The students' stomachs grumbled as they entered the classroom, finding each of their desks equipped with a cooking setup and ingredients. It wasn’t a traditional stovetop, but rather a portable hot plate that was common when camping, along with a few portable pots and other utensils. And the ingredients looked farm-fresh—picked straight from the wilds rather than bought at any store.
It was obvious what their teacher intended for them to do. But the main ingredient was still missing, or rather, just out of their reach. Up above them on the ceiling was a giant net of black vines, and trapped inside there was a lot of writhing and a cacophony of clucks.
“Today, we’ll be cooking with monsters,” The Slayer began the lesson. “And before some of you ask, yes, humans and Lessers normally can’t outright eat monsters. Or that’s what’s taught as a form of general safety. But the truth is, if you cut out meat from the monsters before they begin to rot, it is perfectly safe for all beings to consume.”
“Generally, monster meat is less pleasant than their animal counterparts. Usually a lot tougher and stringier, and just a bit bland in general. But sometimes monsters are all you have during deep expeditions into their territory, so it's best to get used to it. To that end, I recommend packing a spice-kit among your usual provisions. It will make it a lot more tolerable.”
“For today, however, we won’t be using any premade spices or ingredients at all. Everything you see before you, Drimini and I foraged yesterday while you were fighting Pox. We also captured what you hear above your head: Chucks. For those who don’t know, they’re a combination of chickens and ducks. One of the tamer monsters, but rather wily and noisy. They also taste like an approximation of its parts, so it's a good place to start for first-time diners.”
“There’s one for each of you in the net above, with a few extra in case accidents happen. It might seem like a lot for me to have caught in a single evening, but there was a full flock at one of the nearby ponds. Drimini helped me capture them as well when she got tired of playing around.”
“Today, we’ll be using them to make a recipe that my sister created and sent me a long time ago when I was still out surviving on my own. It’s called Chuck’n Berry Casserole. It’s pretty convenient, since where you find Chucks, you’ll also find their eggs, a few of which have been provided to each of you. Then you just need to find berries or something else to give it flavor, which have also been provided in this case.”
“But it won’t be so simple. You may have noticed that all of you do not have the same types of berries, that’s so it won’t be ridiculously easy for you to copy your neighbor. Each of you has five different kinds, two of which are poisonous. It will be up to you to deduce which and dispose of them while then incorporating the other three into your recipe. You should be able to figure out which by using your standard-issue survival guides, of which if you check the notes, I am one of the main contributors—not to brag, but hopefully it will let you trust it more.”
“Additionally, as an extra safety precaution, I will be trying the first bite of each of your meals. If you haven’t prepared the meat correctly and there’s still rotting radiation, or if you’ve included a poisonous berry, it won’t kill me as a Fiend, but I’ll still certainly know. And if any part of it is deadly, you of course fail, and you also won’t get any food.”
“Since you’ll be making multiple portions, that’s your meals for all of today and tomorrow. I’ve instructed the cafeteria to refuse you. And if you’re caught sharing amongst each other, that will make all parties involved fail as well. Lastly, just if you don’t prepare it well, you won’t fail, but you’ll get a worse grade, so I advise you to properly follow the recipe.”
“You’ll also be brewing homemade tea using one of the provided leaves. They look, smell, and taste almost identical. But one of them will make a delicious beverage, the other will cause a heinous rash on your skin, but it won’t show for a few hours, so you won’t know immediately. However, when you drink it, you’ll certainly find out quickly, since your throat will scratch madly for the remainder of the day. You won’t fail if you brew using the wrong one, since that will be enough of a lesson.”
“Now then, I don’t expect you all to already be skilled monster butchers, so I will demonstrate the proper technique. Pay attention, because when it’s your turn to do it, you’ll have to do it quickly before the meat becomes unusable. I’ve included a diagram and instructions for you, but it’s best to see it firsthand.” Drim pulled up an actual cage and set it down on a table, removing the cloth to reveal the monster.
He killed it in a flash, stabbing it in the back of its head without a moment’s hesitation, ending its life instantly. Immediately, the monster’s head began to rot, dissolving away. The Slayer was then quick to remove it from the cage, severing where the rot was the worst to slow it down, and then began butchering away large chunks of flesh and feathers.
The teacher easily could have used more finesse, not wasting as much of the parts as he was currently, but he didn’t want to teach the students the wrong lesson. Speed was more important than acute accuracy. It was better to lose some of the meat and preserve the bulk rather than risking it all for a few extra scraps.
And in moments, he had a good slab of perfectly usable and safe meat. He then went through the extra steps of deboning what remained, cutting it into more desirable chunks similar to what the students would be used to seeing. The Slayer made sure to not waste any of what he had left, showing just how much could be salvaged from a monster that most would deem inedible from the start.
By the end, he had enough fowl meat to feed a starving family for at least two days. He certainly didn’t expect the students to get that much on their first try, but hopefully they’d get at least half, which would be more than enough to sustain them on their own, even with their voracious appetites. And with the later training he had in mind for them, they’d certainly be hungry afterwards.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“I won’t go into the rest of the recipe since it's fairly straightforward cooking, though using some instruments you might not be used to. And it might give you hints as to which of the ingredients you should be using. So let’s get started, shall we? Oh, and since you are all monster hunters after all, you won’t just be handed a fresh kill. You’ll have to ‘hunt’ them yourselves.”
The vine netting disappeared entirely, vanishing into green light. Then the entire flock of Chucks was suddenly left with nothing to support them. They mostly inherited their chicken side when it came to their wings, making it difficult for them to fly. But it was still possible, just with a barrage of raucous flapping with screeches to match.
In seconds, the room devolved from a classroom into a chaotic coop with the avian monsters flapping all around, desperate to escape becoming the students breakfast. But to the hungry hunters, there was little sympathy left. Some caught their prey quickly, slamming the corpses down on cutting boards and beginning their butchery in mere moments from when the madness started.
But it didn’t mean everything would be peaceful from then on, because those that still remained had more room to roam, with the still-hunting students chasing them all around. It took a few minutes, and a few crashes and failures, but eventually every student had finally subdued a Chuck. Most didn’t hesitate at all to kill it, using their cleavers to cut off the heads and get to work, but a few still hesitated, wasting time to build up the commitment to end a life.
All of them had killed monsters thus far in their training, but they were rarely ‘peaceful’ ones that weren’t actively threatening their lives or the lives of others. But hunting to survive was also just as needed, and the Chucks weren’t exactly entirely innocent monsters. They tended to overgraze, both on grain and fish, completely demolishing farms and ecosystems if they were allowed to roam free.
There were proper breeding facilities for them now, in an effort to end world hunger, but many humans were still hesitant to dine upon them if they knew what they were. So the monster meat market was slow-growing as always, but there had been breakthroughs. There were specialty restaurants opening around the world, designed to make monster meals delicious and give humanity a taste for them, so they’d be more open to the idea.
Still, it wasn’t the most appealing idea for many, and some of the students struggled with the prospect—evident by their faces as they cut up the meat, though it could have just been the experience and general sliminess rather than the source. Once the actual monster bits had been removed, however, their faces changed, because it looked like any other food, just uncooked.
The instructor was then pleased to see how stringent of each of his pupils were when it came to identifying the ingredients. He half-expected some of them to break out magnifying glasses with how much they were studying the patterns on the berries. Just from his spot-checks, it didn’t seem that any had used poisonous ones, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he was trying a bite.
And for that he was hopeful. While the minor poison wouldn’t do any lasting damage to him, it still wasn’t pleasant. He’d feel sick for the rest of the day, and the trip to the bathroom later would make him genuinely feel like he was fighting for his life. The Slayer didn’t exactly want to relive some of his earliest experiences out in the woods, but thankfully he’d at least now have proper toilet paper.
Only two of the students also screwed up their butchering, losing the majority of the meat to the rot, which didn’t leave them enough to make the recipe properly. And they were allowed to retry using the extras that Drim had corralled into a new vine cage, but had to hunt them down and kill them all over again. He wasn’t so nice as to just hand them over.
After that, there was only one further incident where a student had made the wrong tea. It only made him more determined to finish his food quickly, even eating some of the remaining raw ingredients—anything to scratch the itch in his throat. Then soon after, the first meals finished up and Drim went around tasting.
Overall they were just okay, but decent efforts from first time chefs working with difficult cuisine. Drim couldn’t be too harsh on them, especially since he rarely put a ton of effort into his own cooking when he was out in the field. A couple stood out as being delectable, however, leaving the instructor hankering for a second bite, but he didn’t want to take away from the students’ rations for the next two days.
One of the main reasons he’d given them a variety of berries, besides the aforementioned trickery, was so that the flavor would vary from dish to dish. Since he had a few dozen to taste, if they were all essentially the same, they’d become harder and harder to judge, melding into one uninspiring flavor. And those individual bites also ended up being his meal, stacking up to make him satiated and ready to skip lunch.
In the end, everyone passed, though there were a few who certainly needed to work on judging when meat was properly cooked. But funnily enough, monster meat didn’t carry the same risks and diseases that other raw meat did when not cooked through. Still, it made it far from pleasant to eat, but alas, it was still edible, just with a few reduced marks to their grade.
Honestly, the teacher wasn’t entirely sure what all these passes and fails and grading would amount to in the end. How they performed academically meant little to him as compared to whether or not they’d learn to survive. Odds are, he’d throw away all the results and put their overall success entirely on the last exam, only looking back on their past experiences if they otherwise failed by a narrow margin, but hopefully it would never come to that point.
Still, it was better that the students didn’t know what he was planning, and he’d continue to let them stress over each task, thinking each one was important. While they had a nice lunch, where the teacher did actually let them try each other's food since they’d all succeeded, the instructor gave another lecture on the importance of proper monster part disposal.
While all the unused flesh had rotted away, they still had the bones. He spoke about where they could be recycled or sold to parts dealers. In this case, Chuck bones didn’t go for much. They weren’t great for broth like regular bird bones and were mostly used for cheap fertilizer. But they could sell the eggs and any unused meat, along with the talons and beaks.
Drim tried to reinforce that it was always better to do something with them than leave it around for other monsters to find and eat. He also hammered the importance of cleaning up blood, which in the wilds usually meant just covering it with dirt, or else the areas they just cleared of monsters would openly attract new ones. But with all that covered, and their stomachs finally full, it was time to move onto the next unusual lesson.