The bad news was that everything was burnt. The good news was that the oil had given the bears a nice crusty finish.

Chef had decided to leave while the fire petered out and have himself a little nap. The morning after he returned to the cave with the rest of his cooking things, ready to go. It was a grim sight of blackened woods and thick with the smell of ash and burnt flesh. He inhaled sharply, a smile plastering his face.

“What a wonderful smell.”

But of course, Chef was a goblin. Bleak scenery and burnt flesh were among his favorite non-food related things. But of course, anything tasty and edible would be a higher priority no matter the work involved, and so he set out to survey the damage.

He found the giant bear right where he left it and decided to carve that one up first. Chef couldn’t be sure, but he got the feeling that his knife skill was helping him carve faster than he did before, that or he was just getting better the old-fashioned way. Regardless, the sun had yet to set when he had finished carving up the giant. The cauldron was still there and he’d grabbed whatever he could on the way over here, so he could start cooking right away. But he didn’t. Chef wasn’t satisfied with how he’d made the batches of bear last time and had been more or less disappointed by all of his meals lately. Well, the oil helped a lot and made for a less goopy meal overall, but he just wasn’t satisfied. Not like he had been when eating Chief. His stomach screamed at him for neglecting to eat the food right in front of him, but Chef couldn’t help this feeling in the back of his mind.

Taking mental stock of all the ingredients he had available to himself, he began to use his magic to try and create different specific flavorings. One by one he would summon a little bit into his hand while trying to focus on whatever intangible flavor he was searching for until he finally started getting there. First was this strange black almost powdery substance that had a taste so soothing to him. The second was even more shocking and took an enormous drain on his mana. He focused in on the sweetness from the black powder and was able to summon some golden, sticky liquid. Directly into his palm.

*Ping*

Congratulations! Your Summon Seasoning has evolved into Summon Flavoring!

Oh well, he’d know better next time. And he’d gotten a spell evolution out of it too! Having a taste, Chef was practically over the moon with excitement. This was what he was looking for. This sweetness he’d never had before in his life that thus far had been at best filled with tart and savory flavors. Finally, he’d felt one of the edges of his flavor profile, and now was the time for pure experimentation.

He tried everything he could think of, even trying to add in the recently separated out pieces of bear, but he could barely taste the bear. Sadly, the black powdery thing didn’t go very well with the meat either, but just a little bit of golden sticky and it completely changed the flavor. He discovered the secret was to add the liquid thing to water while making the stew, then it would infuse throughout the meat while being it was cooked. It wasn’t that he couldn’t use his new flavorings to cook meat; he just had to be more creative and clever about it!

The result was incredible, tenderizing the meat while giving it a delicious sweet crust that was just to die for. Or kill for in Chef’s case. Though, summoning enough of the golden sticky substance to fill his old, small pot nearly broke his head in half. It had to be done, he couldn’t wait to keep making more.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

He spent all night grabbing water, adding it in with sticky gold at different concentrations, and cooking the different cuts of meat with it. He tried pan cooking, soups, stews, why he brought out everything he could think of, even adding oil and flour at times. The one thing that was clear to Chef now was that he needed even more containers. Breaking that jug was causing him so much trouble now that he only had the sack, the bag, two pans, a pot, and a cauldron. The pot was his designated golden sticky holder while the cauldron was mostly used for whatever soup or stew he was working on. Then he had to use two pans for making oil which was, well, not ideal.

He was quite confident by this point that he could make a different oil with cuts from the bears, but it just wasn’t the same. He liked the nut oil a lot more, to the point where he was spending hours on trying to get it to work despite the impracticality of it. But looking at his other containers didn’t leave Chef with many other options. The sack he’d been using to hold the meat in salt to keep it fresh, or at least keep it from going bad, and the bag was… well it had seen better days. It was a very holy bag at this point, having survived multiple forest fires that had nothing whatsoever to do with the goblin.

The knife at least he could continuously sharpen magically, but honestly the bag couldn’t be used for much of anything at this point. Anything smaller than his pot and pans would fall out of one of the holes, which happened earlier with some of the foraged vegetables.

So, he was ultimately being slowed down by just how few his instruments and implements were. He had a big non wooden spoon to replace the one consumed by flames, courtesy of the villagers. It had come with some other things like a big fork and smaller knife, but the knife was quite useless and forks appeared to be as well. He had been settling for using the spoon to gather the oil off the top of the water when he was heating the nuts, that much he had done from the beginning, but now he was having to spoon directly from the pan to the cauldron.

He’d have to demand some jugs when he went back to town, that much was certain.

But Chef pushed through this adversity, worse than any he’d faced thus far on his journey, and made batch after batch of candied bear, eating as he went. He ended up carving the four smaller bears, though they were still about his size, and stuffing all of that meat into his sack. Well, all that would fit. What remained he just had to cook. After all, no use letting it go bad, right? Never mind the fact that he’d been full hours ago, he was determined to find the absolute limits of his endless stomach. And so, having eaten the parent bear and while melting down the bones with just a little bit of sticky gold, Chef fried up two of the cubs with his second pan. The big problem right now was his lack of vegetables and other things. There was no variety, nothing to add in to break up the monotony of eating meat after meat after mind numbing meat.

He considered his options, and even put his spells to use, but no matter how hard he tried, he was never able to summon anything of substance with his magic. At least, nothing more substantial than the sticky gold, but that had drained his mana too much for him to do freely.

Chef spent two days after the carving had been finished, meditating when he got too tired and cooking or carving all the while. Two days of eating meat after meat and only having sprinklings of diversity added in. But then, Chef did something absolutely insane.

He cleaned his pan, crazy as that was to him. He didn’t want a trace of meat in this meal, having eaten a giant bear and two cubs over the past few days, he needed a break. Then, he pulled out half of the flour he had been storing in his breadbox and used his only other completely unused spell: Knead.

He didn’t know what he was doing whatsoever, but Chef was being guided by a need and desire so primitive and essential to sentience that it could not be denied. He had been consumed by the call to create, to explore, to discover, and yes even to diversify something as simple as the meals he had been eating.

And so, he used up half of his flour and used his magic to make something that he’d never even heard of before aside from its mention in the name of one of his spells.

Chef was going to bake a bread.