Chapter 129 Baking

Eisen, Komer, Caria and Melissa sat on the front bench of the carriage and chose to drive for a few hours, simply brainstorming to get ideas for cool new items, and there was actually not much that they could come up with, just cool designs for specific weapons. And since those kind of special designs were rather for a situation where someone specifically comissioned something, they didn’t manage to do all that much progress, and Eisen ended up with a simple conclusion.

"I guess I’ll just make some regular items, and not these special ones for a while. Meaning shirts, gloves, hats, and so on. Maybe some belts to keep different things in that can be useful during a hunt. And then of course backpacks. It’s been a while since I’ve made regular items like that, so it was about time, to be honest." Eisen said with a loud sigh, looking around the area with his truth seeing eyes activated to get used to the new ability of being able to see mana, as he had been doing for basically the last three hours.

"Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea in the end. By the way, how’s that magic forge working that you made before? If you have that, you can even blacksmith wherever you want, right?" Komer then asked the old man, who nodded in response.

"Mhm, exactly. It would work perfectly if I could make the flames hotter, but for that I have to either rank up my element or my mana manipulation itself. It’s gonna take a while, but at some point, I should be able to use it like a regular forge." Eisen explained, before looking over to the clock in the corner of his eye.

"Anyway, I have to go right now. It’s getting pretty late here, so I guess I should go to sleep." Eisen explained as he handed the reigns over to Komer, waiting for Caria and Melissa to get off his lap so that he could climb into the back of the carriage.

"Hmm? Isn’t it a bit early?" Komer asked confused, and Eisen nodded again. "Yeah, a little bit, but I wanted to do something ’there’, so it’s better to go to sleep early." Eisen said, specifically voicing out the ’There’ in a way that would let Komer understand that he meant ’In real life’, and as such the young merchant nodded.

"Got it. You won’t be back for a while, right? Want me to do anything in specific while you’re gone?" Komer asked, before Eisen shook his head.

"Nothing really too specific. Just use the time in the carriage wisely, level up the skills that you can as much as possible, and see if you can learn a bit more magic from the others. If there should be a situation where you encounter monsters, try to tag along with Bree and Kiron, and see if they are monsters that you can somehow finish off yourself, that should level you up nicely." Eisen explained before turning around and looking at the two Fey-kin sitting on the ground in front of him, just having woken up not too long ago.

"Alright you two, I’ll be going to sleep now. Remember, I won’t be back for a few days, so rely on Kiron if you need to fight." Eisen told the both of them before knocking on the ceiling to tell Kiron to come down as well.

While the half-dragon climbed down, Bree nodded with a smile. "Alright! Just two or three days, right?"

"Yeah, two or three days. Till then, just leave the tube there running constantly, and then I can make a few nice things once I’m up again. And all of you make sure to take proper breaks, I know that you don’t need to sleep as much as we do, but I would still like you not to overdo yourselves. We have all the time in the world, so we don’t have to rush. If we pass a nice town, even go ahead and take a break there for a few days, it doesn’t matter, just don’t think we need to be there as soon as possible."

"Alright.. Thanks!" Sky then responded, seemingly taking his sister’s words out of her mouth, since she simply nodded with a happy grin. These two were driving for basically 24 hours straight during their last ’shift’, so Eisen felt pretty bad for that already. He did try to tell them to take a break before, but they usually just told him that it was ’alright’. Now that they finally slept for a little while, they seemed to have realized they shouldn’t overdo themselves.

Either way, now, Eisen turned to Kiron. "Please try to make sure everyone here is safe, I’m counting on you. Also, try to think of some nice weapon or armor you would like to have. As our front-fighter, you need to be well-equipped." He said, before the Half-Dragon Knight lightly bowed forward.

"Thank you, M’Lord. You do not need to fret, there will be no harm done to this group during your slumber." Kiron told his Lord, even though Eisen didn’t really like being called that, and then quickly made his way back up to the roof.

At last, before soon logging off, Eisen turned to Caria and Melissa. "So, do you two want to sleep at the same time as I do? Or do you want to stay awake a while longer?" He asked them, before the Myconid girl squinted her eyes a light bit and turned around to mumble something to the queen bee in her arms.

"Caria and Melly will stay up a bit longer if that’s alright!" She then practically yelled out, and the old man nodded with a soft chuckle.

"Of course, don’t worry. I’m guessing you won’t be able to stay up too much longer though, so don’t force yourselves and just go to bed if you need to." He said with a smile, before Caria nodded smugly.

"Don’t worry! Caria and Melly are big girls! We can stay up super duper duper super long!" She loudly bragged, and Eisen looked at her for a few seconds while she was trying to hold back what was obviously a yawn, leaving him to simply laugh a bit.

"Of course you two can. I’ll see you all soon." Eisen said with a smirk, before closing his eyes and logging off.

"Now then, let’s get bakin’, shall we?" Benjamin muttered to himself after standing up from the capsule, slowly, and most importantly quietly, making his way toward the kitchen.

After he turned the light on, Benjamin noticed a little light that was blinking on the security-system display. It seemed like there was a package that was delivered yesterday, and he just somehow didn’t notice it then. He didn’t order anything, after all, and he didn’t usually get random packages.

Either way, Benjamin stepped over to the front door and looked at the main display to check the sender, since that should have been recorded when the package was placed into the mailbox.

"Hm? Prime Industries?" He muttered out and curiously opened the mailbox from the hatch on the inside of his house, grabbing the small package before bringing it back to the kitchen.

"Now then, what is this...?" Benjamin whispered to himself as he cut the package open, and first found a small note.

[To our benefactor]

[Hello Mister Joyce, in this package you will find a product of ours closely connected to the capsule that you have already been using for nearly two weeks. It is a simple personal assistant that we hope to be to your liking. It is a future product coming out together with the official launch of the capsule. We hope we can continue to count on your help and support outside and inside the game]

After reading the front of this note, Benjamin just tilted his head to the side in confusion. A home assistant? He hadn’t heard about that before, and especially the last sentence of the note confused him a lot, although there seemed to have been a small explanation on the backside, that was, different to the rest of the note, handwritten.

[Sorry for the trouble you’ve had to go through in Ornier with the TriTec kids, and thank you for helping out and giving up your in-game reputation at that location. Sincerely, Samuel]

"Ah... so it was for dealing with those two? Well, I’m not complaining. Should probably call that kid later then, huh?" He told himself with a smile as he looked through the box, finding a few different items. First, a small display that seemed somehow like a phone, but that simply didn’t turn on for some reason. Thinking that he would figure that out in a bit, he kept looking, and found the next item.

A small metal sphere, that seemed incredibly familiar, but didn’t seem to do anything at the moment either.

Next, there was a small plate, that seemed to be a charging station of some sorts, and at last a small USB stick.

Of course, there were also some instructions in there, although they just went up to the point of turning everything on, for which he needed to go back to the capsule.

After letting out a loud sigh, Benjamin stepped back to his bedroom and got to connecting everything. At first he needed to plug the charging station in by pushing it into a small slot at the bottom of the capsule, and set both the sphere and ’phone’ into their respective slots, and then he needed to put the USB stick into a small slot in the back of the capsule.

Once that was done, it was just a matter of time, since he now needed to wait for about three to four hours until the two small products could turn on for the first time, giving him enough time to do what he actually woke up for.

After making his way back to the Kitchen, Benjain got out all the ingredients that he would need now and got to work, since he would now make some nice, fresh loafs of bread.

First, he dissolved some yeast in warm water before adding sugar, salt, oil and about half of the flour that he would need, simply beating everything until it was smooth mixture, before Benjamin slowly stirred in the rest of the flour half a cup at a time to form a soft dough.

Benjamin then placed the dough onto a floured surface and began kneading it until it was smooth and elastic, which usually took about 10 minutes, then putting the dough into a greased bowl and covered it with a towel, setting it down on top of his turned-on radiator in the living room.

Now, he needed to wait for the dough to rise until it doubled, which would usually take about one to one and a half hours.

That time was not spent just doing nothing, though, but Benjamin simply finished up some chores for the day, and even read a book that he was reading before playing the game for about half an hour. That was pretty nice, he hasn’t done that in a while, really.

But soon enough, the dough had risen enough, and Benjamin brought the bowl back to the kitchen.

He set the bowl down and took off the towel, carefully punching the air out of the dough again for a bit, before turning it onto a floured surface again, dividing the dough in half, placing each half into a greased up loaf pan, which he then covered up once more and let it rise for about half an hour, which was once more spent reading a little bit.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

After that, Benjamin could at last place both of the loaf pans into the oven to bake it there for another half hour, which was, quite obviously, once more spent reading.

Soon enough, the bread had a golden-brown color, and Benjamin could take it out of the oven, taking the loafs out of the pans and placing them on wire-racks to let them cool for a while.

And now, Benjamin would make some breakfast for his family.