Dragon Flame Tavern

After Hannah returned home, she casually placed the tin of fruit on the table and immediately bustled into the kitchen to prepare buttered mashed potatoes.

She was one of the wealthiest women in the town, owning not only a bakery but also a grocery shop. However, Hannah remained the silent partner in both establishments, focusing solely on baking the bread sold in the bakery—her speciality. All purchasing and sales for the grocery shop were handled by her husband, Baker.

It had been rather fortunate when Nami managed to buy flour from the grocery shop last time, as Baker wasn't always there. When he travelled to Bant City for supplies, he'd be away for nearly a month. During these periods, Hannah had to manage both shops, opening the bakery and grocery shop alternately.

Upon returning home, Baker immediately noticed the peculiar cylindrical container on the table. "Darling, what's this curious contraption?"

Hannah poked her head out from the kitchen: "It's a gift from the landlord of the Dragon Flame Tavern. It's called a tin." She added helpfully, "You can pull the ring on top to open it."

"Right then, I'll open it," Baker said, tugging at the tin whilst commenting, "I can hear liquid sloshing about—it must be ale inside."

He hooked the metal strip and lifted it from the lid: "Oh my!"

Hannah wiped her hands clean and approached: "Is it really ale?"

She peered down, her expression mirroring Baker's exactly: "Oh my!"

Inside the tin, golden orange segments lay layered upon one another, gleaming softly in the crystalline juice, whilst a sweet citrus fragrance wafted up to greet them.

Hannah forked up an orange segment and popped it into her mouth. The juice burst across her palate, spreading with a delightful sweet-and-sour sensation.

A look of reminiscence crossed her face: "Darling, do you remember when I last tasted fresh fruit?"

Baker's expression soured: "Last year, a mage gave you an apple, and you gave him ten white loaves in return."

Hannah: "And before that?"

Baker grew even more disgruntled: "I brought you a crate of apples from Bant City, and you walloped me on the head with a rolling pin! I had an enormous lump on my forehead!"

Hannah raised an eyebrow: "You mean that crate of dried apple rings!"

For ordinary folk, the journey from Misty Town to the nearest city, Bant City, took nearly a fortnight, with treacherous terrain that even horses couldn't navigate. The primary method of transporting provisions relied on spatial rings, but for common people with limited spiritual power, the available spatial rings were not only small in capacity but also lacked preservation capabilities.

The goods Baker transported to Bant City were predominantly foodstuffs. To ensure the grain remained dry, a simple desiccation array was placed inside the spatial ring, which unfortunately transformed the perfectly good apples into dried fruit.

Baker felt rather hard done by: "I specifically packed the apples in a wooden crate lined with sawdust, but it still didn't work."

Hannah forked up another orange segment and stuffed it into Baker's mouth, declaring rather fiercely: "Didn't I give you a kiss afterwards?"

Baker's eyes crinkled with delight as he savoured the orange's sweet freshness, the rolling pin incident forgotten entirely.

At the same time, chaos reigned in Kira's household.

She and her husband simultaneously reached for the fruit tin, each gripping the container. Kira gave it a tug, and the tin slid across the table towards her: "This is a return gift from the tavern landlord!"

Kira's husband argued his case, pulling the tin back: "If I hadn't reminded you, you wouldn't have remembered to bring a gift at all!"

Seeing the juice spill out in a small puddle from their tussling, with a coconut piece nearly escaping, both spouses winced with pain.

They declared in unison: "Half each!"

In the most beautiful white house in Misty Town lived Mayor Rosa and her family. At this moment, they were gathered around the dining table. Rosa gazed tenderly at her daughter: "When Professor Derek visits the Eternal Night Marshes this time, he'll take you to the Imperial Capital's Stellar Academy to study alchemy when he departs." She added, "Given your foundation in alchemy, you might skip directly to the second year."

Stellar Academy was a renowned magical institution in the Silver Empire, offering an extraordinarily broad curriculum spanning magical botany to necromancy, from popular elemental magic to the obscure spirit speech arts. Lilith's father was the town's only apothecary, and Lilith had absorbed alchemical knowledge from childhood, easily bypassing the first year, which only covered basic fundamentals.

Lilith's expression was grave: "I'll return once I've learnt to create potions that will make the town's soil grow vegetables."

Rosa was torn between laughter and tears: "Our life is perfectly fine now. As long as the Dragon Flame Tavern exists, we'll always have vegetables."

"But the Dragon Flame Tavern mightn't always be there!"

Rosa couldn't understand why her daughter was so fixated on the town's inability to grow vegetables, but she patiently explained: "Actually, the Dragon Flame Tavern will always be there. When your grandmother was born, when I was born, and whilst you've grown up, it may have changed hands, but it's always been there."

Lilith's eyes dimmed: "When Gray returned from outside, he told me that other towns are different from ours. Bushes and small trees grow along the roadsides, with leaves that are green in summer and golden in autumn. If you want to express love for someone, you give them a bouquet of flowers. But we have nothing."

Gray was the son of the red-haired werewolf Kira, who had left for the Imperial Capital's Knight Academy several years ago—the first child of his generation to leave Misty Town. Rosa could only do her best to comfort her daughter: "We have bushes in front of our house too. The pale yellow bushes are even rarer, and the fruits they bear give off a unique fragrance, making them more distinctive than other plants."

Lilith's father, who had remained silent throughout, couldn't help but interject to prevent his daughter from pursuing a futile endeavour: "What we lack is sunlight, not potions."

Lilith raised her head, a flash of determination crossing her young face: "Then I'll bring the sun back."

"No sunlight all year round?" Nami repeated, understanding now why the town had so few plants, with each household having only two clumps of withered, yellowing low shrubs at their doorsteps.

Lusen shrugged: "Not all year round, actually. There are only two seasons here: Clear Moon and Mist Moon. But really, the seasonal divisions only matter within the Eternal Night Marshes. During Mist Moon, the marshes are shrouded in extremely dense fog—cold, gloomy, and sunless. During Clear Moon, the ground fog dissipates, though mist still hangs in the upper atmosphere. Oddly enough, whilst the town borders the marshes, it maintains a perpetual Clear Moon state. However, very little light penetrates the overhead mist, leaving the town perpetually overcast and drizzly, making it difficult for ordinary plants to grow."

No wonder the townspeople looked at her with such eager eyes—she was the town's only greengrocer!

From the moment the tavern interface opened, Nami's thoughts of expansion had burned brightly. How could a single bathtub farm supply the ingredients for her future taverns spanning the entire continent? The Dragon Flame Tavern was surrounded by empty land—there was no reason not to utilise it. "Sunlight..." she murmured, turning her gaze to the radiance stone she had embedded in the wall.

This stone supposedly contained pure light elements and was the preferred gem for light priests' staffs. Using it to provide sunlight for vegetable plots... should be more than adequate.

"You're familiar with radiance stones, aren't you?" Nami said suddenly. Faced with his enigmatic employer's unexpected question, Lusen replied nervously: "Did I give myself away?"

New radiance stone veins hadn't been discovered on the continent for ages. The stones were treasured by nobles and rarely circulated in the market. He had only been fortunate enough to see them whilst assisting his mentor with related research. During his days working at the tavern, he had come to understand deeply that Miss Nami was no ordinary person—whether in terms of wealth, ability, or behaviour. So he had been exceedingly cautious, never showing recognition of the tavern's other curiosities since that first winter thornfish!

"Not at all—you showed no unusual reaction whatsoever," Nami smiled. "But you weren't the least bit surprised to see a glowing stone."

Lusen stood frozen.

Nami reassured him: "I meant nothing by it. Since you understand radiance stones, could they substitute for sunlight?"

Still mortified by his poor acting, Lusen listlessly gestured with his hand: "If it's large enough, yes."

The volume of radiance stones and the concentration of light elements increased geometrically. A bird's egg-sized radiance stone could illuminate the entire tavern; a fist-sized one would certainly provide sufficient energy for a large vegetable plot. Nami thought the plan was perfect, but her hand searching through her pack paused.

These things varied in size, with each radiance stone occupying a separate inventory slot. She had previously found them cumbersome and sold most of them. Apart from the small piece currently embedded in the tavern wall, she had only kept one specimen—a treasure standing taller than a person and weighing five hundred pounds.

If she displayed this enormous radiance stone today, by tomorrow every person in town could come to the Dragon Flame Tavern's entrance to watch the sunrise.