Demon World Boba Shop: A Cozy Fantasy Novel

The next day, Arthur sat Lily down and cooked some eggs and sausages he had in his cold box, letting the oil from the former mix in with the latter until he had a couple piles of heavy, meaty goodness for their breakfast. Cutting some bread and pouring some tea, he sat down to eat and take his first good look at the town’s first gazette.

Election Candidates Revealed! The First Edition of the Coldbrook Murmur Reveals All About Your Candidates for Mayor!

There were seven candidates in total, each with little profiles about their background and what they hoped to accomplish.

Turu Merchant, General Goods Store

Turu promises a commerce-first approach to leadership, leveraging his mayoral powers to maximize trade with both surrounding settlements and the Demon World at large. Under his leadership, building efforts would focus on road improvements, depot-building, and a more refined taxation structure.

Opel Stamper, Stamping Crew Member

Opel promises a sturdy, construction-focused approach to governance, one that builds first, builds often, and builds to last. He will maximize the capabilities of the city from a structural and infrastructure standpoint. Opel hopes to fill the gap left by Karra’s decision not to run for leadership and to give Coldbrook residents a builder-focused option for their mayoral voting.

Every one of the candidates had a specific focus on top of the normal responsibilities one would expect from a mayor, all offering legitimate differences in how they’d run the town that made sense as separate options. All of them except one, that is.

Milo Metalsmith, Milo’s Metalworks and Machinery

Milo promises to focus what seems like an inappropriate amount of town resources trying to, quote, “Get everything to have at least one gear in it.” He says he will spend his time as mayor turning Coldbrook into essentially one large, over-complex clockwork town, even where this isn’t productive or helpful.

The Coldbrook Murmur emphatically dis-recommends Milo for any leadership position at all and recommends, lightly, that he be watched so he doesn’t hurt himself.

Arthur could vaguely imagine the conversation that had led to that article and decided once more that he liked Sett, weird journalistic aggression and all. Which was good, since the next article focused mostly on him.

A Year or So of Arthur: A Profile of Leader

No person is more visible or more exemplifies the can-do spirit of Coldbrook than Arthur Teamaster, of Earth. Though all agree he has trouble focusing on or remembering important things, he has led Coldbrook admirably through its early days. Under his guidance, the town has grown, covered its own basic needs, developed its exports and industry, and defeated a monster wave even when the most optimistic of expectations indicated failure.

This reporter sat down with Arthur repeatedly over the course of the last few days and, with great difficulty, managed to extract several pieces of information from him, in the same way one might extract a sore tooth from the mouth of a very cranky Hing.

The story went on like that for half a page, detailing Arthur’s accomplishments in generous ways that nearly made him blush while the words also took every opportunities to take swipes at his apparent inability to give journalists the scoops they craved. Lily read over Arthur’s shoulders, giggling.

“He makes it sound like he hates me,” Arthur said. “People are going to get the wrong idea.”

“I think it’s probably fine. Nobody will think he’d actually write the article like this if he was really mad at you. This is probably his way of explaining why he tackled you in broad daylight yesterday.”

“Well, either way, I’m glad we have Sett,” Arthur said. “I didn’t know about at least three of these candidates.”

“I didn’t know about any of them except Spiky. And his write-up is the best.”

It was. Sett had stopped short of out-and-out endorsing Spiky, but only just. Just like on Earth, Demon World papers had bias. Unlike Earth, though, they didn’t attempt to hide that fact.

Stanta “Spiky” Bookmaster

Known as Spiky as per his race’s norms, Stanta Bookmaster is an all-round candidate with a firm grasp of every piece of data relevant to Coldbrook. As a founding member of the town, he has spent countless hours documenting Coldbrook’s terrain, it’s natural resources, and every brick of every building as the town grew around him.

Spiky promises to focus entirely on what he calls “dynamic balance,” an ever-shifting, data-propelled approach to leadership that changes with the needs of the town in an effort to anticipate coming problems, material requirements, and labor supply issues before they become problems.

This reporter was impressed by Spiky’s plans and hopes to see more of his ideas regarding leadership in the future.

“Yeah, that’s about as good of a write-up as he can get,” Arthur agreed. “Will the other candidates be mad?”

“Naw. They probably think the same thing.” Lily scooped up a huge forkful of eggs, shoveling the bite down as her eyes dropped in thought. “I can’t think of a single person who would be even close to doing what Spiky can do. And that’s before his academic mayor advantage.”

“Academic mayor?”

“I was talking to Leena about it yesterday. Every mayor’s screen is different. Actual leadership classes get the most comprehensive screens but they are rare. After that, warriors get a different kind of screen that focuses on defense.”

“I thought warriors never get elected.”

“They don’t but they used to. Anyway, I guess if Spiky was the mayor, he’d get all the same information you’d get, just… more. More details, more kinds of information the system assumes wouldn’t be useful to most people.”

“Ah. So the person holding and using all that information would be Spiky.”

“Right. And I don’t think anyone will actually disagree with Sett.” Lily tapped on the paper. “I’m actually impressed he wrote his thoughts down. Some people wouldn’t.”

“Yeah. I just hope we can keep him, long-term,” Arthur said.

“Is there even enough news in Coldbrook for a full-time gazetteer?” Lily asked.

“I dunno. We can probably ask him. If we can find him.”

“Let's go.” Lily put her fork down on her plate, then carried both to the sink. “I know just where he is.”

Arthur and Lily found Sett sitting at a small, roughly-made wooden table packed with copies of the gazette, far more than the town would actually need and probably in excess of how many people actually lived there.

“Hi, Sett. I see you’ve been busy.” Arthur and the gazetteer nodded at each other. “I liked the article this morning.”

“Oh, good. I was wondering if you would. I figured it was more fun than if I had written the same thing, but dry,” Sett said. “It’s kind of freeing to be able to write my own opinions in the margin. I’ll have to pull back if Coldbrook grows because not everyone would have the context, but for now, it’s fun.”

“Agreed.” Arthur pointed at the stack of gazettes on the counter. “Do you really need this many? Most people are going to share theirs.”

“Oh, not for people to actually read today. But I have a whole other crate of these back at my house. People who move here later will want copies. First edition papers are like that. They are little pieces of history.”

Arthur leaned on the table, imagining little demons reading about Coldbrook a generation from now and trying to imagine how it could have ever been so small. It was a fun idea.

“Lily and I were actually just talking about the Murmur,” Arthur began, “and we wanted to come ask you. Do you think there’s enough news in town to sustain it?”

“I’d like to say yes, especially if you keep getting up to your normal antics. But honestly? No. Usually, there’s just not enough change in a town this size to keep a daily gazette.”

“Then how are you going to make it work?” Arthur asked, suddenly concerned.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I talked to Talca about it this morning. Once a week, I’m going to take a run over to Peaktown, Seaside, and a couple other settlements. I’ll release the Murmur as a sort of collection of everything that’s going on in this whole part of the world.”

“So sort of a frontier-news thing?”

“Exactly. Which is great for keeping up with what everyone else is doing, but I think also might make the paper interesting for people back in the cities. Sort of a way for moms to check up and see how their kids are doing.”

“You should make a section for the kids to send their moms messages, if that’s something you want,” Lily said. “It would make the moms like it more and you could probably charge people a coin for a quick sentence.”

Sett gaped at Lily for a moment. “That’s actually a really good idea.”

“Get used to it. She’s full of them. It’s part of her class,” Arthur said.

Arthur and Lily shot the breeze with Sett a little longer, then made their way to the shop. These days, Lily was able to help around the shop almost every morning while still having some time to split off and go help with some other important project in the afternoon. In strict class-advancement terms, helping Arthur was probably a waste of Lily’s time and he had once tried to convince her to spend her time in other ways that would be more productive for her.

Lily had shut that down fast. She became an assistant specifically to assist Arthur, and rightly pointed out that if she wanted to use her class to do things that made her happy, it was her business alone whether or not she cared about them being efficient.

“You’re smiling,” Lily said. “It’s nice, but why?”

“Oh, was I?” Arthur rubbed his cheek, which hurt a little bit from a grin he hadn’t even realized was there. “I guess it’s because everything’s calmed down. I mean, there’s the election and all, but that’s just positive stuff. There are no monsters looming on the horizon or problems to deal with.”

“So you can just make tea,” Lily concluded.

“So I can just make tea, yeah. And lots of it, these days.”

Arthur glanced down at his hands, which were increasingly capable and could now do things he wouldn’t have dreamt of in the early days of developing his class. He hadn’t paid much attention during the monster wave, but he had picked up levels and achievements from his tea that pushed his tea making even further, not to mention the experience he had built up from good, old-fashioned monster slaying.

“Your class is moving along? I know it was stalled for a while,” Lily asked.

“Oh, absolutely stalled,” Arthur said. It had been a while since he checked and the last few times, it had been stuck at the same level. There was finally some change now. “And it hasn’t made a huge difference. Mainly I can just make easier teas better and for longer before I run out of majicka. Increasing the pep in tea doesn’t really cost me anything anymore. I don’t even notice the draw.”

“What’s that mean for the shop?” Lily asked. “It’s not a monster wave anymore. Barely anyone is asking for buffs now.”

“I think they feel awkward doing it. Which is a shame because I have more power than I need, these days.” Arthur pulled a lever, purging yesterday’s water from his kettles while allowing fresh liquid to flow in and replace it. “Nobody wants to seem greedy. I need to figure out how to make them feel like they can ask for things without it being weird for things.”

“Hmm.” Lily cupped her chin in her hands. “The only thing I can think of is changing up your menu.”

“I don’t have any new ingredients, really.”

“Not ingredients. I’m thinking actually telling people what you can do for them. If it seems weird to ask you for something that enhances stamping, you could just put it up on the board and make it clear that’s a service your shop offers. Having it on the sign would make it more normal for most people.”

“Gods. That’s the solution, isn’t it?” Arthur almost slapped his forehead. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to handle this for days and it’s just that easy.”

“Well, that’s what I’m around for. I’m an ideas person, remember?” Lily puffed out proudly.

“You are.” Arthur ruffled the feathers on top of Lily’s head, ignoring her protest. “And I’m very, very lucky to have you.”