George was stumped for a bit, he knew that Fred had started reading into herblore, but how could Fred miss the fact that these plants have magic in them, all plants have magic in them, in this world no one would even entertain the idea of a plant not having magic in them, never mind that, has such a plant has ever been discovered. “Well, we might not be able to buy multiple copies today, but we can always come back for more. Furthermore, your mother is interested in selling your wine as a commodity back to the mainland, you should be able to get a bigger budget with that.”

“Is it really that good to sell it overseas” Fred was still miffed about that not only did he not get any, but the French claimed it was one of their inventions.

“Fire tears are quite a sort after commodity but spoil really quickly so we cannot ship it over, this causes either people to come over here to seek them or to find alternatives, however, you managed to find a way to do that and improve it.”

“But it’s just wine, it shouldn’t garner that much attention”

“that’s because you didn’t just create wine Fred, you created something a lot better.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember you asked why your mother was gaining her strength back so quick after her Ascension”

“Yeah, you said it was due to new skills, skills kept low for that purpose and killing monsters.”

“Yes, but even with that you shouldn’t recover so quickly, or at least your mother shouldn’t at that level.”

“Then what, my wine?”

“Yes, while drinking it your mother told me its effects, which for a fire user is extremely good”

“How?”

“When drunk for a fire user it gives her the status of drunk, and a high level of drunk at that too, but it also increases your mana recovery by a lot, well, depending on how attuned you are to fire, and if you are full on mana, instead of the mana going to waste, it gets converted into exp for fire-related skills, equal to how much exp she would get for using the same amount of mana casting the spell. This lasted until she was sober, which for how potent it was, it took a long time to get sober.”

“That’s amazing”

“Well, you haven’t heard the best part yet”

“Which is?”

“Well, a ‘wine’ like this will sell quite well in high society which means we would be forced to jack up the price”

“Forced to, why would we be forced to?”

“First of all, no noble will be caught dead drinking something that is known to be cheap, and as it’s a really high-value high profile product they will demand we charge them more, not only to boost their ego but to make it an exclusive commodity for either the rich or prestigious people.”

“Wow,”

“And it just gets better and better, our current king is a fire attuned Paladin, a high ascended one at that, but there is a rumour that he’s maxed out his level.”

“So, cant he just ascends?”

“that’s the problem, he can ascend, but he is a king, and a king has a lot of enemies, excluding internal enemies in our kingdom, as well as it being a ripe time for one of his sons to seize the crown, the western heavenly empire to our east and the Neo-Carthage to the southwest, has designs on our lands. However, this wine might be a great help to allow him to speed up his recovery from the ascension.”

Fred at a guess as to where neo-Carthage was but “The western Heavenly empire?”

“Don’t let the name fool you they are not Western, Heavenly, nor an empire”

Fred felt a sense of familiarity with that quote,

“Alright Fred if you’ve got everything you need, shall we head back, unless you want to go somewhere,”

“Ah, yes, is there a glassmaker, and/or a blacksmith in this town”, as what Fred could see this town was big enough to be viewed as a city, he knew in his world there was stipulations required for medieval towns to become cities, and in a lot of cases, many town owners didn’t want it upgraded as the benefits were not always worth it. “Also, George why isn’t this town a city”

“Tax evasion, among other things, well first we need a cathedral to be called a city and all cities with a cathedral need to pay a tithe to the church, similar to tax but for the product instead of coin, usually crops, second the king can only collect tax and call levy from cities but in return, he can tax and call levy from all cities. The only way to prevent this is for the city to be run by a duke and for the duke to claim it as their capital.” George paused to think about Fred’s first question “ah, I don’ think we have a glassmaker, but we have an alchemy store, they sell glasses for alchemy and herblore, but I don’t know if he makes them or imports them, do you want to take a look.”

Fred was wowed by George being brutally honest about tax evasion, in his previous life Tax evasion was one of those odd topics that everyone thought was a bad thing only when they were missing out. He had heard talk about the church and religion but not really read much into it, and quite frankly hoped they weren’t the sort that was religiously overbearing to the populous. “Yeah, I think I’ll be able to find what I'm looking for there if they cater to herblore”

They reached the alchemy shop and walked in, Fred found most of the glass he was looking for, but noticed a discolouration on all of the glasses, this showed poor production of glassware, but was good enough for now, he just hoped that none of the minerals still left in the glass would have any negative effects. He then found a bunch of metal tools; this might save him a trip to the smithy. When he went over to have a look he noticed what looked like a Bunsen burner, with a draw underneath, after he pulled the drawer open it was a round container with silvery ink drawn into what he could only guess was a magic circle, and then a divider was placed on top of it creating two zones, he turned around to look at the till area to find George and the shop keeper talking and called over. “Excuse me”

“Ah, yes” the shop keeper answer while moving over with George,

“What is this tray for”

“That is for magic crystals, you put a fire crystal on the left side where the rune for fire is written just above the left circle grid”

Fred looked back to it, ‘I’m guessing the circle grid is this pattern here’ what he was looking at was 3 circles wrapped around each other. What he noticed was that there were pieces in each circle missing and then each circle was connected with a couple of beams, quite honestly the whole magic circle looked like a maze with words written here are there using the lines of the maze as one would use lined paper to write. He noticed a similar circle on the other side of the divider.

“And you put a mana crystal in the other side. Then when you put it in the burner, once it's in you add a bit of mana to jumpstart the magic array and then you will get a fire come out at the top.”

Fred was fascinated, but something bugged him, “the fire crystal does not have enough power on its own then? I thought the mana potency of fire crystals was usually 2-3 times that of normal crystal.”

“You are right about the crystal but why to burn a fire crystal over a mana crystal they are usually 10-20 times more expensive”

“O” to be honest Fred hadn’t got an idea of prices as of yet, and wasn’t astute to the rarity of items, he could only vaguely guess. But what the shopkeeper said made a lot of sense.

Fred picked up 2 burners some tongs and some clamps and was ready to leave, George paid and got on the cart with Fred, “so to the smithy then Fred.”

“Well, I found what I was looking for in the alchemist shop, so I'm not quite sure.” Fred was pondering about what he needed next “well can we take a look anyway.”

“Sure, but shall we stop for lunch first, the sun had reached the zenith a while ago now.”

As soon as the food was mentioned Fred felt his belly rumble, ‘Wow I thought that was just a cliché that only happened in novels’ “Sure, where are we going to eat.“

George had pulled his waterskin out to drink, “There is a winery at the high-end district near the castle, your mom and I frequent there a lot”

Fred looked at George and tilted his head to the side and said, “are you two dating?”

This caused George to cough up on his water, after he caught his breath, he adamantly denied it, “no-no, it’s my duty as her knight to guard her, so when she goes out, I have to go along”

“O, right right yeah”, Fred nodded his head but didn’t sound like he believed George, then with an evil grin on his face said, “but you are interested though?”

“O look we are here,” we technically still had another ten meters to go to pull up to the side, but George decided to walk it anyway, although it didn’t stop him from hearing both Fred and the carriage driver snicker from behind. When he got to the smithy, he could tell that it wasn’t anything good, the forge definitely couldn’t handle, nor reach the temperature to liquidise iron and the smith only had water for quenching, the smithy seemed to know these were issues as well, as he was using the folding technique that Japan used in his previous era, he remembered a lot of ‘weeaboo’ - or ‘a fanatical nerd for Japanese culture is what his friend had called them, he was one of those who used to make up long-winded phrases for already existing phases just to sound like a ‘posh person trying to sound cool’ – this weeaboo would always bragging about ‘o this sword has 500 folds and this sword has 750 folds.’ The problem was, was that the folding technic is just to compensate for a crappy forger or more precise, not being able to melt iron. “Hey, sir George, where do we go to find out what types of clay are on the market.”

“Types of clay, well there is a builder’s quarter in the commerce guild, they usually show a variety of building materials.”

The smithy was quite an open space with a few blacksmith ‘stations’ if that’s what they call them, and quite a few customers, this allowed Fred to not feel so awkward about leaving without doing anything. He’s going to need a few metal pieces for his plans mainly a lightning induction rod as he doesn’t think he could create an electric generator, at least so soon. ‘I might be able to use the mana as the catalyst, or maybe find a lightning crystal.’ It was summer now and he remembered about every October-November there was a lot of thundershowers, as they got back into the carriage Fred asked “George, the thundershowers we get every fall, are they predictable?”

“On this land yes, not so much on the mainland,”

“Is there something causing this?”

“Yes, about 50 miles northeast there is a large mountain chain, the two mountains closest there are three types of mountains you will find nature mountains, fire mountains and Metal mountains their ratio is roughly 2/1/4, then what seems to be in the centre is a thunder mountain, if you travel to that mountain, you would get lightning storms all the time, but usually without the rain as it is surrounded by 5-6 fire mountains. That range is home to the northern dwarves. As winter crawls south it seems to push the thunder element south with it.”

‘Dwarves live in mountains, who would have guessed.’

“If the winter pushes the lightning South, why don’t we have it in December?”

“Because winter is no longer pushing back in December. Winter is coming to a rest and so there is nothing to push the elemental currents.”

‘Is this earth not on an axis then, are the seasons a mana phenomenon then? “Nature mountains, I thought you said nature springs are all trees”

“Well, the nature mountains are not exactly mountains compared to other mountains, they are Black for a start compared to their elemental colour, which is usually brown, as well it's not as tall as the others, couldn’t even call it half their size, there is a hole at the top with a pit that usually is as deep as 1/3 of the mountain. In the pit is usually a giant tree and extending out of the mountain and an oasis surrounding the tree.”

“Is the oasis some sort of special water”

“it’s liquidated nature crystals, it condenses at the bottom into nature crystals.”

‘This black nature mountain might be a source of coal, but would he need coal with fire crystals about’

“Ah, is the fire tears related to the fire mountains,” Fred couldn’t figure out where they came from if this land was filled with natural springs, but it looks like there are quite a good variety of springs on this land and a lot of them, they might not be a source for war and expansion.

“Yes, most of the bushes at the bottom of the mountain grow them,”

“So, they are a common commodity?”

“Well, you have to travel through the elven forest and then enter the dwarven lands to get them, but they have little influence in this area now due to previous expansion wars and border skirmishes.”

“Right, we are here,”

Fred got out of the carriage “hey didn’t we skip lunch?”

George paused for a moment then realised he accidentally skipped it due to Fred’s teasing. “Not to worry, we can just ask the maids to give us bigger portions.”

Fred looked at it from the outside there seemed to be a giant arch that led to a stoned baily using buildings for walls. They walked in, Fred got the image of a square Colosseum, with fabric drapes all around the roofs on the baily side giving shade and shelter. Then there were wooden stalls everywhere with a few sheets on the floor here and there with heavy goods that looked like they would break the stalls.

George walked over to the builder’s quarter, in the far-left corner. He saw all types of material, wood, the stone he even found limestone, he went over to the clay section and while only a couple varieties were there, he found what he thinks is fire clay. This would help him make a blast furnace, but first, he needed to make a bloomery to cook these bricks and for that, he needed normal clay. “Sir George, I’ve found what I’ve been looking for.” He whispered over to George; he didn’t want to sound desperate as the merchant might jack up the price.

“What do you need”

“About 2 tons of normal clay and 20 tons of fire clay.”

“What do you need that for?”

Fred was surprised George hadn’t questioned his antics so far but happy not to be asked.

“To make a blast furnace”

“Blast furnace, to smith, you’re a noble why would you want to become a blacksmith? Why don’t you ask the blacksmith we just visited if you want something?” George was quite shocked at what Fred was proposing.

“Did you not see that shitty furnace, it couldn’t even melt iron, I don’t want iron from them if they are using that.”

George was getting more and more suspicious of Fred, he didn’t want to question Fred, 1 for Isabella, he was her kid and George didn’t want any awkwardness from this or upset Isabella, second, he wanted Fred to increase the number of antics before he was questioned, firstly it would prevent excuses to hoodwink him and secondly, he had a gut feeling he wouldn’t believe the truth without enough examples. And this was a big one, George, being a knight, had frequented blacksmiths a lot in the capital, and the de Ansul duke city and their furnaces were marginally better than the one here, but not nearly enough to be called ‘shitty’ with such contempt. Fred was acting as if he had more experience with smithing or at least had at one point used a better furnace. Come to think of it he seemed to not be satisfied with the coloured glass in the alchemy store as well.