Over the next few days, Fred taught the three how to extract essential oils from lavender and peppermint. Then with olive oil, they extracted glycerine, although it would have been better with coconut oil as well.

All in all, it took them a week to complete all steps, and the only thing left was to place it in a dark location to sit for a month.

They had made 3 large bottles worth for storage, and then could later distribute them into smaller bottles.

Lastly, Fred used the remaining ethanol, and added water to the mix and stored it. This would allow the ethanol to turn into vodka after 1-2 weeks.

___

At the beginning of August, Edward had shown up with Janet, Harold, and the twins. Harold was in a dark mood, and if looks could kill, Fred would have died 10 times already.

“Hello Edward, Janet.” Isabella greeted them with a kiss on the cheeks.

“Hello Isabella, nice to see you again” Edward greeted back.

“Hello, Harold, Luke and Lucy,”

Harold grunted in response, but Luke and Lucy gave cheery replies. “Hello aunty Isabella,” they said in unison and ran over to hug her.

Fred always found it weird that the twins were so much in sync, he had heard about this phenomenon in twins before, but didn’t realise it was to such a degree,

After all the greetings by the front door, they all went inside to the lounge.

“So, what have you been up to,”

“We made perfume and alcohol” Holly interjected excitedly.

This had taken both Janet and Edward aback. “Perfume? Alcohol?” they looked at Isabella, who just shrugged. Then, remembering the wine fiasco they looked at Fred.

“I made some crisps as well; would you like some?” Fred signalled to a servant to bring in a bowl full.

“Ha, only uncivilised plebs like craftsmen would waste their time with such crap,” Harold snapped. “You’ll never be accepted by us civilised people in high society.”

“You, civilised?” Fred sighed, “you’re just a butt naked monkey running around in the jungle and living in caves without those ‘uncivilised plebs like craftsmen’.”

“Why you…”

“Everything your wearing, the hobby’s you enjoy, the swords you train with, the castle you live in, the town walls you hide behind, where did they come from?”

Harold went silent from this, Fred was utterly baffled, that was such a weak insult, even Edward and Janet looked like they were tired of this.

The Servant came in with the crisps, which saved the room from growing awkward. He placed it on the table and walked to the wall.

“Try one,” Fred offered while taking one himself. Holly enjoyed them very much and was the second to try, followed by Isabella.

Luke and Lucy tried next, and they fell in love with them also and went back for seconds, then just stayed at the bowl trying to eat as much as possible before Edward and Janet dragged them away.

Edward and Janet tried next and was astounded. Only Harold didn’t take one, but Fred didn’t care.

Fred left with Holly, Luke, and Lucy, while Harold went over to the barracks to train.

But Luke and Lucy quickly ditched Fred when they went past the door to the back bailey and ran towards the Stormvermin, to their surprise the Stormvermin had built them a suit of armour that was more suitable to their human physic, it was all bound together by adjustable straps and so Luke and Lucy could adjust them to their new hight.

Fred and Holly went to the Dungeon to have a look at the booze and perfume. Rudy and Delphine had gone back to their fathers for 3 weeks and would return just before the perfume was ready.

“This is going to be great,” Fred said getting out a bottle of vodka, he had managed to get this bottle to 50% and was going to share it with the family tonight.

___

Later that evening, when the other kids were back in the lounge, Fred and Holly entered with the bottle, as well, a servant carrying stacked glasses on a tray.

“So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the spirit of wine, or more commonly referred to as Vodka,” He showed the bottle to the amusement of the crowd par one.

The servant laid out the glasses on the table, they were whisky glasses Fred had made to order, styled from His old world.

There was also a metal shot measurer, one side was a single but if you flipped it, it measured a double. He poured everyone a double, while Luke and Lucy a single, and himself a quadruple.

“Why are you poring yourself more than us?” Edward asked.

“I didn’t think you could handle your alcohol,” Fred replied.

“Ooo,” Both Isabella and Janet replied, “looks like you’re being challenged,” Isabella added.

“I can handle my alcohol, top me up.”

“And me,” Harold chimed in as well.

Fred complied, then stood there for a few secs staring at them with an evil grin.

Edward and Harold hesitated at this. No one else had a sip yet to see what would happen.

“This is a prank!” Harold exclaimed, Edward, didn’t comment but agreed.

Fred just necked the whole drink in one go, swirling it around his mouth for a good taste and then swallowing it. and slammed the glass on the table, he was always able to handle strong liquor, or at the very least could put on a performance of ‘just drinking water.’

Then he was back to looking at the two with a taunting grin.

The pair hesitated for another moment then copied Fred’s action, or tried, the strongest alcohol available was wine with Fred’s wine being at the top end of 17%, before that the next best thing struggled to get to 12%.

Edward and Harold both choked on their drinks, with Harold spitting it out, but Edward managed to swallow the drink quickly and didn’t bother trying for a long taste.

“Pathetic.” Fred laughed, “Luke, Lucy, you don’t have to have any but if you want, take a small sip to see if you like it.”

The two took a sip, “Yuk,” they scrunched up their faces causing the onlookers to laugh.

Fred turned to the girls “You’re supposed to just swallow it, I just wanted to wind them up.”

“Ok” and the three swallowed their drinks as well, pulling funny faces from the strength.

“Bloody hell, you call that a drink,” Edward said after recovering.

___

“You ready for this?” Fred asked Holly,

“…Yeah.” Holly was a bit nervous.

They were going into the operation for Astartes. Holly would be his sixth one. It was just Janet, Matt, Johan as well as Fred and Holly.

Doctor Johan and Fred had managed to create a pain-numbing agent, and it was working a little on Holly. It didn’t stop the pain altogether but was significantly helpful.

Once Holly was done and taken upstairs Fred and Matt had a chat.

“How are you doing with the body modifications?” Fred asked.

“It’s really great, something I keep meaning to bring up is, I have 2 spare organs available. I was wondering what to do with them?”

“I see, it would be ideal if we can get some troops, you work in the barracks right, do you know of any loyal soldiers with trustworthy kids?”

“I know some, do you want sons of Knights or infantry?”

“I would prefer knights, but the mounts would be lacking compared to them,”

“Can you not improve the horses?”

“I was thinking about that, I’d like to have an evolved horse myself, but I would need an entire breed of horses anyway for replacements if I did that,”

“What are the downsides?”

“Diet, the horses would eat a ton more food, and would need to eat meat, otherwise they would be spending all of their time awake eating oats,”

“What about other species? You have the demi gryphons, you might be able to ship them over from the main continent, you’ve got stags from the wood elven forests.”

“I might go with the demi-gryphons.”

“That would probably be better, they are already used to carrying heavier knights, and if you can improve that you should have a force to be reckoned with.”

“There is also, sabre beasts located northeast of the empire, the lowland trader duchies have a few regiments of them,”

“Sabre Beasts?”

“Yeah, they are like horse-sized cats, with two teeth larger than a human head, but they are covered in a tough carapace on their backs and are very dark in colour.”

‘Sounds like a sabre-tooth tiger, I’ll have to look into that.’

“Do they trade them?”

“They trade anything, legally they only sell neutered Sabre beasts, but to the merchants there, illegal just means a luxury commodity.”

“Alright, I’ll look into these, let me know if anyone from the knight’s families catches your eyes.”

“Ok”

___

“How’s Holly doing?” after Fred rested for a bit and went upstairs, he found Isabella and asked.

“There are no abnormalities at the moment, she is just resting for now.” It was just Isabella, George, Fred and the two maids in the lounge, Edward and Janet were in the room with Holly, and God knows where Harold ran off to,

“we’ve had some requests by the local barons, as well as Thomas’ barons.”

“O yeah, what about?”

“They heard about the end of year celebrations; they have all but stated their desire to participate.”

“O, do you think this is a good thing?”

“Well, it would be a great opportunity to strengthen bonds with our barons, I believe they are interested in giving their children chances to make connections.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,”

“Some might even try to push their daughters on you,” Isabella said with a teasing grin. Neither Fred nor Jess was amused by this, albeit for different reasons.

“This also would be a good opportunity to push their firstborns as retainers or their other kids as knights.” George chimed in at this.

“So, it’s a good idea them?”

“Well, the benefits outweigh the cons, but just as they would be seeking to curry favours with you, they would also be trying to make you rely on them.”

“Ok, I have school, so I’ll leave everything to you.” Fred was not one for organising parties so pushed all that on to Isabella, and George.

Neither Isabella nor George was amused by Fred dumping it all on them.

___

Rudy, delphine and Thomas came back, the three kids, after checking up with Holly, visited the Dungeon to check their perfume.

“Wow, it smells so good,” Delphine commented. “You were right Fred; this is so much better than what we usually have.”

“Now you know how to make perfume, you can experiment with different flavours while we are at Ludnus, then you can gift it out for the end of year celebration, this would be a great marketing opportunity for you,”

“Marketing opportunity?”

“Yes, you give people a taste of it then they will come to you for more, at this point you can charge them, and make money. Ideally, you have someone wear it at parties to advertise it, and it will create gossip,”

“You can give it to our moms, they are always going to balls in the capital,” Rudy added.

“Yeah,” Delphine’s eyes lit up from this.

___

Holly had a bit of complication with her recovery, it took her an extra week to recover.

“You said it would only take 2 weeks?” Janet fumed.

“I said, on average two weeks, but we prepared for it to go longer.

This is probably because Holly was on the border of Puberty, and we were actively trying to suppress its start.”

They argued back and forth for a bit, Janet knew what he was saying was reasonable, but she had worked herself up into a fright over the incident. Edward had to step in and calm her down.

___

On the way to school, Fred and Rudy decided it would be best for them to go in the same carriage as Harold, and allow the girls to go in the other. Holly was still at level 1, and they didn’t want Harold to try any funny business. His attitude had gotten worse and worse over the summer.

Except for constant arguing and insulting, the journey to Ludnus was uneventful.

Fred, Rudy, and Delphine had entered the second to last year of Juniors, while Harold was in his last at the age of 14, and Holly had just entered seniors.

Over the term, they learned of the local and recent history, the trader duchies of the lowlands had started colonising the east midlands of Albion in the last 10 years, as well, after the Western heavenly empire established a few cities with ports in the north of the mainland a couple of years ago, they had started colonising what Fred would call Yorkshire, up to where the border would be with Scotland.

As well, Holly had been experimenting with different scents for her perfumes. She had managed to create a rosemary version and a few others.

___

When they got back for winter, Thomas had come over and was helping with the planning for the end of year’s celebration. It took a lot longer due to having to plan for a larger volume of guests.

In fact, over the fall, they had extended the castle to resize the grand hall. This wasn’t just done for the celebration, the city had grown in recent years, especially with new job opportunities and a booming industry.

The plans for the expansion of the town were well received from the builder’s guild, it was planned for about 15 square miles of industry, and to support this, the residential areas would need to be expanded as well, there would be plenty of work in the near future.

This town was growing fast into a city, the only problem was its classification.

The preliminary steel production was in place, and so the next phase was the shipwrights, Fred had designed plans for drydocks, something new to this world, there was going to be 3 large drydocks and 7 medium dry docks.

But what confused the builders was that the size of the medium drydocks was a bit too big for the current largest ships. Still, it wasn’t their money that was burning.

___

A day before the celebration, guests were arriving, they would be stopping over at the guest hotel, next to the castle, and Delphine and Rudy had a lovely surprise, their mothers’ Christine, and Claudine had arrived with Edward, Janet, and the kids.

“Mommy!” Delphine and Rudy both exclaimed as they ran over for a group hug. The mothers picked up their kids and walked inside while chatting with Isabella, Janet, and Fred.

“So, Fred, I heard you’ve been looking after Delphine and Rudy,” Christine said,

Fred scratched his ear in embarrassment, “Well, we have been looking after each other.”

The next day, the celebration was in full swing, and there was a musical group playing in the hall for entertainment. Delphine ran up to her mothers to give them her gifts. Fred found out that the two kids didn’t know which mother was theirs yet.

Fred had thought it was weird, but the mothers didn’t want the two to treat each other differently, and mainly, in this society, a man and a woman could only have one spouse, and mistresses weren’t considered properly married.

If Rudy and Delphine knew which mother was theirs, then it might cause a rift between the legitimate child and the illegitimate child.

Heck, except Thomas and the two mothers, even the family didn’t know who’s kid was. On this ground, Fred could see the reasoning.

“Mommy, check out what I made,” delphine handed the presents over.

When they undid it, one had a pinkish glass vial, the other a blue, although the colour could come from the liquid inside, it was hard to tell. On the lid was a black tubing of some sort, with a bulb-shaped piece at the end, it was a late 17th-century spray device, used in Fred’s previous world. You squeezed the bulb end and a hole near the glass bottle would spray it.

“Ah sweety, what is this.” One of them said,

“Its perfume, look, let me show you.” Delphine signalled for the one who spoke to crouch and held up the hole towards her upper chest, the lady was wearing a low-cut dress to show a bit of cleavage, so this spray would go directly on skin around the neck area.

Delphine then squeezed the bulb a few times, this was its first use, so she had to build up a bit in the pipe. Then it sprayed onto Claudine, surprising her at first. But when she smelt the fragrance, she was intoxicated with it. Cristine was the first to smell it after and pestered Delphine to spray her straight away.

Claudine smelled like rosemary, while Christine smelled like lavender. Thomas was standing next to them and felt they had become even more arousing with this new smell. However, he was quickly pushed aside by the women crowding around the two, the mothers had to give Thomas the perfume for safekeeping, who knew if someone might try to rob it.