Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

“That is a lot of fat.”

“Do we think it’s enough, though?”

“For what?”

“Are you serious? I just explained this to you.”

“Sorry,” said Biggle, still staring at the stacked barrels. “Bit distracted by the literal tons of high-grade alchemical ingredients right in front of me. Do you know what I could do with that?”

“What?”

“I…I don’t know. A lot,” he said. “I’d need to experiment. I normally work with plants and fungi.”

“But is it enough?”

“It’s hard to say,” Biggle hedged, crossing his arms. “At least seventy-five tons. Maybe half-a-million bars of soap.”

Elijah frowned. He’d spent the morning chopping wood, but he still wasn’t certain he had enough to produce the lye necessary to use all of the fat. It would be close, but all of his estimates were just that – approximations.

“I think I need some more trees,” he muttered before turning to Nerthus, who’d joined them at the tree line next to the dock. “Can the island handle a hundred more?”

“Barely,” Nerthus answered. “But any more will tip the balance.”

Elijah nodded. “I guess we can get started, then,” he said. Turning to Biggle, he asked, “So, what do you need to prepare?”

“I have everything I need. I can’t render that much fat. You need a real Cook for that. They specialize in large-scale operations like this,” he said. “I’ll have the scented oils for you in a week.”

Elijah tapped his lip. That timeframe would be difficult, but he felt sure that he could get it done. So, he sent Biggle off to do whatever it was that he did while he let Nerthus guide him to the appropriate trees to cut down. Elijah would have preferred to let them cure for a little while longer, but he didn’t want to be stuck making soap for the next year. He enjoyed it as a hobby – and he definitely saw the potential, both in terms of profit and pushing the cultivation of the people in Argos and Ironshore – but it wasn’t his main focus. He could only devote so much time to the task before he started to get antsy.

So, once he had his trees, he processed them and piled the results next to the rest of the wood he intended to burn for ash. The ethera current surrounding it all was subtle, but he hoped that would translate to powerful soap.

With that done, he headed across the channel and to his sister-in-law’s smithy. There, he discovered something interesting about Carmen. “You advanced your cultivation, didn’t you?” he asked the moment he entered the room to see her staring at a piece of hot metal.

“Uh…yeah? How did you know?” she asked.

“Just a feeling. Congratulations! We should celebrate.”

“Already done. Carissa and I got drunk and made fools of ourselves,” she revealed with only a hint of a brush. She brushed her hands off on her apron, then put them on her hips. “So, what do you want?”

“I can’t just be here to see about my favorite –”

“You only ever come here when you need something. Spit it out.”

He sighed. “Fine. “I need a pot. Like a really big pot.”

“For?”

So, he explained his goal of rendering so much fat. “And I want to do it on the island. I have a place picked out and everything,” he said. “But the scale doesn’t really work without a really big pot. So, a cauldron. Maybe ten feet –”

“Go find a Cook, tell them your goal, and then have them come to me with what they need,” she said. “I have some star iron I can use for this. In most cases, it’s basically trash metal. Too soft for weapons or armor. But for things like pots and pans? It’s great.”

“How much?” Elijah asked.

She shrugged. “Just cover my costs. I’ll let you know when we know the parameters.”

“Carmen, I’m not comfortable –”

“Don’t even try that. You’re family. Plus, you gave us that big-ass power crystal. If anything, I owe you. Just go find your Cook.”

“Any suggestions?”

“Not Demi,” Carmen said.

“Who’s Demi?”

“Someone you’re not going to talk to, that’s who. In fact, don’t talk to any of the Cooks or Chefs in the Forge of Creation.”

“There’s a story here.”

She sighed. “I told you I made a fool of myself,” she said in a small voice. “The foolishness in question involved Demi and like two gallons of Silver River whiskey.”

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“Oof,” Elijah said. Silver River Whiskey was imported from somewhere across the world. It was one of the many luxury items Atticus offered in his stores – apparently, the Distiller was a friend – and it was known for being extremely potent, even for those with high attributes. Elijah had been meaning to try a bit, but he’d yet to find the occasion. “You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Carmen, you need to –”

“I am not talking to you about my love life, Elijah. She’s just…let’s just leave it at that. Please?”

“Fine. So, if I can’t go to anyone in this monstrosity of a building, where should I go?”

“My advice? Find your favorite restaurant and pay them to help you. Offer the cauldron as payment. They’ll jump right at it,” she answered.

Elijah nodded. He wanted to spend a little more time with Carmen – after all, she was right to say that he only ever visited her when he needed something – but his time constraints weighed on him. More importantly, she looked like she wanted him to leave. Ever attentive to social cues, Elijah quickly departed.

As it turned out, it was easy enough to find a Cook, especially when he passed Mama Lou’s diner and caught sight of Sue Anne. If anyone knew how to work with fat, it was a woman who spent her days frying bacon. So, he approached her with his proposal, which she accepted without much in the way of hesitation. The only hiccup came when he told her that it would need to be done on his island, but once he assured her safety, she was onboard.

Soon enough, she’d left the restaurant in her daughter’s hands, then headed toward the Forge of Creation. As she went, Elijah heard her muttering about showing those “uppity elitists who could really cook.” Apparently, there was some enmity – or maybe rivalry – between the run-of-the-mill crafters in Ironshore and those in control of the Forge of Creation. Hopefully, that would get taken care of sooner rather than later.

In any case, with that taken care of, Elijah returned to the island, where he started digging a huge pit on the beach. Once he’d finished, he lined it with stones, then fetched the first batch of wood. Getting it to light was easy enough. It hadn’t rained since he’d set them out to cure, so they were dry and caught quickly.

Before long, he had a raging bonfire.

As he worked, a couple of crabs grew curious enough to investigate, but it only took a few whacks with the butt of his scythe to send them scurrying away. Still, he couldn’t help but notice that they’d grown a little larger than the last time he’d bothered to notice. Not a lot, but enough to be obvious.

But they were a long way off from the frosty crab he’d seen only a few days before. That had been a truly awe-inspiring crustacean.

While he watched the fires burn, adding split logs whenever necessary, he focused on his soul cultivation. Or rather, on controlling the ethera in his channels. Since embarking on that particular journey, he’d kept one facet of his mind trained exclusively on that task, so he found that his ethera responded to his will far more easily than in the beginning.

It was still sluggish, and it definitely didn’t want to give way to his mental commands. However, the fact that he’d made even that much progress – and in such a short amount of time – was encouraging. If he kept going like that, it wouldn’t be long before he was ready to push ahead with the next step.

Once the logs had burned down, Elijah carefully gathered the ash and placed it in specially prepared casks. He’d given the local Hooper quite a lot of work recently, but he hoped it would be well worth it. The barrels in question had been curing in the grove for a few weeks now, so he hoped they would help impart some of his domain’s power into the process of creating lye.

In the beginning, he’d hoped to use his old, makeshift barrels he’d created from hollowing out logs, but that just wasn’t efficient. Still, he did intend to use them for a special batch meant for his own use.

In any case, there were fifteen casks, each with a volume of around forty gallons. Elijah half filled them with ash, then the rest with water he’d gotten from the ash lotus spring before sealing them.

Like that, days passed until, at last, just as he’d run out of ash and created quite a lot of lye, Carmen visited with the cauldron. It looked a lot like cast iron, black and with a mouth around five feet wide. It was narrower than he’d hoped, but that wasn’t really his expertise. If Sue Anne said it would work, he would trust her.

The Cook herself was right on Carmen’s heels, looking simultaneously awestruck and terrified. That was normal for most people who visited the island.

But to Elijah’s surprise, they’d brought a few extra people. Specifically, the children who wanted to join the grove. Hope led them along, and when the entire group arrived, she said, “We want to help.”

“Alright. More the merrier. Just follow Sue Anne’s directions. That’s what I intend to do,” Elijah said.

The children nodded, their faces locked in expressions of determination. Rosabella in particular seemed to take the job extremely seriously. After that, they helped line the fire pit with coal Carmen had brought along from her smithy, then set the enormous cauldron up on a stand she’d made to keep the base suspended over the fire.

That’s when they got down to the business of rendering fat.

Over the next couple of hours, the fat sizzled inside the cauldron, creating a thick substance that Elijah recognized. As Sue Anne worked, she gained momentum, and before long, she had found her rhythm.

For a while, Elijah was mesmerized by the smell of cooking fat – to him, it smelled a lot like bacon – and the swirl of ethera that surrounded the entire process. The children were kept away from the cooking pit so as to avoid ethera poisoning, though they were put to good use when it came to the straining process.

Like that, an entire day passed. Everyone snacked on the cracklings – or the leftover bits of meat and fat – and grove fruits. The children were ushered away after a few hours when it was clear that their energy had begun to wane. But Hope and little Rosabella vowed to return after a nap.

And true to their word, they did just that, proving their dedication.

In the end, it took two days of solid work to render all of the fat into a usable state. During that time, Elijah had strained the lye three times until it reached the appropriate concentration.

At some point, Biggle joined them alongside a few porters who carried the molds for the soap and his personal cauldron. The thing was massive, so mixing the fat and lye – as well as the scented oils he’d brought along – didn’t take nearly as long as it could have.

It was still a big job, though, and by the time they’d finished, almost two weeks had passed.

Still, Elijah couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction as he looked upon rack after rack of curing soap. The operation took up a whole beach.

At some point, a bored Carmen had built a temporary roof to protect them from rain, so the soap wasn’t under any threat of melting.

“How much do you think we made?” Elijah asked.

Biggle answered immediately, “Five-hundred thousand, two-hundred and three bars.” He glanced at Elijah. “Not counting your personal stash.”

“Damn.”

“Indeed,” Biggle agreed, his eyes drooping. Like Elijah, he hadn’t slept the entire time. However, the manic energy that had driven him to that point had faded. “We are going to be very, very rich.”

“Let’s hope so,” Elijah said.