"Are you sure this is going to work, Son?" Anna couldn't help wondering, looking at the large pot of boiling lych tree sap in front of her.
"I don't know," shrugging his shoulders, Lucas replied, "and even if it does, considering how much this sap has been reduced already, my current method of collecting it is definitely insufficient."
It had been about half-a-month since Eris' birthday party, and just as he had expected, Lucas received daily requests for ice cream from just about everyone he ran into.
Even Farah, the taciturn butcher, had seemingly fallen deeply in love with the sweet, cool, creamy flavour.
Of course, as a powerful and dignified Cultivator in the Spirit Initiate Realm, Farah hadn't openly pestered Lucas about his latest invention, but she had subtly inquired about if he was planning to make more ice cream in the near future, even offering the use of her own freezer room if that would help.
The interest in ice cream even exceeded that of Lucas' soap, which made him not know whether to laugh out loud or shake his head wryly. On top of that, after the party had ended, the guests who had been present quickly spread the word about the frozen treat, causing many who weren't present to also become curious about ice cream.
At first, Lucas wasn't planning on making a business out of his ice cream as his soap was already hugely profitable, but with the constant nagging coming from all around him, he began to reconsider.
Unfortunately, there was simply no way for Lucas to sell his ice cream using his current recipe because honey was too rare and too expensive. If he wanted to mass produce ice cream at an affordable price, he needed to find another sweetener.
He needed sugar.
As such, 5 days after Eris' party, during which time he received no fewer than 300 requests for ice cream, Lucas decided to set aside his work on increasing soap production for the moment and test out his idea of harvesting sugar from lych trees.
The only problem was, Lucas had no clue where to start. His new memories contained information about maple syrup, which came from boiling down the sap of maple trees, but how exactly one went about doing that was a complete blank.
Unable to come up with any good ideas of his own, Lucas figured the best thing to do was ask around.
The first ones he talked to were naturally Anna, Sasha, Drake, and Charles, but unlike in times past, none of them had any suggestions for him.
Having struck out with the adults closest to him, Lucas began searching further afield, asking all the best cooks, bakers, and butchers in town. It was only after exhausting all the professionals who dealt with food that Lucas realized he had been going about this wrong from the start.
Lucas' thoughts on the matter had been too simple. True, he wanted to make something edible, a food product so to speak, but the process he was trying to uncover had nothing to do with making food.
Adjusting his thinking, Lucas' next stop was the town's craftsmen, starting with the carpenters.
This time, Lucas met with some small success. These dedicated woodworkers indeed knew a thing or two about how to remove sap from wood through methods such as steaming planks or sun-drying them for long periods of time. Unfortunately, none of them knew anything about extracting sap from still living trees.
Troubled by failure again, Lucas had no choice but to expand his search further, talking to anyone and everyone he could around Redwood Town.
Fortunately, his persistence paid off as he finally ran into someone who provided him a useful suggestion.
An old hunter named Austin was one of the few residents in Redwood Town who regularly ventured far into the Great Western Forest, spending days deep in the woods, searching for rare beasts and valuable herbs.
Before he settled in Redwood Town, Austin had served in the kingdom's army as a scout, so his wilderness survival skills were quite extensive.
However, Old Austin had a notoriously bad temper and was very anti-social, probably one of the reasons he spent so much time in the forest instead of in town. So, when Lucas asked the grumpy hunter how to extract sap, he was quite surprised when the grouch directly told him to drive a large, long nail into the trunk of a tree, then hang a bucket from it and wait a day or two.
Apparently, this was a method used by some hunters and scouts who got lost to obtain water in desperate circumstances.
Lucas was dumbfounded by how cooperative Hunter Austin was with him, until the old man directly demanded a bar of soap as compensation, one that had no floral scent. It seemed that Lucas' miracle cleaning product was incredibly useful to the old man when he was out hunting.
Understanding what was going on, Lucas agreed to make a few bars of soap for the old man and deliver them to him next month.
Nodding gruffly, Old Austin then shooed Lucas out of his house without any further discussion.
Whether this method would work or not, Lucas had no idea, but since he had no other avenues to explore, he decided to try it out.
Collecting a few big nails and buckets from his father, Lucas set out together with his mom to the edge of the Great Western Forest where the pair proceeded to find 5 very large, very tall lych trees.
The nails, roughly half-centimetre in diameter and nearly 10 centimetres long, were easily driven into the tree trunks by Anna before Lucas hung small metal buckets from them.
After hanging up the buckets, Lucas draped a cloth overtop each one to try to stop bugs and leaves from getting inside as well as to prevent evaporation.
The next day, when Lucas and Anna went to check out the buckets, they found that although there was some sap inside of each of them, there wasn't much. Old Austin's method seemed to work, but it was much slower than Lucas had anticipated.
For the next 2 days, the amount of sap inside the buckets increased only marginally, leaving Lucas a bit discouraged; but, when he returned on the third day, he was pleasantly surprised to find that a large quantity of liquid had somehow accumulated overnight.
Lucas had no idea what was going on, or why this extraction method suddenly seemed to work much better today. The only thing he could think of was that the night before, it had gotten much colder than normal.
If this was the secret, though, then there was nothing Lucas could really do about it. According to his inherited memories, accurately predicting or even controlling the weather to a certain extent was possible in the other world, but it certainly wasn't an option for him.
Still, Lucas figured if he set up enough buckets and then just waited for cold days, it would somehow all work out.
In any case, he had to test out if making syrup and sugar was even viable first before thinking of ways to improve his harvesting technique.
Emptying the buckets into a small barrel, Anna and Lucas returned home and began the process of filtering out the dirt, leaves, and bugs that had gotten into it. This was done by passing the sap through a makeshift filter Lucas had created by thoroughly washing and fraying a clump of wool from one of the Spotted Sheep farmers in town.
Once he was satisfied that all the extraneous bits had been removed, Lucas was left with about 8 litres of sap, all of which he poured into a big pot and then began boiling, and boiling, and boiling…
It was because this boiling process was taking so long, with Lucas having added firewood to the stove twice already, that his mother Anna had begun questioning if this was even possible.
Lucas wasn't certain either. The sap had been reduced by 90% already, yet it was still basically a clear, watery substance that looked little different from when he started.
Pursing his lips, Lucas ran and got a long spoon before dipping it into the boiling liquid. Scooping out a small sample, the young boy blew on it several times before popping it into his mouth.
Having already confirmed with Herbalist Erwin a few days ago that there was nothing harmful in the raw sap of the lych tree, and having tasted it herself after they filtered it, Anna just stood by and watched, figuring the worst that could happen would be Lucas getting an upset stomach.
As soon as the concentrated sap hit Lucas' tongue, however, his eyes lit up before narrowing in pleasure.
Seeing this reaction, Anna raised a brow before grabbing her own spoon and taking a sample.
Upon tasting the boiled sap, Anna's eyes also flashed with surprise before she nodded approvingly. Not only was this liquid much thicker than before, it was also quite sweet.
There was a unique flavour to it as well that Anna couldn't describe; it wasn't fruity or nutty, nor with is potent or overpowering. It was a completely new taste for her, but it was still extremely delicious.
Exchanging a glance, the mother and son both smiled widely, spoons still in their mouths as they savoured the smooth, sweet aftertaste.
"If its this sweet, and tastes this good already, then I can't wait to see what it's like once it's fully reduced!" Lucas cheered, extremely happy with the new commodity he had just obtained.
"Indeed," Anna agreed, "This is simply revolutionary! It won't be easy to produce a lot of it, and it certainly takes a lot of firewood to reduce it enough, but even taking that into consideration, it'll be at least 10 times cheaper to acquire than honey!"
"En en!" Lucas nodded vigorously, "With this, I can finally make enough ice cream to get everyone to stop bugging me about it!"
"Hahaha," Anna couldn't help laughing when she heard her son say this.
As Lucas' mother, she too had been getting a not-insignificant number of requests for the frozen dessert her son and best friend Sasha had debuted recently, especially from her little student Eris who seemed unable to forget that luscious, creamy treat.
Anna didn't blame everyone, though, as she too had been quite shocked when she finally got to taste the ice cream Sasha and Lucas had made for Eris' birthday. She even got into a bit of a fight with the two of them during the party's cleanup for excluding her from the dessert's creation process.
Although both Lucas and Sasha had scoffed at this notion in their heads, they kept their thoughts to themselves. Anna had no talent in cooking, so what was she supposed to contribute? Still, neither Lucas nor Sasha wanted a new bump on their heads, so they just waved Anna off casually, saying things like 'too many cooks spoil the meal' and 'there was nothing they needed help with'.
The point was that everyone loved ice cream, but it was impossible to make a lot of it given how expensive honey was. Lucas' new lych tree sugar was about to solve that problem, but it was much more than just that.
"This will be useful for so much more than just making ice cream, Lucas," Anna commented after she had regained her composure.
"You're right, Mom," Lucas concurred. "There are so many more dishes that can be made now that we'll have lots of sugar!"
Shaking her head wryly at the glutinous thoughts of her son, Anna explained further, "It's not just about making new dishes, Son."
Turning to his mother, Lucas tilted his head in confusion, wondering what she was talking about. The whole reason he had been trying to make lych syrup and lych sugar was to replace the expensive honey…
"Right!" Lucas suddenly understood. Honey was very expensive, and the supply was never steady as it relied mostly on foraging, but lych trees? They were everywhere! The market potential for lych tree sugar was practically limitless, and selling it would be significantly simpler than selling soap!
Certainly, once people used soap, most would fall in love with it and want to repeatedly buy it, but it still required some effort to sell as it was a novel product. Lucas had to create demand for his bar soap, which meant expending time and money advertising and marketing it.
Honey, on the other hand, was something that most people had tasted at least once or twice in their life and was always in high demand. If he brought jars of lych syrup to any marketplace and sold it as an alternative to honey for half the price, people would literally swam him to buy it and he would still rake in massive profits!