Chapter 93: Reimu: Money, Come to Me!
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"In that case, I'll be the one treating your adverse reactions after each feeding from now on."
Izayoi Sakuya gathered the used tissues into a small trash bag, then produced a pocket mirror from her sleeve to check her makeup. Nothing was out of place — save for a faint smudge where her lipstick had caught on the tissue.
She pushed open the window, looped the curtains back, and left the guest room with the trash bag in hand, leaving behind a very satisfied Kihara, still sunk into the sofa and quietly replaying everything that had just happened.
One had to hand it to her — Izayoi Sakuya was the head maid for a reason. Those slender hands of hers moved with a dexterity that bordered on uncanny. Despite managing virtually every affair of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, her palms bore not a single callus; her skin was smooth and supple as a freshly peeled egg.
Kihara still wasn't entirely sure how any of this had come about, but receiving the personal attentions of the head maid had left him thoroughly satisfied — body and soul alike.
He downed the last of his now-lukewarm tea and stepped out into the corridor. Sakuya had already changed back into her usual long-skirted uniform.
"You'll be wanting to see Lady Patchouli, I assume. Please follow me."
"With a head maid like you around, Remilia must live an awfully comfortable life."
"You flatter her." Sakuya replied, perfectly even, then turned and led the way without another word.
The meeting with Patchouli went without a hitch. She seemed to have been expecting him, and upon receiving the academic volumes on superpower research that Kihara had brought back from the One-Punch Man world, she struck up an unhurried conversation about rare texts from other worlds.
By the time they parted ways, an agreement had been reached: Kihara would source unusual and uncommon books from his travels across worlds; Patchouli, in turn, would teach him magic.
After returning from the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Kihara slipped back into the rhythm of farm life.
When his Foraging skill reached Level 3, the crafting recipe for the Tapper — the key tool for his brewing ambitions — finally unlocked.
The Tapper could be placed on any tree to extract its sap over time. Of the trees growing around Pelican Town, the three most common were maple, pine, and oak. Among them, the Oak Resin harvested by tapping oak trees was the critical ingredient for crafting Kegs. Maple Syrup and Pine Tar, impressive as they were in their own right, paled in comparison.
To craft a Tapper, he needed forty pieces of wood and two copper bars. The problem: Pelican Town's mine hadn't been unlocked yet, leaving him with no way to go digging for ore. And even if he had ore on hand, without the furnace blueprint from the blacksmith NPC, he had no way to smelt it into bars.
Pelican Town's development had hit another wall.
With no other option, Kihara made the trip to Eientei to find Kaguya, urging her to hurry up and identify the next suitable world for him — ideally one with a mine and a blacksmith.
On his way out, he was ambushed by Eirin Yagokoro, who promptly conscripted him as a test subject for the day. Thankfully, she had enough sense not to feed him anything truly alarming — just a series of experimental medicines she wanted evaluated.
The side effects were... varied. One caused his hair to fall out instantaneously, leaving him as bald and shiny as a light bulb. Another triggered an episode of flatulence so aggressive and unrelenting it was practically a natural disaster. But aside from the indignities, there were no lasting adverse reactions — and somehow, through all the chaos, his physical constitution had actually improved a little.
"Interesting," Eirin muttered, scribbling in her notes. "By my calculations, that compound should have tripled your current physical parameters instantly. And yet it barely moved the needle..."
She trailed off, still puzzling over it, then produced a second vial and administered a hair regrowth agent to undo the baldness. This one also had a side effect: every strand of hair on his body — all of it — shot out to two meters in length within seconds.
Kihara spent the next twenty minutes hacking himself free with a kitchen knife before he resembled a human being again.
As he finally made his escape, he heard Eirin's voice drifting after him, warm and cheerful: "Do come back anytime~"
He broke into a dead sprint, legs a blur, and didn't stop until he was well clear of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.
Since the Tapper remained out of reach for now, Kihara decided to get ahead of the problem by clearing a dedicated patch of land near his house for oak trees. In Stardew Valley, a sapling took a full season to grow into a mature tree.
While the oaks grew, he could focus on other things — laying the groundwork for the Great Brewing Arc to come.
On one of his trips to the Magic Forest to buy mushrooms from Marisa, he happened to cross paths with Rinnosuke Morichika, who was out for a leisurely stroll.
[Rinnosuke's Travelling Cart is now registered. It will appear in the northern part of the Coal Mine Forest every Friday and Sunday.]
Rinnosuke blinked at him when their eyes met, gave a brief nod of acknowledgment, then turned around and disappeared back into his shop, Kourindou.
Wonder what he'll be stocking in that cart, Kihara thought. Ancient Seeds would be ideal.
Ancient Seeds — the crop that grew Ancient Fruit, the one indispensable ingredient for late-game brewing. Process enough of them into wine and you could fill sacks with the profits.
Days passed.
When Kihara harvested his first batch of crops — parsnips, potatoes, and green beans — his Farming skill ticked up to Level 4, and the crafting recipe for the Preserves Jar unlocked alongside it.
He happened to have just enough coal on hand for one jar. He crafted it immediately and set it beside the storage chest outside his front door.
Before he could even reach into the chest for raspberries to load into it, the jar let out a deep, resonant thunk — as though it had swallowed something of its own accord — and began to swell gently, pulsing in a slow, rhythmic way, like something breathing.
"...Is that the automation mod?"
The base game had no such feature. But Kihara knew this mod well; it was one he loaded into every new farm save without exception. The convenience it offered was invaluable — especially for the brewing-heavy late game, when you might have a hundred Kegs or more sitting on your property.
Without the mod, you'd be hand-loading each Keg one by one, agonizing over whether you'd missed one buried in a corner somewhere. With it, you simply dropped your materials into a storage chest placed flush against the Kegs, and the mod handled the rest — filling each one automatically, and tucking the finished product back into the chest once it was done.
Kihara allowed himself a quiet, satisfied smile at the future this promised, and began making plans.
Meanwhile, across Gensokyo, Reimu Hakurei had also discovered a very promising path to financial salvation.
It came to her in a flash: Remilia had shown up and caused trouble specifically because Kihara was her fiancé. Which meant that, with the right framing, she could approach any youkai with a grudge or a grudge-adjacent interest and say: "Pay me, and I'll let you go pick a fight with my fiancé." It was a perfect scheme — it sharpened Kihara's combat abilities and lined her pockets at the same time.
"Two birds, one stone. I'm a genius."
She did pause to consider the pricing carefully. Set it too low, and the youkai would come knocking too often — Kihara might notice the pattern, get suspicious, and cut off her income stream. That would be catastrophic.
"Let's start at one hundred thousand yen per visit. Now, who do I get to spread the word quietly... Obviously the paparazzi writer. Slip her a little something to keep her mouth shut and she'll handle the advertising no problem."
From within her gap, Yakumo Yukari watched all of this unfold in real time.
Her brow twitched. Her fingers tightened around her teacup.
Then she slammed both fists down on the tea table with a resounding crack.
"You USELESS teammate! No matter how much I invest in you, you never improve!"
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Thank you for reading.