RCJoshua

Chapter 66: Brother Card

Milo wasn’t crying, or even really frowning that much.

But in all the time Arthur had known his sparrow-friend, Milo had never once been without a slight smile and looked generally happy. He didn’t even deviate from that expression when he needed to maintain laser-focus on some kind of smithing task. Arthur knew that something had happened.

“Hey, Milo,” Arthur said in greeting.

“Hi, Arthur. Could I get…” He looked up at the sign with unfocused eyes for a few se...

Chapter 65: Level One Cookies

Author's Note: 40% longer chapter today. Enjoy!

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It only took a few minutes for Karbo to get everyone down off the cliff, and a few minutes after that for Spiky and Arthur to get the fear-induced wobbles out of their legs and start the long walk back. Since the combat parts of their crew were back in the city, Karbo walked ahead of them, clearing any dangerous wildlife to make sure the path home was safe and secure.

He also took Lily. At first, she resisted that idea, sayi...

Chapter 64: We Totally Survived

“Don’t worry so much, Arthur,” Mizu said. He had been doing his best to not look concerned, and thought he had been doing a pretty good job until she broke the illusion.

“I’m trying not to. But if they don’t make it through, or if something else goes wrong… it just feels like all of this is my fault.”

“No.” Mizu shook her head. “It’s weather. Not your fault. But if you really feel bad, you could probably reassure her.”

She nodded in the direction of...

Chapter 63: The Scout and the Brute

Arthur and Mizu sat up for a while, as did some others. Lily tried valiantly to stay awake, but once again proved not-quite-owl-enough-to-actually-be-nocturnal by nodding off almost immediately after the stories died down. The single people went to bed first, mostly, which left the couples to couple business. In Arthur’s and Mizu’s case, this was mostly sitting silently on a log.

He wondered how Earth-him would have felt about that. Everything about the relationship was beyond molas...

Chapter 62: Reclaimed Ground

It was a feast. Everyone brought food from their own homes, and they built a few more fires just to have room for everyone to cook. There were several kinds of bread, sausages, a kind of spiced grits with little pieces of meat in it that someone cooked into a creamy consistency over the fire, and even several desserts.

Arthur had started getting used to the sheer mass of food young demons ate. Their daily calorie count would put small whales to shame. And the energy went to an overall a...

Chapter 61: Camping Games

“That, Lily, is a cliff,” Arthur said.

“I know. I mean on top of it.”

The middle of the mountain was gone. Through some freak occurrence, it was like a gigantic knife had come down and cut a square out of the mountain. From the distance, they were looking at a flat cliff that ended with a table-flat section of the mountain, which then led to another cliff in front.

“It’s…” Ers hesitated. “I honestly don’t know the name for it.”

“Me either, even ...

Chapter 60: The Talk

Between Milo’s friendliness, Rhodia’s quasi-pushiness, and Onna’s near limitless ability to generate low-grade fear-based authority, several other people signed on to the camping trip experiment. Spiky came, saying that observing other-world customs first hand meant a good chance for knowledge-gain that would push his class forward. In a rare voluntary destealthing, Corbin came out to say he’d go, and that he was bringing a friend along that nobody seemed to know.

Chuck was comi...

Chapter 59: Trying

Author's Note: This one's slightly longer than average chapter. Let me know if you guys prefer longer chapters. No promises but if enough people like them, we'll try to squeeze a bit of extra content into each one.

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“Oh, gods,” Ella said, as soon as she saw Lily’s new outfit. “She looks like a little puffy cloud.”

“Stay away from me!” Lily flapped her padded arms as she raced around the kitchen, trying and failing to get out of Ella’s hugging range. “I do...

Chapter 58: Melder and Powershot

In all honesty, Arthur was cheating a bit with the new menu.

With so many permutations, the average customer to the boba shop would probably get confused. Some would still sniff out their favorite drink, and that would be helpful in identifying various combinations he should offer regularly.

But by making such a big menu that would intimidate some people, he could make more recommendations and push his Empathic Host skill forward faster. Of course, that wasn’t enti...

Chapter 57: Winter Menu

The next morning, it was shopping time. They needed their own spices, for one, and also to replace what he had taken from Ella. A trip to a tea supplier took another chunk of time, but provided Arthur with several blends of tea that the merchant assured him were popular wintertime choices.

There was also the matter of getting samples of preserved fruit, which ended up being just a matter of making friends with Tandy, the young wolf-demon preserver who ran a surprisingly large undergroun...

Chapter 56: Warm Memories

Author's Note: We went on a mini-rewrite earlier this weekend. Will add a couple extra chapters to the Patreon to make up for things soon.

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The hard part about festivals was deciding when to leave. There was still plenty of food and fun to have, and once Arthur and Mizu managed to reclaim their winter-offering designated friends, they ran around with them for the next hour. As the crowd gradually worked to decrease the stocks of wine and spirits, things got rowdier and louder. ...

Chapter 55: Getting Carried

Arthur left the painting to dry and went downstairs.

“Any luck?”

“I hope so. I’m not much of a painter, really.”

“I’m sure she’ll still love it.”

“Well, if we even get that far. I’m probably showing up in these, or something like them. Not exactly the right clothes for the occasion.”

“Arthur. Arthur Teamaster.” Ella rolled her eyes ever so slightly. “Of Earth. Could you please do me a favor and list the things you know about me?” 2024-04-13 20:56:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 54: Painting

On the way home, Arthur pulled Lily aside and asked for advice. After the whole surprise with seasons, he wanted to make sure that dates in the Demon World were the same thing as Earth ones.

“For starters, today’s a festival day. Think of it as a big party. You don’t prepare anything at all unless you want to run a stand or a game or something. People eat and drink and get into arguments about who won or lost whatever game. And if you want, there’s the offering games. Those are ...

Chapter 3: Coldfall

Arthur jogged back to the shop, pausing at the door to appreciate his beautiful sign.

In the demon world, signs were usually just simple logos, carved or painted as a one-off for individual stores. A produce market might have a wood representation of a single piece of fruit, while the location of a cutlery store would be indicated by a knife.

Above Arthur’s door was a large piece of dark hardwood with a poorly carved cup of boba on it. The carving was much too small for the plan...

Chapter 2: Emphatic Host

People liked Arthur’s menu and made do with the options he had, but it hadn’t changed much since his days of running a food cart in the city square. There were a few choices of tea in both pepped and unpepped varieties, some crushed-fruit-and-milk options, and several flavored and unflavored variations on his boba. People mixed and matched what they wanted out of those, and there were just enough possible permutations that he’d been able to skate by up until now.

But that’s ...