The Slime Farmer - 118 First Custom Produc

It was Sarel that stopped their protests. “There are things I cannot examine without her waking. Tomorrow or the day after, you can take her home when I’m done.”

With those words from the Lowpool’s hidden mystic chef, Adtra and Haral could only reluctantly give way.

“I will repay this kindness,” Haral burst out, earnestly. “To everyone, I promise!”

His sister bowed, in the female manner of clasping both hands close to her chest and lowering her head. “We will not forget.”

Haral quickly followed her in the Ascharonian male version of the bow, resting a fist over one’s heart and bending from the waist.

“Come, come,” Barham grasped both their arms warmly. “Are we not from the same roots? Do not be reserved.”

Defi saw something flit across both siblings’ faces, but they smiled at him openly so but didn’t think it was because of Barham. His words, then?

He had not asked why their fourteen year old sister had seemingly thrown herself into the freezing river. He left that thorny conversation to Allise, who was looking at the two with concern.

It seemed she saw it too.

In the end, Haral decided to return to their home, stating that they had younger siblings who would worry. Adtra would stay at the northern farm for the night.

Defi remembered Haral saying he had another older sister. By Defi’s count, he had at least five siblings. In all the time that he stayed in this world, this was the first he’d heard of someone with as many siblings as an Ontrean.

How surprising.

He had thought that Ascharonians had fewer children in a household because they were only allowed two concurrent wives where Ontreans could marry as many as they could support.

One woman birthing six children – many women from Defi’s home would shy from the idea. Two or three offspring were considered more than enough from any Ontrean woman.

It was impressive however, for one woman to raise that many children.

When Defi returned to the Garge homestead, it was past midnight.

He tested the regular savras-balm mixture, using the space that was the former slime room near the house kitchen. The barrels and feeding baskets that once littered the room were replaced with shelves and cabinets. Some were empty, others filled with tableware and cutlery.

One wall was covered end to end by twin glass-fronted display cabinets. The expanse of display space was empty.

When Tennar found that Defi was furnishing his household, he sent the cabinets as a housewarming gift with the caravan of winter supplies.

Defi sent in return the preserved meat of the first sable crab he bought at the fisher’s guild, inwardly lamenting all the while that he could not eat it himself.

If Tennar had bet that he wouldn’t notice, too bad.

Sarel had only smirked at him when he asked. So Defi concluded that the Bluzand manager had recognized the taste of sable crab meat that was his return gift.

There was nothing he had that was worth displaying though, which was why the cabinets were not placed in the receiving hall.

In Ascharonian tradition, he should get some rare plates to display or something similar. Expensive goblets or carved spoons. Small figurines if he was not into displaying impractical tableware.

Defi wondered what message it would send if he collected and displayed weapons. Ascharon had a warrior history before their emperor threw them down the path of gourmet food, hadn’t it?

Displaying weapons shouldn’t be taboo.

Maybe.

That warrior history in this world was centuries ago.

He should ask Aire or Sarel about it, he decided as he contemplated the emptiness behind the glass. Weapons would be more useful than plates.

Apart from the shelves and cabinets, there was only a table and chair in the room, and the single mechanical clock cabinet. The shelf near the table and chair was full of pots and jars – many of them containing slime extract.

The extract samples from the first mass summoning Defi did had been smashed by the thieves that were almost-certainly not thieves during the conflict with Madame Agreine.

Defi gained the habit of collecting the extract from all the slimes he summoned, tested extensively with the trace-table. He found that when summoned once, he could summon the same slime using a catalyst on the summon-tablet. So he kept the extracts.

He wasn’t knowledgeable enough in raw ingredients and materials to immediately know if a particularly eye-catching extract was useful or not. But the shelf he kept the samples on was extensively fortified with Emblems, making sure that the extracts could not be contaminated or contaminate other things.

Something flashed in the periphery of his vision.

Defi turned in his chair.

The curved lines on the surface of the apothecary’s trace-table stopped extending and glowed in their stillness. The analysis was done. He took a fresh page of paper and wrote down the results of the analysis, frowning in concentration as he deciphered the meaning within the design.

Trace-tables only detected various elements or substances or materials that apothecaries knew existed, but the large swath that was unknown was tested using broad generalizations, for example whether the materials were infrigidants or calefacients, whether they were toxic to the human body or non-toxic, whether they were beneficial for people of certain Shades or not, etc.

Defi suspected that the only reason the apothecary’s guild sold such a massively useful tool as the trace-table to the public, even publishing a guide, was that the average person would not have the means or knowledge to put the analysis together in a manner that would threaten apothecary secrets.

At the same time, people became appreciative of apothecary skills and knowledge, making their contributions to society more valuable in the people’s minds.

Defi himself could only use the trace-table guide.

Not the Lowpool’s reliable librarian Orain had books that could fully pierce the mystery of the trace-table.

Blasted apothecaries.

Defi glowered at the analysis.

It said the mixture was non-toxic, but he already knew that. He identified several substances that the trace-table showed which were consistent to savras, and more which intimated that the mixture had collagen and trace amounts of oil.

Those were probably from the silver-blue carp bones.

When he was at the fisher’s guild, he gained the information that the guild officer Erel had Sunlight as his Shade.

Trace-table analysis said there were no problems in that respect.

But the trace-table was showing other things as well. The large amount of information that he could not decipher even as the indications were right in front of him was frustrating.

Defi did not have the training and understanding to completely bring out the potential of the trace-table.

He leaned back in his chair.

Should he put his glyphmaking studies on hold to learn more about apothecary skills?

No. He discarded the thought after a moment of thinking.

First, if he took the official route, he had to apprentice with an apothecary first, then join the guild. That was too much trouble. The apothecaries he knew were…how to describe them?

Too eccentric, he decided.

Second, the unofficial route would also be very troublesome, and would possibly get the guild pursuing him like a nest of hornets for attempting to steal trade secrets.

Ascharon, how well you protect your merchantry, he sighed.

Another route would be to discover an apothecary’s diary, or someone’s secret research. It would be simpler to hide something like that from the apothecary’s guild, but that was like hoping for pie to fall from the sky.

Defi could only tell Orain to keep a spare eye out for apothecary materials in the man’s unceasing search for books to improve the Lowpool library.

He didn’t expect anything on that front. Countless people wanted apothecary knowledge for themselves. Old libraries and bookshop attics across the land would likely already have been thoroughly scoured.

Defi packed the trace-table and labelled the jars carefully, storing the analysis papers in a chest under the table. The mixture with 60% savras looked to be the most efficacious for the job.

Checking the new mechanical clock, only four hours remained until the sun came up.

He would need to head to the fisher’s guild in three hours to meet with Erel.

Eh, there were more productive things to do in an hour than sleep.

He stretched, blew out one of the lamps, and took the second through the kitchen and out the house.

All the extraction was now done in the warehouse after all.

Feeding the slimes this early was not too far from his regular routine, in any case. It took an hour and a half to feed and milk the slimes.

Another thirty minutes to mix the extracts in the needed proportion and pour the resulting savras balm into small pots. He moved carefully, precisely.

This was the first product that he had personally made for another person after all.

He put the covers on the pots and sealed them with the leaf tag.

All done, Defi still had two hours before he needed to leave the house.

He sat under a sansu tree and placed the lamp beside him, falling into the embrace of the Current.

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Notes:

In Ontrea, there is actually a law clarifying how much added wealth a person should have before adding another spouse. It’s called a ‘marriage-toll’. It’s not a bride-price, which is given to the bride’s family or a dowry, which is the wealth the bride brings with her. Ontreans are warriors, and so are often close to death. This is the money that goes to support the children of a warrior if the head of the household dies suddenly.

The amount changes depending on the status of the person who married into the family.

For example, because Defi’s mother was a slave, the marriage-toll needed to marry her was less than the wealth needed to marry a noblewoman. Then again, because Defi’s mother was a slave with a recorded lineage history going back a thousand years, the marriage-toll needed to marry her was more than the amount needed for most slaves and commoners.

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