Literature / Demon World Boba Shop

It's a wonderful second life.

"Nice?" the old man said, beaming. "Yes, I think I can do a great deal with that."
And he did.

Arthur worked himself into a heart attack at a young age. Happily, he's been given another chance, reincarnated in a world that he only knows will be "nice". Sure, the people aren't quite human, and the social norms are unfamiliar, and there are dungeons and monsters. But there are open arms to welcome him, and ways he can help out the community, and the local water demon girl is really cute...

Demon World Boba Shop is a slice-of-life LitRPG by R.C. Joshua (who also wrote Deadworld Isekai), published on Royal Road starting in March 2024, and updating daily.

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This story contains the following tropes:

A-L

• Accidental Aiming Skills: During a game of "junk weapon darts", Arthur repeatedly draws Milo's unbalanced, too-heavy axe that takes two hands to properly use, so he keeps missing entirely. On his third attempt, he swings his arm around like a trebuchet, knocks himself over, and can't see where it flew from where he's lying face first on the ground — but then he hears it thunk into the target. Turns out it was quite near the centre, too.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Arthur experiments with creating an antivenin tea by exposing a monster to a venom from another monster and then harvesting the resulting antibodies.
• The Atoner: The water demons are acutely aware of their warlike past, to the point where their greetings are all apologies for having attacked and oppressed the people they're speaking to. Arthur, whose ancestors certainly never encountered them, finds it a little bizarre at first, but he gets used to it. Mizu is also capable of using it to subtly flirt, shifting from comments about fighting and slaughter to things like tracking and following. And if she talks about how their histories painted your people as buffoons, she's pretty annoyed.
  Mizu: We pursued your people through the hills, armed and fighting.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Spiky has a librarian class, and has allocated hardly any points to strength or dexterity, so he should have no chance of hitting a target with a thrown axe, especially a clumsy unbalanced axe from Milo's junk pile. However, after studying and calculating for a full minute, he throws the axe at an angle that seems completely wrong, yet catches the wind in the right way to hit the target. Arthur is impressed.
  Onna: Perfect parabola. That's a librarian class. He got the actual angle he needed to throw it worked out.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: After a week of routine, Arthur finds himself wishing for something, anything, different to happen. Then Lily doesn't show up to work, and after a great deal of searching, Arthur eventually discovers her feverish and delirious in the hovel she calls home.
• Big Eater: Eating is important to recover from heavy majicka depletion, so it's normal for the demons to eat quite a bit more than is usual on Earth. Once Arthur works out how to use majicka in his brewing, Ella tells him that he needs the equivalent of an extra full meal per day, and very physical classes like Karbo's can eat enough for a small village.
• Bird People: There are several varieties of humanoid demons with bird traits. Itela has a dove head and wings, Ella and Milo resemble sparrows, and Lily is like a little owl — who thinks that puffing up makes her look older, when in fact it just makes her fluffiness more adorable.
• Blood Knight: Karbo is actually a really nice guy, great with kids, but his true love is fighting. It doesn't matter whether it's a genuine challenge, or just beating up trash-tier monsters that won't give him a meaningful amount of XP, he'll be laughing and cheering as he goes.
• Bold Explorer: Milo's father has an explorer class that requires him to visit and map out undiscovered lands in order to level up — and as civilisation expands, such regions get further and further away. As a result, he's often away from home for many months at a time. The class makes him better at foraging and helps him to push through fatigue in exchange for crashing later. Ella misses him, but admits that in some ways it's nice to be married to an intrepid explorer.
• Boring, but Practical: How does the city deal with periodic monster waves that flood it with hordes of slavering creatures for days at a time? They all take shifts going to the top of the city wall and throwing rocks. With the monsters densely packed, it's hard to miss, and with thousands of people participating, they're able to rapidly thin the monster numbers, until those that are strong enough or cunning enough to survive the onslaught are easy pickings for high level warriors like Karbo. It's not uncommon for there to be zero deaths.
• Bragging Rights Reward: There aren't any tangible benefits to the "I ate the works" System achievement. As its description says, it's just for fun.
• Call-Back: The origin of the demons' peaceful society was a bear demon who arrived from another world, governed by another system.
• Chest Monster: After chasing down a monster in the underground waterways, Arthur sits down on a conveniently placed log to catch his breath — and gets a System notification that he's just been afflicted with a paralytic. As he tumbles to the floor, the "log" then reveals mouth and arms and goes for the kill.
• Clothing Damage: Arthur's tailor is pleased to hear that he doesn't have a combat class, because that gives him far more options to work with; "You wouldn't believe what I have to do to keep Karbo's clothing intact."
• Crowd Surfing: Mizu visibly doesn't want to be chosen for the "first pair" of the Coldfall festival. Part of it is the prospect of going on stage, but most of it is the idea of being shoved off that stage, caught by the crowd, and then carried around the square, being presented to the gods. (Happily for her, the honour goes to a different couple.)
  Arthur: It looks fun for them.
  Mizu: For them, yes.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Littal is skilled at giving riders a rough, teeth-jarring, almost-falling-off-the-wagon experience, until the System decides that they really need the Passenger skill — at which point, they benefit from a portion of the skills of the one transporting them, and suddenly they're compensating so automatically that the ride feels smooth.
  Talca: Normally, it takes longer to get. If you rode cargo wagons, it might take days of travel. But the more you seem to need the skill, the more likely the system is to grant it.
• Cry into Chest: Upon hearing that Arthur neglected his shop and endangered his life by entering the waterways in order to make medicinal tea for her, Mizu yells at him in a way that somehow remains quiet and dignified, slaps him in the arms and chest, then runs out of energy and just breaks down sobbing on him. She makes him promise not to take that risk again before he leaves, although she is grateful for the sentiment behind it.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: The wolverine commander spots Corbin sneaking into his house, and threatens that if Corbin touches his sandwich (assembled from ingredients produced by the city's best specialists), then he will sew bells into Corbin's hide and see how stealthy Corbin can be then.
• Cuteness Overload: Lily in her cold weather outfit, "like a little puffy cloud," sets Ella squealing and chasing her around the kitchen.
  Lily: Stay away from me! I don't want to be cuddled!
  Ella: It's too late! Look at your little gloves!
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • From the moment Arthur first sees Mizu, he's stunned, and she grabs his attention again every time she's present. Milo and Rhodia both tell him he needs to go talk to her, because his reaction is very obvious. He misses the whole safety lecture before a group outing to the forest, because Milo had just pointed out Mizu's arrival.
  • He gets some of his own back at the Coldfall festival, when it turns out he actually looks good in the traditional festival clothing. Apparently the robes were designed with a human in mind, because they tend to look anywhere from poorly fitting to just bizarre on every kind of demon. Mizu not saying much is normal, but the fact that she doesn't even manage to greet him, just stare, and Rhodia likewise, shows that something is up.
    Milo: The girls have never seen anybody look fashionable in these clothes outside of pictures in storybooks.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!:
  • Lily has been living alone in a hole since her parents died, despite the city having excellent social services (in the form of "everyone has a duty to look out for those in need"). She simply isn't willing to accept gifts, and has good instincts for when employment is being offered out of pity. Arthur inadvertently starts to lift her out of her circumstances by offering her a job without knowing just how badly she needs it. Once she's in Ella's clutches, however, her weakness is exposed: she really values her job and feeling useful, allowing Ella to promptly blackmail her into accepting a caring and loving home, by threatening to ban Arthur from employing her.
  • Arthur is less vehement, but he does feel uncomfortable about how much help is simply given to him on a platter, and he struggles to adjust, typically trying to do and give more in return. Everyone tells him that he's overcompensating and needs to just accept that people have a duty to help each other, but it's a slow process. At one point, Ella gives him the city-provided stipend, and orders him to spend every last coin, or else she's withholding dinner.
  • Several characters have opportunities to point out to Arthur just how important it is to let people help him, whether it's Milo overriding his objections and making him accept Mizu's contribution of a private customised well for his food cart ("Have you even considered what it might mean that she's doing this for you? Or what it would mean if you stopped her halfway through, said you didn't want it, and told her to go away?"), or Rhodia getting fed up with his protests that he wouldn't be able to pay her for making more cups, grabbing him by the lapels, and almost growling at him despite being a mouse demon.
    Rhodia: Do not. Do not make me beg you to let me make cups for your actual operating business. Cups that will be used by actual customers, and will provide me with tons of experience. Do not do it.
• Either/Or Offspring: Arthur is startled to learn that Milo's father is a goat demon, since Milo is a sparrow demon like his mother. Ella explains that children can inherit minor traits like nose shape from either parent, but the major features of their species, like birds having feathers and tree demons having bark, are passed down as a set.
• Enlightened Self-Interest: The System likes to reward collaboration and cooperation; Ella assures Arthur that it gives a generous division of experience for jointly completed work. Milo relies on that when away from home and looking for help from a more experienced smith.
  Milo: Prototyping is the first big phase. For the prototyping, the smith with the highest level tends to get the lion's share of the credit as far as the system is concerned. But now that I've made the prototype, and tested it, there's plenty of credit to go around. I can't refine it away from my shop. Which means I need a full shop, and also help, lots of it. Win-win.
• Everyone Can See It: Milo and Rhodia badger Arthur into going over and talking to Mizu, because his reaction to seeing her was so obvious (and loud) that not only Mizu, but everyone present, can tell that he wants to.
  Milo: Because you clearly want to.
  Rhodia: Very clearly. Very, very clearly.
  Arthur: It’s that obvious?
  Milo: You turned different colors. I'm not sure how you people work, but that can’t be normal.
• Family of Choice:
  • One of the highest duties of demon society is to take care of guests, so Eito and Karbo, who discover Arthur lying in the street, are responsible to take him in. Once Arthur gains a cooking class, however, Ella declares that she's taking over and that Arthur now lives with her. Arthur, who has just spent a day being mothered by her and has quickly become attached, can only think that just like that, he's home.
  • In turn, Arthur goes searching for Lily when she's missing, and is able to use a spell that's supposed to be for parents to find lost children. Itela informs him that trying to apply it to him as Lily's employer will only possibly work if he feels responsible for her, that something is wrong in the universe because he can't find her, and she feels the same way. When Itela casts it, she can tell it's Not the Intended Use and drains all her majicka, but Arthur is led straight to the hole in the ground where Lily is laid up with a fever.
• First Kiss: Mizu feels insecure about Arthur traveling for weeks, worrying that he'll find someone better than her, and makes a picnic for the two of them before he goes. Arthur, who's baffled and bemused by her concerns, kisses her before he knows what he's doing. Once they've talked things through, she mentions that it would be okay if that happened again.
• Five-Finger Discount: Inverted by Corbin, who is faced with the dilemma of seeing a lady drop her purse and wanting to return it, but being close to a class reward if he can remain undetected for just ten more minutes. He decides to see if he can hook it back onto her belt without being spotted. Just at the point where he's brushed against her enough that a very perceptive individual might notice him, and he can feel the clash of stealth skills vs Perception beginning, she's then distracted by her children getting into a scuffle, and Corbin gets away clean.
• Fountain of Youth: Arthur's reincarnation takes just a few years off him, still old enough to be legally adult by demon standards, but looking and feeling more like a teenager. He finds it to be a great change, giving him more energy and less stress.
  He could kind of remember what it felt like to be an adult. It was stress, mostly. But it was like the experience was in a story he had heard rather than something he had really experienced. Which was awkward to think about, sure, but it seemed he didn't have much of a choice between ignoring his chronological ages or just accepting the fact that he wasn't quite grown up anymore.
  It was amazing.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: Downplayed, as Arthur's memories of Earth have been intentionally blurred by the System to make it easier for him to adjust and be happy in his new life, and he wasn't exactly an expert on chemistry or metallurgy or electronics in any case. Furthermore, the existence of classes and stats means that industrialisation is simply not needed in the demon world, since society can be well above subsistence level just based on people being supernaturally productive. Arthur does, however, manage to describe an outline of a vehicle shock absorber, which Milo and Spiky quickly comprehend and construct a prototype for.
• Global Currency: The whole demon world recognizes a single standard coin, although smaller (pensa) and larger (majna) denominations do exist.
• Harem Genre: Firmly defied by Arthur, who hears that "harem" is a popular keyword for steering reincarnation, though it's discouraged, and he promptly decides that it's not for him.
• Healing Potion: Arthur wins his first fight against a dog sized rat, but his arms are scratched up, so Karbo gives him a pill that closes the wounds in seconds.
• Horse of a Different Color: Arthur's first impression of a Hing is that it's a goat so muscular he assumes it's carnivorous. It's also low-set and proves to be capable of pulling a loaded wagon at automobile speeds, even over unpaved roads.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Arthur realises that due to a lack of cultural knowledge, he is woefully unprepared for taking Mizu on a date to the Coldfall festival. If it were just about Mizu, who is kind and forgiving, he might be okay. But Mizu's close friend Onna will notice if Mizu is sad or disappointed when she comes home.
  Lily: Oh, yeah, I forgot about Onna. Yeah, she'd kill you.
• Interspecies Romance: Despite their very different body plans, different types of demons have a high degree of genetic compatibility, so it's quite normal to have different types of demon in a relationship. Ella is a sparrow-demon, which Milo inherited, but her husband has goat traits.
• Jack of All Stats:
  • Eito is quite surprised to hear that all Arthur's stats begin at the default baseline, 5, with no racial modifiers at all.
  • Arthur manages to produce a medicinal tea blend that gives tiny benefits across a wide range of factors — energy, comfort, endurance, and enough others that the System message doesn't show the full list. Individually they don't mean much, but together they can make a significant difference to chronic sufferers. Itela is very interested and appreciative.
• Klatchian Coffee: One of the first ways Arthur learns to infuse majicka into his tea is to simply increase the effect of the caffeine. The System is gently snarky about it, but helpful.
  By focusing on the undelivered promises of Earth's energy drinks while preparing a beverage, you have a drink that goes beyond mere caffeine into the crunchy, often fraudulent realm of supplements. This drink is something that Guarana, Taurine, and Creatine never quite lived up to. It grants its drinker not only a pep high, but an overall increase in stamina and wakefulness that replaces a slight amount of the rest they failed to allow themselves.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: You can only get the Rise Together achievement if you agree to forget it exists. It gives bonus XP for doing things to help others, but it would be harder to be properly selfless if you remembered that it was there. The System praises Arthur for earning it, and he decides it's well worth having even if he doesn't remember.
• Laugh Themselves Sick:
  • Lily overhears a conversation between Arthur and Mizu that came out wrong, and laughs so hard she collapses on the ground and turns purple.
  • Arthur's completely failed attempt to eat a S'more gracefully has Mizu giggling, despite her best efforts. Lily doesn't even try, and is promptly rolling in the snow.
    Lily: It’s…. Heee. It’s so cold, but I can’t get up. Arthur. You can’t… do that anymore. I don’t even know if I can eat at the same table with you now. Heee…
• Leaked Experience: During the post-wave party, Eito puts together a plan to power-level Arthur by sending him off with Karbo to be shepherded through dungeons. The next day, once Eito is sober, he looks at the (barely legible) plan again, and decides it's an unnecessary risk when Arthur is leveling up just fine already.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Corbin is a cat demon with a stealth class — so after being introduced, he rarely makes an appearance, presumably because he's practising his stealth and so no-one realises he's there. When he eventually gets a chapter from his own point of view, his inner monologue mentions how advancing his stealth skills has left him feeling isolated, that "He was close to the action, but not quite part of it. The plot, as it were, was advancing without him. The world was becoming someone else's story."
• LitRPG: The demons are surprised to learn that Earth doesn't have a System at all. Everyone on the demon world can gain a class that makes them better at their various professions, and level it up to gain more skills and stat points.

M-Z

• Magic Enhancement: Passive majicka output seeps into whatever someone is making or doing, to enhance it in small or large ways. Smiths can make stronger and lighter steel, cooks can make bread that is slower (or faster) to fall apart when soggy. Arthur gains various skills allowing him to invest majicka in his tea to increase the effects of caffeine, or spice, or medicine. Despite being considered passive, however, it can be quite draining, especially for larger effects.
• Magic Potion: With lots of practice and experimentation, Arthur gains skills that let him infuse majicka into tea to enhance it in a variety of ways, from simply increasing the effect of caffeine, to providing various medicinal effects, and even stat boosts. All of the effects are very small, but they can give his customers an edge in various ways, whether it's being a little bit more accurate when throwing rocks at monsters, completing paperwork in less time, or feeling less pain from arthritis.
• Magitek: Magical heating and cooling elements are commonplace. When Ella hears that Earth doesn't have magic, and instead uses controlled lightning, she decides that sounds magical enough to her.
• Mama Bear: The Mayor is not afraid to yell at the wall of pure muscle that is Karbo. But no one wants to cross Ella the sparrow-demon when it comes to her children, whether natural or adopted.
• Meaningful Gift: Gifts to a partner at Coldfall are meant to be made, not purchased, and traditionally associated with either one's class, or else an important shared experience of some kind. Since Mizu drinks tea regularly, Arthur figures something from his class isn't really significant enough. Instead, he takes a blue star flower — a kind she really likes for both its beauty and usefulness — and grinds it up for dye, then uses it to paint a picture of the flower, as it looked when she first showed it to him. It simultaneously signifies their first real conversation where she introduced him to the flower, and one of the few things in life that is really special to her, and also the anti-venom tea that helped save her life, of which the flower was one ingredient.
• Meaningful Rename: Demons formally take on their classes as surnames, such as Eito Trainer, or Ella Kitchenmaster. Arthur's new surname is Teamaster.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Arthur's first impression of Karbo is "a mass of red muscles crammed into a tank-top and simple fabric pants," and Karbo lives up to that. He's a warrior capable of crushing the strongest monsters, leaping up and down cliffs, and cracking pavement every time he jumps around the city (much to the mayor's annoyance).
• Paralysis by Analysis: By the time Arthur has prepared 5 different tea blends, 7 different fruits (choose up to 3), and 6 different boba flavours, with freedom to mix and match them however you want, he's well aware that most customers will be lost in all the options, and will either stick to one that they know they like, or leave the choice up to him — thus allowing him to practise and level up skills like [Empathetic Host].
• The Perfectionist: After hours of practice to try to get all his baking and brewing just right, Arthur falls asleep and has a dream where he's succeeded, with everything running like clockwork, measured to the second, and constantly being refined for even greater efficiency. Then he wakes up panicked and sweating, realizing it was a nightmare.
  Every bit of joy Ella brought to the kitchen, every pinch of flour selected with love and thrown haphazardly into a bowl in a kind of imprecise homey magic, was absent entirely. It was cooking-as-career in a dark way, with all the soul and fun of a corporate lawyer taking a shot at making partner.
• Psychopomp: The being who greets Arthur, explains to him that he's basically dead, and discusses options for how to proceed, takes the form of a grandfatherly old man. Arthur finds his presence quite calming. The probably-not-actually-a-man assures Arthur that he isn't a god, but he does have the power to offer an alternative to "upstairs or downstairs." The message Arthur gets after making his anti-venom boba implies that he actually met with an avatar of the System.
• The Quiet One: Water-elemental demons are generally comfortable with silence, and Mizu is a girl of few words even by their standards. Pausing for seconds or even minutes during a conversation is normal for her. The first time Arthur holds a conversation with her, she greets him, mentions that he's like a smaller pink infernal, agrees that his totally average stats are odd, and tells him her name, with several pauses in between — and Rhodia informs Arthur that that's the most she's heard Mizu say to anyone.
• Reincarnate in Another World: Arthur's soul is intercepted just before it leaves his body, and after a discussion with a Psychopomp, he's incarnated in the demon world, with a body several years younger than when he died.
• Required Secondary Powers: Some part of Karbo's class allows him to nullify g-forces and land safely from great heights. Which is good, because he's strong enough to leap hundreds of metres into the air if he pushes it. He rescues the Snowed-In camping group by simply picking them up two at a time and jumping off the cliff with them.
• Savage Spiked Weapons: While most of the city drops rocks on the monster horde, Milo instead is making iron balls studded with spikes. They're intended to be thrown at individual large monsters who manage to climb the wall.
  Arthur: And that works?
  Milo: Better than rocks.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The toad demon who evaluates Arthur's medicinal tea takes five minutes just to introduce his class, then keeps talking for the next several hours as he undertakes endless tedious tests, and for good measure he speaks in a monotone. Eito actually apologizes in advance for sending Arthur to him.
• Sherlock Scan: The [Empathetic Host] skill allows Arthur to take a look at a customer and quickly zero in on what kind of drink they need.
  The big tough infernal was beyond pretending to be big and tough, and so might order something sweet. The tiny little hummingbird demon was walking like he was trying to break the cobblestones under his feet, and probably wanted something pretty bitter and plain... As people kept walking by, his brain kicked into overdrive. The beaver probably liked fruit. The stone elemental wanted drinks that were pink because she thought they were pretty. The horse only drank sweet and crunchy drinks.
• Shout-Out: The System likes to draw on Arthur's knowledge of Earth culture. The description of his Tea of the Rock-Thrower promises that "With this drink, the sore back and weak eye of the amateur David are mitigated a bit."
• The Siege: Monster waves surround the city with a seemingly endless horde, for days at a time. Fortunately, the city has a very high wall — although it still has to be actively defended, because some monsters can climb or fly. Smaller villages tend to move into the city during waves, then rebuild afterward.
• Sleep Cute: Ella finds the sight of Arthur and Mizu falling asleep on a bench together so cute that she wishes she could fetch an easel and paint a portrait. The only thing that stops her is knowing it would have been rude. Also, Mizu is much too sensitive for teasing her about it to be in good taste — but Arthur is another matter.
  Ella: It made me feel young again. Milo's father and me were like that, once.
• Slice of Life: The overall plot of the story is simply "Arthur builds a new life in a nice world." There is no great evil to defeat, the dangers of the world are already managed, and Arthur's ambitions simply revolve around happiness with new friends. The story does at times introduce subplots with somewhat higher stakes, whether it's fending off the monster wave attacking the city, or finding a treatment to help Mizu recover from a venomous bug bite, but only a limited amount of responsibility ever falls on Arthur personally. The author notes repeatedly promise that the story is and will remain "nice".
• Snowball Fight: Onna kicks things off by pelting Lily, who proves to be surprisingly good at stealth and ambushes, but without a class yet, Lily just can't compete with teens who have superhuman perception and dexterity. The two participants with combat classes, Chuck and Ern, are on another level again, and after seeing them rapid-fire snowballs at each other, Arthur suspects they're holding back with everyone else to avoid actual injuries.
• Snowed-In: Arthur's camping trip is interrupted by snow, which is great fun for an epic Snowball Fight, but then turns out to have blocked the path downhill. The group ends up being rescued by Karbo.
• Spit Take:
  • Mizu is caught mid-sip and narrowly avoids choking on her drink when Arthur asks if the demon world has seasons. (From his perspective, it's a reasonable question, since the seasons don't work quite like Earth seasons; the weather has been nearly static the whole time he has been there.)
  • Janam is trying to be delicate about how Arthur looks so different from other demons, and takes a drink to gather her thoughts. He then outright admits to looking "like a bald chimpanzee", and gets sprayed in the face as she bursts out laughing. (She's quite apologetic about it, though.)
• Status Buff: The boosts granted by Arthur's "Medicinal Brewer" skill are very small, nothing like a true alchemist could make. However, they have an unusual advantage, in that they don't clash with alchemy; they can stack with it. As a result, the city becomes very interested in what he can make. He's acknowledged as the MVP of the monster wave, after his drinks allow the city to clear out the monsters faster than expected and with no fatalities. Individually there's only a tiny improvement, but with hundreds or thousands of people each doing a little bit better, it adds up.
• Stealing from the Till: Subverted during Lily's first week of work, when she takes money from the till and disappears, then shows up half an hour later, having correctly anticipated an especially large lunch rush on the church day, and bought ice to keep the extra drinks cold.
• Support Party Member: When Arthur's tea proves to be a meaningful resource against the monster wave, the city assigns two professional assistants to help him prep. Their classes are all about helping others to be more effective, and they have long experience working in all kinds of environments, quickly turning Arthur's makeshift work area into a polished assembly line. (He does ask about hiring them longer term, but as well as being beyond his budget, they're reserved by the city as a strategic resource.)
• Supreme Chef:
  • Between her class level, skills, and hard won knowledge and experience, Ella is (according to Eito) probably the best cook in the city. She's employed as a chef, but technically that's a different type of class; instead she's a cook, because she makes food to bring people happiness rather than to impress them. As she mentions to Arthur, though, the best cooks and chefs do both. Arthur is impressed by the mere smell as he approaches their home, and that impression is only improved when he gets to taste the soup she's making.
  • Outside the city, Arthur encounters a raccoon demon who specialises exclusively in making breakfasts. He can't make anything else, but he's amazing at it, to the point where even after he's moved away, people still seek him out. The only problem with his cooking is that you're guaranteed to overeat — but "If you survive this, you're never going to forget it."
    Facing down the old man’s sardonic grin, Arthur felt like he almost had to keep eating just to show him that he wasn’t weak. Worse, all the food was perfect. It was beyond perfect. It would have been impossible to prefer any part of the meal to any other part. And it seemed to Arthur like it was all suffused through-and-through with the concept of breakfast itself, like the old man had caught the platonic ideal of hearty morning meals and pulled it down to grease the pan.
• Swords to Plowshares: As children, Milo and Spiky both wanted combat classes. As Milo grew up a bit more, though, he realised that he liked swords themselves, not the idea of using them to hurt people, and he gained a blacksmith class instead. Spiky, meanwhile, had read somewhere around a hundred books about dungeon crawling and weapons and classes, by the time he realised it was just the reading he liked; he has a librarian class.
• Talented, but Trained: System skills allow people to reach heights that would be impossible alone. But they have to be earned by first putting the work in to learn how to do things, and they work best in conjunction with mundane knowledge and experience. Arthur gains his class, but then spends six hours ruining attempts at bread, because he doesn't actually know anything about cooking or baking. Ella isn't bothered by the mess, though, assuring him that that's perfectly normal. (Once he gets a lot more practice, on the other hand, his skills are able to push his tea to heights Earth never reached.)
  Ella: You didn’t expect it to be that easy, did you? That you’d just get your class and suddenly, you have world-class skills? No, no. It’s work. Hard work. You need to figure out how to do… well, everything. To build a fire and keep it going. To use a knife. To boil water properly, for the gods’ sake. We all had to do it, once. You are just starting a bit later than some.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  • Ella hears that Mizu has forbidden Arthur to risk his life again, and mentions how much she likes Mizu. "You'd be stupid to let her go." Then she sees Arthur's wince, realises what she said, and immediately apologises. The reason Arthur went into the waterways was to make an antivenom, and without it, Mizu is likely to die.
  • Mizu doesn't own a tent for the camping trip, but Arthur has bought plenty, so he tells her, "You can use mine." Then realizes what he said could be interpreted as There Is Only One Bed, and tries to correct himself, with much stammering. Mizu blushes a deep shade of blue. Lily, meanwhile, turns purple with laughter.
• Translator Microbes: Arthur isn't sure what the System is doing to make him perceive the demons' language as English. He just knows he doesn't have any trouble communicating (except when he's working with foreign concepts, such as explaining boba tea).
• Verbal Backspace: Milo is partway through threatening to catch Arthur and return the money that Arthur paid him for his pearl-shaping machine, when he gets a System notification, rewarding him for establishing a commercial transaction with his work.
  Milo: Arthur, I'm going to catch you eventually. And you’re going to have to… Actually, never mind. I'm keeping this.
• Walking the Earth: Arthur is a little taken aback to learn that Talca doesn't really have a home, and doesn't want one, instead constantly travelling around. But Talca seems to be happy that way.
  Talca: Oh, I have a couple of places. Small ones I rent out for cheap. Extra rooms off to the side of people's houses, that kind of thing. And some family scattered around. But most of it's just places to sleep between jobs. The life's out here, on the road.
• Water Wake Up: Arthur's System vision of what a boba shop could be like is warm and comforting, watching customers talk and laugh and drink and eat as he serves and mingles with them. And then the warmth changes to ice coldness as Milo wakes him up with a bucket.
• Workaholic:
  • Arthur doesn't talk much about what work he actually did in his first life, but he did so much of it, hoping to push through to a point where things improved, that he gave himself a massive heart attack.
  • Ella has a healthier attitude; she loves her work enough that when Arthur gains a food related class, she knows she won't be able to sleep for excitement, and pulls an all nighter with him to gain his first skill. Most of the time, however, she's quite sensible about rest and recuperation.
• Wrecked Weapon: Karbo uses Milo's early effort at a dagger, in order to do Milo a favor, because having people actually use his work helps Milo level faster. Karbo and the monster he's killing, however, are both so overpowered that the dagger immediately explodes into metal splinters — which doesn't even slow Karbo down. He proceeds to beat the bull to death with just the handle, until nothing is left. (Milo is thrilled by the outcome, though.)
• You Were Trying Too Hard: The highest-level native demon (ie not counting the Bear) in history was the Goose Sage, who turned out not to even know what level he was. When asked to write about how he achieved such a high level, he responded that he had never once focused on it. He solved problems (which is how the Sage class advances) because he loved solving problems. He valued the money he was paid for solving problems, primarily because it gave him the time and freedom to solve more. He didn't pay any attention to notifications or his status screen at all, just allocated all his points to Wisdom.
  Goose Sage: If my experiences teach you nothing else, let them teach you this. The potential for growth lies in loving your work and attempting to do it better each day.

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Welcome to the wiki, kid. I’m glad to be the first to introduce you by your system name. Everyone say hello to Arthur Troper, of Earth.