"Hey hey, what are you doing, setting a campfire when we are going stealth?"

Behind him, the girl had been setting up a fire with a small cooking pot while he was testing the new system, and now she was throwing vegetables and something look like tree roots into it.

"It was already past noon, so of course I'm hungry! Hurry and help me chop the carrots."

Alice pouted and pointed the ladle at the cat, making demand on him. However, even she was hungry, can she eat the MREs silently? If the wolf discover them, they would be in big trouble, as in send back to the village by the life express.

"Can you leave it till later? We aren't on the camping trip, what if the wolf come over here?"

"I don't care. I won't move an inch before I got my lunch."

"Pretty please?"

"Nope. Look at the red wolf, it went off to hunt for its meal already. You can't find with an empty stomach, yes? Come over here, the soup is almost boiled already."

To prepare a big meal before fighting almost next to their opponent, the cat doesn't really understand how her brain really work. Although, she did have a point, regaining a bit of their strengths before the fight wasn't bad idea. Sighing, he walked off next to the fire,  and began to toss several pieces of chopped carrots into the pot. This time, the blue hair girl's product wasn't bad as last time, in contradiction, it made a sweet smell, which made him thought of the cooked potato soup with pork ribs back at home. This thing shouldn't be bad, he thought, as the girl happily swirled the ladle around.

Pulling two dried coconut-half from her bag out, she drawed the soup evenly for each of them. Look like his guess was correct, his share contained several pieces of potatoes, carrots, roots which he didn't know the name, and meat.

"Here you go, it was a bit hot, so don't drink it all at once."

I'm not a kid, the dark cat wanted to retaliate, but since she went out of her way to cook for him, he stopped before the words left his lips. Bring his "bowl" to the eyes, the warm yellow mixed with a few pieces of red carrot flicked up and down the surface with a rhythm, and the brown piece of meat at the corner of the bowl, everything made his mouth full of saliva. Borrowed a spoon from Alice, he tried to taste the soup. A warm delicious substance flowed down his throat, with the perfect boiled small cutted meats, he realised that he was damn hungry, as he had eaten nothing but coals and herbs since the morning. Putting aside the lack of spices aside, his only regret right now was not having a bigger mouth.

"It was good, wasn't it?" asked Alice with a beaming face, she had finished her share already. Just who talked about don't gulp it all at once a few minutes ago... At least she didn't stuffed her face in the bowl already.

" A few vegetables with some rabbit meats can always make a good meal, my grandmother taught me that." Swaying side to side, she puffed her board chest up proudly. Although, there was a wrong word here that made him nearly choked.

"Excuse me, what is this meat again?"

"Rabbit meats. R-A-B-B-I-T. What, you are allergic to rabbit?"

The cat's mouth was hanging open. Rabbits, as not in these friendly rabbits right? As he recalled her title again, he suddenly wanted to run. There was no chance he'd risked his neck for someone's hunger.

"Fufufufu, look at your face. Nah, they are right here, I'm not that inhumane, you know."

Pretend to puff her cheeks out, she lifted the pile of vegetables up, and voila, there they are, innocently gnawing on the carrots and cabbages. As he breathed out heavily in relief, he recalled something was missing.

"Then whose meats are these?"

"Wolf meats, I collected some of them when you were resting back then. Only a wolf and we have the meat for one week, if it doesn't spoil." Rotating a scalpel in her hand, Alice made the stabbing and cutting motions.

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The gear finally clicked in its place. So that's the reason she got the "Animal butcher" title. She cut out any animals after slaying them, for rationing. In a way, that's handy. In another way, that's scary. Mental note, don't stay around Alice when she is hungry.

Quickly finished what's left of the soup, he asked Alice for some waters to cleaning , " 'cause you can summon them", which she replied as "you want your hand stucks on the ice? Sure, go ahead." Luckily, she stocked on some water, so he didn't need to try the suggestion.

Also, it was convenient for them, the wolf after finished the hunting, went back to the old place and slept there again. Wondering the wolf previous life was a pig or not, the four of them (the rabbits rode in Alice's hood) snuck round about the big creature, using the universal stealth device, the box bushes. If they can avoid the wolf, who looked like at least double their levels, and get to collect the herbs as soon as possible, that would be the best course of action. This time, he ensured that there wasn't any extra bush behind them.

============ In process of sneaking ===============

They didn't really need to disguised as the bushes, as it seemed. The wolf was sleeping still, it even snored like the sound of thunder strikes. Even when they walked right by him to get to the targeted area, the wolf didn't move his tail by an inch. Felt like an idiot for making too much cautions, the cat shut his mouth and didn't mention anything about it. The other three still behaved like their normal selves. albeit they tried to make less noises (and failed completely at it).

The field which was seen from afar, actually only contained a small batch of Silver Grass mixed up with the other plants and weeds, all of which they didn't know the names of. If one of them pick the Alchemist related class, they might knew that some of them were good ingredients for the other quests too, but since that wasn't the case, they only picked what was assigned (they as in the cat and the girl, the rabbits were playing tags around). Although, the number of true Silver Grass was a bit too few, they were still able to pick a handful of them, plus several mana regening herbs that the cat had already forgotten the name, with a bunch of lesser grass. Also, just to be on the safe side, they only chose the high quality grass among them, as Alice happened to have the Appraiser skill on level two.

As the sun came down the horizon, their works here were finished. They had carefully gathered  24 good quality Silver Grasses, 31 lesser quality one for self-sustained, and some of The Herb, as the cat decided to shorten the name down, since he would forget it at any times. Now they only need to reach home quickly, before the night was fully drawn out.

The red wolf was still snoring there peacefully as if nothing happened. Could it be, they could avoid it this easily with his high luck stats? The black cat didn't know it for sure, but his code was never look into a gift horse's mouth, so the sooner he could get out of there, the better his day would be. Tip toed around the red wolf, who didn't react at all, the cat passed without any trouble. The rabbits also hopped over the wolf effortlessly, however he questioned himself if it was necessary to jumped over the wolf's head instead of moving around him. With only the girl left, they could all went home without any worries, right? And the day would end without any scratch on him beside the cracked hand, wouldn't it?

Well, not today.

Of all the way she could pass, the blue hair girl decided to pass over at the end of the wolf's rear end. And it would went unnoticed, if the wolf didn't choose the moment Alice jumped over to turn his body around, conveniently placed his tail under her predicted landing place.

Looked like he would get a first class airline ticket back to the village today as well.