B5 C33: A Feast

Structure does not match any currently registered Stygian Citadel schematics. Would you like to add a schematic?

The notification didn’t come as too much of a surprise, and I quickly confirmed. The actual blueprint was in storage, but somehow doing a scan of my inventory, the system brought up a list of applicable schematics. Seeing as the list was only one long, my choice was fairly easy.

Blueprint for Transitory Hut of Restful Slumber has been consumed and added to your soul domain.

Current structure sufficiently matches Transitory Hut of Restful Slumber to apply schematic. Apply now?

One more confirmation, and the familiar construction notifications began.

You have constructed a Transitory Hut of Restful Slumber!

The quality of your building is: Standard.

…

Based on total bonuses applied from augments and construction methods, the building quality has been bumped up from Standard to Good.

Based on the building quality and materials used, additional bonuses have been granted.

Basic nightmare resistance has been enhanced to increase the likelihood of pleasant dreams. Additionally, your bed will slightly adjust to your preferred temperature.

As expected, it wasn’t some Legendary structure, capable of slaying gods, but it was exactly what I’d hoped for. Actually, with some of the upgrades, it was even better than that.

Exiting out of my mental space, I went about the rest of my day, occasionally daydreaming about other possible buildings I could add to my mind. Sleeping better was much appreciated, but it felt like I’d barely scratched the surface of what my latest skill was capable of.

That night, as I lay down on my bed, I sent my focus up to my mental space, replacing the surrounding wood paneling with the black and purple citadel walls. Walking over to my new bedroom, I lay down for the second time. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out cold.

Unexpectedly, when I finally awoke, I was still in my mental space, and it took me a moment to get my bearings. When I finally had the presence of mind to exit my mental space and return to my body, I pushed myself out of bed and stretched my arms upwards, blinking slowly.

Oh. Hell. I felt… good? 

It was hard to describe, really. With my stats, I was far past the point of waking up with caffeine headaches, stuffiness, or sore muscles. Still, I tended to need some time to wake up fully. Generally, it wasn’t until I’d taken a bath and had some breakfast that I was ready to really turn my brain on and start the day.

Today, however, I felt no such desire to delay. Maybe I’d switch to a nighttime bath person?

Regardless, I was pretty happy with the first test of my new room, although I’d have to coordinate with Verin to see how long I’d actually slept for and if it had saved me any time.

Ready to greet a new day, I rushed out the front door and began throwing spatial mana into Portal and Spatial Step. Another month had passed, and it was time to go bug Arbor again. More than usual, I had high hopes for today’s haul.

~~~~~~~~~~~`

Ages ago, I’d asked Arbor how hard it would be to make some more “out-there” ingredients for me. From what I knew about cooking, it was normal to prepare dishes that came with a host of buffs and power ups, but even at the Apprentice tier, all of my food tended to be mundane. It was possible that I needed some sort of Chef class, but I doubted it.

A quick check with Encyclopedia Verin confirmed that I was correct. I did not need a special class. According to her, a good number of food buffs came from following special recipes that acted a bit like architectural blueprints, but the system was far less strict with food than it was with buildings. If I used rare enough, mana-empowered ingredients, I had a high likelihood of cooking buffed-up food.

Perhaps I’d try to dip my toes into the whole “recipe” path too, but for now, I was focused on the ingredients themselves.

The only problem was I hadn’t had a chance to follow up on my request with Arbor. First, we got trapped in the spatial region and ran out of all our good food, forcing me to restock with basics. The next month, Arbor used all his energy healing Verin.

Since then, I’d been focusing on simple foods so that I could teach Verin how to cook. It hardly made sense to grab complicated mana-enriched plants back when she was still figuring out how to make oatmeal, after all.

At last, though, it was time. Verin was closing in on the Initiate rank of Cooking, and with our herb garden, my hunting, and the fact that only two of us were here, our produce reserves were looking excellent.

Strolling into the ancient clearing, I Jet Stepped over the moat and waltzed into the inner chamber of the heartwood. After waking Arbor up and waiting for him to form his usual elf-like form, I rubbed my hands together.

“All right. Story time first, and then let’s see what we can come up with…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

Back in the comfort of my own kitchen, I removed the new batch of ingredients, arranging them in a line on the center island. Though it was hard to pull Verin from her studio these days, I’d barely succeeded through the promise of good food. 

Rather than prepare one new dish per day, we’d decided to go on a cooking extravaganza, potentially over the course of multiple days if need be. Partly, I just thought it would be a fun bonding exercise, but it also helped that Arcane Storage could keep things fresh and warm. There wasn’t really any reason to cook each and every day when we could prepare a feast and save it for later.

Wearing a light blue apron I’d made and dyed myself, Verin stood to my side with her hair pulled up into a bun. Matching her with my own battle apron, courtesy of Suds, I took in what we were working with.

As to be expected, making mana-rich foods took a lot out of Arbor. Where he usually was able to grow dozens of different plants for me, this time, he’d only managed five. With that limit in mind, I’d focused on plants with intense flavors, knowing I’d get far more meals out of them.

Exemplifying that mindset, the first ingredient was an ugly and gnarled brown tuber. With the return of Verin’s mana sight, we could both see the uneven clumps of earth mana within.

Breath of the Flame Tortoise

+2 Wisdom

+1 Constitution

When eaten, burns away impurities in the mana body, increasing the user’s resilience to mana core injuries and granting a slight boost to mana manipulation skills.

Duration: 10 minutes

On identifying the plant, I had to wonder exactly how God’s Eye figured out an object’s name. Did the system have a single “true” name for every object in existence, or what happened if multiple groups of people had called a plant different things? In this case “breath of the flame tortoise” reminded me heavily of the names of the spells Arbor had granted me.

In any case, I wasn’t calling it that. To me, it was much simpler: magic horseradish. The flavor profile wasn’t exactly the same, and the mana gave it an extra depth to it, but it had that some sort of intense burn to it as horseradish, wasabi, or various mustard plants.

As evidenced by the secondary effect, I’d also tried hard to focus on plants that interfaced with a person’s mana, too. It was possible that they wouldn’t do anything, but I was hoping at least one of them might slightly ease Verin’s pain.

The remaining four were much the same, though with their own minor quirks.

Cloves of the Holy Saint

Earth Dragon’s Tongue

The Son of the Radiant Sun

Golden Orb of Vivification

Or more simply, garlic, ginger, lemon, and orange.

Not wanting every dish to have intense savory flavors, I’d rounded out the first three picks with the lighter citrus fruits, giving us a wide variety of options.

“All right. Quick taste test, and then we can grab everything we’ve grown.” After sampling just enough of the five to build a mental flavor profile, we split up, with Verin traveling to our indoor garden while I moved to the plants still outside.

While we’d managed to relocate a good portion of our garden indoors, there were plenty of more finicky plants that didn’t enjoy being around so much frost mana. In particular, the herbs I’d found in the more elementally charged regions had much stricter growing requirements.

Most obviously, there were all the plants I’d grabbed from the darkness region. A small pond sat next to a larger patch of black plants, along with a stubby sapling. Were it not for my darkvision, I wouldn’t have been able to see any of them, as the entire area was black as night. Using the Sightless Eye treasure I’d gained from clearing the region, I’d managed to create the plants desired conditions.

The sky region’s plants were even more peculiar, refusing to grow without a few aerial gems planted into the soil. Since then, the entire garden section had formed a thin layer of clouds along the ground, and the various stalks seemed to sprout directly from the clouds themselves.

The handful of herbs I’d found in the fire region hadn’t had time to grow much, nor did they seem to enjoy the soil around here, so I mostly left them alone. That largely left the poisonous plants, and given that Verin would be cooking with me, I would be using them extremely sparingly. 

Still, I went through each row of plants with care, occasionally pruning where necessary and harvesting whatever I thought would go well with our existing ingredients.

Hands of the Harvester activated: Your herb has been enriched with mana.

Here and there, my Herbalism bonus from Gloves of the Arcanist would activate, though most of the plants were already empowered. With my Garderner’s Gloves and my repeated casts of Vitalize on all the plants, my garden was set up for success from the get-go.

And while gardening wasn’t meant to be the start of the show today, it seemed that all of my efforts had finally paid off, too.

Gardening has reached level 10!

Congratulations! You have reached the Initiate rank in Gardening!

Based on your actions, you have been granted a new skill augment for achieving a new skill rank.

Chef’s Augment

Increases all vertical bonuses gained from cooking with herbs you’ve grown. Adds up to +5 to Cooking when using herbs from your garden.

It was a fortuitous augment given my plans for today, and I was committed to putting it to good use. A quick sweep through the remainder of the garden yielded a few new flavors to use.

Dark Pondweed

Fiddle-Head in the Clouds

Blacker-berry

Cirrus Sprout

…

In a flash, I was done, and I quickly regrouped with Verin in the kitchen. In addition to everything we’d just harvested, I also removed much of what I’d managed to forage, with mushrooms like my go-to Gnome Caps making a reappearance. At the same time, I took out a few strips of pre-cooked meats and fishes from everything I’d managed to hunt, catch, or grab from Arbor in previous months. With everything literally on the table, we underwent another round of taste testing, each note singing out to our highly perceptive tongues.

“All right, Sous Chef Verin. No need to worry about cooking too much. I can always store away any leftovers in Arcane Storage. Thoughts? What are we making?”

Here, Verin was a surprisingly good sounding board, as each of us had a very different set of advantages when it came to new recipes. On my end, I was the better cook, and I’d taken actual cooking lessons. More than that, Earth had been very interconnected, letting me try food from all around the world, whereas Sylum didn’t seem to have many culinary influences from outside the region.

Verin, of course, made up for this by having eaten the food of talented Chefs for her entire life. She had a much better idea of what one could cook with the help of the system, and she knew a wide variety of fancy dishes that I’d never heard of. Not that she completely knew how to make any of them, but trying to figure it out was part of the fun.

When we finally settled on a menu, all that was left was to launch into action. Tightening our apron straps, the two of us readied ourselves to take on our fiercest culinary battle yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Heat.

It wasn’t something I thought much about these days. Between my Heat Resistance and my second-nature use of Chill, it had been a while since the warmth of a room really meant anything to me. In fact, it wasn’t until Verin made an offhand remark about the steadily climbing temperature that I even realized that anything had changed.

With Arcane Vision’s recent upgrade allowing me to keep various vision variants toggled on, I’d been trying to slowly add in more mana types to my standard sight. Heat Sight, sadly, was still a bit too jarring to use all the time, but as I activated, I quickly discovered just how right she was. 

The kitchen was hot.

The oven was occupied. The stove was crackling away. My Noxious Gastrochemist’s Cauldron was busy sending flecks of oil flying into the air. Everywhere the eye could see, there was heat.

Knowing Verin lacked any way of cooling herself with her mana sealed, I shot off a few Chills until I could see her temperature come down to mine. With a sigh of relief, she continued to furiously chop up a few tomatoes.

For hours on end, we moved from step to step in a flurry of activity, switching between half a dozen recipes at once. It was a level of multitasking I normally wouldn’t have dared attempt, but with Arcane Storage, the exact timing of cooking became much more manageable. At any time, I could pluck a full fish from the skillet, storing it away while preserving its exact temperature.

And so, we chopped. We diced. We julienned and chiffonaded. Some herbs were ground up into fine powders, while others were mashed into pastes or left to bathe in oil. As was often the case with cooking, much of the work was in the preparation, which was doubly true when your spices didn’t come store-bought in little shakers and your meats didn’t come directly from the butcher. Most of the proper cooking was a less frantic affair, especially when it came to the few dishes we placed in the oven, requiring next to no oversight.

“Ah!” At some point, Verin cried out while we were attempting to deep fry some gryphon meat, and I worried that some of the oil had jumped out at her. Examining her more closely, it became clear her surprise was of a happier variety. “Apologies. I just hit the Initiate rank in Cooking. It appears I gained a slight boost to my skill while assisting or cooking with others. Perhaps the remainder of our dishes will turn out even better, yes?”

I felt a touch of pride on hearing I’d helped transform the utter disaster of a chef into a full-fledged Initiate, all the more so considering her augment had incorporated my presence. My own growth was nothing quite so momentous, but even with all my leveling penalties, I also managed to eke out a single level.

Cooking has reached level 24!

Quickly, it became clear that we’d bitten off more than we could chew in a single day, and with Verin’s lower Endurance, she was the first one to call it quits. There was a bit of cleaning to do, but with Arcane Storage, we were able to pick off almost exactly where we left off the day before. For three full days we labored, throwing every ounce of energy we had into our food. 

When at last the final dishes were ready and the heat in the kitchen died down, the two of us retreated to the common room and practically flopped onto the couch, too spent to even consider eating everything right away. There was a single exception to that, however.

“Lady Tess. Before we begin, I feel we ought to try ‘it’ out. If it works as desired, I could use some presently.”

Knowing exactly what she was referring to, I summoned up a pitcher filled with what was possibly the simplest thing we’d made all day. Slightly brown from the molasses we’d mixed in, the liquid sloshed about, filled with bits of pulp and ice.

Liquid Sun to Shine From Within

+2 Wisdom

+2 Endurance

Soothes all internal mana and stimulates the body’s natural resistances, decreasing the effects and durations of myriad illnesses and harmful statuses.

It was, in essence, glorified lemonade with a bit of orange mixed in. I poured us both a cup, and we quaffed them all at once, letting the icy beverage wash away our fatigue. Still, that hadn’t been what she meant, and I knew it. Refilling our cups once more, I knew it was time for the moment of truth.

Alongside the liquid sun, I summoned a second pitcher, this one filled with a much more familiar liquid, burning away my nose hairs from a distance. Ever so carefully, I tipped the container forward, splashing some of its potent contents into our cups.

Once more we drank, and the very moment we did so, our eyes went wide.

“Nothing,” Verin mumbled. “Not even a bit.”

“I’m getting a tiny bit. Probably my extra Perception. Still, it’s barely there.” More than the giant poisonous hydras, the buried desert crypts, or the ancient sentient trees, this was the most unbelievable discovery we’d made in the dungeon. At last, we’d found it. The holy grail.

A way to get drunk that didn’t taste like hell.

Tragically, it was too rare to bind to Conjure Liquid, but perhaps if I cast the spell enough times, the next augment would take care of that. Probably not, but I could hope.

Naturally, we spent some time sampling our new product, purely for scientific and culinary purposes. When our mana cores were purring in contentment and our heads were ever so gently abuzz, we pulled ourselves together to set up for our grand feast.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the end, the dining room table I’d built wasn’t nearly large enough for everything we’d made. Grabbing tables from across the house, we lined them up and draped a bandage-made tablecloth over them all, only barely managing to fit every dish we’d made atop them. With every meal out in the open at once, the aromas hit us like a physical wave, and we found ourselves deeply inhaling in unison.

“Heavenly,” Verin offered. “And I dare say they look as good as they smell.”

She was correct, although that was no thanks to me. Far more focused on taste, I’d never given the same level of attention to presentation. Ever the artist, Verin made sure to fix that this time around, and the spread in front of us might as well have been a painting straight out of her studio.

By and large, most of what we’d made fell into five broad categories.

First, the fried. With oil and flour, we had everything we needed to experiment with fried foods, and with everything we’d been through, neither of us was trying to count calories. We’d thrown just about everything into the boiling oil at some point, sometimes coated in flour, sometimes in breadcrumbs, and just as often in nothing but a few spices. Hardly limiting ourselves to meat dishes, we’d tested out everything that was remotely starchy, along with a fry dried leafy greens.

Here, I had to admit that the aesthetics weren’t anything to write home about, with most of what we’d cooked ending up some shade of beige or brown. While they didn’t particularly please our eyes, however, our ears were another matter entirely. Even a gentle touch had their crispy skins cracking in a way that had me eagerly awaiting the crunch of biting into them.

Out of all those tests, only two dishes had ended up giving bonuses, and it had taken all my willpower not to sneak a few tastes while Verin wasn’t watching. Thankfully, the system mostly seemed to base their names around my preferences rather than Arbor's, too.

Fried Garlic Wings

+1 Dexterity

+1 Constitution

Temporarily alters internal mana to have a slight healing and purification intent, enhancing all healing spells and passively rejuvenating the body.

Ginger Yucca Fries

+2 Endurance

+1 Constitution

With the built-in bonus from Hotplate Hands, all of the food would maintain its temperature until we started eating, so we felt no need to rush as we built our first plates up, choosing the choicest morsels to clog our arteries with.

Pairing with the first group, the second category was sauces and spreads. Most of our traditional dishes were flavored exactly how we wanted them to be, and it wasn’t as if we were about to drench everything under a layer of sauce. Still, especially for the fried food, it felt sacrilegious not to have some form of dips, and without butter, we needed something to accompany all our bread. Jams, jellies, flavored oils, and even some hummus all made an appearance here. Similarly to the first category, two of our creations ended up being winners in the eyes of the system.

Zesty Orange Ginger Dressing

+1 Dexterity

+1 Constitution

Fiery Horseradish Hot Sauce

+2 Constitution

Burns away a small portion of any mana-based impurities within the body or mana core. 

The third consisted of bowl foods. Soups, stews, noodles, and a few lentil dishes all made a valiant showing here, and in this category, we’d gone wild with our colors. The rich oranges of summer squashes sat side by side with the rosy pinks of beets, along with much more standard broth-based noodle soups. Sadly, none of the soups had earned the system’s recognition here, but one noodle dish had. Frankly, I thought our gazpacho deserved it more, hitting all the right spice notes for me, but in fairness, it hadn’t used much of our special ingredients, whereas our noodle dish had.

Fried Garlic Noodles

+2 Perception

+2 Luck

-1 Charisma

Fourth, the salads and other non-cooked food. While many of these dishes took the least skill to prepare, they were often the best of the bunch, really emphasizing how fresh our ingredients were. With everything stored away in my inventory from the very moment Arbor grew them until we started chopping into them, most of our vegetables had effectively been spent only a few minutes outside my storage from the time they’d been plucked.

Here, we got nothing from the system. I’d had high hopes for the two dishes I’d used the ginger in -- a herbaceous take on a tea-leaf salad and an almost disconcertingly black seaweed salad using our Dark Pondweed -- but we had no such luck.

And then, lastly, the true entrees.

As our centerpiece, we had a giant fish with a slice of lemon resting atop it. It had been a bit ambitious seeing as neither of us had ever attempted it before, but with all the salt I’d been storing away, we went for a salt bake. The exterior was fully coated in a thick layer of white, while the rest of the stone dish held sprigs of the closest rosemary and thyme substitutes I’d found.

Salt-Baked Lemon Snapper

+3 Wisdom

+2 Endurance

+1 Constitution

Temporarily enhances the liquidity of all internal mana, reducing the consequences of spell backlash and other common mana injuries.

Really leaning into the punishment, we loaded a slew of peppers into a few curries and stir fries, with one of them getting a heavy dose of horseradish, too. If I was being fully honest, I’d actually made that one just to mess with Verin. The fire variant of Arcane Choker increased my spice tolerance, so I was hoping to trick her into taking a bite by insisting it wasn’t spicy. Evidently the system approved, as my joke meal had been one of the few entrees to earn the distinction of a buff.

And then, there were the usual suspects. Scorpion dashi broths. Rabbit shish kabobs. Gryphon steaks. Verin had even goaded me into making one of her favorites, and much to my dismay, it was the final dish to get a buff, too.

Garlicky Liver and Onions

+3 Constitution

Enhances blood regeneration.

Naturally, it was more food that we had any hope of finishing today, but that was the great joy of having a storage ability. Just a few days of slaving away over the stove, and we now had months’ worth of varied meals ready at the snap of my fingers. 

I loaded my first plate dangerously high until I had to rely on my Dexterity just to keep half the food from falling to the floor, and to a lesser degree, Verin followed suit. A number of the dishes were already things she never would have touched before sundering her Etiquette, with the fried finger foods being the worst offenders. She still eyed them warily here and there, and she made a stronger effort to keep her foods from all touching one another, but by and large, she’d embraced casual dining.

And then, at last, our plates were as full as they could be, leaving us only one final task. With all the tables in the dining room occupied by our feast, the two of us retreated to the common room, ready to tuck in.

It was, in a way, a peaceful moment. All thoughts of bosses and dungeons and mana collection sites were pushed to the wayside by the many layers of wafting aromas, and the only desire I had at that moment was to take my first bite.

My fork quested downwards, spearing a piece of flaky fish. Back up to my mouth, it slowly ascended.

And then, with no warning, the room exploded with both sound and motion. 

Before I could even process what was happening, I was on my feet, summoning my armor. A great snapping, cracking, crash filled the air as the front door split in two. The halves, now freed from the door frame, came rushing towards us before clattering to the floor.

For a moment, I thought it was some beast. Perhaps a boss that had escaped its region. When the dust settled and I caught sight of the figure looming in the doorway, however, all the tension fled my body, and I dismissed my armor.

The newcomer, ever regal, holy, and devout, opened her mouth as if in prayer.

“Damn! That was satisfying. Sorry about the door, but I’ve always wanted to do that. Also, since when did we have a house? Maybe not the point. I’m back!”