"Huh...I guess this quiet village is more of a tourist-y destination than I had anticipated. Are panda monsters just popular with people?"
The night prior, Jordie had asked George if there were any place he could exchange some of the herbs and random ingredients he picked up in the forest for money. George had immediately recommended Jordie to the main commerce area of the village: the Bamboo Bazaar.
Due to Golden Bamboo Village being located in the middle of a trade route between major cities, a lot of merchants and travelers would stop by the place to either rest up, buy some village exclusive products or just play with all the panda monsters.
"Hopefully at least one person here is willing to buy my stuff," Jordie muttered to himself as he eyed the colorful wagons being pulled by all manner of monsters.
Judging from the varying colors, designs styles and emblems, alot of these wagons were foreign traders making one last stop before the big city. That's what Jordie guessed at least.
From what he could see so far though, none of the wagons present would probably be interested in his stuff.
He saw merchants with giant spiders selling textile goods,merchants selling exotic spices and ingredients, there were merchants selling metallic goods ranging from silver mirrors to copper dishes out of the back giant fire turtles and even he saw a guy selling habitat disks and monsters. That latter merchant Jordie decided to keep in mind for later, once he got some money.
"Who knew it was this hard to make money as a...am I an adventurer or a traveller?," Jordie mused. As he mulled over this thought, he began to feel the bundle of joy riding his backpack start to stir.
The sound of a baby hungry minotaur soon surrounded him.
"Moo-waaah!"
"Yeah...right now I'm a parent."
Jordie made his way over to what appeared to be the bazaars' common area and quickly took a seat. Once he was settled in, he carefully took Minos out of his baby carrier and prepared to feed him.
"Too bad we couldn't bring Bessie into the village," Jordie told Minos as he pulled a bottle of freshly squeezed khalkotauroi milk out of his pack along side a baby bottle that the restaurant gave him last night as a complementary gift. "I really need to get my hands on one of those habitat disks, fast."
Jordie popped open the lid to the bottle of khalkotauroi milk and began to transfer it's contents into the smaller baby bottle.
As he poured, the subtle scent of spicy cinnamon tickled his nose and began to diffuse into the air. While most people in the bazaar ignored it or couldn't notice due to all the other spices floating in the air, one person stopped in their tracks.
"Hmm? This scent..."
Jordie had finished preparing Minos' baby bottle and was about to give it to the little guy. "Okay Minos, bottoms up." Until a robed weirdo surprised him from behind.
"Excuse me!"
"Bah!," Jordie exclaimed as he fumbled with the bottle for a moment. He managed to catch it before it could fall to the ground.
"Phew. Do you-gah!"
"I don't mean to be rude, but is that fresh khalkotauroi milk in your hands?"
Before Jordie could release a sigh of relief, a bespectacled girl with a round eyes suddenly shoved her face into Jordie's personal space. Under any under circumstances, she'd be considered cute looking.
"Uhh..."
"I ask again, is that khalkotauroi milk?"
"Yeah? Why do you-hey!"
The strange bespectacled girl immediately took the big bottle of khalkotauroi milk that Jordie had just put down and began to inspect like how a jeweler inspects a diamond with her back towards Jordie.
As for the little baby bottle, Minos had grown a bit impatient about being fed and had actively grabbed the bottle from Jordie's waiting hand. Jordie didn't notice this because his attention was elsewhere.
Things got even weirder for him when the girl began to sniff the bottle with unusual vigor.
"Hmmm," the bespectacled girl hummed. "Slight hints of cinnamon and chili, the faint aroma of rainbow grasses and honeysuckle..."
The bespectacled girl poured a small droplet of milk onto her finger and tasted it.
"And the slight taste of heartbreak, relief and motherhood! This is exquisite milk!," she suddenly exclaimed with a smile. Without dropping a beat, she quickly corked the bottle and turned to Jordie, a manic passionate look in her eyes.
"Tell me! Where did you get such fine milk? Can you get more? How much are you willing to sell a bottle of it for?"
"I, wait, pay? You want to buy milk off me?"
"Of course!," the bespectacled girl said with conviction, "For you see, I am the great Marianne Goodfort! The greatest cheese maker and tyromancer(in-training) in the world!"
For dramatic emphasis, Marianne had commandeered an empty table and dramatically posed on it, her finger pointing straight upward. Jordie couldn't help but look on in shock, awe and pure WTFness.
"Uh...System? What's a tyromancer?," Jordie mentally asked the System.
A quick blurb of text soon appeared within his mind's eye. Apparently the System didn't want to verbally explain what tyromancy was.
[A tyromancer is a person trained in the art of tyromancy, a form of divination that is done by observing the formation of curds as the cheese coagulates. Depending on what additional features developed on the cheese, certain details of the future, love and finance could be determined.]
"..."
How is this a thing?!, Jordie thought as the image of a fortuneteller stirring a pot of bubbly yellow cheese appeared in his head.
Unaware of Jordie's internal monologue or wandering thoughts, Marianne proceeded to get off of the table like it was the most normal thing in the world for her and got back to invading Jordie's personal space.
"So how much do you want to trade that bottle for?"
"Brap! Moo!" Without a single care in the world or caring about Marianne's presence, Minos began to wave his little bottle.