BXBX NOVEL Chapter 406 - Berries
But just when Eisen was trying to fix the motions that one of his Doubles was doing imperfect while making one of the last metal pieces for the system, a notification appeared in front of the old man.
[Blacksmithing reached Level 100 in Rank 3, Upgrading to Rank 4]
[You can now work with Metals that possess special properties]
[Due to Ranking-up your Blacksmithing Skill, you gained +1 STR and +1 END]
With his eyebrows raised, Eisen looked at the notifications, especially curious about what the second one was telling him. "Special Properties? Don’t silver or Maroon count toward that already..?" The old man asked himself as he waved the notification away, and then moved his fingerst through his beard in thought.
"Hmm, I guess I should just ask Constant..." The old man muttered to himself, and then just returned to his work. It was no use for him to try and figure out what ’Special Properties’ on metals were, he wouldn’t be able to find it out on his own anyway.
So for now, Eisen concentrated on the mass-production system for the potions as well as the item to allow for those potions to be recognized as such. The best way that Eisen came up with for that was to do so when closing the bottle down while the cork would be pressed into the top, so the old man combined those two things.
When it would find a bottle underneath it, it would grab that bottle to ohold it in place, push the cork in, and then properly ’recognize’ the bottle. At the very least Eisen figured it out for the potions already, the pills would maybe be a little harder. Evalia was working on designing a good container to store them as well, so he kind of had to wait for that before he could make the system for it.
Either way, after a little while, the old man spent his time enchanting everything properly, and then finished it up by setting the first mass-production system togheter, making his way over toward his materials to grab some mana-crystals and a large amount of amran-petals, which the old man quickly gave into the grinder and then slowly poured his mana into the crystal that was supposed to make everything start.
The actual enchantments were powered by Soul Generators, of course. And when everything started, Eisen started to put the materials into the grinder they were supposed to go into. With his increased size, the old man was able to look into them pretty easily, so he could make sure that everything was working properly.
At the point at which everything was ground down evenly, the grinding stopped and the pestle moved itself up a bit to let everything flow out through the hatch at the bottom, where the two powders were quickly carried up to the top of the next bowl and poured inside there. When nothing kept coming anymore, the container filled with water and everything was mixed together quite smoothly, both with a rotator at the bottom and another small ’paddle’ that was supposed to go against the regular flow of the red liquid.
Then, another hatch opened up and the spiral also soon started to carry the water up itself. When everything then was inside the next bowl, the liquid started to heat up and the water started evaporating.
When then only the actual raw potion was left, it was carried up into the start of the spiraling tube that was supposed to help sift whatever small pieces of crystal or amran that may still be inside out of the potion, before the rest was swiftly poured into the last container, which started to soon pulse pretty quickly and strongly in response to ’compressing’ the actual potion while pulling more unneccessary water out.
After that process was done, Eisen manually pulled the container to the side and let the water leave a fine sift at the side, while the honey-like potion was left inside of it, which Eisen quickly poured into another bowl with the help of a little bit of liquification to make it flow a bit faster, and then returned it to its basic honey-like state.
"Alright... Let’s get started with that, then." Eisen muttered to himself, before he moved back over toward the Dungeon-Entrance and brought the bowl outside, and Fafnir swiftly closed the gate down before he and Sigurd followed the old man together with the three young monster children toward the Kitchen.
And so, Eisen then started to think about the best method of flavoring this. Luckily, it shouldn’t make the quality of the potion go down to flavor it like this. It might make it a bit harder to hide the medicine-like flavor, but at least nothing would be actually wasted.
So to get started, Eisen grabbed a few different fruits that might fit well with this, although he very quickly managed to narrow the flavors he wanted to go with down to either strawberry, raspberry, or elderberry, simply due to the fact that they were all red berries, and that fit better with the ever-red Health Potion.
On top of that, if you turn elderberries into syrup, they can help with simple cold of flu symptoms, so that kind of thing might bounce off to the Health Potion. Eisen did actually know a potion recipe against those kinds of diseases that used elderberries in the actual potion-making process, so it was clear that they were actually supposed to help with that.
Either way, Eisen now just wanted to get to work. First, he wanted to see if he could simply mix ground-down dried berries into it, and then swiftly used a small dehydrator, which he made using one of Bree’s dehydration spells together with her element, and then ground the three different types of berries down in a small bowl, before scooping up a little bit of the potion and mixing it with those powders. To make that happen more easily, Eisen liquified the potions as much as he could manage.
After a little while, it seemed like the potions and the powders seemed to have combined properly, and after tasting a spoon of each of it, Eisen sighed in disappointment. "Well then... The potion’s taste is a bit too overwhelming for this..." The old man muttered to himself, before placing the bowls to the side for now. There was a little bit of aftertaste of the different berries Eisen tried to add into the potions on his tongue still, but just an aftertaste wouldn’t be good enough.
So instead, Eisen started to try and make some syrup out of them to concentrate the berry-flavor some more.
In a saucepan, Eisen first crushed some of the strawberries into a pulp with a potato-masher, and then added water to it before bringing the whole thing to a boil, before reducing the temperature and let everything simmer for a few more minutes.
Then, Eisen poured everything into a bowl through a fine sift to stop the pulp from getting through with the juice, and then pressed down onto the pulp a little to actually make sure as much juice would come out as possible.
When that was done, Eisen quickly put the juice back into the, cleaned, saucepan and added sugar to it, in total it would be one cup of sugar for every cup of juice, and once more brought everything to a boil while mixing the sugar into the juice.
After that, the temperature was reduced again and everything was simmered, until the juice became viscous but still a little runny. Then Eisen quickly poured the strawberry syrup into another small bowl and set it to the side to let it cool, before moving onto the Raspberry and Elderberry syrups.
Eisen was pretty sure that this wouldn’t necessarily work all that well, but Eisen just wanted to try it out, because maybe he would be pleasantly surprised!
Although, when Eisen actually tried to stir some of the potion and the syrups he made together and then tried it, he found that while it did taste alright, he really didn’t want to have to use this much sugar for the potions to make it work, because sugar was pretty expensive here. More expensive than the other materials, at least. So instead, Eisen got another idea that he wanted to try out, and it would really just require one or two more steps in the mass-production machines.
First, Eisen liquified the potion as much as he could to bring it closer toward water, and then started to mash the berries down again. And now, instead of adding water to the berries like before, Eisen mixed some of the potion into it, and started by trying to bring it to a boil, and then simply simmered it for a few minutes again.
Everything seemed to already be thickening up a little more, but it should be fine, really.
Afterward, Eisen once more just sifted the pulp out of the potion mixed with the berry juice, and then placed everything to the side to cool down while Eisen made the next versions with the other berries.
In the end, Eisen tried the slightly thick liquid, which ended up with a similar consistency to a regular potion, and nodded his head in satisfaction. It was kind of sweet, but not overly sweet, tasted nicely like the different berries, although not so much that you would think of drinking the potions like soft-drinks. Meaning, you definitely did notice that it was still supposed to be a potion.
With a smile on his face, Eisen filled the flavored potions into some glasses so that he could have the others taste-test them later to see which they liked the most, and then started to think about what he could do with the leftover fruit-pulp.
In the end, some of the potion was absorbed by the pulp, so it would be just a complete waste to throw it away. Komer already mentioned that he wanted to open something like a confectionary shop, or just a place where people could buy different sweets and snacks and such, so Eisen figured he should try and somehow turn the pulp into something that could be used for that.
And it surely wouldn’t be that hard either, as Eisen already had a few pretty good ideas, because he did some of these things already with leftover pulp after making jelly or jam before.
It could be spread thinly on a sheet and then dehydrated to be turned into a slightly chewy, healthy snack like that. It could be mixed into dough for breads or cakes, and just used as a filling by itself or after being mixed with some sort of whipped cream or similar things.
Of course, it could also be used to make berry-flavored alcohol, although that didn’t really fit into a confectionary shop.
And due to the fact that there was some of the potion left inside of it, it would have some passive healing effects as well. Eisen would just try out a few of these things in the next few hours and let the others decide which things they liked most, and would then make them again for Komer to see if he felt like they could actually be sold.