Demon World Boba Shop: A Cozy Fantasy Novel

“Don’t bruise that.” Rebes was circling around a couple heavy-hided monsters nervously. “Do you have any idea what that is?”

“No,” Arthur said, gently lowering the monster onto the pile where they were sorting the leather-based monsters. “What is it?”

“It’s belts, Arthur. Belts that repel water. That never break. That never stain.”

“That sounds like all your stuff.”

“Yes, but this self-fits. If you put it on a clip, you can just thread it around you and it tightens. No adjustment needed, so long as it’s close.”

“What possible purpose could that serve for the animal?” Arthur’s mind flicked over what little he remembered about Earth’s evolutionary theory before giving up after he realized his knowledge stopped and started with remembering there was one. “Why does it need this?”

“Arthur, I don’t know. What I do know is that if you manage to bruise the leather, I’m going to stab you with an awl. I have those. They’re meant for leather. Let's keep it that way.”

Arthur continued sorting with Rebes for a while, then moved to help Milo with his increasingly large pile of scales. Milo tossed Arthur a crowbar, which he used to pry huge scales off of some armored thing before clanking them over on the small mound next to the monster. Milo, at least, did not complain about bruising.

“How did we even kill this? It’s huge and these scales are inches thick,” Arthur asked.

“Either someone caught it in the eye or it got crushed internally. Scales are good for stopping stabs and punctures, but not so great at keeping force from spreading through your organs,” Milo said.

“Fun stuff,” Arthur said with a flat voice. “What are you going to use the scales for?”

“These? One of them is going to be my new hammer. I’ll need it once my old one breaks.”

“Is it that close?”

“I’m going to break it making the new hammer, almost guaranteed. I’ll make backup hammers to make sure I can even finish with this. But the new thing should be really something.”

“What do you even use for a handle on something that has monster scales for the head?”

“Traditionally? Wood. And I’ll see what Kout has ready. But if we get really lucky, there will be one of those big frog-looking monsters. They have a bone in front of their heart that’s pretty stiff, but won’t snap. It’s the stuff of wonders.”

Every alchemist, builder, and crafter was busy taking everything they could carry back to their workshops, stocking themselves up with above-average materials in quantities that would last them months, if not years. It was wealth that was going to flow out almost immediately in the form of processed goods, medicine, and tools that would further increase the productivity of future work.

On top of that, Coldbrook was going to stash a full quarter of it. Normally, cities got more, not only to fund operations but also to dole out as needed to enable various must-have projects or to sell and bring in resources the town otherwise couldn’t get. In this case, that didn’t seem like much of a problem.

“It’s too much, Arthur. It’s still too much.” Spiky was sitting on a chair with an open ledger in his lap. “When cities get monster waves, it’s a nice bump. When a town as small as ours does, it’s… wealth. Unbelievable wealth. People are going to walk away from this wave and have five-level years just working with what we have.”

“It must happen any time a small town repels an attack.”

“Nobody as small as us ever does for a wave that big!” Spiky slammed his book shut. “You don’t understand the hundreds of things that had to happen just so for this to go off well. Or maybe you do. But the point is, it’s too much. We don’t have enough labor to spend it all on projects, at least in the short term. We could sell it and get money, and we will with some, but…”

“But we don’t need that much money either. We’d just be hurting someone else’s economy.”

“If Karbo had wiped out the wave, the city would have got most of it, and the government would have got another chunk. That still would have left us with a lot. This is madness.”

It was what Arthur thought of as a good problem. They had more monster meat than they could eat, and then more than they could preserve. They had more hides than their leatherworker could cure, more alchemical components than could be converted to pills before they spoiled, and just generally more material than they knew what to do with.

Some stuff was non-perishable. Most of the kinds of things Milo wanted, like durable bones and scales, would keep almost forever. Some things could be ground to powder and kept in jars for use as dye or reagents.

But there were also perishables. And no one had a good answer for how to put those to use.

Arthur was momentarily distracted from trying to figure out what to do with an impossible amount of monster materials when Corbin destealth less than a meter away.

“Dammit, Corbin. You’re going to scare people,” Arthur yelled.

“People, sure. But I’m trying to scare you. Why don’t you ever scare? It’s a big downer for me almost every time,” Corbin said.

“I don’t know, Corbin. Maybe because you have been doing it to me ever since I got to this world. What’s up, anyway?”

Corbin sat down in the dirt, glancing at the piles of monsters with only moderate non-crafter levels of interest. “I just got back from a very interesting scouting run. I thought you’d be interested to hear what I found out.”

“You shouldn’t be working right now,” Arthur said.

“I was bored. Live with it.” Corbin scratched his kneecap with his long nails and then flopped over into the dirt. “And I’m tired, so listen so I only have to say this once.”

“Deal.”

“First the good news. Karbo is back. It looks like he finished up fighting whatever monsters needed to be splashed elsewhere then tried to get back here in time to help, and only missed by a few days.”

“Well, that’s nice. Good to know we have cover until the wall is back up.”

“Yeah. But the bad news is a doozy. It looks like Coldbrook wasn’t the only monster wave that picked that moment to get hit. That iron town you visited is gone, but it always is. Two other frontier towns like ours got wiped out as well.”

“Oh no.” Arthur felt that one deep in his gut. He knew how it would feel to have something like that happen. “Did they… did they get away?”

“Yes. But Seaside and Peaktown are rubble. They didn’t have as much to lose as we did but it’s all gone now.”

“Terrible.”

“Yeah. Karbo apparently swept through both areas like an avenging god, so most of the monsters are gone, but they have a week before they can go back.”

“Why not now?”

“It’s a rule. A law, even. Trying to get back to a demolished town too soon is dangerous. You can’t be sure the monsters have moved on, even if Karbo is on the job.”

On Earth, Arthur had been as guilty as anyone of hearing about terrible occurrences in far-off places, momentarily feeling guilty about them, and then forgetting them forever. But these places seemed a lot closer, both in terms of location and how heavily he identified with them. On top of that, this was the demon world. It was a neighborly place. It wasn’t the kind of place where you just shrugged off other people’s trouble.

When he looked up from that thought, Corbin was already gone, or at least appeared to be. That was convenient because Arthur had an idea.

“Spiky, listen. I need help writing a letter,” Arthur said.

“On what subject?” Spiky asked.

“On the subject of the people in those demolished towns coming here with whatever wagons and packs they can wrangle up. Hell, we can probably get Talca into play on this one as well. If they have to go back to ruined towns, I’m going to send them back loaded.”

—

Before the trade holiday was fully done, refugees were reaching Coldbrook. Most Peaktown was already here, and Corbin delivered the message that most of Seaside was within a day or two. Demons of all kinds were shuffling into the town, looking exhausted and depleted.

Coldbrook had remedies for that. First, they had food, tons of it, all fresh and ready to be roasted, stewed, or fried by the cooks of the town. Second, they had roofs. The town always had at least a couple of houses in reserve and most of the people in town were more than happy to give up a couch or spare bed for a visitor.

And third, and possibly most importantly, they had a mountain’s worth of coin in the form of monster parts, all bundled up and ready to go.

“This is too much. It’s worth more than our whole town was.” The snake-demon woman who had been in charge of Peaktown looked in awe at the pile of materials, some of which various Coldbrook residents had already offered to process into tools and medicine before the week’s time limit was up. “We can’t take this.”

“Oh, be quiet, Zelk. We can too.” A small badger following her around interrupted, shoving her to the side. “Arthur wants that, right? All of Coldbrook?”

“We do. And it being too much is sort of the point,” Arhtur said. “We can’t use all this. We figure that if you get the head-start this stuff can buy, you might be able to get a wall up and grow a little faster than you otherwise would and be ready for the next wave.”

“I still don’t get how you all did that. You don’t have any more people than we did,” Zelk said.

“No, but we have geology. And we got lucky with a lot of our ideas working out better than they had any right to,” Arthur said.

“And Arthur makes magic tea,” the badger said. It seemed that he had already been talking to Coldbrook residents.

“And I make magic tea, yes, although I feel a need to stress that it makes a small difference.” Arthur suddenly had an idea, and snapped his fingers. “I can send you guys back absolutely loaded with tea, now that I think about it. My garden has been going crazy.”

“Before the tea, as good as this is, and it really is good of you to do it, I still feel as if we should pay you back in some way.” The turtle in charge of Seaside pushed up his spectacles and sighed. “I just don’t know when we are going to be able to. Or how. It’s quite a bit to repay.”

The badger who was tailing Zelk looked around the town, as if his eyes were about to magically find on some answer to the question of how to pay Coldbrook back immediately. Then they lit up and he broke out into a wide grin.

“What about that?” he said, pointing. “Would that do as a start?”

“Oh, huh.” Arthur smiled. “Yes, that would be great.”

—

“All right, all heavy lifters go with Brian.”

There was somehow a Brian on the work crew. In a world of Karbos, Karras, and Liths, somehow Brian turned out to be one of the few universal names that both of Arthur’s worlds shared. Karra pointed at the rabbit man who looked small but strong and a good fifty people joined him.

“Construction folks are with me. Everybody else, find a crew that looks empty and join it. Remember not to hurt yourselves. Every rock helps. No need injuring yourself over this. Are we ready?”

A cheer went up and people scattered as they prepared for the day’s work. There were rocks in the road and three towns had come together to move them.