CWD: GA ~ Thirty

Three days later, they were celebrating their first full week of surviving in the Juxtaposition.

The Epic coffee turned out to be just that: epic. It was well worth doubling the credit cost, and the comforting beverage came out dark and rich. While Reuben complained that he had to use more sugar and cream than usual, Brie’s shift to a rapturous demeanor reduced even that complaint to mere mutters.

It took a couple of days, but they eventually found another herd of Wight-Tailed Deer. Nacho and his friends played it smart and didn’t try to pick them off one by one. They enacted their plan by building a makeshift corral, weaving together a fence of different lengths of wood and grasses.

Then it was only a matter of chasing the deer into the corral. The main issue was that one of the deer had leveled faster than the others. His back tail-arm was well-muscled and sported long yellow talons, and some of its teeth had become fangs. Other arms had started growing out of the thing’s hide, but fortunately, they were rather short and skinny, with half-formed fingers. Reuben shook his head in disgust as he stared at the beast. “That thing looks like a potato that was left in a cupboard for too long.”

That horror didn’t run away like the other ungulates, but instead charged them. As expected, Active Combat began with the normal System message.

The creature effortlessly knocked Reuben aside—since the man wasn’t wearing his chainmail at the moment—and rammed into Nacho. Its pale hand's filthy claws raked down his unprotected face. The cook's first impulse was to use his knives and kill the deer, but he didn’t want to lose credits for his team. Also… Nacho didn’t feel any pain. “What’s going on?”

A Juxtaposition message flashed in Nacho’s eyes.

Damage taken: 0. 5 Health Points Cheesed!

The mutated deer monster pivoted and rammed Nacho with its antlers once again. He staggered back, hands clutching his tattered shirt, but no blood oozed between his fingers.

Damage taken: 0. 10 Health Points Cheesed!

While Nacho was staring at his unharmed torso in shock, Brie took care of the nightmare deer with her hammer. She sped up, whirled to block the thing’s antlers, then Combat Dashed its brains out.

Active Combat ended, and Nacho stood there shaking, pondering the strange messages. A sharp tang of limburger hung in the air, or as the French would say, the stench of angels feet.

“Why do I smell like… cheese?” He’d received fifteen points of damage from the mutated Wight-Tail’s attack, and yet his Health Points hadn’t gone down. Nacho eyed the Ring of Cheese. “Cheese the champion… this ring absorbs damage done to the person wearing it. I don’t know how much it’ll take, but this changes a lot about how we’ll be able to approach combat. I shouldn’t wear it. Reuben, put this on.”

Brie dragged Nacho away from the deer corpse before he could remove the item from his finger. “One thing at a time, Nacho. We need to keep the deer herd penned. We need the credits!”

Reuben was already waving his gauntlet wildly, scaring the wide-eyed ungulates back into the corral. Some were trying to climb over the hastily-made fences, but between the logs, the undergrowth, and the other trees, they were forced to stay inside.

Brie’s fifth grade camp experience paid off once again. She brought down thirteen of the deer singlehandedly before the remainder managed to break out of the corral and race off through the forest in a scamper of hooves.

Well, they now had plenty of meat for Nacho to practice on. He flipped the Ring of Cheese to Reuben. “Here. Put this on. I’m not sure how much damage you can absorb, but it’s at least twenty Health Points. That makes it a powerful magic item, though we’ll never know how powerful it actually is until we’re able to test it properly.”

Nacho started on the deer pile by selecting the big monster deer and its various arms. He hacked the budding limbs off with Hunger, his cleaver. Using the ungulate info pack and his Cry knife, he successfully cleaned out the entrails and stripped the hide. Having the info pack open in his vision while he worked on the deer was like having two computer screens to watch as he prepped the carcass. It was very convenient, if sometimes distracting. He started to slice off a few steaks and tried to process one.

Hail, mighty deer hunter! Wanna process your newly acquired Wight-Tailed Deer meat?

Yes / No

Nacho chose ‘yes’ and earned a harsh buzz along with a bright red flash in his vision.

Sorry, Satiation Player, but you’ve bitten off more jerky than you could chew. This is a level 6 hunk of meat, and you max out at level 5! Either increase your skill or watch the meat go rancid! Don't let life leave a bad taste in your mouth!

Nacho tossed the meat to the side and addressed his friends. “Looks like we got a more advanced deer. You okay if I spend credits to level up a skill?”

“Yes, and do it fast! We don’t want to lose all this meat.” Brie waved her hand in a ‘hurry up’ motion. “I figured you might have trouble with this one. He was worth fourteen credits.”

That brought their hunting adventure up to two hundred and thirty-two credits. Nacho used eighty credits to upgrade his Ingredient Processing skill to level four. He quickly closed his system view and processed the level six deer, making the steak glow a golden color as the Putrid Mana was strained out of the meat.

The System congratulated him.

One portion of level six deer meat processed! Twelve credits! That’s some mouthwatering money!

“I got twelve credits from one steak!” Nacho had hit the jackpot. The big deer would take him a while to get through; there was just so much meat. Also, it had taken time to gather the bodies, and they’d spent some time figuring out the Ring of Cheese, so he had no time to waste. He didn’t want his payday to liquify on him.

He had to prep and cook the meat right there in the forest. On the plus side, It was a good day to grill out: the skies were cloudy, it was a chilly day, and it could start raining at any minute. Working as quickly as possible, Nacho was able to go through nine more rounds of Ingredient Processing, bringing the group credit pool up to a total of three hundred and fifty-two credits.

The cook figured they could use that to upgrade Reuben’s and Brie’s skills. More than anything, he wanted to try cooking the meat. He was nearly starving, and Brie would be hungry—she’d used her Combat Dash and Defensive Whirl to bring down the big buck.

He had his friends find some firewood and at least one flat rock.

His cooking grimoire, his Aria, laid open, flipped to a whole new section, Entrees for the Carnivorous Adventurer. With an eye on the recipe, he triggered the magic and soon was throwing in salt, pepper, a generous portion of canola oil, and lemon juice he’d bought from the Store.

Just as they had with the pancake recipe, the ingredients started out red on his paper, but turned black as he adjusted them. Nacho was too hungry to add any additional Cooking Magic to the deer meat. He wanted to get those steaks sizzling.

His fire had reduced to bright red coals, and he could’ve laid the steaks directly on the rocks, but he preferred his cast-iron skillet. He arranged three steaks in the pan, even if they didn’t fit perfectly. Soon the air was filled with the delicious smell of the venison sizzling and spitting. He had his spatula and his knife, but still ended up somehow dumping one of the steaks into the fire. He gingerly fished it out and mentally debated buying a fork… or tongs?

All the while, the meat continued cooking, and he kept having to move the slices around, including the one coated in ashes from the fire. He glanced at his friends guiltily, and he could tell that they were having a silent argument about who would be getting the ash-coated meat. “That’ll add to the flavor, right? No? I’ll eat the ashy one.”

“You’re a cooking saint.” Reuben put his hand on Nacho’s hand to let him know that he appreciated the sacrifice.

The cook stacked the three steaks on top of one another and finally got into the rhythm of moving them around. First one, then another, up and down they went, until they started to blacken. The coals of his fire seemed too hot, but how did one adjust the temperature of a fire’s coals?

Nacho was sweating, stressed, and praying that he hadn’t screwed up the meal too much. Reuben and Brie squatted down around the fire, staring at the meat like wolves. It was the big guy that pointed out the obvious. “They’re done, Nacho. At least the outsides are. I like my meat pink, but there are limits.”

Brie disagreed just as Nacho moved to take the meat out. “Do you mind cooking mine longer?”

Nacho wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, but he managed to scoop out his ash-coated meal out onto one of the Store trays they’d saved from one of their mediocre meals. Brie’s meat continued to cook, though Nacho knew that the blackened part wasn’t going to get any less burned with more heat. While he waited for her to allow him to remove it, he pulled out a leftover pancake to wrap around his venison to make a primitive sandwich.

Reuben finally slung on his gauntlets and pulled Brie’s steak off the pan. He held the hunk of meat in his metal gloves and blew on it. “Hey, look, even better than tongs! These things are great. They fit around my new cheesy ring—aw man, I can’t wait to get hit and see how much damage I can absorb! Or how smelly I can get. Do you think it will cycle through the smell of different cheeses? Or just the one set scent?”

“No kisses for you, stinky boy.” Brie took out a knife and fork and cut into her steak. The outside was black, but the inside had remained pink. “Ugh. So close.”

Probably too pink, but the Putrid Mana was gone, and it was comparable to rare beef from a fancy restaurant. Nacho waited for her to take a bite, as did Reuben. Brie rolled her eyes at them. “It’s going to be fine. It’s Nacho’s first attempt, and it can only get better.”

“See?” She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “It’s fine.”

Reuben bit off a chunk of his portion of blackened meat. He chewed, chewed, chewed… and chewed some more. He reached for his water bottle and managed to force the deer meat down. “Exactly what I would expect from monster meat; it’s not that bad.”

Concerned, Nacho tried his, and once he got past the taste of the ash, he got to experience burnt meat. Eventually, he chewed his way through the charred exterior only to encounter the half-raw center, which tasted disgustingly gamey. He detected a hint of the salt and pepper and lemon juice, but it was akin to smelling something on the side of the road on a freeway while going eighty on a hot summer day. He unexpectedly recalled a cooking term and searched his memory. “What’s a marinade?”

Brie didn’t answer, continuing to chew with a determined look on her face. Reuben, looking for any excuse not to be ingesting the meat at that moment, was happy to answer. “It’s letting meat sit in a sauce to make it more flavorful and tender. Grab some water, man. It helps.”

Nacho survived his first deer meat like he’d survived his first attempt at pancakes: using a lot of grit and determination. If the kitchen was his new battlefield, he was getting his butt kicked. “All this means is that I need to practice. If anything is true, it’s that practice makes better.”

After banking their fire, Nacho and his friends returned to the overhang, the cook hauling ten pounds of the uncooked meat. His plan was to spend the evening practicing cooking. Once settled, they started another fire before the sun set on the cold day. The flickering flames gave them some much needed heat and light, in addition to preparing a cooking arena for Nacho. To top it off, if the ominously gray clouds started spitting rain, they were in a good position to retreat under the overhang.

They still had to discuss their plan for the three hundred and forty-two credits they’d accrued. It was a windfall, and Nacho wanted to buy some barbecue tongs to avoid the dropped meat mistake he’d already made. Cooking was so much easier when you had the right tools… as was everything else in life.

He’d just bought the tongs when they heard a man’s voice call up to them. “Hey! We saw your fire! Can we come up?” From the sound of the chattering, the man wasn’t alone.

People had found them at last. Nacho’s knives twirled in his hands—he didn’t remember drawing them—and his friends watched him nervously. “What do you guys think?”