The curious dwarf took the first sip of beer, and the rest was history.
His excited shout and relieved exhale upon drinking this mysterious cold beverage garnered a couple more curious dwarves to approach Baldrick’s table.
Of course, Baldrick didn’t hesitate to give them a free taste of beer. And as expected, those dwarves immediately became enamored with the refreshing taste of the alcoholic drink.
Since these dwarves were used to much more potent drinks like ale, they all treated beer as if it were water in a desert. This made them extremely prone to becoming addicted to beer.
They wanted to drown themselves in it, clamoring for Baldrick to give them another bottle.
“Brother! This Reborn Beer is amazing! I’ll give you a full crate of pure steel for a crate of this beer!”
“Me too, brother! I’m willing to part ways with a handful of full-clarity gems for ten crates of Reborn Beer!”
As they shouted their requests, this drew more and more dwarves in to look at all the commotion happening at Baldrick’s table.
At this point, he was the only vendor in the black market where his customers were the ones shouting to buy his products. All the other dwarves shouted at the customers just to get their attention on what they were selling. But not Baldrick. The customers were the ones doing all the marketing for him.
It was like a virus that spread among the dwarves. Each of them was lured in by curiosity, and Baldrick satisfied it by giving them all a free taste of beer. And once they got a taste of this cold beer down their throats, they too got caught up in the frenzy to buy as much beer as they could.
This type of tactic was taught by Michael. He suggested to Baldrick to give his customers a free bottle of beer, which might seem too much, but it worked in getting the dwarves to buy a whole crate for themselves.
“I’ll buy your whole stock!” said one dwarf.
“That’s unfair! I’m fine if I just get a hundred crates of bottles for myself.”
“Hey! I got here first. If anything, I should be the first one to buy out the whole booth!”
The dwarves were in uproar, bargaining higher and higher prices for the beer without even Baldrick saying anything about its price.
“Brothers!” Baldrick finally spoke up. “We are willing to trade beer for any metal or precious trinkets that you can offer. However, we are prioritizing deals that are made in one currency: Damascus Steel.”
Upon saying those words, the dwarves went silent.
“I have it! I can give you a kilo for each crate!”
“Me too! I can give you a hundred kilos of Damascus steel right now!”
“Wait! Can I reserve crates for myself? I have a lot of Damascus steel in stock, but it’s on my forge!”
Baldrick smiled as he saw this. Finally, the Reborn Beer was in business!
…
…
…
In a matter of a few hours, Baldrick’s entire stock was cleaned out by various buyers.
Michael had him implement a 10-crate limit for each dwarf, meaning they couldn’t buy in bulk and let the other dwarves have a chance to buy it for themselves.
Michael knew that the spread of Reborn Beer hinged on word of mouth. If only a small number of dwarves had their hands on Reborn Beer, it wouldn’t spread quite as fast as they wanted it to.
And just as Michael predicted, the first night after Reborn Beer was sold in the black market, the taverns began stocking their shelves with this new product.
“Say, good brother. What is that new product you have there? That doesn’t look like ale…” a dwarf asked, leaning over the table to point at the conspicuous bottle of beer displayed among the best ales in their stock.
One of his friends turned to look at the bottle and recognized the name stamped on the front. “Wait a minute… Reborn Beer? I think I’ve heard that before.”
“What is it?”
“I heard that this alcohol is making waves all over the dwarven community! It’s a hot topic right now. I’ve heard that even royals want a piece for themselves.”
The dwarf, upon hearing this, couldn’t help but want to satisfy his curiosity. “If even those picky dwarves like it, then I want to see what it tastes like!”
The dwarf bought the bottle, took a sip, and was addicted in one go.
“Bartender! Where can I get more of this beer? This is a revelation!”
The bartender dwarf looked suspiciously around him as if he didn’t want others to hear his next words.
“Rumor is,” the bartender whispered. “You can get all the beer you want if you travel to the Parched Lands and seek out the paradise within it. That’s not all, I heard there’s…”
The dwarves listening to the bartender’s story couldn’t help but gasp at the insane stories about this supposed village in the middle of the desert.
“I’ve only heard about this because I have a friend who went to the village himself. And after he returned here, he praised it to no end. He’s not even the first eye-witness to come forward with commendations for this village,” the bartender added.
The dwarven friend group all looked at each other, with their eyes showing their intent to visit this magical place.
And so, that was how Reborn got slowly filled with more and more dwarves either permanently moving to the village, or just visiting it for a good time.
Meanwhile, Baldrick finally returned to the village, with the automobiles filled with carts and carts of a mysterious silver and black metal called Damascus steel.
This was perhaps the first time someone was able to smuggle this much Damascus steel out of the Dwarven Kingdom. And it all landed in the pockets of a ten-year-old child with a penchant for making strange inventions.
“This is all the steel I’ve gathered, boss!” Baldrick said, presenting the Damascus to Michael.
“Good, thank you for your work!” Michael complimented the dwarf. “Now, it’s my turn to make good use of this…”