Chapter 471: Chapter 471 - Booze
"Yes! Now, this is more like it!" Exclaimed Celestia excitedly, as we entered the second carriage.
"Wow...fruits, vegetables, and even meat. Looks like they only have dried meat, but hey, meat is meat. And the scent coming from those barrels, that’s definitely alcohol," I remarked, as I sniffed around, before adding, "I see, they were using this carriage to transport consumables, and the other one for valuables."
"Finally, I get to have some booze! Don’t get me wrong, that weed stuff was pretty good, but it wasn’t quite the same as getting drunk. Ooh, I wonder what it’d feel like to try both at the same time?" She grinned, her eyes gleaming.
"In my experience, the alcohol kinda overpowers the weed, so you mostly just feel drunk. But I should add that my tolerance with weed was probably a fair bit higher than my tolerance with alcohol," I replied, as I began loading the crates into my Item Box, before adding, "Should I preserve the booze or not?"
"Don’t preserve, obviously. It’ll only get better the more we age it," She pointed out.
"Well, I was thinking of cooling them and then preserving them so that they stay cool. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my booze nice and cold," I grinned sheepishly.
"Oh, I didn’t think of that...damn, that’s a tough choice...," She muttered with a conflicted look on her face.
"I mean, we’ve got five barrels here, how long do you really think they’d last? The quality isn’t going to improve that much, unless we preserve it for years," I reasoned after mulling it over.
"Yeah, that’s true...I doubt one barrel will last more than a week or two," She frowned in response.
"Are you assuming that we’ll be drinking everyday?"
"Uh...are you not?"
"No, not particularly."
"Oh...okay, we’ll talk about it later. So, how do you plan to cool them? Maybe kidnap someone with Ice Magic?" She suggested uncertainly.
"What? No. I was just planning on putting the barrels in a stream for, like, a couple of hours or so at night," I replied in bemusement.
"Huh? That’ll work?"
"Yeah. The water will be cold at night, and it’ll gradually cool the booze," I explained.
"Hm...yeah, when I think about it, that does make sense."
Right, thanks to Ice Magic, this world has had no need to develop any ways to make ice or keep things cold...actually, I have no idea how people kept stuff cold in my first world before refrigerators were invented.
Like, how did it work in places where it didn’t snow or get particularly cold? Did people in those places never see ice? Huh...I wonder if I can find any info about that in my Info Bank? Eh, I don’t really care enough to look it up.
Celestia and I then finished packing up everything, before heading back to the cave. She was pretty cheerful, practically rushing back with a look of anticipation on her face.
She might be a bit of an alcoholic. Well, I’m a pretty serious pothead myself, so I can’t exactly judge her for it.
"Come on, pick up the pace, Larrk!" She called out impatiently as she bounded ahead.
"Slow down, we’re almost there, there’s no need to rush," I responded with a wry smile, before jogging over as I got a look at the restless look on her face.
It wasn’t long before we got back to the cave, I took out a couple of fancy mugs we took from the first carriage, along with one of the barrels of alcohol, popping it open and dipping the mugs in, filling them up before handing one to her.
She practically snatched it out of my grasp, an eager gleam in her eyes before she put it up to her lips and took a deep gulp, letting out a content sigh.
Alright, let’s try this out...oh, not bad. It’s some kind of wine, with a deep, purplish-red hue. I wasn’t expecting much, but this is pretty good. Its pretty rich and quite strong too, I like it.
"Wow...this must be some pretty top shelf stuff, it’s so much better than any drinks I’ve tried at the bars in the place I used to live in. It’s got a strong kick to it too, nice," She grinned, a slight line of wine across her upper lip.
"You got a wine mustache there," I informed her.
"Hm? Did I get it?" She replied, as she licked her lip.
"Mostly, there’s a bit over the right corner."
"How about now?"
"Oh, sorry, I meant my right...so your left."
"Now?"
"Yup, you got it."
"Hey, get some of that dried meat out, I bet that’ll go great with this booze," She suggested, before holding her mug out towards me for a refill, having finished it already.
I’m only halfway through mine, she polished that off fast.
I then refilled her mug and handed it back to her, before taking out a few strips of the dried meat we got, giving her one before I picked up one myself and took a bit.
Oh, it’s pretty tough and a bit rubbery, but it’s really savory and flavorful. These’ll be perfect when I’m stoned and get the munchies. I wonder what kind of meat this is? It’s a little familiar, but also not.
"Any idea what animal this came from?" I asked her.
"Yeah, pretty sure it’s Minotaur beef. It mostly tastes like cow beef, but it’s got a more gamey tang to it," She replied, before taking a swig of wine from her mug, looking a bit unsteady.
"Huh, cool...in my previous world, Monsters weren’t really edible. They tasted awful, though eat enough of them and you gain their abilities. Like, I got the ability to shoot out webs after eating a bunch of spider Monsters."
"Seriously? That’d be pretty convenient, if we could just get new powers by eating Monsters. I don’t think I’d be able to eat spiders though, Monster or otherwise," She responded with an apprehensive shudder.
"Yeah, they were pretty gross."
"It’s still pretty hard to wrap my head around the whole concept of other worlds. Like, I’ve accepted it as fact at this point, of course, but every now and then, I get these moments of, like, ’woah, it’s pretty crazy that there are other worlds out there completely separate from this one’, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah, I get it. Even though I was already familiar with the concept thanks to the fiction of my first world, I had trouble processing it as fact when I found out it was real after dying," I recalled with a wistful sigh.
"Mind telling me more about that? Your previous lives, I mean?" She asked me.
"Hm? Yeah, sure, I don’t mind. Guess I’ll start from the beginning, then. In my first world, I was born into a pretty wealthy family, my parents were politicians."
"Wait, you mean you used to be a Noble?"
"No, not exactly. In the era I was born into in my first life, the concept of Nobles and Commoners had pretty much died out. Of course, there were still people who were either absurdly rich or cripplingly impoverished, and plenty of rich people looked down on those less wealthy than them as inferior, but people like that were considered to be assholes.
Anyway, while I did grow up rich, it was far from a happy life. My parents were extremely strict and held me to impossible standards when it came to education and stuff, but I had a lot of trouble focusing on stuff that didn’t interest me. I also had a twin brother, he didn’t have that issue, so my parents ended up focusing all their attention on him while treating me like trash.
Eventually, they were murdered, and I remember feeling this sense of elation when they died. I ended up inheriting all their money, bought myself a house and decided to live a relaxed, peaceful life. But some of my relatives tried to persuade me to give them a share of the fortune I’d inherited, I told them to fuck off, so they framed me for a crime I didn’t commit and got me thrown in prison. I didn’t want to live out the rest of my life in a cell, so I killed myself. Yeah, that about sums up my first life," I recapped, before taking a sip of wine.
I haven’t really thought about my first life in ages, I’m feeling a lot of mixed feelings. I thought I’d be over it by now, but I guess I’ve still got some lingering emotions.
"Wow, that sounds awful...I guessh having a family doeshn’t automatically mean that you’ll be happy, huh? I’ve never had any family, and I alwaysh envied people who did, I thought maybe my life would’ve been a lot better if I’d grown up with family instead of in an orphanage," She sighed in response, slurring slightly.
"Well, I think that would be the case with the majority of families. I just ended up with a really shitty one in my first life. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case in my second life."
"Is it okay if I ask you about your shecond life? I know it hasn’t been that long shince it ended, so if it’s painful to talk about, forget I ashked."
"It’s fine, I don’t mind. I’m still pretty remorseful about how it ended and everything I lost, but at this point, I’ve accepted it," I replied with a smile, before adding as I noticed that she’d finished her second serving of wine, "Want another refill?"
"Huh? Oh. Nah, maybe a bit later. I’m at jusht the right level of drunk right now, I’ll go for shome more once it starts to wear off."
