“Explain it to me again.”

Lucillus, a man of few words, is confused by my explanation.

“It’s just about proximity. I need to stay close to her. The more time we spend together, the more it’s likely that she will change her mind about me. Humans – and Elves, I think – do not live on a straight line,” I trace such line in the air with my hands.

“It’s more like a wave that goes up and down, up and down,” I start moving my hands like that.

“So, if you want to catch a girl who’s on the fences, you have to wait for those ‘up’ moments. And—man, I’m not explaining this very well. It’s like there are hundreds of lines. But they are not synched. You have to wait until there is a sum of all these lines so you can surf that giant wave.”

“Surf?” Lucillus frowns. “Okay, listen. Whatever. If that works, I’m a flat-eared Human turd.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, both the individual and the racial one,” I wink at him.

“So, onto our next endeavor!” I point with my finger in a direction.

“That’s not where we are going. That’s where we are going.”

He shows me.

“So, onto our next endeavor!” I point with my finger in that direction.

“I need a raise,” Lucillus mumbles.

I ignore him and start walking with a spring in my step, Lucinda temporarily forgotten.

“So, close to the Adventurers’ Guild is where you find a lot of traffic and lots of people ready to spend money on food, right?”

Lucillus nods.

“Lots of problems too. Adventurers are a particularly messy breed. They fight among themselves all the time. The Watch hates adventurers. They cause trouble wherever they go. I always say that if we had better funding, the Watch could easily take care of all those requests. Instead, we send idiots without training to die miserably.”

“Well, Carl Marx, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion,” I say. “But let’s go there. I bet your ears those people are always up late, drinking. And you know what goes very well with late-night drinking and hangovers?”

“A stamina potion?” Lucillus ventures a guess.

“You naïve little child,” I cackle.

“Bakery food! Croissants, cookies, brownies, cakes!”

“Bakeries are closed at night.”

“And that, my dear Lucillus, is soon going to change! I’ll show you why bakeries are the Queens of the earliest mornings!”

…

“This place comes at twenty gold coins a month.”

A short Elf – I say short, but the guy’s like almost 6 feet – is showing me a few places for rent right in front of the Adventurers’ Guild.

“That’s quite cheap,” Lucillus says by my side.

“Yeah. The last place was torn down by a bar-fight. No one wants to open up an inn, or worse, live right in front of the place,” the short Elf says. “Everything gets wrecked from time to time. The few inns that are close-by are managed by high-level ex-adventurers. They are the only ones who can keep those beasts at bay.”

I look around what used to be an inn and I scratch my chin, trying to think about how I’d want to arrange stuff. There’s a kitchen and even an upper floor with some rooms.

The place is empty, almost ghastly. However, I can probably put up a few wooden walls and make a proper bakery lab behind it. It sits on the other side of the road to the Adventurers’ Guild.

“The kitchen still works. It has all the usual Runes. You could have this place making food by the evening. You’ll have to buy the furniture yourself, though.”

“Yeah, yeah. Show me the kitchen. Let’s see what I’ll be working with.”

The guy beams when he hears me say that. He understands that I’m already settling for this place. And if Lucillus says that the rent is not high, even better.

We enter the kitchen and I’m treated to a great view of cupboards, some bigger and some smaller.

“They all have Preservation Runes. You’ll need someone to check if they all work, but the owner is willing to pay for that. You have two stoves with all the usual Fire Runes. He shows me some weird counters and I nod, unconvinced. I’ll need someone to help me with that. And I even know who that someone might be.”

Hehe.

“Do you have an oven?”

“Yes, there are three ovens in this kitchen. The previous innkeeper loved to bake. He had two more installed and, from my understanding, they are incredibly good at keeping their temperature. Plus, the runes can be activated on many different degrees of heat.”

Rolling my tongue, I take another look at the stoves.

“Do the stoves have different settings for the Fire Runes? I mean, can I modulate the heat they produce?”

“Sure, but they have three or four settings, I think. The oven, instead,” the guy fishes a piece of parchment out of his bag of holding. “The oven has, wow, thirty settings.”

“Thirty, huh?”

These motherflippers probably have an oven that goes from ten to three hundred degrees Celsius. That’s… good. Very good.

“Are there any facilities made appositely to fry stuff?” I ask.

“Not that I know of,” the guy looks over the parchment where the equipment is listed. “Can’t you just use a pot?” he shrugs.

Goddamn amateurs.

I’ll fry your head in a pot.

Well, I’ll need an upgrade to better control the frying temperatures.

See, I wouldn’t mind some [Baker] skills right now. They probably have the right stuff I need. But well, I’m still going to blow their socks off.

“Well, get me the contract and give it Lucillus. I don’t touch that stuff.”

He looks at me, uncomprehending. However, he’s more than happy to offload this place to someone.

“Do you have a measuring tape?” I ask the guy.

“Hum, sure, why?”

“I need to take some measurements. Give it to me, I’ll pay for it.”

“Well, can’t you wait until you sign the—”

“Tape, buddy. I need the tape. I’m not wasting my time. If I don’t get baking by tonight, I’ll go mad. I can’t keep doing other stuff, okay? So, tape, please. I’ll tip, don’t worry.”