Road to the Crown

"I need you to get to the innkeepers from the city and roadside taverns in the area. Invite them to my palace tomorrow, at noon they should be free for long enough."

As I carried Elia away to her chambers that my servants prepared right beside my own, I continued to give orders to the head butler of the castle while trying to ignore Elia's curious hands roaming all over my body.

While the honey liquor wasn't as strong as real booze, with how easy it was going down one's throat, it wasn't an achievement to get wasted on it! With the addition of shutting her mouth with the continuous outpour of the liquor in my silly attempt to calm her down in front of the envoy, I had only myself to blame now.

"Coomeee on! Shu-w mea urs skiin!"

Taking the responsibility of making her drunk silly, I could only ignore her sleazy manner of speech and pretend to not feel anything when her hands started sneaking in under my upper clothes.

But it was truly wondering how fast her head gave up. Just a moment ago, she still looked to be lightly smoked, only for the alcohol to suddenly hit her like a hammer, making her lose all her restraints. If not for my swift reaction, she would just undress and fall asleep on top of the dining table!

"Okay, okay, we are almost here. Just bear with it for a little longer."

Carrying her on my arms, I was unable to stop her silly advances on my chest, nor her playing with her fingers around my face, as if she turned to some kind of kid, driven to explore the entire world with just his sense of touch alone.

"It will be done, my lord. Is there anything else you want me to prepare?"

Only now finding the opportunity to butt in between my words and Elia's silly attempts to undress me, the head butler managed to slip a few of his words into my attention. While I tried to ignore this small aspect of life in this period, his ability to walk beside me in this not-so-wide corridor while half-bent in a bow was something to be proud of!

"Hmm… A bath will do. Make sure to bring some fresh firewood to my room. I don't want to get cold after cleaning myself. After all, we are in the middle of the winter!"

Just as I finished my sentence, the doors leading to the chamber right beside mine finally appeared, instantly pushed open by the head butler. Coming inside, I could see it had the exact same layout as the master chamber, just without additional doors hidden behind the bed that would otherwise lead to a study and private library. With the bed already done, I just placed Elia on it, before snapping my fingers at the housemaids and pointing them at the drunk girl.

"Don't let her do herself any harm. It would be for the best if you could put her to sleep."

Even though she was officially my fiancee, even if this status wasn't just a result of our scheming, I would still be forced to stay away from her while the maids would help her change. It wasn't the modern times when two people would start living and sleeping together even before swearing to each other, not to speak about the marriage. In my current reality, making a move on a drunk woman, even if she was a fiancee of mine, would be met with huge scorn from the noble community!

While it wasn't something I should be really bothered with, I honestly doubted that even watching her change would be able to spark any real reaction in me. After years of diligent training under the masters from all around the world and direct lectures from thumb-sensei and his four senior disciples, how could a simple girl that spend last three years of her life on the run even hope to arouse me?

Finally freed from my self-imposed duty of showering Elia in care in front of all the castle servants, I could get to my own chamber and wait for the workers to bring a new bail of fresh water from the well. Living on the second floor of the palace added a bit of hurdle for the servants tasked with carrying the water bucket by bucket… but that was why there were called servants in the first place!

Reaching for the study hidden behind my bed, I realised with content that a single barrel of each kind of wheat I bought back in Krakow was already waiting for me there, along with a big gourd of water and local beer. With how much I drank already, I wasn't going to try to get wasted even more, but simply wanted to have a comparison between what I was about to make and the existing products!

It was finally time to test the capabilities of my system!

Opening up the crafting window I spotted long ago, I made sure that the doors to the study were closed tightly and locked, before selecting the brewing submenu.

Starting with a long list, describing all sorts of drinks, both those that were commonly made in current times and those popularised in the future ages. While there was some allure to brewing brandy in a damned Commonwealth, with almost complete lack of wine and culture of drinking it, there was simply no point in pushing forward in this direction!

With what kind of materials I prepared, I could only go down one route. Selecting 'beer' from the long list of names, a new window appeared right in front of my eyes, split into two-three areas.

At the very top, another list of names could be scrolled with just a single intention to do so, showcasing all sorts of names of the beer kinds, from stouts, through lagers all the way to porters. After clicking a random name from the list with my mind, the remaining two parts of the windows lit up, with a shortlist of required ingredients and 'craft' button right below it, and a clusterfuck of information and strange words on the right side.

Just a single look at the most complicated part of the screen made my head dizzy. Even though I wasn't really that drunk, when I saw sentences like "wood type for barreling", "Sweetness of the wort", "sheltering time", with most of them being too complicated for me to even read through them, I praised the creator of this system for his ingenious invention of a flashing button that allowed me to switch between advanced crafting mode to a simplified one!

Looking at it and wishing to click on the button made the entire screen flash once again, only to be replaced by something that I was finally able to understand. What was even more important, was down-to-the ground infographics that explained the steps required to actually start crafting anything!

Following the instruction, I picked the type, the quality and the alcoholic content of the required beer, while ignoring all the optional, additional options like richness, aftertaste and bonus tastes.

As soon as I moved my sight over to the "craft' button, the window seemed to copy itself, before the original window blanked out and turned into a gust of a strange, dense mist. While it was all new to me, I grabbed a handful of wheat, one of the glasses that I poached from the dining hall and later filled with fresh water from the bail, and finished it up with a pinch of hemp, only for the 'brew' button that replaced 'craft' one to flash in greed, instead of its previous, greyish colour.

With the excitement taking over my mind, I accepted the process and watched as the mist started rotating, blocking my sight completely from what was happening inside it. A short moment later, its movement stopped as it retracted, leaving a levitating glass filled with golden liquid to the brim.

Staring at this strange sight, I reached forward with my hand, only to feel a strong pull on my arm as soon as my fingers locked on the handle of the mug. As if everything was over now, the mist completely disappeared, and the crafting windows hid back to the corner of my view, with my sight completely blocked by the mug and a flashing information window.

"Completed the first brew!"

"Host obtained Brewmaster level 1 title!"

"Unlocking development tree!"

"Unlocking bonus options!"

"Unlocking parameters meshing!"

"Unlocking progress subsystem!"

If not for the fact that I was something of a gamer myself, I could see how easy it would be to someone unacquainted with the RPG games to be overwhelmed by the amount of information showing in this window. Instead of trying to panically digest all those sentences and make any sense out of them, I brought the cup of my first system-made beer closer to my lips and took the very first sip.

Aahhhhh!

THAT WAS IT!

That was the beer I remembered from modern times!

Maybe because creating it solely from the wheat and just a pinch of hemp was kind of a bad idea, its taste was closer to those cheap ones one could buy for a few coins in most of the local shops,

But it was still at least a few classes better than the ones served by the local taverns I visited so far!

With my interest piqued, I put the glass away on the table and pulled out yet another one before running out of my study to the room proper to fill it with the water that my servants continued to pour into the bail.

After returning to my study, this time I took my time in selecting the recipe. Going as far as to play around with the additional options, I ended up with a typical lager, based on barley, with an addition of the apple aftertaste and sour spicing of hemp. Repeating the exact same steps with the bout of mist appearing, throwing all the resources required by the recipe - which allowed me to learn that by throwing more barley that I was supposed to, the additional grains simply fell down to the floor - the mist once again started its shenanigans, before leaving me with yet another mug filled to the brim with aromatic liquid.

With all the attention I gave while creating this brew, I couldn't help but be a little nervous before drinking it. Raising the cup to my lips, I stopped it just a few centimetres below my nose, giving myself some time to inhale its aroma. Wetting my lips at first to judge the texture, as soon as the first droplet sneaked inside, I couldn't stop myself from raising the cup higher, and drinking a whole mouthful of it!

It was insane!

I don't think I ever had a beer this good even in my previous life in modern times!

Not only I could clearly feel the seven percent voltage behind the liquid, but it also seemed to caress my taste buds with its light texture, before filling them with a rich sweetness of an apple and washing it off with a bout of sourness of the hemp. While I had to admit that local beers were capable of keeping the fruity taste of its ingredients, there was no way to even begin to compare my insane brew with the silly craft of the local taverns!