Casual Heroing, Chapter 79

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Bread! Bread! Bread! 🥪🥪🥪

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Chapter 79 – Kneading?

I look at the door handle at Happy Bakery’s entrance, slightly illuminated by the moonlight above.

It’s wood. The whole building is marble, but the door, predictably enough, is wooden. That’s a stupid thing to notice, I suppose. Why wouldn’t a door be wooded, right?

More or less ten days ago, this door wouldn’t open.

Ten days ago, I felt like I had been shunned by everyone here.

How fickle are we, right?

I feel my pocket where the key to Happy Bakery is lying... happily.

I put one hand on the handle and the other on the key, just in case. When I turn the handle, though, the door opens.

Cool.

...

I look at Tiberius and Quintus, brooding and mixing flour, yeast, and water. They are doing pretty well for themselves, but I do see what Lucillus told me—they have an eerie vibe about them, my two friends.

I exhale and step inside the kitchen.

“Yo! Wassup, boys? All good?”

They are startled by my sudden appearance.

“Chef?” Tiberius speaks first, completely still.

“In the flesh. I was taking care of some business in my room—nothing untoward, don’t worry. I wasn’t playing with the flag on the pole, if you know what I mean.”

They exchange a look, clearly not knowing what I mean.

Surprisingly enough, Quintus looks even broodier than Tiberius. Have they had any trouble around here?

“Well, I’ll explain when we are not around the ladies, okay? So, update me. What’s happening? What’s popping?”

“Boss Clodia received a shipment yesterday. We now have enough semolina to ramp up the Altamura bread production again,” Quintus says.

“RIGHT!” I shout, facepalming myself. “Damn it! I had completely forgotten about that! People are eating up all the bread. How’s the mother yeast coming along?”

“Boss Clodia ordered giant glass jars,” Tiberius explains. “She said she’s going to close you inside one of them if the bread doesn’t keep selling.”

They both smirk at the mention of one of the innumerable threats Clodia’s made.

“It is what it is. Where’s Raissa? Day off?”

“I’m here,” I hear an offended voice from behind me, and I turn to find the diminutive Elf with her hands on her sides.

“Well, not my fault that you are pocket-size,” I give her my custom wink. “I gather that you three have the bread situation under control. Good. Good. Good. But we’ll need something to knead the bread with. It’s such a waste of time to do this by hand. So, tell you what,” I move my finger around like a crosshair, trying to find the person I’m looking for.

“Aha! Flaminia, can you come over?” I shout as half of the bakery winces. Oops.

“Joey, don’t shout!” Flaminia shouts back even louder.

As the pink-haired [Chef] approaches me, I evaluate my options. I would love to start baking with chocolate, given how much there's just waiting for me, but the bread situation will be a problem. I'm sure Clodia has already considered it; still, if we ramp up production, we will be bottlenecked by the amount of [Bakers] in here. So, if we want to move past being an only-bread business, only one thing can help us...

“Listen, I wanted to work with you on something today. I’ll teach you a recipe on the go. We need to get Claudius here. And a [Blacksmith]. It’s not too late, is it?”

Flaminia looks at me as if I was a deranged psychopath.

“It’s past the day, Joey.”

Oh, yeah. That means past midnight. Having 27 hours in a day does weird things to sayings. And there’s no such thing as ‘midnight’ either.

“Don’t we have a [Blacksmith] here? I don’t need anything particularly complex. But I do need Claudius. And I do know where he lives. He’s a poor apprentice—I’m sure he won’t turn down money. Also, he's a hopeless nerd. But, if you ask him nicely, he will come running, trust me.”

...

“Joey, what are we doing?” Flaminia asks me as we tread the streets of Amorium by night, closely followed by Lucillus and Antoninus. Clodia almost took my head off when I said she didn’t need to alert the two before leaving. I know, I know. I was just very excited. But I shouldn't act stupid—I’ve learned my lesson.

“Kneading by hand, although romantic, is actually impractical. You can only knead so much dough at once, and your body temperature can mess with the dough. In addition, the yeast and the gluten are also influenced by temperature. Ideally, you don’t want the dough to go over a certain temperature, and that’s why, in an ideal world, you would use very cold water.”

“And?” Flaminia looks at me, confused.

“And we are going to build a machine to knead the dough,” I say, looking at her. “Well, considering how much dough Happy Bakery processes daily, we will free up a bunch of people to do much more impactful work. We can focus on what bread we are making. Get creative and add variety instead of spending more than two-thirds of any employee’s time on kneading the stupid dough.”

“What about new apprentices? They won’t get the skill to knead faster this way,” Flaminia furrows her brows. “I also got an upgrade on my kneading skill.”

Ah.

Automation makes people nervous even in the Middle Ages, heh?

“Don’t you worry. We’ll have other stuff to do by hand.”

“Whatever. I'm curious to see what you'll come up with this time. Just remember that the Day of Ancestors is coming up, and people will get more bread than usual. Clodia will want me to work as much dough as I can. You'll probably be spared from it.”

"Day of Ancestors?"

"Yes."

When I keep staring blankly at Flaminia, she facepalms and nods.

"Right. Humans. It's an old tradition. Like, take the Day of Blooming; that is very recent. The Day of Ancestors, instead, is much, much older. We don't even know how it started. There are legends of how our people fought some monsters."

"Cool," I shrug. "Anyway, I was thinking about teaching the employees some cake-making."

"Before the Day of Ancestors? Sure. Let's see how Clodia puts you through three marble walls," Flaminia scoffs. "Let's get this done first, and then, we might discuss recipes. I'm happy you came back, Joey. Really. But let's not disrupt everything inside Happy Bakery on a whim, ok?"

"Fair enough, " I nod.

After ten minutes, we reach Claudius’s apartment, and I bang on his door.

“Claudius! It’s me, Joey!”

After a few seconds, the man opens the door and yawns in my face.

“It’s late,” he states, looking at the moon hanging up in the sky and then at me. “What do you want?”

“I have a great-paying job for you,” I say with a wink. “I need you to work out a problem with me. Enchanting problem. You decent, or do you need to change?”

He looks at his stained robe that reeks of magical powder and other alchemical reagents they use for enchanting. Then, he shrugs.

“I’ll get my tools, wait for me,” he says with another yawn.

...

Claudius stares at the drawings I made on the spot. They are less sharp than the ones I made for Fulvia of my uniforms, but they are good enough to give him an idea of what I need.

“So, this spiral rotates,” he says, pointing at the kneader.

“Yes. Also, the bowl spins too. It needs to keep moving so that the bread doesn’t get stuck. Ideally, this would need two speeds and...”

Claudius looks at the ceiling, yawning so strongly he seems about to fall on his ass.

“You don’t know anything about enchanting, do you?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“You would need a [Telekinesis] enchantment,” he states matter-of-factly.

“And?”

This time, Flaminia takes over, “they are extremely inefficient, Joey. We would need to spend a fortune in Mana stones or have a [Mage] work the kneader with their Mana. And you are looking at golds upon golds. I’m sorry if we wasted your time, Claudius.”

Huh?

“But isn’t the first Cantrip about two [Light] spinning? Can’t we apply something similar to the kneader? Don’t they have magically powered carriages and stuff like that?”

Claudius gives me a long stare and looks at the door.

“Joey, it really doesn’t work like that. To move an object, you would need something that generates force. To generate the movement, the force needs to push the object. How would that work? Which of these components would the force even push? With carriages, it’s usually a propulsion force or even an Air Magic enchantment. That’s the only way you could do it. I suppose you could try and make this into a sort of small windmill and then, apply Air Magic, but that would cost you even more.”

I stare at Claudius with my eyebrows locked together.

"Wait, what? Can't you just inscribe a moving spell matrix?"

Claudius stares back at me with a slightly annoyed look.

"What do you even mean, Joey?"

"Alright, do you mind showing me your First Cantrip? I'm curious."

"Why?" Claudius yawns. "I just want to go back to sleep. I have work early in the morning."

"Sorry, Claudius. Joey has been obsessing about bread," Flaminia says.

Hearing the gorgeous Elf's words, the [Enchanter] suddenly perks up. "Don't worry, don't worry. I will just show Joey. Are you practicing magic, too?"

Does he think I want to learn how to do the First Cantrip from him?

"Yeah."

"Well, this is how it works. Of course, every [Enchanter] needs to be a proficient [Mage] first."

Claudius takes a step back and summons an extremely pale [Light]. It's so pale it looks like it might sprout freckles at any moment. Then, he conjures a second one.

He slowly makes them rotate, with the wacky [Lights] sputtering every half-a-second, as if they suffered from Parkinson's. After about ten seconds, he dispels the [Lights] and shrugs.

"Don't feel bad. I have practiced Cantrips a lot to get an apprenticeship under Master Iacchus."

...

I’ve just come back from work. My plans to build a mixer and then use the rest of the time to teach Flaminia a hilarious recipe went up in the air. So instead, we just spent the time revising the quantities of bread, preparing more mother yeast, and generally keeping records of the number of supplies we needed and will need in the future. Some of it was bordering paperwork, and I let Flaminia handle that, staying by her side as a consultant.

The real problem is that, from what Claudius explained to me, they don’t really have a way to move stuff other than generating a veritable [Telekinesis] push on an object. And while that’s doable for the rich nobles, it’s way too costly for a bakery, even when you take into account the sheer number of people spending a third of their time, if not more, kneading dough by hand.

Skills made these people lazy.

Yeah, I know. It’s a harsh assessment, but it’s true.

And you know what? Enchantments are not spells, are they?

Claudius is apparently good at dealing with them, but does he have a supreme murderous magical tome with all the knowledge one needs to build a cheap mixer?

Plus, listen, I have a hunch, ok? I know I’m not special or anything like that, but there’s a bug in my ear—if that’s the expression. The first Cantrip is super hard for a reason, right? It’s about moving lights in a circular motion. And it’s super hard to figure out because it’s all in the vectors. Now, I didn’t want to look like an ass in front of Claudius and say something that might not be correct—but isn’t there a way that one could apply said motion and knowledge to make a spiral hook knead some dough? I mean, he was using his Mana instead of vectors to move the [Lights], from what I saw.

Could it be that he doesn't know about vectors?

I look at the book and scratch my chin.

I glance at the sunrays coming through my window and realize that I should go to sleep.

Then, I look at the book again.

Or should I?

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