Chapter 85
Before starting research related to coffee farming, they first had to test the espresso extraction machine.
What the hell was the principle behind espresso having this kind of effect?
“Ho ho! This time, the research slaves under me… ahem, the graduate students’ papers have been outstanding, and it’s all thanks to Young Master Akion!!”
“I’m glad to hear that Sir Montefio benefited as well.”
Montefio, dean of the Department of Magic and head of the Imperial Mage Corps, came along with the senior professors of the Department of Magic,
and researchers from the Papal See also flocked over to examine how the espresso machine worked.
And the result was….
“What is this rotating force?”
“It appears that this mysterious force generated by the motor, together with mana, dissolves into the water and becomes trapped in the boiler, where it is continuously compressed and concentrated.”
“No….”
Through the various mana-powered engineering devices, mana and spiral force had infused the water in the boiler.
“The reason your body is overflowing with energy… appears to be that the mana has absorbed the power of flame.”
“It must be thanks to this heater!”
“Agh.”
On top of that, the mana-powered electric heater gave it the power of heat and this and that….
Akion understood none of it,
and at the same time, he had no desire to understand any of it.
“How mysterious! How did the power of flame become infused into the water?!”
“To think this is possible even though it isn’t a potion made through alchemy… Amazing, truly amazing!”
Since these people were half calling it a bug themselves anyway, Akion decided he would do nothing but curse the Heavenly Lord.
[I’m a victim too….]
The Heavenly Lord’s silent explanation never reached Akion.
*
A bug was still a bug,
but since it was a beneficial bug, Akion decided to leave it alone.
“Anyway, it’s delicious, so have a cup~!”
“Right? I’m telling you, it’s really delicious mixed with milk!”
“Her Highness the Princess should drink a little less, though.”
They had now reached the stage where they needed to mass-produce coffee beans.
Before that, as far as coffee farming was concerned, Akion had no intention of offering his opinion.
He didn’t know much about growing coffee trees, after all.
The Irgacepe side, where the plantations would be, would know more about that sort of thing. He planned to provide only the necessary equipment, such as water pumps.
- BOOM!!
“Is this enough?”
“Thanks, Sis.”
Therefore, Akion had to devise a way to mass-produce green beans from the coffee fruit, also known as coffee cherries.
That way, he could feed all the academy students.
- Swoooosh~!
“Geez, I don’t use my water magic to fill tanks like this!”
“Quit complaining and fill it up. Prospective master’s student.”
Of those methods, the easiest for mass production was the wet process, commonly known as washed processing.
When picked coffee cherries were placed in a large tank, the ripe, heavy cherries would sink to the bottom.
“Ew, it doesn’t taste good.”
“That’s covered in dirt. Why are you eating it…?”
What floated on top? Unripe cherries and foreign matter such as dirt that had been mixed in during the harvest.
After removing all of that, they harvested the cherries that had sunk to the bottom, completing the first step.
- Rrrr…!
- Rustle….
Second, they passed the washed cherries through a machine called a depulper, which forcibly stripped away the outer skin and pulp.
“Wow. It looks like a walnut.”
“But it’s really sticky….”
A depulper was a machine that separated the pulp inside the coffee cherry from the parchment containing the green bean.
Basically, the cherries caught between the roller and the plate spun around wildly, separating the pulp and parchment.
However, there was no way a depulper could exist in this medieval romance-fantasy world. They had to make one themselves and adjust the gap between the plate and roller by hand.
“Still, this isn’t too difficult!”
“Heh, hehe. Right. We just need to make a lever that adjusts the gap between the plate and roller….”
“Oh. Then let’s move on to the next step.”
“No, it’s difficult! Extremely difficult!!!”
“H-Hermione, you’re awful…!!”
Third, fermentation.
This part was simple: place the parchment in a tank filled with clean water and ferment it for twelve to thirty-six hours.
“What? Then we don’t have anything to do, do we?”
“Heh, hehe. We can rest…!”
“What do you mean, rest? We have to keep the water lukewarm and connect a pump to circulate the hot-water pipes. Let’s make them quickly.”
“Th-then after that’s finished, we can r-rest, right…?”
“Why are you talking about resting again? This is still the experimental stage, so we have to keep watching until the fermentation is complete.”
“Grrrk….”
After washing the fermented parchment in water, fermentation was complete when a handful rubbed between your fingers felt squeaky rather than slippery.
After that, it was dried somewhere with low humidity, plenty of sunlight, and good airflow.
They spread it out on the ground to dry, turning the beans over from time to time with a rake.
“Hmm. About seventy percent remains.”
“Let’s dry them a little longer.”
If they wanted to produce it quickly on a large scale, they could apply the principle of a hair dryer and dry everything with a warm-air blower,
but temperature control would be difficult, so they decided to use natural drying instead.
“So now we can really rest, right?!”
“Yes, yes. It would be more productive to do research while you rest—.”
“Aaaah, Akion, Hermione and I are going to rest first, hehehehehe!!”
“Good grief. In my day, I couldn’t even do that.”
Turning the beans over was simple enough: they could hire manual laborers to do it at set intervals,
and Akion had been pushing himself too hard as well, so he decided to let his sisters rest this time.
“That was just like the Tower Master after Young Master completely shut her down— Waaah!! Don’t pinch me, both of you!”
“It is karma.”
“It’s karma, you doggie.”
Goldie’s cheeks were stretched out, but anyway.
* * *
Meanwhile, what were the dark mages doing?
“Is this the Black Holy Water?”
With their usual opportunities to cause trouble being cut off in an unusually sharp manner,
they had obtained a secret potion in hopes of finding another chance to make a leap forward.
“It’s called espresso, to be precise.”
“Do you really have to nitpick and correct me? Just let it go.”
It was espresso, to be precise.
In a dingy basement tucked away in a corner of the slums, the dark mages huddled together and stared at the contents of the small cups.
“Is this that coffee?”
“I’ve never seen it before. But the smell… it’s nutty.”
“It would be nice with some bread….”
Because of the persecution by the Empire and the Papal See, the dark mages could barely set foot in the capital at all.
Their food supply and even their survival had become difficult, and without the backing of the Black Star Cult, they would have been exterminated by now.
“Let’s share it out and drink it little by little.”
And they also had to show results satisfactory to their backer.
That was why they had focused their attention on espresso.
According to information from an insider at the academy, something tremendous was supposed to happen the moment they drank it.
“It makes you incredibly smart, right?”
“Or else your mana increases explosively!!”
“Hehehe, with just this much…!!”
It would be one thing if only priests became stronger; even knights and mages who could merely wield mana had experienced effects from it.
In other words, espresso was extremely, extremely beneficial to both divine power and mana!
“Come on, let’s drink!”
If that was the case, then the mana used in black magic ought to benefit as well.
Of course, it had been slightly—or rather, quite heavily—twisted by the nature of demons and black magic. But anyway.
- Gulp!
“Khhh… this is to die for…!”
“The savory flavor in my mouth, ngh!”
For people who had been living in poverty, a single demitasse of espresso was the height of luxury.
“I want to eat it with some well-seared beef….”
“Heh heh heh, if we become stronger with this, that will be entirely possible!”
To think that only those bastards in the bright world got to drink something this delicious.
Some of the people who became dark mages had their reasons,
but most were scum who seized the chance to become stronger the moment it appeared, even if it meant killing others.
They were the kind of people who thought it was fine to curse those outside as long as they alone prospered.
- Crackle!
“O-oh!”
“Something’s reacting!!”
And, to the despair of the entire Empire, the effects of espresso began working on the dark mages as well.
“Kahahaha!! This power! This sensation!!”
“Hehehehe!! At this rate, even a high-ranking mage or a master-level knight won’t be anything to fear…!!”
Their five senses had become extremely sharp.
Their brains had become just as overactivated.
And on top of that, their mana, twisted by black magic, was overflowing.
“Akion Enerysis… We’ll have to keep him alive instead of killing him.”
“Indeed. We should tie him down and make him mass-produce this espresso machine.”
“And toy with his women in front of him! Kyahahaha!”
To them, espresso was an enhancement potion second to none.
- Crackle, pop!
[Damn it, I was sure I’d set up the connection properly, so why did a connection bug occur?]
“O-oh…! What is this sensation?!”
“Are we beholding the great God of Darkness, perha…?”
Until, suddenly, they heard the voice of a great being.
[Huh?]
“Huh? Wh-what? Why can I feel divine power…?”
“Why…?”
The presence of the being crossing through the dimensions was spewing out the divinity that the dark mages hated and feared so terribly.
[You’ve got to be kidding me. Now even these bastards…?]
“H-huff, huff!!”
“I-it connected to the Heavenly Lord!”
They were people who had made contracts with demons.
Though those demons were nowhere near the Heavenly Lord’s level, they were beings of considerable rank….
“Hahaha! Hahahaha!! You foolish Heavenly Lord!”
“I shall offer your flesh to my great Lord Vlad!”
They thought that if they told the demons they had contracted with about this method, they would be able to gain tremendous power.
[Ah, thank goodness. It’s a one-way communication channel that only I can use.]
“Huh.”
But it was a one-way channel through which only the Heavenly Lord could send messages.
- Click!
[Then you can’t hear me.]
“Wh-what?! We can’t hear the voice!!”
“Damn it, you goddamn bitch!!!”
Their influence couldn’t reach the Heavenly Lord in the slightest.
[Wait… then what if I pour holy power through this connection…?]
“Everyone, calm down. That isn’t important! Can’t you feel the tremendous holy power right now…?!”
“There aren’t any priests anywhere.”
“Not that!! The energy pouring in from that Heavenly Lord!!”
In other words, the Heavenly Lord could unilaterally rain holy power down on the dark mages.
- Vrrrrr!!
“No way… Is the Heavenly Lord going to pour holy power into us through that connected passage…?!”
Only then did the dark mages realize what was happening.
To them, holy power was no different from hydrochloric acid.
Moreover, their bodies were currently overactivated.
Their black-magic mana and all five senses were activated to their absolute limits.
“Heavenly Lord!! Please have mercy—!!!”
If they died of shock from the tremendous pain the moment the holy power poured down, that would be easier.
If not, their end would be quite horrific.
They all fell to their knees and begged desperately toward the heavens, or repeatedly bashed their heads against the floor.
[Yeah, I’ve already read your memories and scraped out all the information~]
But their capable Heavenly Lord had already extracted every last bit of data from their memories.
Now that their value had fallen….
[Heh, that singularity bastard. Even bugs can be useful.]
“Noooo—!!!”
- Vrrrrrrrr!! KRAAAK!!
- ZZZZZZZT!!
“Aaaaaaargh—!!!”
“Kieeeeeek—?!!!”
An ultra-high-voltage holy lightning storm raged through the basement in the slums.