You know, I was actually kinda worried that she would say no to a second date.

I thought that maybe she was only humoring me one time, or that she didn't like it.

It seemed that was unfounded, as she gave no hesitance when she told me: "Sounds good."

I had been working with the other villagers to figure out what kind of things they could and could not eat, and what pastries were like as far as they were concerned.

It seemed that whatever translation magic or whatever was going on was pretty precise, so they were basically what I thought of.

It was good to hear that my plan wasn't going to fail on its face.

The biggest hurdles to my plan were simple... finding an acceptable facsimile to the ingredients I needed.

I figured it would be really hard to come by any sort of naturally-occurring margarine or anything like that, but I thought I would look.

Of course, I'm not so lucky as to find such a thing.

Though, I was lucky enough to find a plant that was a type of grain, I was immediately suspicious about it being poisonous to one of the two of us.

It seemed like my worries were unfounded, as long as I cooked it, it would be fine.

Before you suggest that I was being reckless, I tested it (and everything else for that matter) on local fauna first, as well as consulting the Fifskae on whether or not it was like anything they'd seen.

Turns out, the Fifskae also had a plant similar to this one, so that's a step in the right direction.

On my ingredient hunts, I could never find any sort of milk-substitute of any kind, not even a plant like a coconut... that was really disappointing.

At that point I decided that I would have to change the recipe a bit to match what I had.

The next step was harvesting sap.

I didn't exactly have any idea what I was doing, which really didn't help. I knew for a fact that it could easily go wrong in a myriad of ways, but I forgot what they were... it didn't seem useful or interesting at the time.

I wish I had paid better attention after all of those failed attempts.

I wasn't even like I needed a lot, I just needed enough for like a bottle of syrup, and that would do fine.

So, I just tried a bunch of random stuff to see what worked.

Luckily, one of my attempts did work, and didn't produce something that looked like human blood...

Yeah I don't think I can ever un-smell that either...

I started boiling that stupid stuff down while I tested the different things I could make with my ingredients.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

I came up with a sort of simple bread-thing with a crunchy texture.

All it took was flour, yeast (a very small amount, thank heavens), salt, and hot water.

Next was my strange failure to make syrup.

It become a honey-like consistency, but it tasted okay, so I rolled with it.

After all of that was done and I made sure to test everything just in case I was almost about to serve mustard gas in bread form, I came over to Sydui and asked her out for a second time.

In retrospect, I really should have just asked her to follow me and try it right then, but it felt too informal to do it that way at the time.

Lessons learned I suppose.

It was the day of the date, everything was set up, everything was going great... until.

"Everyone! Champion incoming fast!" The watchman yelled.

We had managed to build a single watchtower and a small section of wall.

It was good progress, but not helpful right now.

I lamented my fate as I grabbed all of my gear and jogged to meet the enemy.

They were still a way off, but I could still make out most of their important features.

They looked like a blob with a humanoid assortment of limbs and... a shield of all things?

[Thunth The Corpulent, plus four other titles]

Danger Level: Certain Death

Huh, he had more titles than I did...

Concerning...

I fired a shot at him and his shield suddenly met the bolt and deflected it.

Well, this sucks.

I reloaded my crossbow and slung it over my shoulder in case I got a chance to use it later.

I unsheathed The Great Stabbinsky.

"Time to do the impossible one more time old friend."

'What more could a magician ask for?'

I smiled at that.

I jogged over to meet the giant gross thing before it made it to the village.

The villagers attempted to use their atlatls against Thunth, but he just blocked everything no matter how improbable.

However, as I got closer I heard him say: "[Guardian Aegis]!"

A [Skill] then.

At least it wasn't natural talent... that could have been really bad.

He stopped his enormous inertia feet before reaching me, skidding to a halt.

He made some sort of gross blubbery noise, which I assumed is what passed for speech among his kind.

I mean I don't mean to be that guy or anything, but it sounded so... moist... and jiggly...

I digress.

I swung at him with The Great Stabbinsky, which was predictably blocked easily with [Guardian Aegis].

I strafed around him, hoping to outmaneuver him, but he just kept stretching like his entire skeleton was made of spine.

Even when the villagers and I attempted a coordinated attack, he'd just switch hands with his shield as a stage magician might with a deck of cards.

I also tried to kick his shield, but that stupid blubber of his distributed all of the force...

It was so gross looking, I really couldn't kill this guy fast enough.

Thunth then tried to grab me with his ham-sized fist.

Luckily for my safety, as well as my ability to feel clean ever again, he was pretty slow.

I suppose it doesn't matter how slow you are if your attacker can't ever hit you.

I tried and tried to get passed his defenses, but even as he grabbed at me, I could tell he would just shove the shield in my face, stopping any sort of resistance before it started.

This was by far the most frustrating fight I'd ever been in, I could tell that Thunth was barely tired, as was in fact resting as he blocked. I was going to lose a war of attrition if things stayed the way they were.

To a thing that looked like the poster-child of being the most out-of-shape and disgusting creature I could imagine.

If only I had something that could bend passed his shield... or break it maybe...

I had an idea!

I put away The Great Stabbinsky and pulled out my saw.

I charged and clashed my saw against his shield.

I dragged it across the surface...

...To reveal that nothing at all happened.

Thunth made a sound that only be described as gurgling his own vomit... which I assumed was a laugh.

I slammed my saw against his shield over and over.

"Damn it! Damn it! Why! Won't! You! Break?!"

A line of text appeared, but I was too focused on what I was doing to read it.

Suddenly, my saw turned into mush and splashed everywhere, much to both of our surprise.

After a second, it clicked and I burst out laughing. "Oh, because it's mercurial! That's hilarious!"

I pointed the handle of the saw at Thunth and said a badass quip. "Checkmate."

The mercurial metal slid around Thunth's shield and wrapped around his arm.

He frantically attempted to remove it in vain and it formed a saw's blade and cut through his arm in a matter of seconds.

His shield clattered to the ground as he screamed in pain and fear.

"Yeah, that was my cool line, so this one's just gonna be a more generic 'see you in hell'."

The metal wrapped around his neck and decapitated him, causing him to mercifully disintegrate before I had the displeasure of finding out how bad he smelled on the inside.

I turned to walk toward the village and saw Hund run up to me. "There was a second champion! They took several villagers, Sydui gave chase!"

I said the only think I could think about in that moment. "DAMN IT ALL!"