Chapter 56

Breaking the Quality Barrier

Brewer’s path, level 250. I had not yet broken the quality barrier, but I felt so close. Completing the Of a Higher Quality quest was all that was on my mind. I was so deep in thought as I worked, that I didn’t see or hear BarnacleEyes when she entered my cabin.

“Do you think Thrush will share some of his fish,” BarnacleEyes said. “Smells good and it’s making me hungry.”

I continued working on my task, wondering what I was doing wrong. How could I have brewed so many beers and still not break the quality barrier? I tried adjusting recipes, I tried clone brews, and I tried being more specific with time and measurements. Nothing worked.

“Well I hope he shares some soon,” BarnacleEyes said. “I went looking for him, but he’s busy with the smoker. I didn’t want to bother him. He was counting to himself. Counting his shards, I think. He was near 700 before I came to see what you were up to.”

Repeating beers that had broken previous quality barriers didn’t work. The only thing left to do was to complete other quests that I had lined up and to keep gaining experience by brewing everyday. Were it not for GloomGlower and his fleet of goblins, I don’t think I’d have passed level 20 by now.

“Say,” BarnacleEyes said. “What are you doing? What is that?”

My thoughts began to wander off once more.

“Hawkin?” BarnacleEyes said. She poked me.

“Hunh?” I said. It was then that I fully realized she’d been here this whole time. “I’m sorry. I was lost in thought.”

“Whatcha doing?”

“I’m stripping bark as thin as I can.”

“Why?”

“To make a better sieve.”

“Why?”

“So that I can filter out more sediment from the wort.”

“Why?”

“I’m hoping it will help me complete my quest.”

“Why?”

I stopped for a moment to look BarnacleEyes straight in the eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m talking too much again.”

“I don’t think you’re talking too much,” I said. “I think asking questions is important.”

“You don’t think I’m talking too much?”

“You can ask me why as many times as you’d like. I’m trying to break a quality barrier so that I can reach the Tavern Ale quality. There’s a Planes Cutter shard in it for me, but I’m more interested in brewing better beers.”

“...why?” BarnacleEyes slowly said, testing the word.

I chuckled. “I’m not happy with the beers I’ve been brewing. Everytime I have a ranked beer and then try my own afterwards, it’s horrible.” I laughed. “I want to make a beer as good as the Ale of the Vale of Ara. That’s my first ultimate goal.”

“Why?” BarnacleEyes said.

I thought for a moment, even pausing from stripping bark. I set the last thin slice aside in the pile and sat back to relax for a moment. BarnacleEyes waited patiently. Her stomach growled. I replayed the memory I’d vicariously lived.

“Because,” I began, “sometimes we do things that are unimportant.”

“Why?”

“Many reasons, I suppose. Joy.”

“Does making beer bring you joy?”

“It does. What about you, BarnacleEyes? Is there something unimportant that you want to do? Something that makes you happy?”

BarnacleEyes was stumped. She occupied herself by kicking back and picking her nose. I gave her time to think while I continued stripping bark. When I had enough material, I began weaving the finest sieve I could. Once again, I was deeply ingrained in my task and even deeper in thought.

Thrush came and went. BarnacleEyes left. The voices of Boggo and Thrush echoed up from the cellar. The afternoon went by, and the evening glowed orange and purple. By then, my sieve was finished.

Let’s give you a try.

I brewed a small personal batch small enough to fit in the hurricane bottle. The new sieve was a vast improvement from the previous. After pitching the wort with yeast, I set the beer near the stove for a better fermentation temperature. 3 days later, I woke to find a new system prompt.

[Quest: Of a Higher Quality. Complete!]

[Brew a beer which breaks your quality barrier.]

[Minimum quality to complete quest: Tavern Ale.]

[You have brewed a Tavern Ale quality beer. Anything you brew will now have the minimum reputation and quality of a Tavern Ale.]

[Stored and fermenting beers have been updated to Tavern Ale quality.]

[You’re out of mana.]

[Reward: 1 Silver ranked common Brewer’s loot chest. 50 bronze ranked common Brewer’s loot chest. 1 Planes Cutter shard.]

[New Quest: Local Inn.]

[Now that you’ve achieved quality: Tavern Ale, you have a much better chance to sell your beer to inns, distributors, markets, and vendors.]

[Sell your beer to an Inn.]

[Reward: 1 Silver ranked common Brewer’s loot chest. 15 bronze ranked common Brewer’s loot chests.]

[New Quest: Answer Dellia’s Calling.]

[Visit Dellia Lucerne on the Ethereal Plane between Brewery: Hawkin, and the Vale of Ara.]

[Consume a Planes Cutter shard before drinking a Vale of Ara ale with the Brewer’s Portal attribute.]

[Reward: 1 silver ranked uncommon Brewer’s Loot chest.]

[New skill available: Brewer’s Harvest.]

[Learn new skill?]

[Y/N]

Yes.

Information suffused my mind. A new technique. One quite powerful. Brewer’s Harvest allowed me to plant barley seeds and use mana to speed up the growth and harvesting process. Leveling that skill was going to be time consuming, but the reward was promising. If I could grow barley in the blink of an eye, I wouldn’t have to do all these quests for ingredients.

Breaking the quality barrier had brought on at least 100 more quests. About 90 of them involved traveling, which I declined. The other ten involved brewing a few different types of beer and even locating a Brett yeast. A yeast I was unfamiliar with, but since the quest didn’t specifically mention traveling, I thought I would keep it active in the background. Just like most of my quests.

Of a Higher Quality was a quest that had sat there for a long time before I completed it. Damn did it feel good to break that quality barrier. To celebrate, I made a lavish dinner with salads, roasted squash, potatoes, soups of onion, broths of fat and herbs, and salted fish.

Dinner was loud. A spring rain descended and turned the clearing into millions of splatters of mud. The humidity rose and a fog pushed into my cabin. BarnacleEyes was quieter than usual. She said she was “just thinking about your earlier question.”

I poured each of us one of my older ales that had evolved into a Tavern Ale. We smashed mugs and celebrated the completion of my quest. BarnacleEyes was envious that Thrush and I had classes we were grinding, and she hoped to one day earn a Fable Stone. How she was going to earn one, I didn’t know.

“BarnacleEyes said you were counting shards,” I said, waiting for Thrush to divvy out some darkly smoked fish.

“Yes. I’m almost there,” Thrush said. “Ever since you’ve been brewing double batches, I’m getting twice as many shards when I make a sale. I’ve got two hundred and twenty four more shards until I get my tent.”

“A tent,” BarnacleEyes said. “Where are you going to put it?”

Thrush shrugged.

“My beer is now good enough to sell to inns and be on the market,” I said.

“The closest city is Lunstad,” BarnacleEyes said. “That’s a city of humans if you didn’t know, but that’s months away. You’re not going to go to Lunstad are you?”

“Of course not. I’m more excited about the achievement itself, than bringing it into the world of humans—I guess I could say.”

“If I feel like going for a walk one day,” Thrush said. “Maybe I’ll bring some of your beer with me to sell to these inns.”

“I don’t think you’ll be received with welcome,” I said. “I know you better now, but people will see a monster when they look at you.”

“I am a monster, but I wouldn’t have trouble existing in a city of humans. If I wanted to blend in, I’d have to first eat a great deal of humans. If my composition becomes more human than dreambon, then I could walk the streets of Lunstad without anyone the wiser. I would look just like one.”

BarnacleEyes was confused, and thrush patiently walked her through how his system worked. He avoided many of her questions and only delivered what he wanted her to know. In the matter of an hour, the goblin seemed to have finally grasped the concept.

“So that’s why you look different sometimes,” she said. “You’ve got fish scales on your nose and on your ears. That’s why your eyes are silver. Because you’ve been eating a lot of fish.”

“Yes,” Thrush said.

He shared some dreambons with us for desert. Apart from the fish, it was the only other food BarnacleEyes was interested in.

“You’re not going to leave to sell Hawkin’s beers, are you?” BarnacleEyes asked.

“I’m not interested in eating humans right now,” Thrush said.