Powder with the power of volcano's

"Is this the tavern you meant? it does seem pretty popular" Jonas said while standing in front of another wooden building. In this town, carpentry seemed more important then masonry as it looked like. Jonas was pretty impressed though, every house he had been in was really well insulated. It looked like the outer and inner walls had some distances between them in every house, indicating that something might be in between them for example hay, but Jonas didn't really know as he just speculated.

Before the two of them were the tavern Mendo had mentioned once on the way to Fontechia. It was the most popular in the town even though its name seemed to be unpronounceable. Jonas realized that he needed to memorize the alphabet. Luckily, the language was one of his many advantages with his memory, and although he had to train the pronunciation with his mouth over time, he could learn an alphabet with just a quick glance at what the meaning of each letter is, and as he understood everyone he had met until this point perfectly, this was something not to worry about.

Mendo didn't really talk all too much as they walked towards the tavern, well, how would he? He just heard one of the most incredible things he had ever heard. A man he just met 3 days ago was not only trying to be elected as mayor, no, he even wanted Mendo to be elected with him. But what was probably the most mind-blowing thing he had said was that he was going to bring the biggest tree in the region down... TOMORROW! how could he do such a thing in ONE day!? It seemed impossible to Mendo, but he knew one thing for sure. If this man was able to say, with confidence, that he could take down such a behemoth of a tree in just one day, he would probably already have more power then Pete. Not only that, but he seemed to be a lot more educated then Pete, who could pretty much do nothing then fight and sign papers with his name.

Both of them slowly walked into the crowded tavern, not shortly thereafter hearing singing and yelling. The atmosphere was like that of a normal party, but everything else wasn't really like anything a normal party would entail. There were two people who were coated with dirt, both of them smelling like the extremely foul stench Jonas had inhaled at the dock this noon. They were probably sulfur miners. They yelled at some other folk who didn't have the smell of sulfur on them but were clearly miners as well. The whole thing seemed to be escalating until someone stepped in and stopped the group of ruffians.

On another table, people cheerfully sang together while a few of them danced. Alcohol seemed to be no scarce thing to find as everyone drank out of their wooden grogs. The smell of sweat, sulfur, alcohol, and other unique stenches made up the air in the worn-out tavern.

A few people looked at the two of them and recognized Mendo, yelling at him that he should sit down and get a drink with them. He refused with a lot of sarcasm in his voice, clearly having his fun, while Jonas looked around for the 5 people they encountered the other day. After scanning the room, he found them in a corner, sitting at a table and laughing together. It was the same 3 men and 2 women he saw that day with Mendo, so he quickly grabbed the latter and went over to the table they were sitting at.

The first person to recognize them was the one who talked to the both of them back then, that being the man with the brown coat who was the only one in the party with an average height. Most of them were relatively short, with the exception of the women for some reason, who was slightly taller than the other two men.

The man turned around to them and instantly locked his eyes onto the right leg of Jonas while loudly saying, "Hah! found your leg again did ya hahaha!" he laughed heartily while the other two colleagues joined in the laughter. Jonas was clearly quite annoyed again, but he could read the atmosphere and quickly played it off by saying, "No no they grew back! I don't want some old leg!" He enjoyed a bit of sarcasm, even if it was at his own expense. If someone took himself to seriously, he would be an incredibly non-charismatic man. When Jonas joined in on the joke, the two women also joined in, seemingly not being able to hold themselves back. The three guys seemed to take a liking to Jonas while they said, "Of course! who would want an old leg haha! ok but back to business, you guys are here for the reward I'm guessing?" He surprisingly got out two silver looking coins out of his pouch. He handed them to Mendo and said "But don't spend it all on the booze haha! that's an endless pit my friend I daresay" He laughed again, then he offered both of them a seat beside him. Jonas and Mendo looked at each other and then quickly took the seat beside the man.

On his 5th beer, Mendo seemed to already be sleeping on the table. Jonas on the other hand only drank about 2 beers. He didn't want to have a hangover the next day as he needed to make the gunpowder and buy the saltpeter. He had even decided how much he should make. As he received one Kerks, he had about 500€ in his currency. As he already did the math, one-kilo sulfur would cost him about 4€, which was nothing to him right now as he was basically already in the upper echelon of welfare when it came to money. He was going to buy about 1.5 kg of sulfur and 10.5 kg of saltpeter. The only thing he then needed was charcoal, but he could easily get that out of the fireplace of Mendo's house.

Jonas wasn't really used to party's or get together's anymore, but he still knew how he had to behave around other people. He talked to the other people who were around the table for about an hour now, he even got to know all there names. The man he already spoke to was named Heinrich, the other two guys were named Ulf and Pend. The two women were named Sabine and Selfa.

Jonas had been pretty quiet for the last minute as he thought about the plan he had for tomorrow, but just then, the man named Heinrich jokingly asked the almost sleeping Mendo, "you wanna go and hunt some fullbears tomorrow? you had a pretty shabby looking Galver but I bet we can get you a new one with the money you made today hahaha!". Normally, Jonas would ignore what the other guys joked about with the drunk Mendo as they didn't really hurt him, but what surprised Jonas the most was the answer Mendo gave, "mmmm mmmm... I can't, tomorrow Jonas is going to bring down the big tree.... mmmmand I wanna be there then... *snore*". The other's looked at each other and then looked towards Jonas, probably expecting him to laugh, but Jonas had a different idea. This was a rather perfect opportunity for him.

"The man didn't lie, I'm going to bring that tree down, but he forgot to mention himself, he's going to help out with carrying the stuff I need".

The table went silent. Heinrich, noticing the weird atmosphere asked Jonas if he could also watch so as to look if the latter was joking. To his surprise, he wasn't and readily agreed to it. No, he rather insisted, asking them to invite anyone that would want to watch.

Then, Jonas woke up Mendo who had already slept in, and said that they were going home.

When they arrived at the house, it was already pretty dark. Jonas knocked on the door as he didn't really want to open it himself when he already had to hold Mendo up with his left arm and hold his crook with his right. The door quickly opened with a tired-looking Rife behind it. She let both of them in and helped with laying Mendo into his bed. After that, Jonas asked if they had something like a razor lying around, to which he only got a confused look. He changed his question to ask if they had a sharp knife somewhere so he could finally make himself look a bit more well kept.

At first, Rife wanted to refuse, as she didn't really want to give a stranger a knife in their house, but after thinking about it for a while, she reluctantly gave him the sharpest knife they had.

Jonas looked at his reflection in a water bucket and began with his hair. He decided that the long hair he had was annoying, so he cut the ponytail he had and threw it out the window. After that, his beard was the next target. As Jonas kind of liked the look of muttonchops, he just shaved his chin while he tried his best at making a clean line out of the rest of his beard.

After that, he went onto the sofa and slept in.

The next day, Jonas woke up early, while Mendo once again slept like a baby, although that description really didn't fit his body. Jonas got his crook, went and took the cotton bag Mendo had on when they met, which was pretty big. Then he took out a key that Mendo had given him when he arrived at his house for the first time. He needed 10.5 kg of saltpeter and 1.5 kg sulfur. He would carry the sulfur in a small basket that lay beside the door and the saltpeter in the bag.

He opened the door and went to the dock to get what he needed.

As he came back to Mendo's house, he was not only 12 kg heavier but was also a whole 12€ lighter. He had also bought a 20-meter rope that he could build the fuse out of. Sure it would be a pain in the ass to do it with only gunpowder, so he was going to put a bit of gunpowder inside of it and then do the rest via alcohol. Luckily, it had stopped snowing, so if he hurried with deploying the fuse and quickly putting the alcohol on it, it should work just fine. He needed Mendo to be the one to light the fuse as he needed to run away as soon as he lit it. he needed to get about 180 meters away from it, but that should be no problem if Jonas made the fuse a slow-burning one. He could probably stretch the time to about 1 minute. Then it would be way more time than needed and would ensure the safety of Mendo.

Now the only thing Jonas had to do was to make the gunpowder.

It took roughly speaking 1 to 2 hours for him to get the finest powder he could. Then he took another hour making the fuse. When everything was ready, he put the gunpowder into the cotton bag again. Heaving 15 kilos around while having to use a crutch wasn't easy, so he once again had to rely on Mendo for it.

What gave him the biggest headache though, was finding a way to plug the hole he was going to put the powder into. The easiest way was to use the cotton bag he already had as a first-level container, after that he would put it into the hole, then seal it with dirt and after that a thick layer of snow. If he then did that for about a meter, it was pretty much as airtight as he could get.

As he packed the rope onto to cotton bag, Mendo came home with Rife, making the timing of the both of them perfect. Mendo gave Jonas a wide, open-eyed look, as he quickly asked, "Can I use the bag and buy you a new one?". Mendo didn't know how to answer so he just nodded. He gave the bag Mendo while saying "You know where we are going now, I hope you're ready". Jonas gave a quick smile, all the while Rife just stood confused beside the two men, finally asked with a curious tone, "Where are you guys off to?".

Jonas looked at Mendo, then at Rife, and gave the cockiest reply he had given to anyone in his life up till this point.

"We're going to cut some trees".