I jolt awake, and it’s dark. Ah, this is familiar. Drifting in and out of consciousness in a strange bed while I recover from medical treatment. I’ve been coming to all day: sometimes Gugora was there, sometimes he wasn’t. He gave me water and soup, once. The soup tasted like stale socks. He insisted it was medicinal, but I figure any benefits were outweighed by the desire to barf. He showed me to the chamberpot after that, and I’m not sure which experience was worse.
I don’t need to use the bathroom now, though. So what woke me up?
Something’s tingling in the back of my head. An intangible itch. It feels familiar yet annoying, like a bug bite.
[Role Requirement.]
The sudden voice makes me jump. I’d forgotten about Echo. Then again, I’ve been mostly unconscious for the last day. Haven’t had a lot of opportunities to explore these new mysterious powers.
[Role Requirement.]
I think I might be getting sick of them already.
“What?” I breathe into the dark. I’m still tired and sore, but I can feel my strength returning to me, bit by bit. “What do you want? It’s the middle of the night.”
[The user is at risk of breaching their Role Requirement,] Echo says. [The Chef role requires the user to engage in cooking, baking, or food preparation on a daily basis. Time remaining in Day: 4 minutes, 14 seconds.]
“Thanks for giving me enough heads up,” I grumble. “Can’t you delay it a day or something? I’m sort of busy healing here.”
[Negative,] Echo says.
I sigh, squinting over at the table next to my bed. Gugora had left the food there before: maybe I can use that to satisfy the requirement. But as my hand gropes blindly across the surface, I only brush up against a mug of water, which I nearly tip over.
“No joy,” I say. “What happens if I don’t meet the requirement before midnight?” I’m getting some serious reverse Cinderella vibes, and I don’t like it. What, is she going to turn me into a pumpkin for not making a sandwich?
A new display appears in my vision.
[Sanity Level: 100%]
Well that doesn’t sound good.
[Any time that transpires beyond the Requirement will result in a reduction of the Sanity Level Stat.]
“What?” I hiss. “This role is going to drive me insane?”
Echo doesn’t answer.
I swear. “How much time left before midnight?”
[2 minutes, 49 seconds]
“Crap.” I lay there a moment longer, marveling at the absurdity. What’s the point of these roles, anyway? Make some soup or you’ll be driven slowly mad? That’s crazy!
The itching in my brain is getting worse. I can feel it crawling its way into my fingers, now, too.
Realizing the universe is not about to take pity on my circumstances, and the time until me and my sanity are parted is ticking down by the second, I throw the blankets off.
A sharp twinge snaps up my back and arm with the movement, and I suck in a breath. Then, much more slowly, much more carefully, I sit myself up.
I hear my blood rushing in my ears for a moment, and I wait for the sound and dizziness to pass. The room is cold without the blankets. Suppressing a shiver, I feel around on my bed and find a knitted texture. Slowly pulling the fabric around my shoulders, conscious of every twinge in my shoulder, I wait until the dizziness and shivers pass. So far so good. Cautiously, I stand up.
I grimace as my back protests, burning as I straighten up. I sway slightly, and brace myself against the wall. It’s fine. I got this. Slow and steady wins the race.
[Role Requirement.]
Well, maybe not this race.
I feel my way over to the door, gaining more confidence in my balance as I go. Cautiously, I pull the door inward, wincing against the creaking hinges, and glance out into the hall.
I don’t really remember being brought here, not more than bits of broken memory, so I’m not sure what I was expecting, but a hallway of doors wasn’t it. The end is swallowed by darkness, and shadowy impressions indicate where more doors like mine line either side. If this is a house, it’s a weird one.
Still keeping my hand on the wall, I creep cautiously down the hallway, trying to ignore the tightness in my back that’s increasing with each step. Mentally, I will Echo to Check my health as I walk, not daring to speak aloud, and she happily responds.
[HP: 41/90]
Wow, I’m actually healing up pretty fast. That’s good, I think. I wonder if this passive healing is what also saved my life after Maru’s attack.
I frown at the memory, hatred and anger bubbling up at the thought. But the Role Requirement is getting itchier, a mental static creeping to the forefront of my mind, making my fingers twitch. I have more immediate concerns to worry about.
[Role Requirement,] Echo says, a little more insistently now.
Yeah, yeah, I can hear you, I think, irritated. I can also see the timer to midnight counting down in the corner of my vision: twenty seconds left.
I pick up the pace as I tiptoe my way down the hall, hoping I won’t have to start checking rooms. I have no idea where I’m going or what could be behind any one of these doors, but I’m hoping something will obviously indicate itself to be a kitchen at some point. Emphasis on hope.
The timer hits 0:00. The static in my mind grows louder. I scratch at my arm, fingers tingling, itching with nervous energy, and then a new stat starts to move.
[Sanity Level: 99%]
I gasp as the wall beneath my hand vanishes, and I stumble a foot in that direction. I blink rapidly, trying to discern shadow from shadow.
I’m at the top of a staircase. I hadn’t even realized I wasn’t on the ground floor. Beneath me is an open room, full with long thin shadows: tables and benches, I think. Finally, my surroundings start to make sense.
I’m in an inn. The ground floor is the tavern, and up here are a bunch of rooms. I squint at the ground floor, and think I can make out a bar at the far end. If that’s where the drinks are, then the food can’t be far.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
[Sanity Level: 98%]
I force myself back into motion. The stairs creak as I feel my way down the steps. It’s a bit eerie, creeping around a sleeping house in the middle of the night, but with my Sanity Level decreasing by the second, I can’t let a little fear of the dark stop me.
Tip toeing as best I can manage, I make it down the stairs and across the floor of the mess hall. Sometimes I pause when a board starts to groan beneath my toes, stopping and slowly drawing my foot away to find a quieter path. After doing this a few times, Echo speaks up.
[Skill unlocked: Soft Step, Level 1. Walking silently comes more naturally to the user, their instincts picking out the quietest path 10% of the time.]
Yes!
[Sanity Level: 97%]
No!
I hurry around the side of the bar, where a doorway leads into a back room. I flex my fingers, as if that would scratch the itch clawing its way from my fingers to my brain. Ducking under the curtain, I step into the back room.
“Bingo,” I whisper.
Between my vision adjusting to the dark and some thin slants of moonlight scattering through the wooden beams, I can make out barrels and crates lining the walls. More items are stacked on shelves, leading me to believe this is some kind of store room. A large chimney squats against a wall, inside which a cauldron is hanging over the ashes of a dead fire—probably what made that nasty medicine soup I had earlier. My first instinct is to head there, but I pause. Heating up that giant pot would take time—time I don’t think my sanity has—and I’m not sure how I’d start the fire regardless. Instead, I turn to the nearby shelves and crates.
The bready smell of yeast and something sharp and sour is even stronger in this room—as strong as it was out by the bar—so I think a lot of the barrels might have beer or alcohol in them. More things that don’t help me. The nearest crate is closed, so I try to pry it open, but quickly find it’s nailed shut. I try the others scattered about the room, but they’re all the same.
[Sanity Level: 95%]
The mind-static is getting worse. The itching is almost a physical sound now, a hissing that’s eating at my hearing and crackling in the edges of my vision. I blink my eyes and nervously rub my hands together, trying to focus.
There’s a raised shelf by the fireplace. It’s about neck level for me, but would be normal counter level for, say, a giant orc. I grab the lip and stand on my tiptoes, peering over the edge.
“Jackpot!” I whisper. A knife is sitting out, just a few feet away. Unfortunately, a few feet is more than my reach can manage from this angle. There’s some other bins and jars littering the surface, and some dried plants hanging on the wall. This must be as kitcheny as it gets.
The problem is, it’s all up there, while I’m down here.
I reach an arm over the edge, grimacing as the gesture stretches the muscles in my back and digs up a tight pain from hip to shoulder. I manage to grab one of the jars, but everything else is out of reach. Even so, I bring it back over the edge. Lifting the lid off, I give the powdery contents a sniff, and then stifle a sneeze. Some kind of spice. If I had ever spent a day in my life cooking, maybe I would know what it was. Then again, this is a totally different world, so maybe I wouldn’t.
[Sanity Level: 93%]
Crap. I set the jar down and hurriedly glance around the room. Aha! A ladder is leaning on the other side of the chimney. As my sanity level steadily ticks down and my anxiety level steadily ticks up, I quickly go grab the ladder. My back protests as I drag it over to the counter, and I grit my teeth against the pain, but I don’t have a choice other than to endure it. Because of this completely stupid nonsensical magic system, my very sanity depends on it.
By the time I start climbing the ladder, I’ve worked up a sweat and my back is throbbing. Four rungs up, the counter is about the right height it’s supposed to be, maybe even a little short. But because I’m exhausted, and because I don’t trust myself not to fall off, I shimmy over and sit down on the counter instead. Okay. What have we got to work with?
[Dried woodroot,] Echo suddenly says as I’m glancing over the plants hanging on the wall. My gaze shifts, and she continues to fill me in. [Pixie grass. Blue onion stalks. Dried Torra fruit.] I quickly start tearing through everything else on the counter, pulling out baskets and removing the lids from all the ceramic jars. [Rice flour. Rock salt. Fire peppers. Tomatoes. Beetroot. Swamp weed.]
The list goes on, but it’s all pretty much vegetables and dried ingredients. What am I supposed to do with this? How can I cook or bake anything with a bunch of flour, spices, and veggies? I don’t even have water I could mix with any of this. I look around the rest of the room in mounting desperation.
[Sanity Level: 90%]
It’s starting to hurt now. A pressure in the back of my mind. I try to ignore it, along with my mounting panic.
More crates. More barrels. But from this vantage point, I can make out some shelves at the back of the room that I hadn’t seen before, illuminated with a faint blue light. It’s so bizarre that for a moment I don’t comprehend what I am looking at.
[Loaf of yellowgrass bread,] Echo says, reading off the items. [Boar loin. Boar shoulder. Boar ribs. Herron eggs (4). Cheese round.]
Echo isn’t done listing off the items, but I’m already scrambling down off my perch and hurrying over to the other side of the room. Bread and cheese and raw meat just sitting out on a shelf at room temperature? Bizarre. But I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I can’t see them from the ground, but the food comes into view after I climb up another crate and peek my head over the ledge. A waft of cold air blows over my face. Glistening faintly on the surface of the shelf are blue-white symbols and circles, ice crawling over the glowing lines. Some kind of magical icebox, I guess. Works for me! I snatch the cheese and bread from the shelf, leaving the stuff that would require cooking behind. Until I can figure out how to light the fireplace, the meat isn’t much use to me. I hurry back over to the kitchen “counter” and dump my spoils over the surface. Finally, I’ve got something to work with.
[Sanity Level: 85%]
The pain in my head is starting to feel sharp, my fingers like they’re full of bees. I snatch up the butcher knife that’s sitting on the counter, and immediately, the sensation lessens. I pause, Checking my Sanity Level again.
[Sanity Level: 87%]
It went up! Okay, grabbing the knife was a good call then. Let’s see if I can’t do better.
I quickly cut into the bread, partially squishing it as I saw off a couple thick slices. The cheese comes next—it’s so hard I have to stand up on my knees and put the full weight of my upper body into cutting through the round. Eventually, though, I’m able to cut a crumbly piece of that away as well.
[Sanity Level: 91%]
Good! We’re getting there. The tomato next, then. I’m not a big fan of tomatoes, but given the limited options I have to work with, I guess I should be happy this world even has one thing I’m already familiar with. Cutting up the tomato goes extremely poorly, and I basically just mash it into the counter top, but do manage to scrape something resembling a hunk of pulp onto the bread.
[Sanity Level: 92%]
I pause at the spices and dried veggies. The fire peppers smell nice and make my eyes water, so I sprinkle a bit of that on. The swamp weed has a slightly mildewy scent to it, and when I nibble the end it equally tastes a bit fishy, but it’s also crisp and fresh, and probably as close to lettuce as I’ll get.
The end result is a cheese, tomato, and swamp weed sandwich with a sprinkle of fire pepper and rock salt, which looks like it might have been assembled and then sat on by a toddler. Not exactly Michelin star, but it’s mine.
My brain tingles, and the static abruptly vanishes.
[Role Requirement satisfied,] Echo says. [Sanity Level: 100%. Knifework Skill Level Up!]
I look at my sandwich and the ruined tomato with skepticism. If my Knifework has improved at all, Echo is being extremely generous.
So I guess that’s it, then, I don’t even have to eat the thing, I just have to make it. Despite my questionable choice of ingredients, it seems like a waste to just leave it there. Besides, the earthy smell of the tomato, the warm heavy scent of the bread, and the sharp salty bite of cheese are making my stomach grumble. Apart from a few sips of that soup Gugora gave me—if it actually qualified as soup—I haven’t had anything to eat all day. Tucking my legs up onto the counter, I settle in, carefully pick up my dripping, awkward mess, and take a bite.
I chew for a moment, then freeze. My stomach lurches as the mix of flavors hits me. My mouth waters and my throat clenches—and I keep it down. No way am I going to puke up this hard-earned prize!
It’s not even really bad. I mean, okay, it’s not great either, but it’s a decent first attempt! It’s just something different—not what my tastebuds were expecting.
I think it’s the swamp weed. The swamp weed was definitely a bad call.
I’m in the middle of picking the slimy green leaves out of my sandwich when the light turns on. Or I guess, more accurately, the room is filled with light, since they don’t really have lightswitches here. Whatever the cause, the sudden burst of color stabs into my eyes and I flinch back with a hiss, squeezing my eyelids shut.
I hear a startled intake of breath. “Thief!” a sharp voice cries.
“No!” I object. I mean, I guess, technically, yes, but these are extenuating circumstances. I shield my eyes with the sandwich, trying to squint at the small figure and bright light at the other end of the room.
“Don’t move!” the person cries.
Their voice is familiar, and their stature is incredibly small, but it’s the ball of fire they’re holding in their hands that I can’t tear my eyes away from. Woah. Is that real magic?
They tense up. “Set the weapon down!”
“Weapon?” I ask, giving my sandwich a confused look. “It’s not that bad.”
But the figure doesn’t give me a chance to explain my pitiful sub, as in the next moment, the ball of fire is flying my way.