Ellis and Ena rested underneath a tree for the night. Their journey continued the very next day.

It was another day of nonstop walking, interrupted only by the occasional encounter with a vicious creature. Their mealtimes were conducted under a strict time table. And by that, it meant that they only ate whenever they came across a creature that Ena approved. Ellis thought that the whole process was bothersome, but he didn’t really mind. A part of him believed that the little fox was a real connoisseur. She only picked out the best meats that this forest had to offer. There was nothing wrong with eating good food.

They walked, they fought, they ate, and they slept. This sort of monotonous pattern continued for the next few days.

On the fifth day, the river suddenly opened up. More specifically, as it turns out, the stream that they had previously followed was merely a distributary. It connected to a much larger ‘main’ river.

The new river was significantly deeper. If before the water only reached his hips, then this time around, the water reached his shoulders. What’s more, it was wider too, as wide as a tennis court.

Ellis did not really think much of this change. Regardless, they were still doing the same thing. They traveled upstream.

Like always, they encountered several creatures. This time around though, something was a bit different. Rather, the difficulty had increased. Before, they only ever encountered lone monsters. Now, multiple creatures often attacked them at the same time.

A family of carnivorous moose, a pair of bipedal sloths, and at one point, they had gotten caught up in a ‘gang-war’ between a group of giant alligators and a black bear that greatly resembled the bear that they had encountered previously.

The most troublesome encounter was with a troop of ground monkeys. These things had overly muscular arms and legs. A thin layer of fur covered their bodies. They also possessed giant tails that were more than double their body height. They were not too big, just slightly larger than a normal human, but there were a lot of them.

The group that they had encountered probably numbered in the thousands. Ellis wasn’t too sure, he lost count after he killed his 200th monkey.

He called them ground monkeys because these things did not live in trees, but rather, on the forest floor. As it turns out, they had been camped out along the river bank. Apparently, they lived in holes, evident by all the burrows that littered the ground.

Their large numbers and persistent attitude were what made them troublesome to fight. It took nearly three hours to mow them all down. By that point, the sun had long fallen. Ellis and Ena decided to borrow one of their holes for the night.

That encounter occurred on the eighth day.

Unfortunately, Ellis quickly learned that such an incident was not at all uncommon. They continually ran into more and more groups. Often times, those groups had staked claim to the land around the river bank. If they wanted to progress, then Ellis and Ena needed to fight their way forward.

Eventually, another ten days passed.

The pair sat by the river. A warm breeze flowed through the forest as the gentle sound of running water smoothly caressed his ears. Unlike their hectic everyday lives, today was a rare moment of peace.

Ena was curled up in a ball by his legs while Ellis leisurely tended to the fire. Both of their eyes were greedily fixed onto the rising flame. More specifically, they were staring at the thing directly above it.

Right now, they were cooking food.

After he discovered Ena’s ability to produce fire, Ellis strived for a life of cooked food.

At first, his meals were rather simple. He simply threw a chunk of meat into the open flame and hoped for the best. While the outcome was certainly better than raw meat, it would not win any accolades any times soon. The meat was always overcooked and it tasted of ash.

Eventually, Ellis grew smarter with his cooking. Instead of just tossing the meat into the fire like some barbarian (not even literal cavemen probably did what he did), he learned how to cook with stone.

He found a flat piece of stone roughly the size of a frisbee and used it as a makeshift stovetop. With this, he hoped for a larger range of control whenever he cooked. And it certainly worked. While cooking now took a bit longer to do, the end result was a meal that wasn’t flavored with ash and charcoal.

Of course, this was only the first step.

The meat from magical creatures was very juicy and tender. Even the lean looking carnivores dripped with animal fat. Everything he put into his mouth was delicious. It was at a level where even those three-star Michelin restaurants from Earth would find hard to beat.

Was being delicious a characteristic of Lull’s wildlife? Maybe it was a result of Ena’s careful selection, Ellis did not know and he did not really care to know. He simply shut off his brain and enjoyed his food.

Still, success breeds desire. Even though the food was already cooked, he still couldn’t help but yearn for something even better.

Ena also shared his same sentiment. She got even pickier with the creatures she judged. It wasn’t rare for them to go a full day without eating purely because she found none of the monsters of that day to be up to par.

Ellis once attempted to give her blood. He thought that since she enjoyed the dragon’s blood so much, she would surely like other types of blood. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. She only ate the same meals as he did. Really, she was a girl who possessed very human sensibilities. That is if you exclude her habit of snacking on dragon scales. But then again, it wasn’t like eating dragon scales was exclusive to her. Ellis did it too. It was like chewing on potato chips. Not the best in the world, but it was certainly addicting.

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In pursuit of an even greater level of cooking, Ellis began experimenting. In the end, he came up with two methods of cooking: skewering and pan-frying.

Skewering wasn’t possible. At least, not normally.

The sticks in this forest were too brittle to be used as skewers. As a result, he substituted it with animal bones. He would whittle a bone down to a manageable size and then wash it in the river.

Usually, he used femurs or fibulas, but he found that a rib bone worked best for this type of thing. It had that natural curvature to it that allowed for one to cook meat directly over the flames.

All in all, this method was fairly successful. Roasting meat over an open flame was always a delight, but it wasn’t really better than the stone stovetop method. At most, they were equal.

His second method was the real breakthrough.

Ellis called it ‘pan-frying’, but he wasn’t really frying in a pan. It was a method similar to the stone stovetop, except he exchanged the heated stones for a dragon scale.

Dragon scales were kind of perfect. The scales were naturally flat, thin, and around the same size as a standard frying pan. When heated, they would take on a scarlet luster.

Most importantly, they were good conductors of heat, almost like metal. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him at all if someone were to tell him that dragon scales were actually some sort of bio-metal.

The best part about using a dragon scale to cook was that it elevated the flavor of the meat. It acted almost like a spice. The scale’s natural properties rubbed off on the food that he cooked.

Unsurprisingly, this method of cooking was a hit with Ena. It got to a point where she wouldn’t eat unless it was cooked with this specific method.

Recalling all this, Ellis shook his head.

As he waited for the fire to heat up, he suddenly got an idea.

“Hey, give me a scale for a second.” He spoke to Ena. She quickly pulled out a spare dragon scale from the magic pouch and handed it over to him.

Next, he walked over to the river bank. A few seconds later, he returned with two stones in his hands. The stones were around the same size as a basketball. Ellis hollowed out a fist-sized bowl in one of the stones.

He then took the scale and broke it up into smaller manageable pieces. He placed the pieces into the bowl. After all that was done, he whittled the second stone down until it was just slightly smaller than the bowl.

“Kyu?” The fox walked up to him, curiosity written all over her face.

Ellis did not respond. Instead, he began grinding down the contents of the bowl using the whittled stone. This was something that he had come up with after observing the effects of the ‘dragon pan’. It was somewhat similar to a stone mill. It ground down the contents of the bowl into a powder-like substance.

Well, considering the shape of his little contraption, it was probably more similar to a mortar and pestle.

Ena watched all this with rapt attention. She was a big fan of the dragon pan method of cooking, and right now, she felt that Ellis was doing something similar.

After a few minutes, Ellis finally stopped. He peered into the bowl. The dragon scale had been reduced to grain-like particles. It currently resembled green sand.

“Done.” He wiped the sweat off his brow and let out a faint smile.

With that, the next thing he needed to do was actually cook the food. This time around, he decided to go with the skewering method. Before he started though, he made sure to rub a bunch of the powder into the meat. It was a similar process to seasoning a steak.

A few minutes later, and a delicious smell wafted through the air.

Ellis removed the meat from the flame. He tore a piece off and tried it.

He immediately widened his eyes in surprise.

“This sort of thing… it’s better than I originally expected!”

The end result was something that completely toppled the flavor profile of the dragon-pan cooking method. It was far tastier than anything he had ever eaten.

He finally realized why he felt the meat had been so lacking. Although the natural quality of the animals in this world far surpassed the quality of the animals from earth, his cooking lacked spices. Naturally, it tasted bland (well, to an extent). The dragon scales acted as a replacement.

At the same time, he had to marvel at the creature known as the Dragon. Its scales were truly versatile! Not only was it a good snack, but it also worked well as both a frying pan and a spice!

Dragons really were the legendary creatures that his homeworld made them out to be…

Like that, the pair of fox and homunculus took another step forward into the culinary world.

****

They continued walking for a few more days.

On the twenty-fifth day, the stream once again opened up into an even larger stream. In short, they had been following an offshoot of the main river.

Ellis did not know whether this new stream was the mainstream or just another distributary, but judging by its size, he was leaning towards the former. The river in front of him was large. It was more than ten times the size of the previous stream.

Even the Amazon river from Earth paled in comparison.

He checked the depth. He discovered that the river was very deep. A spot that he randomly picked had a depth of nearly four hundred meters. 

When he first arrived at the river, only one thought popped into his mind: seafood.

With that sort of motivation, the pair of fox and homunculus spent the rest of the day swimming within the depths of the Not-Amazon river.

It did not take long before they encountered a fish.

It was a creature that resembled a catfish. It had a rotund body with two whiskers sticking out of its face. It had a mouth large enough to swallow a person whole. It did not look very strong, but it was very troublesome to fight. In this case, troublesome meant that it always ran away.

The catfish was actually the one who attacked them first. After it discovered that it was nearly impossible to injure both Ellis and Ena, it swiftly lost interest and swam away. The duo spent nearly an hour chasing after it. Ellis had a pretty good lung capacity, so staying underwater was not difficult, but perpetually chasing after this thing frustrated him.

It was surprisingly fast, and Ellis had a difficult time catching up (on account of his lack of experience in swimming).

After a while, something happened. Ena’s tails began to glow. Unlike before, this time her tails shined with a luminous blue luster.

The water around them suddenly vibrated. It pushed them forward. At the same time, the water surrounding the fish also changed. It shimmered and vibrated. It did not do a lot of damage, but at the very least, it was able to restrict the catfish’s movements.

Ellis was naturally surprised by all this. Ena also possessed water-based powers. Could it be that each tail represented a different element? What were those nine elements?

After thinking about it for a while, he eventually dropped the topic. None of it really mattered. Right now, he was more focused on eating seafood.

The two quickly returned to shore and Ellis went to work setting up the flame.

Afterward, he descaled the catfish and removed its innards. Then, he sprinkled some dragon spice all over the insides and the outsides of the fish.

Once it had been properly prepped, Ena pulled out a whittled down rib bone from the magic pouch and handed it over to him.

“So, it’s roasted fish today, huh?” Ellis smiled. After the discovery of dragon spice, roasting became Ena’s new favorite method of cooking. Although sometimes he wished for a bit more variety, Ellis didn’t really mind. After all, he liked roasted meat too.

With that, he quickly skewered the fish and placed it near the fire.

As they waited for the fish to cook, he suddenly heard rustling.

This happened a few times, but the smell of cooked food attracted wild animals. He turned to the source of the noise. There, he could see a pair of triangular ears poking out from behind a bush.