Chapter 128 Finished Brews
After a while, Eisen had a few large bowls of the Healing Balm sitting in front of him, and chose to start making the containers for it out of some wood, which was done by simply carving out a block of wood and rounding its outside and making a small screw-on lid for each one. This took a while simply because of how many there were, but whenever Eisen finished a small pot, Komer started filling it up with the balm, so there was quite a bit of time being saved.
And after a few hours, Eisen thought that they should have enough balm to start it out with, and it was always easy enough to make more at any point.
"And now?" Komer asked curiously, wondering what Eisen would make next, and he scratched his beard in thought.
"Hmm, I would like to make some bandages, but the fabric that we have isn't really that great for that. If we get to some town, I would like to see if I can buy some that's better for it, or maybe even specifically make some." Eisen explained, and then looked over to large honey-crystal-hive standing in the corner, being reminded of something he didn't really think about for a while.
"For now, let's just think about new products to make in a bit and take a look at how this turned out." Eisen said with a smile as he stepped over to the mead that he made a few weeks ago. It should definitely be done by now.
He made a small opening at the top that he could pour a little bit of each of the three types of mead out of, and poured them into three samll cups to taste-test.
"Here, have a sip of each as well. It's mead, three different types in total. One without any herbs added, one with Amran, which is used to make health potions, and one with Byron, which is used to make Mana potions. Seems like the herbs even slightly changed the color of the mead, huh?" Eisen said as he looked at the different cups, seeing a light tint of red and blue in them.
Curious how this tasted, Eisen took the first sip of the regular mead and immediately smiled. This tasted pretty good already, although it really just tasted like honey for the most part. Happy that this seemed to have properly worked, Eisen finally acknowledged this batch as 'Finished', and a notification popped up in front of his face.
[Mead]
[Quality – Perfect][Rank – 0]
[Description] A Batch of Mead made by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen. Nothing has been added to it other than the most basic ingredients, and as such, it is the purest experience of mead you can get.
[Brewing Skill Learned]
After smiling in satisfaction, Eisen set the large bottle of mead to the side, before turning to Komer. "So? How did you like it?"
The young merchant looked at the cup in his hand before shrugging. "It tastes great, for sure, but it's kind of bland, right? There's nothing much about it, it just tastes like honey." Komer pointed out, leaving Eisen to simply nod.
"Of course, yeah, there's nothing special about this so far. I didn't add anything into this at all. Let's try the other ones then. First the Amran one." Eisen said as he took the sip of the lightly red-tinted mead. There was already a large difference to before. Of course, it still had a strong taste of honey, that was inevitable with mead, but it tasted a lot more refreshing and pleasantly sweet, giving a light warmths to Eisen's body, which was most certainly just something that he imagined and not actual warmth somehow magically emitted through the drink.
He nodded in satisfaction and handed the cup over to Komer, who likewise took a sip and smiled afterward. "This tastes very different, wow. It's kind of hot, but not spicy or has any actual heat? Is that about right?" He asked criously, and once more Eisen nodded. "Mhm, that's exactly right. It's kind of similar to the way that Health Potions feel as well, so I guess it's something caused by the Amran itself. Anyay, this is obviously finished now." Eisen said this out loud, and immediately a notification popped up in front of his face, showing him the info on this particular drink.
[Health Mead]
[Quality – Perfect][Rank – 0]
[Description] A special type of mead made by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen. It has in large parts absorbed the essence of Amran petals, and as such now has a light red color, as well as special effects.
[Effects] 5% increase in HP regeneration for 1 hour
"Oh, interesting! This actually increases our HP regeneration for a while." Eisen told Komer before grabbing the next, and last, cup of mead and looking at its blue tint.
Komer, however, looked at Eisen in surprise. "Oh, really? So this is already the type of thing that Gordon asked you to spread around?"
"Well, similar. The things that Gordon wrote down in the recipe-book are far more particular. Anyway, let's try this last one as well." Eisen said as he finally took a sip of the Byron-infused mead, and noticed how polarizingly different it was to the Amran version.
While the amran seemed to give the mead this feeling of warmth, the byron apparently gave the mead a feeling of coldness. Just a very nice, refreshing cool. This was for sure the type of thing that you could sip on in the heat of summer, which made Eisen simply wish to have something like this in real life during the barbecue with his family and friends in a few days.
"This is really nice as well, right?" Eisen asked Komer, after handing the cup to him, and he quickly nodded. "Yeah, it is… It somehow feels super minty, right?" He asked, trying to properly describe this feeling. Since Eisen understood what he meant, he simply nodded.
"It does actually, yeah. Anyway, this is definitely finished."
[Mana Mead]
[Quality – Perfect][Rank – 0]
[Description] A special type of mead made by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen. It has in large parts absorbed the essence of Byron petals, and as such now has a light blue color, as well as special effects.
[Effects] 5% increase in MP regeneration for 1 hour
Eisen smiled in satisfaction as he looked at his status to see the proficiency he now had with his newest skill, and saw that it was only a little over 60 proficiency levels away from ranking up. It made sense that something like this would give a lot of proficiency, considering the amount of time that it takes to actually complete.
But there was one more thing that had to be considered, which was that Eisen had a lot more mead than this. There was one more of those 'Honey-Capsules' filled with regular mead, and in total 12 more capsules filled with either Health or Mana Mead.
And as such, it didn't take long to rank up either.
[Brewing reached Level 100 in Rank 0, upgrading to Rank 1]
[You can now make massive quantities in one container]
[Due to Ranking-up your Brewing Skill, you gained +1 INT and +1 END]
Eisen smiled in satisfaction and continued to properly ackowledge each mead as finished after fishing out the small bags of either byron or amran and generally quality-controlling each capsule's content.
"Now then, Komer, what do you think? Should we sell these in these large bottles, or refill them into smaller ones?" Eisen asked, before the young merchant began to think about this for a while.
"Hmm, well, these large ones would end up being pretty expensive, right? So that would rather be a special think to buy from a place already known for high-quality alcohol. So small bottles would be better, I guess." Komer muttered, leaving the craftsman to nod at him.
"Mhm, exactly. I'll be refilling these into half-liter bottles, so we'll end up with a bit more than 50. We'll keep one of the regular mead, and two of the special ones for ourselves, though." He laughed loudly, before sitting back down next to Komer.
"But we should better do that sometime else. I would prefer to actually buy bottles we can put these in, or maybe I could try and learn a glassmaker skill, if that exists, and make a bunch of bottles for it. Re-Shaping glass into bottles with transmutation doesn't work too great."
After Eisen explained this, Komer tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Huh? But didn't you do that kind of thing already?"
"Ah, yes I did. But you see, when I reshape things with transmutation, it doesn't do that evenly. The rough shape is exactly how I want it, but because I pull and push the material around, it's denser in some areas than in others, which is just not a good thing in the slightest, especially with glass." Eisen explained at last as he looked over at the clock that he set to show the real-life time, since he wanted to wake up quite early today, at around 4 to 5 am, to make something nice for his recently-arrived family. He basically slept till late afternoon yesterday, so he would probably fine waking up this early. And since it was already a little bit before 3 am, it was soon time for him to log off. Well, 'Soon' was quite relative in this game.
"Anyway, because of that I would like to wait for that if possible. Shaping things like that with transmutation is quick, and refilling things doesn't take long either, so I can do that just before we arrive, or even after we arrive, in the magic city."
"I see… Well, then what else do you want to make right now? Anything else interesting?" Komer asked curiosly while Eisen stood up again, pointing at the window to the front bench of the carriage.
"For now, I'll just give these two a break. I don't really know much about magicians and what kind of stuff they need, so I'll think about that for a while. You can come with me to the front, and we can help me brainstorm a bit." Eisen smiled before leaning in a bit closer, whispering to Eisen so that none of the three that shouldn't hear about this wouldn't. "You probably know a lot more about games than me, so you might know what other players might like. The next big group is coming next Monday, so we should really prepare for that, right?"
Slowly, Komer nodded as he stood up. "Yeah, let's do that! Actually, I'm kind of curious to see what will happen then… Especially how many there will be."
"For sure. Anyway… Bree, Sky, come on you two. Take a break, Komer and I'll take over." Eisen told the two Fey-Kin siblings, before they tiredly nodded and stopped the carriage for a bit as they switched 'shifts', but just after Eisen and Komer sat down in the front, Caria heavily protested and jumped out after them.
"No fair! Caria wants to stay with Eisen too!" She exclaimed, immediately sitting down on Eisen's lap with her arms crossed in front of her in a pout.
"Of course, of course. Actually, what have you and Melissa been up to the whole day? You've just been sitting in the corner together with the scouts and soldiers." Eisen said with a frown as he looked over at both the Myconid and the Queen Bee with a smile, thinking about those two Bee-groups as well.
These actually seemed to have evolved too, although their evolution was rather shallow. Considering that two of the scouts died before, two of the remaining ones turned to 'Elite Scouts', while the head of the scouts from before that always stayed with Melissa turned into a 'Scout Commander'.
The same seemed to have happened with the soldiers, four of them turning into 'Elite Soldiers' and one of them into a 'Soldier Commander'. Physically they didn't change much, but their stats got a nice little upgrade, so it was all fine.
"Hehe, that's a secret! A super duper duper super surprise! Right, Melly?" Caria exclaimed happily while throwing her hands into the air at the same time that Melissa began buzzing loudly and jiggling her body around. "And no looking at Caria or Melly's status either! That would be unfair!" After Caria yelled this out at last while looking at Eisen with her stern, dark eyes, both Eisen and Komer looked at each other, obviously thinking the same exact thing.
'So cute…'.