Slowly heading my way back to the Inn I noticed a small a few notifications coming through

  Notifications:

  You have earnt 25 experience for making an enjoyable meal

  You have earnt 25 experience for making an enjoyable meal

  You have earnt 25 experience for making an enjoyable meal

  Well I guess lunch service has started at the Inn I had completely forgotten the leftover stew can also provide experience, would I hit Level 5 today after all?

  I rushed my way back to Inn to ensure I was there to help out if need be, heading inside I saw far more than just two people with stew in front of them, entering the kitchen I saw a smiling Geo

  "How'd you go?" he asked immediately before I could ask about the food.

  "Really good I think, spoke with Elder Peter regarding the class and he suggested I invest my points into Intelligence and Charisma, he also suggested I help out at the Medical Pavilion, both for the experience but also my healing he said could help people" I explained

  "Yeah that makes sense, your charisma is pretty abysmal, you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone to try you're food if you were running a street stall, or even at the Pavilion for that matter" Geo laughed before continuing "But honestly Trev it's a great idea I think you should do it, the issue is if Larry see's you cooking in here and taking it elsewhere he might murder someone, do you think they would let you cook at the temple once or twice a week?" he asked, "Maybe I'd have to ask the Elder"

  Thinking on it, I doubted they would have the room spare for that, however I know someone who has an overly dusty kitchen I could borrow and offer to clean up in exchange I thought to myself

  Changing topics Geo asked "have you got experience today? I have served ten or so customers so far"

  "I got three notifications on the way here" I mentioned

  "Sounds like the enjoyable part of it is more than just explanation text" Geo said before thinking for a short time "The stew is never as good the next lunch service mainly because its served with day old bread and not as hot its why we only charge a copper for lunch instead of the two for dinner" he explained

  "Oh I did not even know that" I said, after all I had never eaten here for dinner, only lunch even on my days off

  "Four venison stew please" Miccas, voice called through the door. Jumping into action I took them out to the table Micca pointed out to me On return to the kitchen it was back to business as usual today was going to be a boar meat pie, this was a dish I found to be a lot simpler in practice than I thought it would be, since it ended up just being several large dishes with diced boar meat and vegetables mixed in a gravy with a mashed tuber topping, Geo explained to me these could be made with a bread like ingredient short crust pastry and it would keep it all contained but he said with the numbers we'll be serving it would not be worth the effort.

  Once lunch service was done we had served around twenty more people of which I got nine notifications.

  "You've got to be kidding me!" I blurted out loud looking at my status

  "What is it?" Geo asked a little bit concerned with Micca poking her head in the door as well

  "I'm 3 experience points off a level!" I said clearly scorned by this turn of events, of course I'd only be 3 experience off level 5!

  "Lucky I've not had lunch yet" said Micca with a big smile on her face "I have always loved your cooking" she said

  "You've only ever had my solo cooking one other time" I retorted

  Taking her bowl along with a fresh cooked roll and leaving the kitchen I heard her saying "Exactly! Still always"

  A short time later it came through,

  Notifications:

  You have earnt 25 experience for making an enjoyable meal

  You have reached Level 5 in Arcane Chef

  You have +2 unspent stat points

  You have gained a new Ability

  You have a new Ability selection

  Wow I thought, I got 2 abilities for level 5, pulling up the selections I read over my options

  Choose from the following options:

  Clean Cut

  Skill type: Passive

  "Cut to the very soul"

  Infuse your knife with mana, allowing you to make cleaner and more precise cuts.

  Infused Flavour

  Skill type: Active

  "Never underestimate the power of good flavour"

  You actively infuse mana into your food, allowing you to bring out extra unexpected flavour!

  Handle the Heat

  Skill type: Passive

  "No need to leave the heat, You're here to stay"

  Provides a fire resistance buff for all cooking related heat.

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  Looking over these options I almost immediately took the handle the heat ability, I did pause however because it was very similar to the ability that Geo had described so it was the same as, or similar to the cooks regular ability to handle heat in the kitchen.

  However the Infuse Flavour ability was clearly an Arcane Chef unique once since I had to actively put mana into a dish to bring out flavours? but what did that actually do.

  It was a gamble if I should take the skill I know, or the unknown but I figured I'm already here on this unknown path so I may as well commit to it and selected the skill Infused Flavour

  Congratulations you have gained the ability Infused Flavour

  Congratulations you have gained the ability Chefs Pantry

  Chefs pantry? I wondered pulling up my abilities to look them over

  Basic Meal Prep

  Level: 1

  Experience: 50/100

  "Can craft basic meals at an increased pace"

  Butchery

  Level: 1

  Experience: 25/100

  "Able to identify usable parts, Increased yield from target"

  Knifework

  Level: 4

  Experience: 96/1056

  "Efficiency with a kitchen knife"

  Infused Flavour

  Level: 1

  Experience: 0/100

  "Never underestimate the power of good flavour"

  Chefs Pantry

  Level: 1

  Experience: 0/100

  "Every Chef needs a place to store the special stuff"

  I groaned audibly, "Why does every skill need to be so vague with descriptions" I asked to no one in particular forgetting Geo was still there watching me.

  "What did you get?" he asked with a gleam in his eye, "the early levels are so much fun you get all the abilities quickly before it slows right down past level 20"

  "Uh I got two abilities, one I had a choice of three the other I was given as part of levelling up" I explained "first the one I chose is infused flavour, it said I could actively infuse mana into a dish to increase the flavour, the other options were the fire resistance buff on cooking related items you explained, and the other was more precise cuts, honestly it was super vague on how it helped outside of knifework" I paused for a moment still looking at the skill I was provided without selection "and the other is called Chefs Pantry and all it has for an ingredient is that a chef needs a place to store the special stuff, but I don't know what that means?"

  Geo thought for a long while, "You're not wrong they are very vague descriptions, but as a guess, it sounds like some form of storage, a cooks pantry will always hold ingredients" Geo grabbed a tuber off a nearby counter throwing it to me "Here mentally try to store that" he said.

  I nearly dropped it not expecting to have something thrown towards me so suddenly but I did as I was instructed and mentally thought about storing the tuber, where I didn't know..

  Would you like to store 1x Common Tuber for 5 mana? Yes/No

  Mentally selecting yes the tuber vanished from my hand, I stared down at my hand shocked, even Geo's jaw opened at that.

  "It's like a bag of holding!" he said excitedly, "Uh yeah it said it cost 5 mana to store that tuber" at that Geo winced a little bit.

  "5 mana for a single item is going to get costly quickly, but we need to test this, you have mana to spare right?" he asked with a gleam in his eye as he practically dove into the cupboards pulling out a variety of different items from a pot, a bag of tubers, plates, a coin, and some rags.

  While he was doing that I was trying to see how to view what was stored in the space mentally trying to pull it up, eventually figuring it out when thinking about my Pantry Inventory with my status window open

  Chefs Pantry Contains:

  1x Common Tuber

  Well that was going to be useful I thought, I was broken out of those thoughts by Geo,

  "Right here we go, we'll start with other stuff and not the bag of tubers in case it uses all your mana" he said passing me a pot

  Would you like to store 1x Iron Pot for 5 mana? Yes/No

  again selecting yes it vanished, next I was handed the copper coin.

  Unable to store, not eligible food related item.

  "No luck on the coin" I said frowning a little, it would have certainly been nice to store my coins in a place no one could take them.

  Next Geo passed me 2 different plates and placed the rag on top of one of them, "Here try this, its a kitchen rag so who knows"

  Holding the 2 different plates and the rag I again tried to put them all in my holding space

  Would you like to store

  1x Common Small Plate

  1x Common Small Plate

  1x Kitchen Rag

  for 15 mana? Yes/No

  Selecting yes, all 3 items vanished Geo practically clapped at that "Ok finally lets try this, it has around twentyish tubers inside, but don't run your mana dry if it is going to cost to much" Geo said as I just nodded taking the bag from him

  Would you like to store 23x Common Tuber for 5 mana? Yes/No

  Selecting yes, all the tubers were gone and what remained was an empty bag "How bizarre" said Geo, taking the empty bag "did you run out of mana or something?" he asked

  "No, It only cost me 5 mana for all 23 tubers, but it cost me 5 mana per plate" I said a bit confused by it all.

  "Hmm, so it seems you can stack items of the same type for the single mana cost, those were 2 different plates so they counted as 2 separate items, alright time to pull it all back out I want to see if tuber rain down on you if you try to withdraw all 24" he said with a chuckle

  Deciding to get that embarrassment out of the way I mentally pulled up the inventory and then thought to remove all the tubers

  Would you like to remove 24x Common Tuber for 5 mana? Yes/No

  Selecting yes and flinching instinctively in case they fell down on my head I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had instead neatly piled onto the benchtop "It cost me 5 mana to pull them out as well" I said to Geo I proceeded to pull out the rest of the items which also neatly appeared in front of me.

  I was now also at 115/170 mana remembering I had gained two more intellect points from my level up.

  "And you said its an ability right?" Asked Geo, "You should look up if you gained experience for that"

  Pulling that up I saw Chefs Pantry was at 11/100 in experience "I looks like I get 1 experience every time I store and withdraw items" I said "But not for every item, the bag of tubers was 1 experience by the looks of it"

  "Right well only one thing left to test" said Geo, which had me a big confused I thought we had figured out the pantry skill now, He pointed to where the meat for the pies was cooking near the stove.

  "Try to infuse flavour into that" he said with a grin on his face

  Of course! I thought I had completely forgotten I had received another skill as well, following the instructions I went close to the pot and being unsure really what to do I just placed my hands near the stew like mixture and tried to infuse flavour into it

  Food not eligible, Not made by Arcane Chef.

  "It didn't work, it said its food not made by Arcane Chef" I said with a frown on my face, before Geo's face lit up "Oh but we still have a small bit of stew left over from last night that you made right?" he said excitedly pulling over the dregs of the lunch stew pot "Here try this" he said

  Would you like to Infuse Common Venison Stew for 50 mana? Yes/No

  Figuring it would not hurt to try, I selected yes.

  Immediately the stew started to glow, after a short time it returned to its normal colour but there was no visible changes "I think I did it?" I said confused "but it didn't mention what it actually did outside of infused it with mana" looking down at the last bits of stew to see if I could spot any difference.

  Geo came along side also looking in the pot to try and spot any difference after a short while he said,

  "Guess we try it then" before I knew it he had 2 bowls and was portioning up the last of the stew

  "Well bottoms up he said" before taking a bite, unable to read his expression I also took a bite of mine It didn't taste drastically different? Or maybe not different at all, I couldn't tell.

  "Did it do anything?" I asked, Geo took another bite "I don't taste any difference" he said before he presumably brought up his own status screen, there his eyes went wide, with no other information I opened my own but everything looked normal "did something happen?" I asked a little impatient after seeing the reaction.

  "You didn't see it?" he asked in shock.

  "See what?" I said confused pulling up my status again, "There is nothing different" I added, feeling like Geo might have been pulling a joke on me at the moment.

  "It gave me a +1 Dexterity buff" Geo said in awe, "Food doesn't give stat buffs, only potions. Expensive potions at that" he said "It doesn't say how long it lasts though"

  Geo was lost in thought for a long while before he seemed to snap out of it "Well damn we need to get Dinner prepared and fast get those pies in the oven now Trev" he said realising how late it was getting and how much time we had spent testing and messing around.

  Dinner was absolutely more hectic than normal partly due to small delays from the pie, but also because I was so distracted by the day I could hardly keep myself focused on the task, and I really needed to speak with Micca but the night did not allow us even a moment to speak.

  Especially with Larry being extra hard on her due to and I quote "Leaving me to basically die here alone" I did find it all a bit dramatic but I didn't say a word about it, well not at the Inn anyway.