“Trevor!”

  A voice called out from a distance away.

  “Trevor, wake up,” it called again. As I groggily raised my head, I didn’t see anyone in the room—just Crisplet in the brazier watching the door, but no Lily anymore.

  Getting out of bed, I was still fully clothed, so I stumbled my way to the door to see Liane peeking her head around the side.

  With a giant smile, she said, “Oh, good—I was worried Lily would be there and get mad.”

  “No, she’s gone at the moment. Has it been a couple of hours already?”

  I made my way to the door, Crisplet following behind me, as I walked into the hallway.

  “Yep, has not been long. Hari has asked for everyone to be at dinner tonight to discuss some stuff, but wouldn’t elaborate on what. Milo is still asleep,” she said, leading the way to the dining room.

  When I entered, Jen and Micca were both sitting at the table, and waved as I made my way to the kitchen. I wanted to cook the eel, but to cook it properly I wanted a large open flame and a couple of iron rods to flatten it out, and although I’m sure I could manage it in the oven, it wasn’t ideal.

  So instead, I decided to repeat what I made last night since I had the entire thunar left. I would add some vegetables to it, though, so I started with that. I pulled out several tubers as Crisplet took his place in the oven. I wasn’t sure what wood to use today.

  I figured I should stick to treant, as I knew Milo still had work to finish downstairs.

  I would make garlic mashed tubers, along with the foeni and herb-crusted thunar—essentially copying what I made last night before I passed out, only now I could enjoy it.

  As Hari, George, and Darren arrived from training, Liane made her way into the kitchen.

  As she took her place in the corner, “Smells really good.”

  “Thanks. It’ll mostly be the same as last night, just with some vegetables to go with it.”

  Liane chuckled. “And more people for Lily to eye off instead of my plate!”

  I was surprised when George entered the kitchen, looking around wide-eyed at everything going on.

  “Wow—you don’t realise how much goes into making the dishes,” he said, looking around. When he realised I was just looking kind of surprised he had come in,

  “Oh, sorry. I don’t know what you had planned for tomorrow, but I wanted to invite you properly to come down and train with us for a while!” he said excitedly.

  “Absolutely!” I responded.

  He left the kitchen shortly after, and Liane was the first to break the silence while I was heating up the pan to start cooking the thunar steaks.

  With a chuckle, “You realise you’re going to get your arse handed to you in the spar, right?”

  “I know!” I groaned. “But I really want to spend time with my friends. We’ll part ways soon enough, and I’ll regret it if I don’t.”

  Liane just nodded before snapping her attention to look at me.

  “Did you try the new butchery technique yet?”

  “No! But I really want to. I might do something once these are all cooked. Lily is not here, so she’ll want food at some point.”

  My mind was racing about what I could prepare. I had a lot of carcasses left to be butchered, but most of them didn’t seem very interesting.

  I could try doing one of the bears I avoided—it would be a good test, since I knew it would have taken several hours prior to the evolution.

  ***

  A short while later, everyone was sitting around the table. I had served up everyone their food; even Milo was awake and looking far better.

  I had made exactly the same as yesterday, just adding the mashed tuber and some steamed carrots with butter and salt to it, along with a wedge of lemon on each plate.

  Once everyone had finished eating, Hari got down to business.

  “Right, so I wanted to get everyone here to discuss our next steps. We’ve all been relaxing—or mostly relaxing.” His attention lingered on George and Darren.

  “But we’ll need to move on. Our ultimate goal is the capital, which is over a month’s travel away. It will also be well into winter, so I suspect our trip to slow down due to that. As it stands, we don’t have enough horses, and it won’t be possible for us to ride double that distance.”

  I raised my hand, not wanting to directly interrupt him, but I had been thinking about this exact issue.

  “Just speak, Trev—you don’t need permission here,” Hari said.

  “Sorry. Well, I had an idea about this topic. I was considering getting a wagon—that way I could make the sugar reed drink on the way, but it would also give the others a place to sit,” I began, but was interrupted by George.

  “I’d like to avoid sitting in a wagon if it’s possible.” He was visibly pale, and it took a moment before it clicked that he’d likely have some trauma from his experience in the army. I was saved by Micca.

  “You can ride the horse; I’ll pick the wagon any day.”

  Hari cleared his throat, silencing the chatter. “It’s a good idea; however, we need to consider it would be both expensive—since we’d need to buy a horse to pull it regardless—and cumbersome later when we need to move fast, not to mention it would make the trip considerably longer.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Are we really in a rush, though?” Milo asked.

  Considering it, I had an idea. “I was also thinking, maybe I could store the wagon if I consider it a food wagon? If not, we could leave it with Micca when we get to the capital. I’m sure they’ll have a use for it, and it’s not like we’ll be keeping spare horses with us anyway.”

  “That might work,” Milo said, appearing to be deep in thought. “If you consider it a food wagon, or integral for your cooking, perhaps if we get a small oven inbuilt into it—or even just chopping boards for prep—then it’s likely your skill will allow you to store it, and carrying people would be just a side thing.”

  “That’s fine, but it doesn’t change the extra travel time—bearing in mind we’ll be in the middle of winter when we get to the capital,” Hari countered.

  “We’re not in a rush anyway, and extra time will allow people to move on and the rumours of Trevor to die down?” Jen offered hopefully.

  Liane laughed openly at that. “Not a chance. At this stage, trying to hide Trev’s association with Lily will only do more harm than good—it’s better to embrace it.”

  Hari was nodding at Liane’s statement, but it was George who spoke up.

  “I personally don’t mind if it takes longer—it will give us time to train and be ready for our role in the capital.”

  Hari let out a sigh. “Okay, well—next, I think we should leave in about three days. I think that will be enough time to organise a wagon and get the customisations added to it. I suggest you all buy warm clothes while we’re here. By the time we hit Dunhearth, the snow will be starting, and by the time we hit the capital, it’ll be well and truly set in.”

  After that, everyone parted ways. Milo went back downstairs to finish off with his buff, and the others went to have baths or go to bed. It was just George and Micca left behind.

  “Thanks for everything, Trev,” George began. “It’s not an exaggeration to say I would have been dead if you didn’t show up, and I feel like I’ve been ignoring you since.”

  I waved the concern away.

  “Also, I didn’t realise how poorly we were trained!” George said, throwing his hands into the air. “Until I started training with Hari, I thought we had something good—but they taught us nothing!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a sad truth. “You’re absolutely right. Did you know at one stage I was considering trying to use my chef skills to go and kill monsters and force myself to be an adventurer that way?”

  “You what?!” Micca said, eyes wide.

  George laughed. “You’d be dead.”

  Micca didn’t say anything but looked horrified.

  “Do you miss home at all?” I asked them both.

  George quickly shook his head. “Not at all—but I never saw that place as my home. I wasn’t from Dunhearth to begin with.”

  Micca looked a bit more pained, and I quickly jumped in. “You don’t need to say anything if you don’t want to,” but I was waved off.

  “No, it’s okay. I’m torn. When my parents left, they said they’d be back, so leaving feels like I won’t be there when they return—but that was years ago, and they should have only been gone for a month at most,” Micca began, her head down.

  I had not heard the story of what had happened to her parents. Geo mentioned once he assumed they were dead, but all he knew was they went missing. Micca was lucky that friends of the family helped her out until she was old enough to survive on her own.

  Not wanting to push the heavy conversation further, I decided to change topics. “You excited about the capital?”

  Micca took the change in stride, wiping her eyes, and let out a soft chuckle. “Yes, and no—I’m excited and terrified in equal parts. I expected to start in a smaller town or city and travel around, not go straight to the capital and set up shop.”

  “I’m excited about it. I never thought I’d get to see the capital,” George said.

  ***

  Several hours passed. I ended up showing both of them several creatures I was storing, but the winning one was when I pulled out the drake’s head. George was giddy with excitement, but Micca was terrified.

  At some point I felt the presence of Lily show up, but I didn’t see her yet. It felt like the right time to call it a night and head back into the kitchen to cook something for her.

  After saying goodnight to the two of them, I made my way into the kitchen, seeing Lily lying down before the flames in the oven, with her eyes firmly on me as I entered.

  “Yeah, yeah—I don’t have anything cooked for you yet, but I will make something now,” I said, looking through my storage list for ideas. I paused on the giant rats for a moment, but it would take too long to roast the meat, I felt like. I ended up pulling out a small stack of Skywolf steaks and started to season them.

  Ensuring they had good coverage, I then made a garlic butter for them and started heating the pan.

  It didn’t take long for me to finish them all since I only had to cook these to rare for Lily. I noticed again they all earned me experience for Manaflair Crust.

  After a quick infuse, I piled them onto a plate and passed them down to Lily, who essentially ate them all in a single bite.

  Deciding to go to sleep after that, collecting Crisplet from the oven and noticed Lily had vanished again.

  I wonder where she went?

  ***

  Waking up the next morning to light streaming through the window, I got straight to it. I had a bunch of stuff I needed to get done today. I needed to collect my mould from the blacksmith, as well as get two long iron rods for the eel.

  I wanted to try the new Butchery skill as well before heading downstairs to get destroyed in training.

  Making my way to the kitchen and quickly organised myself a breakfast. No one else was there, so it was a simple affair again—toasting a roll, cooking some strips of boar belly—and, leaving with Crisplet in the brazier, I made my way out of the guild hall, which was surprisingly quiet, and started heading to the smithy.

  Once there, I was quickly shown the twenty-four-piece mould he had made, and it looked perfect!

  Each section was a small oval shape and would have made the perfect candy to place in your mouth, and they all had a perfect outer rune circle at the base.

  It was exactly what I wanted.

  After a brief chat with the man, I also got two iron rods and essentially a giant mallet to crush the sugar-reeds to make the juice later—which, to my shock, entered my pantry despite it being a weapon to most. The name that appeared also made me laugh a little.

  Would you like to store [Common] The Juicer x1 for 5 mana? Yes/No

  On my way back to the guild, I also dropped by one of the bakeries in town and purchased close to thirty dessert pastries.

  Entering the guild, I went straight to the kitchen. I was going to butcher two things: first was one of the bears; then I was also going to butcher the Obsidian Eel and get that ready for tonight.

  Once I made it to the counter, I pulled out the bear and realised on the counter it was far too high to work, so, storing it again, I pulled it out on the floor, then removed my knife and got to work.

  I noticed straight away the difference. The moment my knife made a cut in the hide, it felt wrong—like I was cutting the wrong spot. Then, as I stopped and looked at the creature, I swore items were jumping out at me: the claws, the teeth, the eyes—screaming at me to remove them first and save them as valuable.

  I followed the instinct that I had never had before. Making my cuts, I was surprised when a couple of the organs likewise jumped out at me, while others remained regular.

  I could have sworn as well that the hide was coming off easier and cleaner, like I was just gently pulling it away from the meat below, which was left in a pristine state.

  All up, it took just under an hour to finish breaking it down; the hide coming off in a single piece.

  I was shocked at how easy it was.

  Next, I pulled out the eel and got to work. Noticing the moment my knife touched the creature, it seemed to kick in, and parts stood out—like the fins, the teeth, the eyes again.

  Cleaning the eel was much faster and easier, and I was done in what felt like minutes. I also cut it down the middle, so I would have two long sections that I would thread the rods through later to cook it.

  Cleaning up around me, ensuring I didn’t leave the kitchen in a terrible state like the other night again, and made my way down to the cave. I was shocked when Liane fell in step with me as I went through the guild hall.

  “Have you been watching me the whole time?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I should say yes to make you paranoid—but no. Just got back from getting lunch, saw you, and decided I would see what you were doing,” Liane said with a smirk.

  “I’m heading downstairs to get my arse kicked in training,” I said, already regretting my choice.

  “Ooooh, I can’t miss that!” she said excitedly.

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