Chapter 95

Aged and Carbonated

Hawkin

[Quest: Tavern Tankards. Complete!]

[Your beer has been enjoyed by patrons of several taverns!]

[Reward: 10 Bronze ranked rare loot chests.]

[Quest: Bed and Breakfast and Beer. Complete!]

[Your beer has been enjoyed by travelers in several inns.]

[Reward: 14 Bronze ranked rare loot chests.]

It was the start of a good day, with some good loot chests to open. The prompts had woken me up and I groggily slid out of bed. The morning was cool. The day bright, as I’d left my door open overnight.

I don’t know how you’re selling my beers to people, Thrush. I hope you’re doing alright.

After a hot cup of dandelion root tea, I built a fire in the stove and put some tomatoes in a pan. Then chopped wood betweens sips of tea. Stretched to wake up my mind. BarnacleEyes came sauntering out of her shed, still wearing the torso of her Thrush costume. She looked like she was the pole from which hung a banner of hide down to her toes.

“Brewing time?” she groggily said.

“At your leisure,” I said. “Join me whenever you feel up to it.”

The sun rose, but the birds raced the coming light with a raucous. BarnacleEyes glared into the canopy. She snarled and crumpled fists.

I brewed, then we brewed, and took a break between batches for an easy lunch. The tomatoes I’d neglected were blackened beneath and roasted on top. I set some nuts, seeds, and bear fat in a bowl and left it for the birds on the roof of my cabin.

BarnacleEyes was envious of the meal so I gave her the same thing as the birds.

“Nope,” she said. “Don’t like it. I’ll take the fat though.”

“I can’t give you a whole lot of bear fat because I don’t want to run out. You can have some salted fish if you’d like.”

“Why don’t you just get more fat?”

“I could. I’d have to go hunting.”

“I’ll teach you how to fish, if you teach me how to hunt,” she bargained.

“I know how to fish.”

“Not the BarnacleEyes way.”

I couldn’t contain my smile. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know how to fish the BarnacleEyes way. I agree. I’ll teach you and you’ll teach me.”

“Are we going to the plane today?’

“Let’s go right now,” I offered.

When we returned from digging in the plane and leveling my skills, I took a moment to look at my stats and go through my newest loot chests.

My brewer path was at level 740. Most everything else fell behind by a hundred or so levels. Hop Wallop was the lowest at 360, but I was learning a lot through skill books about dry hopping and using various varieties of hops.

I’d been donating half of my planes cutter attribute beers to Dellia in exchange for Hiccup’s Silo #43 shards. I now had 300/1600 shards.

I was brewing as fast as I could, but running into problems. I wasn’t getting enough waterskins from the blue besties to be able to keep up with the attribute beers. I didn’t want to use whole barrels either, because they would still only count as 1 single beer. I had to be patient with Boggo.

I was so busy that it was alright with me. I brewed as much as I could, every single day. My Super Tavern ales were slowly leveling up in quality. I started at 12/100, they were now at 57/100.

My new loot chests contained an assortment of colored yeasts, skill books, several beers, and a sprig of lavender. I absorbed the skill books throughout the day before brewing one last batch. A double hoppy ale.

All my hoppy ales were planes cutter beers, mostly because I was on a hop kick. I just couldn’t get enough hops. Quite unusual, next to the more esoteric beers I’d been brewing since I started.

With my feet propped on the table, dusk in the doorway, and the gentle light of the stove radiating throughout the cabin, I used all my skills to brew a 5 gallon batch in mid-air. I filtered the wort from the grain and hops. Fermented the wort. Then dry hopped the beer at the end of fermentation into a sapling bound, 5 gallon barrel.

After 48 hours, I coerced the beer out with a wave of my Brewer’s Bubble skill and filtered out the hops. Then returned the beer to the barrel.

[Level up! Brewer Level 741.]

[New skill acquired: Forced Carbonation.]

[New skill acquired: Throughout the Ages.]

[Forced Carbonation: This skill will allow the user to control the amount of carbonation. Precision reflected through level and rank of skill.]

[Throughout the Ages: This skill will allow the user to manipulate the aging process via speeding up or slowing down. Based on level and rank of skill.]

Forced carbonation was fun to play with, although it cost me quite a bit of mana at such a low level. I juggled brewing mana beers, double hoppy planes cutter beers, and nut brown ales.

Beers often exploded from my Brewer’s Bubble from over carbonation, and I immersed myself in leveling the skill to become more acquainted with how to use it. One of the most difficult skills to get a grip on so far.

After a week of brewing, I decided to take it easy one afternoon and enjoy a nice walk with BarnacleEyes. It was a hot and blustery day, but we kept cool in the forest.

“Are we hunting right now?” she said.

“We can be. We can look out for tracks that lead to watering holes. Then we can set some traps.”

“How do you hunt?”

“Traps mostly. If I ever get a bigger animal, it was out of self defense. That’s how I got bear fat.”

“Will you teach me how to set some traps?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let's see if we can find some deer droppings or moose scat.”

“You can eat that on your own, I’ll be fine,” BarnacleEyes said.

“Not to eat,” I said. “To track them. See if they’re passing through or going back and forth from a water source.”

“Why isn’t Thrush back?”

“He’s not going to be back for a while.”

“I feel like Thrush could hunt down anything. Easily.”

“We’ll have to make do on our own,” I said.

We ran into deer droppings along a desire path. We followed the path to a small creek that carved through the land.

“So the deer come through the path everyday?” BarnacleEyes said.

“I’m sure other animals use the path,” I said. “Not just deer.”

“Do we set a trap now?”

“Yeap. I’ve got some cordage. All we need to do is whittle some sticks and set the snare trap. I’ll guide you through every step of the way.”

“I’m hungry,” she said.