Chapter 48
But there's something tacked on before Brewer?
Nectar?
Where had I heard that before?
A haze lifted from the depths of my dim memory.
It seemed a fair amount of time had passed inside the Gate, and Ahmad's car was gone.
Well, the busy man couldn't have waited around here forever.
So how was I supposed to get back from here?
Just as I was wondering about that...
Beep! Beep! At the sound of a horn, I glanced over and saw a limousine parked by the roadside.
Naturally, a skeleton was sitting inside.
As soon as I got in, a call came through, and Ahmad's bright voice rang out.
─Brother! Sorry I had to leave first because I was busy! I sent a car over for you!
“No, no, why would you wait around when you're busy?”
─Haha! By the way, did you really clear the dungeon? You didn't happen to kill the dragon, did you?
I did give the dragon a serious stomachache, though.
“How could I kill a dragon? I cleared the gimmick.”
─Ooh! Now I'm curious how you did it.
“Trade secret.”
─Aw, can't be helped.
It's an unwritten rule among Hunters, so he wasn't going to pry into how I'd cleared it.
─But this one changed to Stage 1 too, just like the dungeon in Russia?
Don't tell me this guy was going to use that as an excuse to say he couldn't give me the 10% since he couldn't manage it...
─I'll send some undead over to take control for now.
“Huh?”
─The clearance rights should be auctioned off. The proceeds are all yours.
...My goodness.
─I heard the grandson of the LMHC Group chairman Awakened recently, so he'll probably be interested. I'll talk to the old man.
“No, you don't have to go that far...”
─The first-clear reward is pretty big. These days, it's something money can't buy.
I did it so often it felt like routine, so I'd taken it for granted, but it really was a big deal.
─You've worked hard, so consider this some extra income. And if you need anything else, just ask anytime.
I felt a little guilty, but there was no reason to turn down something he was offering.
“Thanks.”
─Oh, and do you like wine?
“Wine?”
I didn't mind it, I guess...
I did like that champagne called Jacques Selosse.
But for my closest friend, it was a different story.
Zephyros was such a wine enthusiast that he had an entire room at home devoted to his wine cellar.
“I do.”
Zephyros does.
─Haha, great. You can't come to Bordeaux without checking out a winery. About half the wineries in Bordeaux are mine, and I can arrange a visit to the other half whenever you want, so just say the word. A tour would be nice, or if you want, you can take as many vintage bottles as you like.
If it was expensive wine, especially one old enough to be called a vintage, each bottle would cost at least a few thousand euros, perhaps even hundreds of millions of won.
He said it as casually as if he were offering me a can of Coke.
As expected, his scale was different.
“Would it be okay if I invited someone?”
─If that someone is Zephyros, he's more than welcome.
Great.
Since I was in France, I might as well look around before I left.
Ah, of course, before that... I should find out what exactly a subclass was.
**
Many of the wineries in Bordeaux also operated hotels.
That was also why French wineries often had the word Château in their names.
In Korean, that meant a castle.
In other words, these wineries had originally been like noble estates, complete with the castles where their owners lived.
And at my request—or more precisely, Ahmad's request...
Anyway, when we asked, they handed over the entire castle.
While spending the night in a castle like a French aristocrat or royal, I looked into subclasses.
Surprisingly, the very concept of a subclass didn't exist in Hunter communities.
Zephyros had asked what it was, too.
Which meant... I was the first to obtain a subclass.
Well, it was a reward for liberating a Gate, and I was the only one to have liberated a Gate twice.
Made sense, I guess?
Next, Nectar.
I was startled when I searched it and learned what it was.
A drink of the gods, supposedly.
A drink that could grant eternal life just by drinking it.
A Brewer who could make something like that...
Of course it wasn't an ordinary class.
Besides, it said I could change subclasses whenever I wanted.
There was no reason to hesitate.
“I change my subclass to Nectar Brewer.”
[Your subclass has become ‘Nectar Brewer.’]
[You have acquired the Nectar Brewer-exclusive skill, ‘Understanding of Brewing (Unique).’]
[The effect of the title ‘Dragon Drunker’ is applied, so the proficiency of the ‘Understanding of Brewing’ skill starts at S.]
[Understanding of Brewing (Unique)]
Description: The divine dwells in a perfect creation. The experience of a mythic brewer who reached the divine realm and ultimately became a god is contained within. (S-rank proficiency effect: 0.1% Nectar is infused into liquor brewed to perfection.)
Hmm, it didn't seem like anything had changed...
“Ugh!”
The sensation of something suddenly pouring into my head made me clutch it and collapse onto the bed.
What the hell was this?
Knowledge I didn't know was surging up like a flood.
And all of that knowledge was...
Alcohol?
From ancient times to the modern day.
All sorts of knowledge needed to brew liquor flowed into me.
It wasn't just simple recipes.
It was about what effect each component had on the taste and what it did.
What to control and what to amplify to steer the flavor of the liquor in a certain direction.
That was the kind of knowledge it contained.
With all that knowledge crammed into my head...
I promptly lost consciousness.
**
I had no idea how long I'd been out.
It was only when I heard a knock at the door that I came to.
“Come in.”
A middle-aged woman cautiously opened the door and set food on the table.
The winery where I was staying wasn't normally set up for guests to stay overnight, but at Ahmad's request, I was staying in a guest room as a special exception.
The woman who'd just brought me food was the winery owner's wife, too.
After I finished off the delicious French home cooking and went out, they were too busy making wine to pay me any attention.
Well, that was actually nice.
I sat off to one side and watched quietly.
“Oh, just as I thought.”
Even with the knowledge I'd gained from Understanding of Brewing, the winery's production process was flawless.
That was only natural, since the winery was called Château Pétrus.
It wasn't one of Bordeaux's five most famous Châteaux; it was a wine from a small appellation, but that only enhanced the winery's reputation.
Depending on the vintage, a bottle cost two to three thousand euros at minimum. It was a top-tier wine.
There was no way a place making wine like that would have anything to criticize.
Of course, if I really wanted to nitpick, I could find something, but that would be just that—a nitpick.
“Would you like to try a glass?”
As I watched, lost in thought, a young man who looked like the winery's heir came over and handed me a wineglass.
Then he showed me the large bottle in his other hand.
“This is the 2010 vintage, considered one of the finest vintages on Bordeaux's Right Bank. It's often called the ‘Vintage of the Century.’ I'm not fond of rating wines by scores, but a famous critic gave this vintage a perfect 100.”
“How could I refuse?”
At that price, a bottle must've cost several thousand euros.
“In celebration of Hunter Kim Segyun's magnificent dungeon clear, allow me to offer you a glass.”
“...You were Awakened?”
At my question, he grinned and nodded.
“I'm a Brewer.”
“What?”
Wait, you were a Brewer too?
Seeing my astonished expression, he evidently misunderstood it, and continued explaining.
“It's not a common class, is it? It's a production-type class, but quite a few people Awaken into it around here. I wanted to become a mage or swordsman and escape the winery, but when I Awakened as a Brewer, I figured it must be fate.”
Wait, isn't that your main class?
But me... uh, well...
“Either way, Bordeaux's wine industry and Gates are inseparable. These days, most Bordeaux wines blend in Donjon Noir, a grape variety from dungeons.”
“Does this wine have it, too?”
“Yes, which makes this vintage even more special. We started blending Donjon Noir into our wine that year.”
Since wine made entirely from dungeon grapes was too expensive, even the finest wineries only used a little.
Even that small amount sent production costs soaring.
Still, I heard it was worth the cost.
Wine lovers had reached the point where wine without dungeon grapes seemed too boring to drink... so naturally wineries had to blend it in with the times.
“Now that you've cleared the uncleared Gate in our region, production should increase soon thanks to the pacification effect. Prices should come down, too. One of the Bordeaux wineries' biggest wishes is for the price of Donjon Noir to drop. Haha.”
Since they couldn't leave it out for the flavor, but had to spend a fortune buying it from elsewhere, it must've been a straight loss for them.
“Thanks to you, I'm enjoying a real treat.”
I took a sip.
It definitely tasted different from before I got the Brewer class.
Just like they say, you see more when you know more.
Ah, in this case, it was closer to tasting more when you know more.
Smiling, I said without thinking,
“This is fun.”
“Pardon?”
“Ah, I meant it's fun learning about this wine.”
It really was fun.
Figuring out how it had been made and what kind of direction it had taken.
“Hahaha! Fun... That's a fun reaction, all right.”
The heir to Château Pétrus said with a hearty laugh.
“I've served this vintage to quite a few people, but you're the first to react like that!”
“Could I try making some myself?”
“Wine?”
“Yes, even if it's just a little. I'll pay for it.”
“Haha, Ahmad would have my head for that. He specifically told me you're his most important guest and to give you anything you wanted. Come with me.”
He led me to an area piled high with harvested grapes.
“That's all you need.”
“Huh?”
“The juice pressed from grapes is fermented by the natural yeast on the grape skins and becomes wine. All you need is grapes and nature. That's it. The grapes are here, and nature is here, isn't it?”
The heir looked at me as if to say, What else do you need?
Hmm, to me...
That sounded like he was saying the variables were being kept under fixed control.
But there was no way they could be perfectly controlled just with the environment and the same grape variety.
That's why, even with the same wine, the taste changed from year to year, and more broadly, why each vineyard produced a different taste, even if they tried to control everything as much as possible.
It was also why the scores fluctuated so much from one year to the next.
The biggest reason the variables couldn't be controlled was that humans couldn't control bacteria.
And...
I could.
I revived the yeast from the yeast sediment left at the bottom of a bottle of Château Pétrus's 2010 vintage.
They said that was the best vintage.
So the yeast must've been the best, too.
Astonishingly, the yeast rose again from sediment that had been dead for decades—since 2010.
Then the yeast naturally made its way into the pressed grape juice.
The yeast naturally set to work recreating the various factors I'd tasted in a vintage considered the very best.
It wasn't just yeast.
I also roused and set to work various other microbes, like lactic acid bacteria, which determined the wine's smoothness.
At last, a barrel of wine was complete.
In less than half an hour.
This time, I hadn't simply cranked up the alcohol concentration recklessly; I'd tried to recreate the same flavor as much as possible.
Imitation is the mother of creation, after all.
For now, I'd tried to get as close as possible to that supposedly excellent wine.
And the result?
[It was not brewed perfectly. Nectar does not form.]
“Tch, a failure?”
“W-What did you just do?”
“Ah, I ruined the wine. Sorry, but... could I use some more of these grapes?”
“They're extra grapes we set aside in case of accidents, so I don't mind...”
“Thank you. Brewing liquor is surprisingly fun.”
Is that why old guys kept jars of homemade liquor stacked up at home?
I was starting to get the hang of it.
I felt like my ability to control the various bacteria and my knowledge of brewing, which had been jumbled together, were gradually blending.
I thought I could get it with just a little more practice.
**
Jean, the heir to Château Pétrus, felt as if he were possessed by a ghost.
What on earth had that man done to cause such intense fermentation in such a short time?
At the same time, he laughed.
He could guarantee that a wine whipped up that quickly would have no flavor.
Wine wasn't made by people; it was made by nature.
It was art created by nature and time.
All people could do was give it the slightest nudge in a certain direction.
That was what he'd believed all his life.
And not only him—his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather...
Ever since the ancestor who first started making wine, they must all have believed that.
Even so.
They did say curiosity killed the cat.
“Hmm...”
He couldn't hold back his curiosity.
He carefully drew some of the wine from the top of a barrel where the sediment had already settled.
The wine that man had labeled a ‘failure.’
When he brought it to his nose...
A cold sweat ran down Jean's spine.
“H-How...”
Even from the aroma alone, he could tell.
His nose was telling him...
And so was the ‘System’ of his ‘Brewer’ class.
This was...
Pétrus wine.
He was almost afraid to taste it.
But he steadied his trembling hand and took a sip.
“...Good heavens.”
It was Pétrus wine before it had been aged in oak barrels.
It was exactly like Vin Nouveau, wine before aging.
The problem was...
This wasn't a wine from the current year, with its poor harvest and bad weather. It was the legendary vintage he'd tasted as a child, before he'd properly entered the wine industry.
It tasted like the 2010 vintage.
At that moment, Jean's resolve crumbled.
Curiosity had pierced his heart.
“That man... W-Who is he?”
He simply couldn't bring himself to leave.
Dazed, he sat in a chair off to the side and watched Kim Segyun continue working with the grapes.
At some point, he dozed off, then woke at the sound of someone nearby.
A wineglass was suddenly thrust in front of his eyes.
“Feeling a little more awake?”
“Ah, I...”
“You should've gone inside and slept properly. When did you fall asleep here? You don't need to keep watch. I won't steal anything.”
“N-No... that's not what I meant.”
“I'm joking.”
Kim Segyun gave a faint smile as Jean accepted the wineglass.
“Give it a taste. I'm finally somewhat satisfied. I think I've got the hang of what to do now, so it should be easy from here on.”
“......”
Even what he'd called a failed attempt earlier had been nearly perfect.
Now it was starting to frighten him.
“This is...”
Even just smelling it for a moment made him dizzy.
Could such complexity really come from grapes alone?
He swallowed once.
It was when he took a sip of the wine.
[You have encountered a creation at a level beyond your comprehension. Your understanding of wine expands. The proficiency of the ‘Understanding of Wine Brewing’ skill has increased to SS.]
A System message appeared, but that didn't matter in the slightest.
Before a god...
‘Am I allowed to make wine now?’
That was the only thought filling Jean's mind.