Why do humanoids of this world obsessed with changing the shapes of their body? Darko spat out the tea that he was drinking one day at an affluent district in Stokbon, as he was coughing. Man this was disgusting. How did the nobles tolerate this hogwash of a beverage? He wondered about the actual use of the tea as he was trying to cough to scrape away the lingering bad taste in his mouth. He would really regret ordering this tea in one of the tea shops he had frequently went in. Of course Darko would not settle for anything less. This tea shop was owned by no other than Lilianne Sommers, one of the most famous tea merchants in Stokbon, might be also one of the most famous in Falderen. Although she was really known as a tea merchant, she also managed this tea shop, where quite a number of people, some of them even Falderen nobles, frequented. And currently, one of the best-sellers of the place was the tea leaves exported from Esuilus, which was known for its therapeutic effects on the body, which included weight loss, supple skin, and much more. It was a great hit mostly among the female Falderen nobility, which, Darko had noticed, were so fat that when they walk, the fatty parts of the body were jiggling with their every movement. Clearly not a sight to see when someone's eating, and until then Darko was choking in his cake when he would see something like that again. Hopefully this was a solution to their problems, if not, he might not control the urge to throw the hot Esuilan tea with its brewing container towards the owner of the place. He had earlier received the mission to infiltrate the rival Quilliam's Teashoppe from Lilianne Sommers, to uncover what she thought was a fraud in the Esuilan offering that the shop had. Mostly that nasty rumor that the Quilliam's were just offering low-grade tea steeped with spices so that it would have the Esuilan aroma that was the standard of the product. Being a culinary person that specialized in non-alcoholic beverages, Darko accepted the job, with the proviso that he would get one package of the tea for free to determine the aroma and taste, and that he would need more people for the job of infiltration. That way they could prove if that tea that was offered by Quilliam's was the genuine article or the fake one. As per the preparation indicated in shorthand in the package, Darko prepared the Esuilan tea with his portable tea brewing set. He also prepared another sample using a standard he had used in brewing his teas back in the real world. The results were similarly colored teas, which was quite dark in color. He then used a spoon to slurpily drink each tea. The taste was also the same, much more full-bodied than the regular teas and was more comparable to coffee, and was also very bitter. The aroma and the taste removing the bitter part was fragrant though. The bitterness was intolerable for Darko, and so he tried to add some sugar to the teas. The result was so disgusting he had to spit everything on the spittoon provided. What the hell? Everything turned upside down! The aroma, the taste, all were gone with the addition of sugar. What replaced it was an acrid sourness that was very disgusting for a tea drinker. So that was the tea that the Falderen noble ladies were drinking? Between bitterness and acridity, they had no choice. They sacrifice everything to gain their figure: pleasure of taste, time, and money, and when they do not get it with one method they will be frustrated and use much more drastic means, ruining their lives in the process. @Iván Carl @Eyas Amari
It's been a couple of days now, weeks even. Iván's been hopping from one lead to the next, hoping that he would be closer to once again being face-to-face with the otherworldly being he had encountered down in the Spire. Ever since that expedition, his obsession with the masked purple god-machine-thing has grown steadily. He could not do anything aside from thinking about it, every second of every minute of every hour of every day has all been about that being. That may change today, if not for just one day. Iván was overextending the limits of his logic, overreaching for his obsession to give him one day of respite. Quilliam's Teashoppe. Iván hadn't met Quilliam yet but his name had quill in it and one of the monsters in the Spire was basically a walking flesh bag filled with quills. Maybe this was connected to the otherworldly being? Maybe not. Most probably not. But he didn't exactly have any other leads for the day, and he had just passed by the Aristocracy for some reports. Why not, right? His wild goose chases have apparently left him out of Stokbon's loop, as now, there was some kind of tea leaf fad out here, something about weight loss and skin care. Iván couldn't care less about any of that, but he did like tea. He still had those cookbooks he got from that crippled alchemist in the cursed village he went to with Madison Freebird. It's been a while since he read them, any of them, but his desire to start his own curry shop could benefit from this quest. Maybe he could take some of the tea or whatever he can learn from Quilliam and use it for his future restaurant. Iván sighed as he stood outside of the teashoppe. As per Lilianne Sommers, the person who posted the quest, he had two options: (a) catch Quilliam in the act of preparing his fake tea and get some proof to destroy his name, or (b) persuade his customers that he was fake even without any proof. The second option seemed the most efficient. He could just his illusion magic to trick his best or loudest customer into thinking Quilliam was a fraud. He wondered if he could still meet up with the man, though. If he was genuine, maybe Iván could even learn a thing or two from him. You must, you must, you must... "I know," Iván deadpanned. "Shut up and let me think." @Darko Ljubicic @Eyas Amari
Eyas didn't know anything about tea. Which, really, was fine. She preferred her cans of Arizona, grabbed off a gas station shelf and chucked in a fridge for later. But here she was, dealing with more stuff over tea. Herbal tea, medicinal, she honestly stopped caring about it after a while. There wasn't anything she was gonna gain from drinking it. Except now she was apparently gonna gain some stuff for doing this quest thing. Which she now needed to do. No point in putting it off any further, really. She hadn't been able to figure out how to just violently slaughter the person and convince the crowds it was a random murder, but hey. Her gut told her it could be done. Or at the very least, get the world to believe it was by some divine will that they died. Also known as the power of coin. So she went ahead and went through the marketplace, the katana at her side popping with sparks every so often. It even smelled like tea here, not something she was enjoying. She almost kept going, then she heard retching. With her given task, somebody sick plus bad tea meant somebody probably had the bad tea. A Herculean leap in logic, but she was just trying to get done. Cutting corners was the way to get this done. So she approached the guy who apparently had bad tea, cocking her head. "Not what you expected?"
