Chapter 248: Trading Alcohol [Bonus - ]
"Right away, Lord Sky!" the quartermaster barked.
Within minutes, two soldiers carried over a heavy and beautifully polished teakwood box bound in brass ironwork, setting it down gently at Vespera’s boots.
The chest was packed to the brim with expensive, rare culinary spices that would cost hundreds of thousands of credits on the open market back home.
Vespera offered Sky a breathtaking radiant smile, bowing her head gracefully.
"You are far too generous, Lord Sky," Vespera thanked him warmly. She placed her single right hand against the brass latch of the teakwood box.
FLASH!
With a subtle spatial shimmer, the massive box of luxury spices vanished cleanly into her private Lord Inventory.
As the loot disappeared into his storage, inside his mind, Silas let out a deep internal sigh.
’Damn...’ Silas thought, shaking his head in silent disbelief behind his female disguise. ’Do pretty women really just get all this expensive shit handed to them for free in the real world?! I’m literally just standing here, breathing, acting slightly shy, and smiling... and this famous Classic Lord is just throwing crates of luxury butter cookies and priceless master-tier spices directly into my inventory! If I were out here as Silas Graves in my normal male body, I’d have to barter my ass off or trade blood and iron just to get a single grain of salt out of this guy!’
Silas couldn’t help but smirk inwardly.
’This female Lord disguise is the greatest economic cheat code in the entire Sovereign Realm!’
"Come along, Lord Vespera," Sky spoke up, interrupting Silas’s internal revelation as he gestured toward the massive iron doors leading into the lower belly of his mobile rig. "Let me show you to our private storage vaults so we can select those Central City alloy ingots we discussed earlier."
Sky led Vespera, Tasmin, and Thora up the wide iron ramp and into the interior of the moving fortress.
They walked down a wide steam-heated corridor lined with reinforced mythril pipes and mechanical gears, eventually arriving at the heavy vault-like entrance of the mobile territory’s central forge and storage armory.
The heat inside the corridor was intense, smelling strongly of molten metal, coal smoke, and quenching oil.
As they approached the open forge doors, a short, incredibly stocky, and powerfully built figure marched out of the smithing bay, wiping grease and soot from her forehead with a heavy leather towel.
It was a female dwarf!
She was built remarkably similar to Thora... featuring the same broad, muscular shoulders, compact stature, and calloused master-smith hands.
However, unlike Thora’s messy, dark braided hair, this new dwarf woman possessed a wild, flowing mane of bright golden-blond hair tied back in a thick warrior’s ponytail, and her eyes burned with a fiery competitive sapphire-blue light.
The moment the blond dwarf stepped into the hallway, she froze. Her sapphire eyes locked directly onto Thora’s brown eyes.
Thora stopped dead in her tracks as well, staring back at the blond dwarf.
For three solid seconds, the two dwarf women stood five feet apart in the middle of the iron corridor, glaring at one another with an intense rivalry that made the heat in the hallway spike by ten degrees.
Then, in perfect, uncanny synchronization, both dwarves let out a loud, dismissive sound, turned their heads away from one another, and shook their heads with exaggerated sighs of mutual exasperation.
"Hmph!"
Vespera raised an elegant, curious eyebrow, looking between her own forge-mistress and the blond smith. "Thora? Do you know her?"
Thora crossed her thick arms over her chest, grumbling around her toothy jaw.
"Unfortunately, Vespera... I do," Thora introduced grumpily, pointing a thumb at the blond dwarf. "This loud, arrogant, golden-haired hammer-slinger is my estranged older sister... Brenna."
Hearing her name, Brenna puffed out her broad chest with immense unshakeable pride, resting her heavy mythril forging hammer proudly against her shoulder.
"That’s right! I am Brenna!" the blond dwarf proclaimed in a booming, confident voice that rattled the hallway pipes. "I am the Master Dwarven Smith of ’The Unmovable Wall’! While my little sister Thora was busy hiding away in dark caves banging on scrap iron, I was mastering the high-tier, multi-layered alloy techniques of the Central Lord City!"
"Who are you calling scrap iron, you blond anvil-head?!" Thora roared back instantly, baring her teeth. "I just forged a Tier 2 longsword that cleanly bisected a twenty-five-foot Boss monster this afternoon!"
"Luck! Pure elemental luck!" Brenna scoffed arrogantly.
Before the two dwarven sisters could devolve into a full-blown hall-destroying brawl, Lord Sky stepped smoothly between them with a warm laugh, patting Brenna gently on her armored shoulder.
"Easy now, Brenna," Sky greeted his master smith cheerfully. "We have honored guests today. Unlock the primary storage vaults for us, if you please. We’re showing Lord Vespera our alloy reserves."
"Hmph! For you, Lord Sky, anything," Brenna grunted respectfully.
She turned and slammed her heavy palm against a glowing runic wheel on the vault door.
CLANG... HISSSSS!
The massive six-inch-thick steel vault doors slowly ground open, releasing a cloud of cold preservation mist that washed over their boots.
Sky led Vespera, Tasmin, Thora, and Brenna into the massive, two-story private storage vault.
The interior was a treasure trove of industrial and military wealth.
Neatly stacked along reinforced steel shelving units were thousands of refined iron bars, crates of glowing spiritual crystals, bundles of high-tier monster leathers, and rows of pristine untouched architectural building supplies.
Sky walked over to a specialized velvet-lined display rack near the center of the vault.
Resting upon the velvet were several heavy, dull-grey metallic ingots that pulsed with a hypnotic silver runic circuitry.
"Here we are," Sky announced proudly, gesturing to the metal. "These are genuine True-Silver Tungsten Alloys, forged directly in the grand foundries of the Central Lord City. They possess a natural, high-density mana-conductivity that makes them completely indestructible against conventional physical weapons..."
Sky picked up one of the heavy ten-pound alloy ingots and stepped forward, placing it directly into Vespera’s single right hand as an upfront diplomatic gift.
"Please, take this first ingot as a token of my goodwill," Sky offered generously.
The moment Vespera’s fingers wrapped around the True-Silver Tungsten metal, both Thora and her sister Brenna leaned in close with their eyes stretching wide as they stared at the rare alloy with drooling blacksmith obsession.
"By the anvil of the gods..." Thora whispered breathlessly, her fingers trembling as she traced the glowing silver circuitry on the metal. "The grain structure... it’s folded over ten thousand times! The mana flow is completely frictionless!"
"Of course it is, you simpleton!" Brenna glazed right alongside her, practically salivating over Vespera’s hand. "It’s True-Silver Tungsten! You could forge a Tier 2-3 shield core out of a single bar of this stuff! It’s forging perfection!"
Watching the two rival sisters bond over their mutual metal-glaze, Sky let out a soft chuckle through his mask.
He turned his attention back to Vespera, initiating the formal trade discussion.
"As I mentioned earlier at the border, Lord Vespera," Sky explained in a serious, business-like tone, "initially, my plan was to send my own vanguard teams out into the Umbral Basin to hunt and stockpile raw meat for our upcoming Lord War. But after seeing firsthand just how volatile, hostile, and utterly dangerous the fauna in this sector is... with Tier 3 mutated Mini-Bosses simply roaming around open clearings, I refuse to put the lives of my crew in jeopardy just to fill our stew pots."
Sky gestured toward the remaining rows of True-Silver Tungsten ingots on the velvet rack.
"I am completely open to establishing a direct immediate trade," Sky proposed. "I will trade these high-tier Central City alloy ingots directly for the raw Umbral Wolf and Roc meat stored in your territory’s reserves. Name your exchange rate."
Vespera nodded smoothly with her purple eyes calculating the economic value. "I agree to the trade in principle, Lord Sky. However—"
Before Vespera could state her meat-to-alloy ratio, Thora suddenly popped her head up from admiring the metal bar, wiping a string of drool from her chin as her brown eyes lit up with a wild idea.
"Hey, My Lord!" Thora chimed in loudly, grabbing her Lord’s sleeve. "Why the hell are we just trading simple meat for these god-tier alloys?! Why don’t we trade him some of our alcohol?!"
"PUFFT—!"
Inside her mind, Silas almost violently spat out his tea.
’Alcohol?!’ Silas screamed mentally at his dwarf forge-mistress. ’Thora, you insane little pervert, what the fuck are you doing?! Don’t bring out your crazy dwarven moonshine during a high-stakes trade negotiation!’
Sky blinked behind his silver mask, his curiosity instantly piqued by the mention of territorial liquor. He stepped toward Thora, tilting his head.
"Alcohol?" Sky asked intrigued. "What kind of alcohol does Blessed Land produce? We haven’t had a fresh high-quality brew on this rig in months."
Before Vespera could stop her, Thora shamelessly plunged her hand into her deep leather utility pouch and pulled out a heavy, sealed glass bottle filled with a glowing thick golden-amber liquid that radiated a dense, intoxicating aroma even through the cork.
It was a bottle of Thora’s hyper-concentrated and infamous Blessed Drink... the exact same divine dwarven moonshine that had completely knocked out both SSS-Rank goddesses, Eluned and Morwenna last night.
"This right here, Lord Sky," Thora proclaimed proudly, tapping the glass bottle, "is our territory’s exclusive, signature brew! The Blessed Drink! It’s fermented from spirit-grain and other secret ingredients!"
Hearing that a new, high-tier alcohol was on the table, Lord Sky immediately turned toward the hallway door, shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Hey! Call in Astrid! Get her down here right now!"
Within seconds, heavy iron footsteps pounded down the corridor, and a massive, tall woman clad in heavy mythril plate armor jogged into the vault.
This was Astrid... one of Sky’s primary vanguard Shieldmaidens, and notorious across the entire mobile fortress as a hopeless heavy-drinking alcoholic.
"Did somebody say fresh booze?!" Astrid roared eagerly, her eyes locking onto the golden bottle in Thora’s hand like a hawk spotting prey.
"Sister! Pour me a cup of that immediately!" Brenna, the blond dwarven smith who apparently shared Thora’s exact same dwarven tolerance for heavy drinking demanded loudly, slamming her forging hammer onto the floor!
Sky chuckled, gesturing to a logistics officer who quickly brought over a tray of small, iron tasting cups.
PLOP!
"As you wish!"
Thora popped the cork off the bottle with a loud sound as an explosive wave of sweet spirit-grain and rich, burning alcohol vapor flooded the entire storage vault.
Thora carefully poured a single generous shot of the glowing amber liquid into three iron cups, handing one to Lord Sky, one to the alcoholic Shieldmaiden Astrid, and one to her blond sister Brenna.
"Cheers to Blessed Land!" Sky toasted cheerfully, lifting his cup.
"Down the hatch!" Astrid and Brenna roared in unison!
All three of them tipped their iron cups back, draining the hyper-concentrated Blessed Drink in one single violent gulp.
SWISH... GULP!
For one second, nothing happened.
Then—
FLUSH!
Lord Sky, Astrid, and Brenna’s faces simultaneously turned a deep beet-red.
Their eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as the overwhelming potency of the ingredients exploded directly inside their bloodstreams.
"By... by the heavens...!" Astrid whispered breathlessly with her armored knees beginning to wobble violently as a blissful goofy smile spread across her face. "It’s... it’s so beautiful... it tastes like drinking liquid gold and sunlight..."
"The... the flavor..." Brenna slurred out, her sapphire eyes spinning in dizzy circles as she swayed back and forth on her heavy dwarven boots. "It’s... it’s perfection... little sister... you... you actually cooked..."
"Truly... a divine... vintage..." Sky mumbled faintly behind his mask, his entire upper body swaying like a tree caught in a hurricane.
FLOP! THUD! CRASH!
In perfect synchronized succession, the alcoholic Shieldmaiden Astrid collapsed backward into a stack of leather crates, the blond dwarf Brenna face-planted flat onto the steel floorboards snoring like a chainsaw, and Lord Sky slumped heavily against a metal shelving unit with his legs completely giving out beneath him as he slid down onto his rear, he was dizzy and barely conscious.
Thora stood over their fallen, snoring bodies, placing her hands on her hips and throwing her head back with a wild boisterous cackle.
"AHAHAHAHA!" Thora roared triumphantly. "Look at them! One single shot of my Blessed Drink and they’re completely floored! That is the undeniable power of dwarven brewing!"
Standing a few paces away, Vespera stared down at the groggy cross-eyed Lord of the Unmovable Wall slumping against the shelves with a massive sweatdrop running down the side of her face.
Inside her mind, Silas was pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperated disbelief.
’I’m seriously not sure that trading alcohol is supposed to result in the opposing Lord and his top officers getting instantly knocked out cold on the floor...’ Silas thought weakly. ’What if his stream chat thinks we just chemically poisoned their Lord?!’