CWD: GA ~ Twenty-Nine

“I wish we didn’t need to have this talk, but I promise we’ll speak about that… later.” Choking down bile and paranoia over how they would judge him, Nacho stuffed his backpack full of food containers and refused to meet her eyes. “Let’s get going. I want to get to the overhang before nightfall.”

Nacho guided them back to the game trail that bordered Tomahawk Creek, then did his best to avoid the subject. “Other than the burned parts and the pieces of wood in my pancakes, I think the real problem is the measurements. Too much baking powder and not enough sugar. I should probably upgrade my Cooking Magic Skill.”

Reuben marched behind him, while Brie took the front. Brie had her helm and boots on, but just as before, they were traveling with their chainmail stored in their extra-dimensional Storage Slots. The Healer appeared uncomfortable with the tense mood and started to babble. “You have to practice cooking, which means we need credits for ingredients, and we need customers. Are we going back to Armor Mountain?”

“Eventually,” Nacho replied, clinging gratefully to the safe conversation topic. “I want to hunt more, so keep an eye out for Wight-Tails. We also might want to go deeper into the Deep Buggy Darkness, now that we have more Skill levels and some new magical items. I’m hoping the Ring of Cheese does something awesome. Once we’ve leveled a bit more, we’ll eventually check in on the people on top of Armor Mountain.”

“Question about that.” Brie abruptly turned and appraised Nacho, then asked him the question he had been worried about. “Are we going up there to sell pancakes to the people… or to eat them? Was that the plan all along?”

“We’re going to eat the pancakes, not sell them,” he replied lightly, only getting a solemn headshake in reply as they stopped in a clearing. A few Blues Birds drifted from tree to tree, but never got close enough to become a concern.

From the way she was digging in her heels, Nacho knew he couldn’t get around the topic any longer. “We need to do this now, huh? Fine then. You’ve seen how expensive food gets. A Tier zero meal is three credits, Tier one is thirty, while Tier two is sixty. That’s right; sixty credits for something that tastes like week-old buffet leftovers. But remember, once you hit level ten, Tier zero food doesn’t do anything for you—despite the fact that the creatures we were fighting were powerful, as you've seen—that doesn't translate into more credits. Kill a big demon thing for one meal? Maybe? It wasn’t worth it, especially since the entire world was growing more powerful, more intense, and the amount of Putrid Mana was always increasing.”

Brie remained silent, and Nacho felt awful admitting the depths they’d had to sink into. Reuben, as always, could feel the tension in the air. Like the good friend he was, he offered Nacho a way out. “Look, man, it’s not like all the things that you experienced actually happened, right? It was just in your Probability Vision thing.”

“I used to eat people.” Nacho exhaled, his heart twinging with guilt as they edged away from him slightly. There. He’d said it. “At the end, we all did. It was just more… economical, however awful that was. Tier two players could eat Tier zero people and it would count as a meal.”

“Abyss, dude. Did they… taste like chicken?” Reuben weakly joked, though he was beginning to look a little on the pale side.

“Pork,” Nacho replied honestly, meeting their eyes directly. He had already gone through the mental gymnastics necessary for him to be okay with surviving. Now he just had to get through their reactions.

“I’m not judging.” Brie put a hand on Nacho’s arm, then waved the other hand side to side. “Okay, I’m judging a little. Kinda hard not to.”

“It can change this time. It doesn't need to be like that.” Nacho looked into Brie’s eyes, desperate for redemption he knew that she couldn't give him. “We can change things. But it’s going to be a stretch for me. I was alone before, but not only that. It’s true that I was an Assassin, but the reality was that I was magically forced to obey orders. My job was to kill people for the Final Victory Guild.”

“Run by the Crave guy?” Reuben questioned him with concern. “Was that how you knew him?”

“Exactly that.” Nacho swallowed as the memories flooded back. “Being a Cook is practically the opposite of being an Assassin. I’m going to be keeping people alive.”

“With your cooking?” Reuben’s bark of laughter fully broke the tension. “No, you’re still an Assassin. I’ve tasted your pancakes.”

“Wouldn’t a Healer be the opposite of an Assassin?” Brie pointed out with annoying accuracy. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. We have a way of earning credits that no one else has. That’s going to help us in the end, so let’s just keep walking. Thank you for finally telling us.”

They continued on in uncomfortable silence through the forest. Nacho figured his big confession was done, but he was so very wrong.

“Tell us about your time alone,” Brie casually requested over her shoulder after a while, like it was no big deal. Nacho had figured he could avoid all this talking with more hunting, but naturally, there was no sign of the deer. Where were all the animals? He figured other deer hunters had felt the same way over the centuries.

With nothing else to distract them, he reluctantly continued his confession. “Very long, very sad story short, I didn’t trust anyone—I was mourning the loss of you two, and I became a not very nice guy. Basically, I’d stalk behind parties of people, lie in wait while they’d dish out damage on some monster, and then I’d come racing out of the shadows to deliver that last hit. Whoever gets the last hit gets the credits. I was known as the Shadow Killer, and I was kind of a legend.”

“You sound like a total scumbag,” Reuben snorted as he pictured Nacho running up to an orc and stabbing it in the butt, then running away as fast as he could. “Going in and grabbing the credits while other people did all the work? You’re the worst.”

“Your sense of right and wrong always astounds me. Why is it that this part of what you are hearing is the thing that makes you mad at him?” Brie groaned at her groom. “Two minutes ago he told us he ate people.”

“I didn’t want to explain any of this,” Nacho protested with false bravado. “None of this shows me in a good light. But you saw me abandon the survivors on Armor Mountain. You already know I can be kinda soulless. Fact is, I’ll do anything to make sure we survive this mess. Even if that means letting people die, or doing the deed myself.”

The couple winced as their eyes were drawn to the long knife strapped to his belt. Brie looked away and squared her shoulders firmly, as if to ward off undesirable thoughts. “You have a good point. I can't judge you too much for doing what you had to do.”

“You’re sharp cheddar these days, Nacho. So edgy.” Reuben tromped down the path behind Nacho. “Let’s all just… think of it like this: you’re feeling guilty for a dream you had, right? It was kind of you, but not really. Like you said, we can change things. You didn’t do that, not really. You just watched a super realistic movie.”

“It’s an interesting idea,” Brie agreed right away. “Use the experience from the dream, but don't repeat the actions in real life. Also, if it’s only the last person who hits the monster that gets the credits, we could have Nacho fight, as long as he doesn’t kill whatever he hits. We need to put him to work.”

“Yeah, in the kitchen and in our restaurant: The Three Cheeses.” Reuben gripped at his chest as though he were missing a dear friend. “People will come from across the land to buy our gourmet pancakes and succulent venison. It’s so very yummy.”

“The Three Cheeses…” Nacho closed his eyes and tried to accept that they were willing to move past this. “I can get behind that.”

Around noon, they finally encountered a herd of Wight-Tailed Deer. It was a slaughter-fest that resulted in thirteen kills. They also picked off three Blues Birds that came in to eat the carrion, earning one hundred and twenty-five credits in addition to the credits that Nacho had earned processing apples that morning, minus the money he’d spent on ingredients for his pancakes. All told, they had brought in one hundred and forty-two credits with the annihilation, but Nacho wasn’t going to let all that free meat lying in the field go to waste.

He processed as much of the flesh as he could before the remaining carcasses were liquified. It was a race to the end, eating pancakes as he went, chugging water, and only stopping for mana to regen until the work was done. Using the HungerCry Knives, he was able to skin the deer and cut steaks far faster than with any other blade he’d tried before. The Juxtaposition chided him on his salt and pepper recipe, but reluctantly allowed him to continue using it repeatedly.

They’d managed to bring down two level two deer. Working as fast as he could and taking regeneration breaks as needed, Nacho was able to complete twenty rounds of Ingredient Processing. He received four credits for each pound of flesh he cut from the deer, for a total of eighty credits to add to their stores. That brought them up to two hundred and twenty-two credits. “Already made back half of what we had to invest in me!”

The rest of the day was spent hurrying back to Rocky Top by climbing up the trail through the boulders, until they once again found their overhang and the charcoal remnants of their previous fire. From what they could tell, no one else had slept there.

Reuben and Brie kept watch while Nacho spent a few credits on basic cooking supplies, which were surprisingly cheap. He had expected the System to charge him up the wazoo for a set of measuring spoons, a half-cup measuring cup, a whisk, and a spatula. Then again, the Juxtaposition didn’t have many Satiation Players to begin with.

Nacho also splurged on a blue Outdoors Enamelware coffee pot. That was for Brie, who insisted she could live without a lot—Netflix, hot showers, a toothbrush—but she would not live without her morning coffee.

By the time he was done, they were back down to one hundred and seventy-two credits.

The food he’d brought was almost gone, but they still had three Chicken a la King MRE’s left. Reuben said those had been voted the military’s worst MREs of all time. The Meatballs in Marinara sauce meal was better, and Nacho ate that one. For the first time, he was the one who needed to eat more because of all his Skills usage.

The next morning, the cooking went so much better. With actual measuring utensils, Nacho’s pancakes were better… but the coffee from the Store was like yesterday’s gas station sludge warmed up in a rusty pot. Nacho was fairly certain that Brie would massacre entire ecosystems for her coffee, so she didn’t complain, but she wasn’t happy. They’d have to look into upgrading the coffee using the rarity chart, a part of the Store that Nacho hadn’t explained to them just yet. Survival came before comfort.

Nacho’s pancakes turned out exponentially better, though they were still so dry that it took an extra few cups of coffee and some more water to get them down. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, but that was what practicing was meant for.

They even bought some Store maple syrup, but that didn’t help much.

Reuben sighed over the meal—he was a guy who liked to eat—but Nacho reminded him that they were suffering through an apocalypse. Sacrifices had to be made. The Healer still shook his head sorrowfully as he choked down the breakfast. “I think it was Aeschylus who said that in war, truth is the first casualty. The second? Breakfast. Oh, the humanity.”

“Let’s really hunt today.” Nacho scraped burned remnants into the fire. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some more apples. Or maybe a Boarconator. It’s like a Baconator, only more boar than bacon.”

“We should level your skill,” Reuben suggested instantly. “If there is bacon involved, I will happily stand aside so you can get boosted.”

“Not unless we need to.” Nacho shut him down instantly, already knowing this conversation was going to happen. “I want to buy that venison info pack along with the recipe. I need to get good at it. Then, when we show up with actual steaks and good non-Store pancakes, people will actually want to buy what I’m cooking.”

They finished off breakfast, secured their camp, and only took their most important supplies. The rest they hid under the overhang. It wasn’t long before Nacho found a grove of Red Pernicious apples, though he had Reuben and Brie pluck them. These apples had already grown teeth, but unlike Puckered Granny apples, they never developed eyes and legs of their own. They could only drop onto unsuspecting prey, eat into their head, and take over their bodies. Truly pernicious predators, the fruits were. A few of the red apples had already mutated into level three monsters, about the size of bowling balls, and were ready to drop off.

Brie found that she could Combat Dash under the limbs, slam her hammer into the tree to send a bunch of Red Pernicious fruit falling to the ground, then dash out from under the tree without being hurt.

Due to his comparative lack of speed, Reuben tried the bow and arrow. He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t anywhere near good—there was a lot of wincing involved. Brie taunted him by muttering that he could’ve spent some time at Camp Sacajawea to improve his archery. He retorted that he didn’t like to be in forest fires. Luckily, the monster apples were easy to kill. The ones with teeth were worth five credits, though the regular fruit weren’t worth anything; at least, not until Nacho started processing them.

He followed in his team's wake, collecting the pierced fruit and extracting the teeth. Once they were processed, he was left with a huge pile of sliced apples, though the big ones unfortunately tasted like sawdust. The smaller ones were pleasantly crisp, though they had to be eaten with caution, because sometimes additional teeth were growing inside. Reuben discovered a few molars at one point and nearly hurled. Nacho merely grinned and said, “Looks like a monster apple a day keeps the Healer away.”

Feeling far more confident in his abilities, Nacho splurged on more ingredients and spices, and it was cinnamon-apple pancakes for lunch—not that they needed regular meals anymore, as long as they didn’t use their Skills and ate once every twenty-four hours. However, the habit of eating at intervals still ran deep.

Between killing the fanged apples and processing out the Putrid Mana, the team ended the day with another couple hundred credits. Nacho had been worried that changing the recipe would turn his cinnamon-apple pancakes into goo, but the Juxtaposition seemed to take a liberal view with additions, subtractions, and substitutions—as long as he had the minimum three ingredients.

If he could take a neutral recipe and augment it, he wouldn’t have to fork over their precious credits on recipe variations. He knew there would be limits, of course, because the Juxtaposition wasn’t going to make it easy on him, but it was a thrilling discovery nevertheless.

Reuben added a fair amount of cinnamon and sugar to his pancake, but it had still turned out dry. Nacho wasn’t sure what was wrong. Did he need to use canola oil instead of the melted butter? Bacon grease? Avocado oil?

The Dinner Party was sitting at a comfortable three hundred and seventy-two credits, but Nacho couldn’t believe he was going to waste their precious credits on yet another recipe. Perhaps the Juxtaposition made it easy for Satiation Players to gain credits, but they also made the recipes so expensive. Then came the real question: was he really ready to cook deer meat when he couldn’t even get simple pancakes right?

Regardless, he spent the credits on Cleaning and Cooking your Favorite Ungulate. That night around the fire, Nacho started reading. He’d gotten one thing right—he was definitely supposed to cut off the Wight arm and toss it. It was banefully poisonous.

After that, a cook was expected to do unspeakable things to the deer, starting with the back end. However, if done right, the entrails could be removed without too much fuss, and then it was a relatively simple matter to strip off the hide. The ironic thing? Very Fine Venison was basically a roasted deer haunch with only a little salt and pepper, though it additionally suggested vegetable oil and a little bit of lemon juice.

He also had to get the temperature of the fire just right, which wasn’t going to be easy. All in all, the information pack and recipe was clearly worth the money. Again, he felt himself getting nervous about cooking, which further devolved into cycling his anxiety into anger about being nervous. He’d spent three years in the Juxtaposition killing all manner of man and beast, so how was this what threw him?

“Anything good?” Reuben’s face glowed in the firelight.

“I think so.” Nacho closed the book. “Tomorrow, we need to try my skills out on some Wight-Tailed Deer. We can’t get distracted by more monster apples.”

Brie poured water into the blue pot to get it ready for tomorrow’s coffee. “I found this rarity chart while I was looking for better coffee; what does it mean? I don’t want a repeat of this morning’s terrible caffeine sludge.”

“Ah… you found that.” Nacho grinned sheepishly and started drawing out a simple matrix for them.

Common: Price as stated

Uncommon: +50%

Very Uncommon: +60%

Fairly Rare: +70%

Rare: +80%

Very Rare: +90%

Epic: +100%

Brie’s brow furrowed. “At one credit, a hundred percent increase is only two credits. I’m going to buy us epic coffee, and everyone else is going to be perfectly fine with that. It has to be better, right?”

Nacho thought so, but he wasn’t sure. The Juxtaposition’s rules weren’t exactly… fair. No one had bought single ingredients back in the day. They’d all basically just grown accustomed to the Store coffee that came with breakfast meals.

Sitting around the fire with his friends, Nacho still felt weird that Reuben and Brie knew about what he’d done his first time in the Juxtaposition, and he felt the need to talk about it. “Hey, so with all the things I told you about my Probability Vision… all of what happened… are we still good?”

Reuben made a face. “We know you, Nacho. We know you have this side to you… because of—how do I put this as nicely as possible…? We had always voted on you as the most likely to eat another person. Be happy our old yearbooks got left in the old world.”

“You did what you had to do, and we’re grateful.” Brie set the pot down into the dirt, the top loaded with epic-grade coffee. “We’ve always known that if you didn’t have us to keep you stable, you might become too self-interested.”

“When you’re not distracted, scattered, and perfectionistic, that is.” Reuben picked up a little pebble and tossed at him to show he was half-kidding. But only half. Nacho knew that he could be driven and self-absorbed, though he wouldn’t go as far as labeling himself narcissistic. Then again, he might be fooling himself that his selfishness didn’t run deep. It was funny. During his first time in the game—once he had lost Reuben and Brie—he hadn’t cared much about stealing credits from other people and hadn't even cared too much that his guild had frequently used him to remove key targets. Nothing had seemed to matter except the mission.

Now? His mission was food, pure and simple, and everyone—not just The Dinner Party—was going to benefit.

There were still a couple of secrets he was holding back. For one, he didn’t know how to tell them about the impending Calamity… or the CrossHumans. The entire AKC had some time before they were in danger of delving into that particular mystery. Even so, his mind kept drifting back to the incoming horror.

How could he explain the Bove to someone that hadn’t witnessed it?