Chef made his way into the woods nearby in search of shelter. If he had been lucky, there would have been some abandoned cottage or ruin or at least a cave nearby for him to quickly transform into a residence. But he wasn’t. There were, however, lots of trees.
Truthfully, Chef had never built his own shelter and didn’t really have a good idea of how to. So, he just did what felt natural and found a couple of fairly rotten fallen trees to slump next to. And then he slept. For a while. For a really long while as it turned out.
Chef didn’t know what time it was when he awoke, but the sun was painting the sky red. Apparently, he’d slept an entire day. Well, so much for showing up in the morning like he had planned. Meanwhile, his stomach was winning the internal coup, so Chef decided to forage up some ingredients for today and then make some traps for small game.
The berries, nuts, and mushrooms in these woods were plentiful. He was even able to scrounge up some wild vegetables and fruit! As he stirred up some dinner, Chef wondered why the humans didn’t come out here to forage more.
The sound of cracking wood came from behind Chef. First, he froze, but then he slowly turned and looked eye to eye with an enormous bear of the non-glowing variety. Nobody spoke or made any noise. Presumably the bear couldn’t speak, but Chef couldn’t know these things. Then the bear made to move in closer and Chef, instinctively, summoned his hottest cooking fire he could right below its face.
It screamed out in pain and fear before bolting away, Chef resisting the urge to do the same.
“I hate these stupid headaches.”
But then Chef realized that the pain wasn’t that bad. And he had summoned his current cooking fire just a few minutes ago. He realized it all at once.
I haven’t checked my status since that other bear.
So, he did just that and his jaw dropped.
Name: Goblin Chef
Species[Level]: Goblin[55]
Class[Level]: Goblin/Peon[10], Goblin/Cook[10], Goblin/Chef[20], Chef/Baker[15]
Health: 49/49
Mana: 37/37
Stamina: 40/40
Titles:
Cannibal
Skills:
Brawling III Convincing
Conniving III Running
Climbing Intuit
Kitchen Magic Butchering II
Poisoncraft II Poison Resistance II
Baking II Goblin Spreading
Knife Meditation
Kitchen Heat Resistance
Spellcasting:
Create Cooking Fire Set Temperature
Stir Sharpen Knife
Wash Dishes Breadbox
Knead Summon Seasoning
Traits:
Gluttonous Loathsome
Garbageman
Boons & Banes:
Exquisite Taste (F)
Goblin Confidence (C)
Attributes:
Power 30 Hutzpah 59
Gusto 36 Intestine 55
Alacrity 27 Waagh 0
Sense 37 Ability 27
Inexplicability: 26
Chef didn’t understand why even his gusto was so large, but attributed it to how much of that bear he’d eaten.
I guess cooking the bear gave me more stats for it then?
He’d known it to work that way for quite a while, but he’d never seen such a large change before. The only explanation was that as he improved his cooking, he would gain even more stat increases when eating the food he cooked. Meaning he had to save the flour for special occasions, at least until he got more.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Curious about his big numbers, Chef decided to punch a nearby tree trunk.
“Ow!”
The result was as expected. So, numbers weren’t that big yet. But the rotten tree that he used as a bed never stood a chance! He smashed in parts of it with glee as his newfound power gave him a rush of adrenaline.
Then he went back to cooking.
Punching things is scary. I’ll stick with poison for now.
His mission reaffirmed and a new target in mind, Chef cooked for himself first. Then and only then did he start work on his bear killer. Though some more burning hot grease and jelly were definitely on the collection list as well. Just in case. That, however, would have to wait until after he got some more corpses. He ate the food as soon as it was done, quieted his stomach for a few precious moments, and then got to work on some traps.
He’d known how to trap rabbits for a long while, and other small critters weren’t too different. In fact, he’d been one of few goblins with the patience for it. Not the trapping part, that was fine. It was making the thatch that drove goblins mad.
It was just waiting and watching. Watching and waiting. And then you grab and twist but you don’t get to break. It goes against every goblin instinct! But Chef persevered and learned the skill that allowed for incredible innovations like trap making and the loincloth. But Chef was an innovator first and foremost. So, while most goblins would lay out the grass on a sunny stone somewhere, he would instead use his magic to make this go much faster!
Truly, any society would be lucky to have Chef’s advanced skills. With the thatch drying out over the extra fire he made and swiftly shut off, he got back to making his poisonous goop. It would be a back and forth all night between cooking and making more thatch when his mana allowed for another fire. After a few hours he got tired and went back to sleep.
He rose with the sun, full of power and excitement and the smell of burning. Ah, right, he was surrounded by coals and embers.
You see, Create Cooking Fire creates the fuel and the flame magically, hence why it takes mana to make it burn hotter, but removing the heat gives back none. And no matter how low the heat, a sizable chunk of mana is consumed every single time. This is because the spell also creates a small area for the fire. Emphasis on small. So, when, for example, a dozen of these small fires are kept in the same small area, small enough for them to overlap, the zone for the flame spreads. Though this phenomenon is known by a more common name.
Forest fire.
The clearing was ablaze with cook flame, which meant that Chef was quite fine despite the heat. He was sweating a fair bit and could go for swim to cool off, but it wasn’t worse than unpleasant to him. However, the clearing that had been full of grass he was intentionally drying out had, surprisingly, caught on fire. And with the magical nature of the fire, it didn’t need much energy to burn in the first place.
Well, there go my traps. Chef calmly gathered his things as the inferno raged around him, pouring the rest of his water onto his bag to ensure he didn’t lose it.
Oh well. Time to find a new camp and try this again.
----------------------------------------
It took three more tries before Chef found a sufficiently nonflammable clearing. The same thing had played out each time, all the way down to the curious bear that Chef was too distracted to poison. He had a task and there would be no sidetracking.
Sadly for him, watching grass dry was too boring to stay awake for, even with Chef’s legendary patience. It also seemed that while Meditation allowed him to ignore sleep for a while, it wasn’t a substitute. So, he got four- or five-days’ worth of sleep over two days. Inconvenient that.
But after just a couple more destroyed clearings he succeeded! He had tons of thatch now and was only making more as time went on, having figured out a system to heat it just long enough to dry but not burn. What he did was use the rumbling of his stomach to keep time. It was incredibly consistent after all. Two rumbles were enough for the thatch and so that’s what he did.
Then he made himself a little lean-to not far from a nearby creek by amassing fallen tree branches and using the thatch as rope and covering. All in all, it took four days from when he first got to the human village to set up his home, traps and all.
Oh right, the humans.
He almost set off to return to them but then he realized something. Chef looked down, viewing his body in all of its green glory.
The fire had consumed his wolf costume days ago.
Well, time kill that big ass bear.
Chef went back to foraging and cooking, but this time he made enough poison to kill a… what was bigger than a bear? Wait, would this even be enough for it?
Chef foraged some more and cooked up even more poisonous goop until it was overflowing from the pot. It was his most potent mixture yet. It had to be with how big his numbers had gotten. So, he just dumped the pot out on the forest floor. Goop spread slowly along the now barren earth as Chef cackled maniacally. He gathered up his first trapped hare and threw that into the goop too.
Now he had to wait. No, first he had to hide. Then wait. Killing was hard.
He scurried away and then hid in a tree. Soon he would have another big bear to eat. Very soon.
…
Chef, bored of waiting again, decided to take just one more nap.