A (Somewhat) Triumphant Return (Solo)

[Shuwen]

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Word Count: 490

Shuwen felt... groggy, tired, something. He didn't really have enough active brain power to come up with a suitable term for his current state of mind. Having suffered from excess socialization, he'd felt a sudden and urgent need to withdraw from the world at large, and had somehow... done so. He didn't know how long it had been since he had last spoken to another soul, nor did he clearly remember what he had been doing during the time since.

Well regardless of what I've been doing, I should probably stop. It doesn't seem to be very productive. Getting up off the ground, the monk took a moment to stretch the stiffness out of his body, and started putting together a plan of action. It looks like I still have some food in my inventory. That's nice, but I should probably put some drink together too. Now that he thought about it, hadn't he been putting some research together on some drinks he had been planning to make. The first drink came to mind fairly quickly; he'd been working on it before running into that crazy guild leader that (literally) flipped the table on him. Perhaps now as a good time to continue his research.

Lemonade wasn't really a complex drink to make, which is probably why he'd more or less figured out how to make it on his own, despite being such a low level at the time. It was, at the end of the day, lemon juice mixed with water and sugar. The issue, at least for him, was in the proportions. Much much of each ingredient should he add to each unit of the drink? After all, they had a huge impact on how it tasted. Too much water and it would taste like insufficiently flavored water. Too much sugar and it would taste too sweet. Too much lemon was the worst; the tangy, sour flavor could overwhelm his tongue all too easily if he put a lot in.

As he struggled to recall what proportions he'd already tried and dismissed, on hand idly came up in front of him, opening his player menu, then his inventory. He couldn't remember what he had stored away very well, but he did recall that he usually kept a small stock of ingredients that he expected to use in the near future. However, to his chagrin, it looked like he'd messed up a bit; while he did have a fair amount of sugar and water, he didn't have any lemons! Whoops. Better go find some then. He thought, rubbing his forehead. Now that I think about it, it's been a while since I fought anything. It seemed like he'd taken to avoiding monsters lately, rather then fighting them. It probably wasn't a good idea for an adventurer like him, considering his combat ability was his livelihood, but it didn't seem like he'd been in his right mind at the time.

[Shuwen]

Word Count: 599

Now, if he remembered correctly, most fruit-ish ingredient items dropped off certain plant-type monsters. Most notably Briar Weasels and Forest Treants. Based on his current condition, it would probably be better to go after the Treants. Of course, finding them was easier said then don-

His thoughts stopped abruptly as one of the larger branches of a tree he was walking by suddenly came down and brained him. " Gyafuma!" He spat out as he fell flat, trying to keep himself as close to the ground as possible. However, that didn't help much as the tree made a loud grown, and several more branches stretched out towards him, their sharp ends foretelling a rather gruesome fate if he stayed in that spot. Panicked, Shu rolled to one side in a desperate attempt to avoid getting impaled. He was able to do so, but his lack of planning caused the roll to land him in an awkward position, leaving him vulnerable to the tree's next attack.

Splat! A stream of sticky sap hit him square on, drenching his orange ghi and blocking out other potential smells. Uh oh. He thought as a red icon appeared on his status bar. The sap inflicted a speed debuff, slowing both his movement and attacks. Not the worst one he'd run into, but considering how out of practice he was, it probably wasn't a good sign. Right, I've got to get my flabby butt in gear if I don't want to get killed. And it would probably stink to get killed by a monster leveled significantly lower then him.

Rolling back onto his feet, Shuwen attempted to move closer to the treant's trunk in order to strike it. However, as he did, it fired several seeds towards him at high velocity. Between their speed and the debuff, he didn't have a chance of evading it, and instead settled for blocking. He Held his arms up in a cross-arm block, right hand over the left. A few seconds later, his skin suddenly turned a greyish metallic color. Shu smirked as he activated the Iron Body skill. Between the block and his buffed defense, the seeds were only able to inflict negligible damage as they bounced roughly off his shield. Okay, time to take the offensive Drawing a throwing knife from his belt, Shu tossed the knife at the treant, the blade spinning end over end twice before sinking into the tree with a dull thud. It wasn't a particularly powerful attack, but since there was a significant gap between their levels, it did quite a bit of damage. Now then, striiiiiiiiiiiiike! Instead of retracting his free hand, he swung it horizontally, activating the Zoom Attack skill striking the tree despite the distance between them. Having dealt significant damage, the treant's hp was already in the read. A quick run and jump kick was enough to finish it off. I've still got it baby! He thought with glee. Glee that turned to joy as he saw what items the monster had dropped; several types of fruit ingredients, including a fair number of lemons. Niiiiiice.

Fortunately, it didn't take much more in the way of experimenting before he was able to make the lemonade; it seemed he'd been closer then he'd thought before; he was able to create decently-tasting lemonade just by making minor modifications to the proportions that he'd settled on before, and didn't waste too many lemons. Making a mental note of what the final proportions were, he went and used up the rest of the lemons to make as much orange juice as he could.

[Shuwen]

Word Count: 358

There was one more drink that Shuwen wanted to make. It was a bit different from the lemonade in several respects, most notably that he planned for it to be alcoholic. He generally wasn't fond of alcohol; it seemed to be an acquired taste, and e had little personal motivation to acquire it. However, one of the Monk class abilities on his skill list required it's consumption before it could be activated. It's ability was a particularly desired one too; a significant boost to evasion. Of course, there were a number of different kinds of alcohol, and the choice of what type was significantly more crucial to him; he wanted to make something he could stand drinking, preferably something he'd even enjoy a bit. Actually, there was a type of alcoholic drink that geared towards beginning drinkers. That type of drink was probably the ideal drink for him. A wine cooler, if he remembered it correctly. He had a sneaking suspicion he was going to get looked down on for consuming what was considered a "sissy's drink", but he didn't really care enough to adjust his plans for that. So then, let's see what I need to gather to make this.

From the looks of it, he was going to need several ingredients. Low-grade wine, fruit juice of whatever kind he planned to mix into it, and possibly carbonated water. The second was already taken care of. In addition to the lemons, the treant had dropped several other types of fruit that he could use, certainly enough to suit his needs. The other two would be more difficult. Carbonated water was made via a machine, and wine, even low grade wine, had to be pre-made. The former would probably require a trip to Londanium, while the latter would either require more effort then he wanted to put into it, or a trip back to Londanium. Blah He thought irritably. I wanted to at least finish this up before I rejoined civilization, but I guess that isn't really an option. Packing all of his gear back up, he headed in what he believed was the general direction of Londanium.

[Shuwen]

Words: 478

So, after a few wrong turns and an unintended excursion to Moon Dance forest, Shuwen finally managed to relocate civilization and acquire the things he'd needed. Getting them wasn't quite as hard as he'd figured either. He'd thought that finding someone who could produce and/or sell carbonated water, which was produced by machine, but it seemed there was a larger demand for it then he'd realized, and he was able to find a seller without too much difficulty. Buying the wine was easy enough. The only issue was that it wine cost a bit more then he liked; mainly because he had to buy it in a larger amount then he needed. It was somewhat of a pain, but he supposed he could use the extra supply to produce more in the future.

With that done, there was only one more big challenge he needed to deal with before he could finish making the drink without issue, and that was working out the proportions. He needed to mix the right amount of each ingredient to meet each of his criteria. And he had a fair number of criteria. The drink needed enough alcohol for it to be able to activate the drunk monkey skill, and enough that he could still take said alcohol, but not so much as to overwhelm the rest of the drink's taste. He also wasn't sure how much of the carbonated water he wanted to include. On one hand, the obviously soda-like quality it added to the drink was welcome. On the other hand, it was essentially water, and watered down the flavors provided by the rest of the ingredients. Perhaps there was some other reason to add it, but he wasn't knowledgeable enough to know what that would be.

Keeping track of the proportions he'd already tried, Shuwen began to experiment. As he wasn't a scribe, the notes probably wouldn't last very long, but that wasn't a big deal; the only thing he intended to have permanently recorded was the final result; the records of his mess ups weren't something he cared about enough to keep around. Unfortunately, the process for testing it was even harder then usual. Normally, he just needed to drink a bit of his latest attempt, and that was enough to determine if he'd gotten it right or not. However, he also needed to ensure that it was capable of activating the Drunk Monkey skill. That required greater consumption then he would have liked, especially since there was alcohol in the drink. At several points after testing, he needed to take a break to let it wear off before he could continue. At one point, he even ran out of fruit and had to buy some more, which was rather irritating. However, he was eventually able to get the mix right, and could officially consider the drink complete.