253: Encounter
Watching the pot boil slowly, I decided to check my status. It had been some time since I cleared off the notifications. I’d noticed it had slowed down a little from the rush at the start, but I still had over a hundred enjoyable meals and even more combat notifications.
Curiously, however, the system was now actually shortening the listings rather than individually listing them, so I wondered what had caused that change? Or if it was just reaching a certain threshold.
Notification:
You have earned 11600 experience for 116 buffs used in combat.
You have earned 2550 experience for making 102 enjoyable meals.
You have earned 3200 bonus experience for healing 62 individuals with your meal.
…
You have reached Level 34 in Arcane Chef
You have +2 unspent stat points
I did panic when I remembered my skill quest required me to buff twenty-five meals, and I felt despair when I saw it had reset back to zero after tonight’s meal.
“You alright, Trev? You look like something bad happened,” Jen asked.
Letting out a sigh, “I ruined the skill quest by not buffing all of tonight’s food.”
Jen waved it off. “That’s not a problem. You’ll get it done before long.”
“The problem is, I really wanted to have that special dish as part of the twenty-five, see if it would influence the results,” I said.
I was hoping they’d understand what I meant by special dish. I didn’t want to mention the permanent stats out loud, even if Gilain had left the room. I don’t know how good his hearing would be.
“Ah, that is problematic. I wonder if it might be wise to cook twenty-five meals, have them all in storage, and just go through infusing each one in one sitting? Then you can control what you’re infusing and include some rarer meals?” Milo suggested.
Sitting back, I noticed Crisplet was looking towards the door, so I reached out to him with my own mana to try to figure out what he was after.
I got back a strong sense of curiosity and pride.
It was then that I put together what Crisplet wanted. “You want to go outside now? You’d be able to join the others in training, I imagine, but just be careful around Gilain, okay?” I said, getting a large burst of sparks in response.
Not even a moment later, Crisplet was heading outside, where I heard a huff from Lily.
Looking down, I saw her looking out but still lying on the ground next to me, half wrapped around me.
“You can head out as well if you like? I’ll leave the armour on along with the scarf so you can see what’s happening and come back if needed,” I said, looking down at her.
I knew she’d just be grumpy because she’d not been able to do anything for herself today, being at my side for the entire day, but this seemed to be enough, because after another look towards the door, she jumped into a shadow and was gone.
Not wanting to do anything crazy now that Crisplet and Lily were gone, I tried to work out some food combinations that would help me maximise certain buffs. I really wanted to create something that Jen and Liane would appreciate, more so Jen, since Liane had several that boosted poisons and stealth by now.
In my notebook, I listed all the dishes I knew that had dexterity, from rabbits, voidscale hares, li-kye, bark vipers, but it looked like galvonson was the largest dexterity increase.
“We need more bark vipers,” I muttered.
Milo looked up from his own notes. “What was that?”
“Oh, nothing. I’m trying to work out a more potent dexterity food, and I need more bark vipers. They are easy to stock reduce, but really anything fast that might provide dexterity would be nice,” I explained.
Milo pointed towards the boiling pot. “You’ll probably find the Chironid is dexterity based. Its speed is its key feature.”
“I wonder if there is a reason we get so much strength and endurance based food compared to dexterity?” I questioned, mostly to myself.
“Of course. Creatures with high dexterity are either ambush creatures or excellent at escaping with their speed, while the ones with strength and brawn are more likely to stand and fight,” Jen said from the side.
Liane let out a groan. “We need more poisons.”
Shaking my head, “I can’t help you with that. I’d purify them all.”
“Why didn’t you restock in the capital? You had so much time,” Jen said, confused.
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Milo laughed. “Because she was too busy following Trev, trying to steal food.”
Liane just let out a groan.
Turning to Jen and Liane, “If you’re out hunting at all and see anything fast, even if it’s small, any chance you could get it for me?”
They both nodded. For the rest of the night, I was making notes and trying to brainstorm ideas. In the end, what I came up with was to make a galvonson cutlet, with quick root powder and blood owl beak powder, infuse a bark viper into it, and what I was curious about was the wood in my storage, the mystery bowyer blend.
I didn’t know specifically that it would give dexterity, but I felt like there was a good chance given the name. I’d also be able to use dominant flavour on it and push the dexterity further.
“When is the next village or town?” I asked.
I was hopeful that maybe I’d get a moment to cook there without prying eyes.
“We will hit a tiny village tomorrow. It sits on the edge of this forest, but I don’t know if we’ll stay or move straight past it. Then we’ll get to the next town in two days,” Milo explained.
***
The next morning, after serving a very basic porridge for breakfast, I checked the pot with Chironid meat. It got moved to the side so it wouldn’t boil all the water away and instead was on a slow simmer for the entire night.
Gilain, who got a little closer, keeping his distance still now with Lily’s return.
“That’s looking good. You’ll want to skim off all the fat on top, and on our next stop you’ll want to take all the meat and bones out of the water and discard them,” he said.
“Throw it away?” I asked, confused.
He nodded. “It’ll be no good for anything now. All the flavour will be in the water.”
Shrugging, I skimmed off all the fat on top before storing it away for the day.
Once we were back on the road, Hari had Gilain at the front, so Lily was far more relaxed at the back, which was good, as it also gave me the opportunity to use my foraging ability while we were still in the forest. There was new growth seemingly everywhere, as all across the ground and even the road we were riding on, saplings and plants were growing.
Several times I saw what must have been lemon tea grass growing along the road, but it was all so small that it wasn’t worth stopping for.
“It’s a pity. If we came in a couple of weeks, this would be all full of growth. I can see it all glowing and starting to come up,” I said.
“That’s alright. This is only a small patch of forest, remember. We’ll be going along the edge of the dark forest for quite a while, and if this is all growing here, I imagine there will be some thick growth happening there,” Jen explained.
It was only a couple of hours into our ride when Jen let out a whistle, which caused everyone to go on edge, as she appeared to be watching something behind us. Luis already had his hand on his sword, while the ground beneath the caravan had already solidified as it appeared Milo was controlling the stone there.
The caravan slowly came to a halt, and other than coming around the side to get a better view, everyone stayed roughly in their positions except for Liane, who had already vanished into the trees. Her decoy was on the horse, but I was noticing the difference. There was a lifeless look in the eyes, as if they had lost their gleam.
It didn’t take long before I saw what Jen was warning everyone about, as a group of four approached us on horseback, rapidly gaining. However, they appeared to stop suddenly too.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“It’s possible they just felt all the auras,” Milo said.
One of the riders slowly started to approach, calling out from a distance.
“Hello! We’re from the Adventurer’s Guild. Just looking to pass,” the man said, clearly still trying to keep his distance.
Milo just waved him forward, where he slowly approached, while the rest of his group had not moved yet.
Milo let out a laugh as the man got closer. “Sorry, I meant you’re good to pass.”
The man seemed surprised by this and waved his companions towards him.
“Sorry about that. We thought you might be transporting royalty or something. The caravan is so armed, we didn’t want to get too close,” he awkwardly laughed.
Milo smiled. “Just a regular merchant escort, I’m afraid.”
“Sure, sure. The name is Brisc. We’re just heading up to the Pinch,” he said as his party slowly approached.
I leaned toward Jen. “The Pinch?”
“It’s the nickname for the town past the village because it’s in the middle of three separate forests, and it had some silly name like the Tall Grove, but everyone calls it the Pinch,” Jen whispered.
As the group approached, I noticed they had an interesting group setup, with there being a strange mix of individuals. Going by their weapons, they had the leader who appeared to have a long sword, while two others in the group were wielding sword and shield, with the fourth member being a mage of some kind, just going by the robes, though he almost appeared shabby, especially compared to Milo.
Again curiosity got the better of me, as I said to Jen, “Three swordsmen in one group is not ideal, right?”
I likely should have expected the leader to be able to hear me. He was the one who answered me. “It’s not normal. We had a specific job to clean up a lot of small creatures. It’s not our usual party.”
Feeling embarrassed, I muttered, “Thanks.”
The group passed, and I couldn’t help but notice the mage’s eyes kept lingering on the group, while the others appeared to be trying to avoid eye contact, especially as they came past Lily, who had not been hiding away at all.
Milo even seemed to do a double take seeing him, but shook his head.
I couldn’t help but let out a laugh as I caught sight of Crisplet at the front of the caravan, who was currently using his crown, and the full draconic fire was coursing through him, but this didn’t just get a side glance from the mage. He stopped, staring at Crisplet.
“Altin, come on. Move it,” the leader Brisc said.
It was loud enough that I could hear it, but it was clearly trying not to draw attention to himself.
Once they were gone, I couldn’t help but say, “That was rather odd.”
Milo snorted out a laugh. “Not as odd as you think. He’s not wrong. This caravan is not normal, and even though Gilain and Lily are holding their auras back, approaching this would be unmistakable. If we were approaching a caravan this heavily armed, we’d also be discussing if it’s easier to go around the long way somehow.”
The rest of the journey was uneventful. In the end, I didn’t find anything by the side of the road I felt was worth foraging. Plenty of things were growing, and there were the odd items I could spot deeper in the forest, but nothing was bright enough to leave the caravan over.
By early afternoon, the forest started to thin out, and I got my first sight of the small village we’d be passing.
However, immediately I felt like something was wrong with it. Even from here, the small wooden fence that encircled it appeared to be falling apart, or broken down, and there was no smoke from any hut, no life on the streets.
It seemed abandoned, except for the four adventurers who appeared to be waiting near the gate.
From the side, I heard Milo mutter, “Be ready for anything. Something doesn’t seem right here.”