CWD: GA ~ Thirty-Five

Nacho was kicking himself. He’d had the perfect opportunity when Hogan and Whitney had been alone with him, since Crave and his knockout feather hadn’t been present. However, taking on both bruisers at the same time wouldn’t be easy—especially with the chains on his ankle.

He’d have to play the long game.

Until then, he had the chicken-bats to prepare. The creatures were a mishmash of poultry and flying mammal, with fur instead of feathers, and fighting talons a rooster would have been proud of. Their faces were a nightmare of huge dark eyes and golden beaks edged with razor-sharp metal, accented by a red wattle underneath; that was their actual weak point, though he wasn’t going to tell anyone for now. Each was about the size of a medium dog, which meant they produced a whole lotta meat.

These things attacked in swarms of all ages and levels, so Nacho had a large variety of carcasses to work with. A few were even level three creatures, granting him six credits for each portion. He worked tirelessly to drain away the Putrid Mana, collect his credits—a fact he’d never tell Crave about—and then start on prep. In a flash of inspiration, he decided to save the fat because he had plans to make a deep-fat fryer if the worst came to pass and he ended up with the guild permanently.

Then again… that wouldn’t happen under any circumstances. If Hogan, Whitney, and Red Suzy Blacke ended up killing his friends, Nacho would kill them right back. He kept checking his Stat Sheet obsessively to make sure The Dinner Party hadn’t lost any members. “Within range, and not dead. Good start. Keep at it.”

At first, it was easy to get caught up in the cooking. He was making biscuits for the first time, and he would’ve thought that the quick breads would’ve been fairly easy. Nope; there was a definite art to them that he didn’t understand in the slightest. He ended up making several rounds of tasteless hockey pucks, which he chowed down on to keep his Hunger levels up.

Then he remembered that a lot of people had used cans of premade buttery biscuits, the paper-roll kind that had to be smacked on a counter and produced the satisfying *pop* as they opened. He contemplated buying some from the Store and trying to pass them off as his own work, but they would’ve been terrible. It was all too easy to know when something was from the abyssal Store.

Once he had hacked up the chicken-bats with a dull knife, he pan-fried the meat in a little vegetable oil, though bacon grease would've been better. The cookbook worked surprisingly well; it turned out that Colonel White Beard did know a thing or two about poultry.

His first attempt at making fried chicken-bat was pretty good, with the chicken coming out showing an ‘Uncommon’ rarity, but Nacho completely screwed up the biscuits in the oven, round after round. He could only wince and hang his head in shame when the adventurers came in to eat. He loaded them up—and with his newly enhanced skill level, they were getting a full twenty-five percent extra added to any stat when they combined his iffy pan-fried meat and his depressing biscuits.

Crave also gave him the noble task of boiling water constantly, and soon, he was going through cords of wood to keep his oven and stove going. The cramped kitchen rapidly grew hotter than the Kansas City Plaza shopping center on a humid August day.

At the end of the long work hours, Nacho moved his chair into the farthest corner and settled as comfortably as he could on the hard wooden seat, trying to sleep, or at least turn off his brain. His worry for Reuben and Brie was driving him nuts. They were still alive, but for how much longer, if he didn’t do anything about it?

He’d processed twelve of the chicken-bats, and each had yielded about twenty pounds of meat. At six credits per pound, he’d added one thousand, four hundred and forty credits to his stockpile just from prepping. Selling his meals? That brought in an additional six credits per meal for another eighty credits. Most of the meat liquified before he could get around to doing anything with it, but there was always another chicken-bat in the many coops below.

The Chaos Coop truly was a gold mine.

Nacho spent six hundred credits to upgrade his Small Blades ability to the ninth level, making him likely more dangerous than any two other players in the dungeon in terms of sheer deadliness. He was disappointed, but unsurprised, that he was blocked from upgrading to the tenth level until he was a Tier one Common cook; the restriction was a Juxtaposition mechanic that eventually forced players to upgrade—which meant ever more expensive food. Even after raising his Skill, he was still left with over a thousand credits.

Deadly intent glinted in his eyes as he glanced at the leg chain once more. When the time came, he was going to cut some throats, and he had the perfect knives for the job. Then he realized… he still had plenty of credits available to upgrade his cooking Magic. “Why not? If I eat a bunch of my own cooking and then go into battle, I’d have an even larger advantage.”

Another six hundred credits took his Skill to level nine. By now, his cooking would give him a forty-five percent boost, and he was still left with four hundred and twenty-three credits to play with. Unsure of what to do next, Nacho forced himself to rest. He was exhausted from the back-to-back Skill usage.

He shifted on his simple wooden chair, made slightly more comfortable by the little cushion, with his feet propped on a nearby shelf. Nacho had to smile. His life hadn’t been perfect—far from it—but he’d found the love of friends. The cook kept tossing around the idea of just escaping. He could do it anytime he wanted to, and then he could meet up with his friends and form a guild with the Armor Mountain people—they seemed like good people, especially with the contrast that Crave and his lackeys provided.

He slowly opened his eyes, and the creeping despair was gone.

A flash of blue light made him start. Just as before, a man in a toga and sandals appeared with his arms crossed, grinning. He wasn’t there in real life; no, he was there in Nacho’s gaming vision, like an item in the Store.

Mr. Toga’s blue eyes twinkled, and the smile revealed a mischievous dimple in his cheek. “Here you are, back with Richard Crave and the gang. You’re not going to stay here, right? I mean, if you just follow what you did before, my boon doesn’t mean all that much.”

Nacho bolted upright as his earlier guess was confirmed. “You’re Kronos? You’re a Patron?”

The movie-Zeus-look-alike nodded. “That’s right. I didn’t contact you before, because what was the point? That was all just playtime possibilities. This is a definitely-real type of situation. Which means I’m here to make sure you don’t do what you humans do all too often.”

“What do we humans do?” Nacho questioned him, unable to mask the slight condescension in his tone.

Kronos casually wandered about the kitchen, glancing here and there, and walking right through tables and shelves. “Oh, you know, fall into a rut and then decorate it instead of getting out and away. A picture here, a throw rug there, ‘oh, sweetheart, should we découpage the furniture’?’” Kronos turned and glared at the cook. “The answer is always no. Don’t découpage anything. Ever.”

“Not sure I know what ‘découpage’ means, but I’ll take your word for it. I’m not staying with Crave. I was abducted.” Nacho found himself grinning like a fool. It was nice to know that his Patron was his kind of person. He wiggled his foot to make the chain clink. “Do you want to help a guy out? Can you break these chains?”

Kronos frowned as he took in the predicament. “I can’t break the chain. Notice I’m in the gaming system, not here in real life. Between you and me, since you’re not a Warlock, I shouldn’t even be here at all. I just took a moment to sneak in, check on you, make sure you haven’t given in to despair.”

Willing himself to make the most of this opportunity, Nacho inhaled and released the breath slowly. “I have a ton of questions. Like where Reuben and Brie are. What’s the nature of the Juxtaposition? Are you gods, aliens, or just really powerful players that got bored and decided to mess with a weaker world? What’s the square root of an impossible number? Who are the CrossHumans? Why all the Earth culture references, since you’re clearly not human?”

Kronos dropped his head back and made a very frustrated grunting noise. “Me showing up to check on you is one thing. Me shattering the traditions of the Juxtapositions? Notice the plural, cookie. Juxtapositions, for there are many. No, my unorthodox boon has already drawn a ton of attention. It’s never been done before, but come on, you know how grueling the game seems. I mean, it is impossible for a lot of people, and we have a very specific outcome in mind—survival of the flatulent. Wait. No, your idioms are so… plentiful. Survival of the fittest. We need the best and brightest to survive.”

Kronos was on the move again, vanishing into the oven and materializing out the other side.

Nacho’s eyes followed him around the kitchen. “We need to survive to win the game, kill the CrossHumans… is this a gambling thing? Am I a prize stallion?”

Kronos spun on a heel, whipping around at an impossible angle. “Yes, you are a prize stallion. I basically singled you out, Nacho, but not just you; you and your friends, who are very much alive. I have great expectations for you three, and so far, you’ve been playing the game perfectly. It’s that Fourtuna who’s getting in my way. He doesn’t believe that the endgame I have in mind is possible.”

“Is he wrong?” Nacho quietly inquired. Even though he did not know what the ultimate goal of his Patron was, it sounded as though everything was in the air, if other Patrons were shocked by the attempt.

“No, you can do it. There are two types of Patrons: those who have hope in their hearts, and those who are greedy brats, milking the system until they squeeze it dry. The latter ought to go down in flames, bright flames, burning out in the rocket’s red glare. Or a firework. But I digress… humans have such a variety of stories, songs, poems, video games, and so many streaming services.” Kronos shook his head in wonder. “What’s with that?”

Nacho didn’t want to get sidetracked by talking about technology and individualized companies. Kronos seemed to realize his reluctance and stared into his eyes. “It’s about time you escaped, my friend. Crave is problematic for many, many reasons. He never told you about his wife, did he?”

“None of us talked about our past.” Nacho swallowed his concerns and started to limber up. “There’s a reason for that. The past has teeth, and it’ll go for the throat every time.”

“The future is far hungrier. It eats the very seconds of our lives.” Kronos laughed as they philosophized about his domain of time. “Get out of here, so you can start your own guild and feed your friends. Also, do something about the Bove? That thing was a bit of fun gone wrong. I’ll try to come back, you know, when I’m needed most. There are more than a few of us Patrons in your corner, Eli Naches. Also, you’re overworking your biscuit dough. If you’d been born in Mississippi, you would’ve known that.”

Nacho made a face. “Yeah, people in the South do know how to cook. Last question: please explain the culture references?”

“The stories of you pesky humans, Earth in particular, make us old weary beings optimistic. If there’s one utterly precious commodity in the universe, it’s hope.” With a wink, Kronos vanished abruptly.

Outside the kitchen, the sound of Hogan’s clanking plate mail approaching set Nacho on edge. However strange his conversation with Kronos, there had to be some good information. He’d go over every word eventually, but for now, getting a key to unlock his chains was at the top of his to-do list.

With that goal in mind, the uneasiness at Hogan’s impending arrival shifted into excitement and readiness. “Let’s see what level nine in small blades looks like up close and personal.”