‘What do you do here?’
She was ordered to cool things? When did someone… No, it might have been me. I put the sorted Miasma in here for exactly that purpose. But still something is not really right.
‘So, what was the first you noticed, when you were born?’
A blurry picture was sent. I can not really decipher it completely, but can make out the silhouette of a white haired rat girl. I got it!
cling clong
‘Oh sorry, I disconnected by understanding what was going on. You were born from the residue Miasma on Snow.’
Further in the rather strange dialogue I found out she had no body at first, but with more Miasma she became something. So what the Miasma did was create something similar? If that would be true, then there would have been many more of those sprites… Oh wait, there are.
At high concentrations of specific elements and specific Miasma some kind of ‘knots’ are hovering around. Most have no body and might not even be aware of themselves, but if I give one of them preformed Copy Miasma… Nothing happens…
Oh, wait I am an Idiot! Looking away and searching for different things to see what happens around here. Leafy is resting in the earth growing… Leafs? Wow, she is enveloped in them like a cocoon.
...back to the place and… Yup, a small doll like earth sprite is born. The knot was in the fields and I just formed out of Copy Miasma a body. It never worked with anything, but now it works? I hate how Miasma makes no sense at all! Well, I have new avenues in creating something fun!