Chef’s hopes were demolished before they even had a chance to bloom. Before he went out to forage the next day, he set up a decoy for his food; a poisonous goop infused just like his old ones had been was piled off to the side of the cave entrance. When he returned from foraging, he found the pile empty and the boars eating his food.
He sighed and they reacted to the sound, splitting up and dashing out of the cave and into the tree-line. Half a day’s worth of foraging had been eaten just like that. He continued to cook and carve and work his way through the creatures he’d killed already, changing up his strategy the next day. This time, he made a poisonous goop more powerful than the ones before, not one that could be eaten and ignored even by something with poison resistance.
But when he returned, he found the goop at the entrance to his cave untouched and the boars within stuffing their faces. This time he brandished the knife quickly, but they still managed to get past him without more than a glancing blow to one of them. Without the goop to slow them down, they’d eaten through an entire day’s worth of foraging.
This had to stop. Chef was trying to figure out what to do about this. Usually, he got through his problems by burning or poisoning them, but he really didn’t want to set his cave on fire. Sure, that would deal with these boars, but he’d lose the food he left behind for them. And even then, it wasn’t like more wouldn’t show up eventually.
No, Chef needed a solution that allowed him to respond to surprise attacks by creatures, one that didn’t rely on them eating a goop. Then, in a stroke of brilliance, it came to him.
What if they didn’t need to eat it. What if I could make a poisonous goop so foul that just smelling it was enough?
Chef was inspired and got to work right away, making the most potent cocktail of hallucinogens that he’d ever seen, mixing it together with all of his skills flaring. And then he had made it, a substance so utterly disgusting that the smell of it drove even him to go a little loopy.
*Ping*
Congratulations! Your Poisoncraft has increased!
But just a little bit. After all, he was a strong, powerful goblin capable of moving the entire world! Just look at him go!
“Yea, just look at you go! You’ve got this, buddy!”
The goop cheered him on, but something seemed just a tad off to old Chef, so he decided to meditate and clear his head. Of course, he’d been poisoned rather powerfully. But it was nothing that him and his new best friends couldn’t handle, right boys?
The boar carcasses and hanging bear skins cheered him on, so Chef went back to making more… things? Cooking, right, that’s what it was called. Now how did he start fires again?
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*Ping*
Congratulations! Your Poison Resistance has increased!
Chef found himself in a field nearby, clothes gone and mouth full with something. Spitting it out, he realized he’d been eating some raw carrots pulled out of the ground. Spitting more, he saw that some dirt and grass had been accompanying them.
Gross.
It took him a few rumbles before he finally found his cave again, and to nobody’s surprise he had two guests who’d decided to see themselves in. They even helped themselves to his food. The aromatic goop had obviously lost effect over time, leaving it to do very little or nothing at all at this point as the boars simply ignored it in favor of their feast.
Chef snapped, unwilling or unable take it anymore. On instinct, guided by his skills and abilities or perhaps some strange madness, he used magic once more in an unintended way. He pointed his hand towards the goop which had been so effective even against him, and commanded it.
“Rise.”
At first nothing happened besides the boars noticing him. They began to prepare their exit, fury and rage consuming Chef when he saw their snouts covered in the food that he had so painstakingly collected. Mana bled off of him as his store of it dropped rapidly, but he didn’t care. There was only one thing he cared about, and he’d see it done.
“RISE!”
A purplish green puff came off of the goop as the boars dashed out of the cave, but it was too late. Enormous as the cloud was, they had surely inhaled enough to make them at least as disoriented as he had been. However, Chef didn’t have an appreciation for exactly what he had done.
When the goop was sitting there and simply emitting an odor, the dose he inhaled could be compared to one serving’s worth, perhaps as much as two depending on how long he stuck around. But when the spell forcefully ejected more gas from the goop, what it had actually done was pull out whatever remained within by filling it with far too much air to hold. The result wasn’t one or two servings of a powerful hallucinogen, no.
The result was over a dozen.
The boars began frothing at the mouth, falling over onto the ground as they spasmed violently. Chef watched in awe as the creatures flailed wildly in an attempt to get back on their feet, but it was to no avail. Slowly, but surely, they stopped moving. And yet, Chef received no notification. Truly, the poison resistance these things had was scary, it was just that he was scarier.
He walked up to them, knife in hand, and killed them quickly by stabbing their throats, his head aching all the while. After he confirmed their deaths, he went ahead and did some more meditating. Once the throbbing in his head subsided, he checked his notifications.
*Ping*
Congratulations! You have killed something!
Congratulations! You have killed something!
Congratulations! Your Kitchen Magic has increased!
So it wasn’t just cooking that could increase this skill; he could improve it by innovating his spells.
Now this gives me some ideas.
Chef waited until after the cloud had subsided in his cave and decided to make himself another batch of the poison bomb just in case he needed it later. Of course, when his cauldron began to lecture him on the importance of hygiene and the power of running water, Chef came to an entirely different conclusion.
“I really need more containers so I stop breathing this stuff.”