A New Kind Of Grind

"Your money or your- oh shit, it's y-"

That was about as far as the mugger got before I shot them.

"They're getting bolder, and more numerous," Cass muttered as I reloaded my dart gun. While neither Veronica nor I had managed to get the complicated clockwork of a proper revolver working yet- a proper revolver would precisely rotate and lock the cylinder into the next firing position as you pulled the trigger, after all, and it turned out neither of us was that good of a mechanic- she had managed to make a simple and useful single-shot dart gun for me, along with a dozen darts and the tools I'd need to reload the darts with alchemical drugs. Now, granted, making the dart gun actually fire the darts had required Akane's help with enchanting- and she'd thrown in an accuracy enchantment too, just to be nice- but ultimately, it hadn't been that complicated of a project.

The worst part, from my perspective, was figuring out how to brew a poison potent enough that the amount I could put in a single dart would reliably take down a Level 3 assailant. Sure, poisons were inherently more concentrated than potions, meaning I could actually fit a whole dose of poison into a dart- I most certainly could not do that with a potion- but I was, currently, only a Level 2 Alchemist, and so I had to dump a lot of magic into my batches of poison.

"On the plus side, they recognize me," I said, latching the dart gun's breech closed and looking around. "And clearly, they know I'm too much trouble to accost."

"Yes, but-"

"Yeah, that doesn't help anyone who isn't me, I'm aware," I said with a sigh. "For that, we'd need to solve the root of the issue, which is whatever is making people turn to banditry in the first place."

"Well, that'll be easy," Cass said, rolling her eyes. "All you'd need to do there is turn the world into a perfect utopia where everyone can get productive, well-paying work and stable, affordable housing. And after that, you can build a tower up to Heaven and visit the Goddesses on the weekends for tea and blowjobs."

"Okay, yeah, it isn't an easy problem to fix," I said. "But I refuse to believe it's impossible, and it most certainly isn't impossible to make things better, even if I can't completely fix them."

"I wish you the best, and I mean that sincerely," Cass said. "But, in the meantime, it might be better to focus on improving your own life, instead of those of the people trying to rob you at gunpoint."

"If I'm being perfectly honest, this prick right here is just too pathetic for me to be properly mad at," I said. "They weren't even worth the sliver of XP I had left to hit Level 2- I'm still a Level 1 Wizard after shooting them."

Cass sighed.

"Anyway, I sure hope the guards show up at some point to take this asshole to jail, because I do not want to just leave them unconscious in an alleyway," I continued. "Where the hell are they?"

"Well, hello there, Miss Updyke," Rusty said as I walked in. Rusty was a middle-aged beta who was not an exemplar, and was instead simply built like a perfectly average woman. Her hair was a dull orange-y red color that reminded people of rust, hence her nickname, as well as the name of her tavern- The Rusty Anchor. She was, like Captain Ironwood, from Arnhold- just across the Black Sea from Dorn, and unlike Dorn, had pretty much always been a hospitable land where people could actually live. The Arnish may not have been among the original settlers- who'd all been from Vega- but they were one of the most common ethnic groups in Dorn. "I'm guessing you've got a new delight from your homeland to share with us?"

A cheer went up from the gathered patrons. Not everyone in the Rusty Anchor was a coworker of mine, but enough were that everyone did recognize me, if only as the reason why the Rusty Anchor now sold french fries, a very popular variant on the perennially-popular roasted potato slices.

"Indeed I do," I lied, pulling the barrel-laden hand truck into the tavern, and gesturing for Cass to lift it up and set it atop the bar. The beer wasn't at all based on something from back home, given that, back home, alchemy was a crock of shit and magic wasn't real. But, well, I'd rather say it was a thing from back home, because the french fries were, and everyone loved those. "What I've got here is a special little brew I call Purpleheart Sweet, an alchemical beer. And for today only, everyone gets a half-pint sampler for free!"

"And if they want more than a half-pint?" Rusty asked.

"It's still beer," I said with a shrug. "It's a penny a pint, just like every other beer in the tavern."

A single penny, admittedly, wasn't all that much, but then, a pint of beer wasn't all that much in comparison to the barrel, either. I'd used one of the spare forty gallon barrels that Haruna kept on hand for this batch of beer, and filled it to the brim; considering that there were eight pints in a gallon, and accounting for a bit of waste and spillage, this one barrel would ultimately sell for six silver. Of course, I wouldn't be getting all six of those silver, because I wasn't the one serving it, but when I'd been brewing this batch of beer, I'd held myself to a strict budget that'd ensure I still made some profit from selling it at one silver per forty gallon barrel. As long as I could negotiate at least that much from Rusty, I'd be in the black.

"...Ooooh," some sailor I didn't recognize said, after a long pull from a half-pint sampler. "This feels like it has a Stamina potion mixed in."

"Just enough of one to keep you from waking up with a hangover and swearing off the drink forever," I said with false modesty; when it came to picking a potion effect for my alchemist's beer, I'd thought that a potion that removed one of the unpleasant side effects of beer would be well-appreciated. It was the best idea I had, and I had no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I'd be getting much better ones from my customers in short order. "After all, I want you to drink a lot of this, so I can sell more of it!"

There was some laughter at that, and people started lining up for samples.

"We'll consider this first barrel a freebie," I said, a few hours later, after most of the patrons had cleared out. It was past my bedtime, now, but I had a few potions of wakefulness- literally just concentrated cold-brew coffee, if I was being perfectly honest- in my inventory, so I'd probably live. "But the next barrel, that's going to cost you."

"Of course," Rusty said, nodding amiably as she washed a glass. "Forty gallons a barrel is the standard size, you know."

"I do, yes," I said. "So how much are you willing to pay for a barrel that size?"

"Twenty five pennies," Rusty said.

I winced, and wasn't even acting.

"Rusty, I cannot afford to sell you these barrels for only half a silver," I said. "But you can afford to buy them for three silver."

"And what makes you think that?" Rusty asked mildly.

"The ingredients for a day's worth of simple, cooked food are about four copper, or three copper if you buy in bulk from the right suppliers," I said. "But you sell three simple meals for six copper in total, which is a material markup of, what, fifty to a hundred percent? I'm not going to accuse you of price gouging, obviously- that extra copper pays for everything here that isn't ingredients- but I do know that you can pay half the revenue for ingredients." I patted the half-empty barrel. "And this ingredient, you don't even have to cook before you serve it. I already did that."

"...Two silver," Rusty said.

"Two silver and twenty five copper," I said.

Rusty sighed. "You drive a hard bargain. Fine. Two and a half silver a barrel it is."

We shook on it, and then Rusty handed over a gold coin.

"I'll be needing eight barrels, if I want this order to last the month," Rusty said.

"Well, of course," I said, accepting the coin and nodding. "I've got two extra barrels already brewed up and ready to go, and I'll bring those by tomorrow afternoon. The other six are going to take me a few days, though."

"I can work with that," Rusty said, nodding. "I'll hold you to it, though."

"I expect nothing less."

"So, with that," I muttered, "that improves my financial situation pretty nicely, but... it's not a silver bullet."

"Oh?" Akane asked.

It was the next evening, after I'd delivered the first two additional barrels of Purpleheart Sweet and gotten the brew started on the next six barrels.

"I mean, if I understand the math correctly," Akane began, "it looks to me like you can probably sell about sixteen barrels a month, which is two gold pieces a month."

"Yes, but, that's just revenue," I said. "It's only after I subtract expenses that I actually get profit. At a hundred and twenty five copper per barrel in revenue, but forty five copper in production costs, that comes out to a profit of only eighty copper a barrel, or one gold, five silver, and thirty copper a month."

"Still not bad," Akane said.

"Oh, absolutely not," I said. "With the Alchemist class, brewing beer really does not take much work at all. Buuuuut, it does still cost money, and it costs enough money that, unless I can sell more than twenty five barrels a month, then it still brings in less money than being a longshoreman, which doesn't cost me anything but time and energy."

"Yeah, but..." Akane trailed off. "I mean, how much is your time and effort worth to you?"

"Enough that I'm not willing to quit being a longshoreman until brewing beer makes me five times what unloading ships makes me," I said simply. "Which would be one hundred and twenty five barrels a month, and require me to sell beer to more than just a single tavern."

"That's... a lot of beer," Akane said.

"And I will likely never make that much," I said. "No, beer brewing is very likely to stay as just a hobby- something I do to keep the Rusty Anchor happy, because the money is not going to matter once I join the Guild and start delving. And that, fates willing, should be reasonably soon."