BXBX NOVEL Chapter 109 Mal
"Mhm, same for me~! I finished all I needed to do already, so I’m fine!" She said with a big grin, so Eisen chuckled and began walking toward Gordon’s Tavern while Melissa was sitting on his shoulder and he grabbed Caria’s hand.
It didn’t take too long for them all to arrive at their destination, and when they stepped inside, a middle-aged man stepped outside angrily. At first Eisen didn’t think anything of it since Gordon seemed like the type of person to easily piss someone off, but he noticed that the man was somewhat surprised at seeing Komer but simply kept running.
While telling Bree to wait inside, Eisen then looked at Komer with a frown. "Did you know that man?"
Slowly, Komer nodded in response as he kept looking at that man that just left. "Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s some executive in my dad’s company, and one of my brother’s followers. The one that bought everything up."
"Huh, then I wonder what he’s doing here so early in the morning. Let’s just get inside and ask Gordon." Eisen said with a frown, opening the door again and stepping into the tavern where Bree and Gordon were already talking to each other.
"Good mornin’ Eisen, how’re ya doin’?" He said while laughing loudly and extended his arm for a handshake, and Eisen happily greeted him back.
"I’m pretty good if I’ll be honest, but what was that about with that guy just now?" Eisen asked curiously, and Gordon sighed loudly while shaking his head.
"Ah, that guy’s just a wee cunt, been comin’ every day and tryin’ to get me to sell me recipes and drinks to ’is boss. That guy can just feck right off if he can’t even come ’imself!" Gordon swore with a mixture of laughter and anger, and Eisen began to frown.
"Scouts, go after that man and don’t lose sight of him." Eisen commanded, completely confusing Gordon in the process, before five Bees crawled out of his backpack and immediately flew threw the slightly open door near to instantly.
"The fuck was that?" The dwarf behind the counter asked while suspiciously eyeing the backpack, and Eisen chuckled lowly.
"The small Bee Melissa here is actually a queen bee, and she can lay scout bee eggs, so I’ve just sent those away to follow that man just now. We’re actually looking for the person he’s working for." Eisen then explained as he sat down on one of the stools in front of the bar.
"Anyway, that’s not why we’re here right now. I’d like to see if you could sell me some brewing ingredients for some rather simple things." The old man asked, and Gordon nodded while crossing his arms.
"Of course I can, what d’ya need?"
"Mainly barley malt and yeast. I’ll not be making anything extraordinary yet, just things like basic beer and whiskey. Once I’ve got that down, I’ll make some other things from your recipe book."
"Got it, but plan in enough time for yer whiskey, takes a while till ya can even consider it good enough to clean yer ass with."
Eisen laughed lowly and nodded, "Yeah, don’t worry. I’ll be making a barrel of beer and a barrel of whiskey for now. That should be enough for quite a while until I find a place to keep some of my things long-term. There isn’t really much space in our carriage."
Gordon nodded slowly as he opened the door to the back room and waved Eisen over to have him follow, before the old man told his companions to wait for him.
In the back room, Gordon turned to Eisen while showing him the types of grains and malts that he had, "So, how much d’ya need?" The dwarf asked, and Eisen repeated his mental calculation to make sure he wouldn’t make a mistake.
"Hmm... my barrels hold a bit more than 200 liters, and I need about 8 kilos of malt for 30 liters of whisky, so I need around 54 kilos of malt, so I should probably take double that. As for Beer, maybe a bit less at 7 kilos for 30 liters at 80% efficiency, so around 47, so I’ll take double that as well, bringing me to around 202 kilos of malt in total. Yep, that should be enough." Eisen then said, and quite impressed, Gordon nodded while crossing his arms.
"Huh, ye already know a bit about brewin’, huh?" He laughed out loudly while grabbing four fifty kilo bags of barley malt as well as one small 10 kilo bag off the pile, helping Eisen carry them to the front of the tavern, where Eisen then turned to Bree.
"You can carry one of these, right?" Eisen asked, and the Fey-kin nodded happily.
"Mhm! I can! I think..." She said before seemingly casting a spell to make the bags a slight bit lighter each, before grabbing one of them happily.
"You sure you can carry it?" Eisen asked with a smile, while Caria herself also grabbed the small 10 kilo bag, while Komer was left not carrying anything since his stats were too low. Eisen wanted him to carry the 10 kilo bag instead of the small and weak Caria, but she simply wouldn’t give it to him no matter how often Eisen asked. So instead, Komer then carried the small bags of yeast.
Eisen himself carried three of the fifty kilo bags, which is something that he never would have been able to do in real life, but now with his stats so high and his Giant’s Strength Racial skill activated, it was actually quite easy to do.
"Alright, thanks Gordon. Komer, can you give him the money from my purse?" Eisen asked, and the young man quickly nodded before putting his hand into the purse connected to Eisen’s hip and then pulled out the appropriate coins before paying Gordon with them.
"Come back again sometime before ye’re leavin’. I hope that ain’t too soon." Gordon told them while they were leaving.
With a soft laugh, Eisen smiled at the dwarf. "Of course, don’t worry about that." He told Gordon before the group made their way through town toward the stable that Bree chose to keep the carriage and the two Automata in. And it seemed to be a quite high grade one at that, with seemingly pretty strong guards standing out front to ensure that nobody was able to steal anything.
The group hurried inside before making their way toward their carriage, where someone was seemingly messing around with both Aulu and Cabarum.
Or rather than messing around, he was holding hay toward Cabarum while being growled at by Aulu, with a guard holding a spear toward her.
"Hey, what’s going on here?" Eisen asked while setting the bags of barley malt down onto the ground next to the carriage.
The Guard that was currently trying to ’defend’ everyone from Aulu held his arm to the side to stop Eisen from coming closer. "Sir, please stand back! This is a wild beast, so it would be better if you evacuated!"
Basically instantly, Eisen’s expression turned sour as he began rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Aulu, sit." Eisen commanded before the Wolf Automaton instantly sat down on her butt and stopped growling, causing both the Guard and stableboy to look at Eisen in confusion.
"H-Huh, sir, how did you do that? Was this wolf a tamed beast?" The Guard asked while stuttering, and Eisen nodded.
"Something like that, yeah. It’s impossible to get a wild beast into town, isn’t it? So how would I be able to do that? And you, kid, I’m pretty sure my friend here told you that our horse doesn’t need to be fed. So why are you simply going ahead and doing something like that without our permission?" Eisen then asked while frowning at the stableboy in annoyance. Surely he didn’t mean anything bad by it, but it still annoyed Eisen that he simply did something like that without actually being allowed to.
From what Eisen could figure out judging from what the stableboy was muttering about in broken sentences, he was trying to feed Cabarum, but since he didn’t need to eat, he simply kept his mouth shut. The stableboy became a bit more aggressive at this point, simply out of worry for a horse that wasn’t eating, prompting Aulu to jump out of the carriage to defend Cabarum.
Eisen sighed loudly and kept shaking his head. "Listen, I get that you just wanted to help, and that’s a good thing, but you don’t need to feed him. Neither he nor this wolf need to eat or drink, so you don’t need to try and feed him." He explained and the stableboy nodded slowly.
"S-Sorry about that..." The young man muttered before turning around and rushing away, while the guard was also trying to slowly leave while filled with embarrassment.
While Eisen opened up the door into the carriage again, Bree began to fidget around somewhat while placing her bag of malt into the spot where Eisen told her to. "I’m sorry, Eisen... I should have told them more clearly..."
With a light smile Eisen began to chuckle, shaking his head as he placed the three bags he carried onto the same spot as where Bree placed her bag. "Don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault. At least now they get it.¬ Anyway, just put everything down for now, I can start making everything some other time. First, let’s go grab something for my next small project." The old man said with a light smile before stepping back out of the carriage followed by Komer and Bree.
The young merchant lightly tilted his head to the side with a hint of curiosity in his eyes before turning to Eisen. "What next project?"
"Haha, it’s nothing grand, sorry. I’ll just start making some books." Eisen chuckled, leaving Komer’s smile to change into boredom.
"Books..? Really...? Why?" He asked with a loud sigh, and Eisen could only laugh before the group made their way out of the stable again.
"My biggest reason is simply curiosity. I asked Bree before, and she told me that it has its own separate skill. It makes sense if you think about it, because it doesn’t really fit into any other crafting category just right. So I want to see what kind of effects it may give me, or what kind of special books I can make. And once I make books, they can definitely be useful if I want to write down my own recipes, or if you want or need to write down stock or order quantity or something like that, if we should at some point take orders." Eisen explained, and Komer only let out a lengthy ’Ahh’ of understanding.
"Alright, I get it. Well, can’t really be avoided, so better get it out of the way early." Komer shrugged as he continued following Eisen further into the center of town.