Thick Skin: fewer things bother you.

Well, if that wasn’t just the most open-ended ability he had gained thus far. And that was saying something, honestly. Other than that message, his morning was very calm and relaxing. But now wasn’t the time to sit around and read. No, it was time for action!

So Chef got back to making some thatch while also looking around for the right kind of rocks and some good wood. First, he was going to make himself a shovel. The slow talking lady had shown him one and, sadly, he was going to have to make his own thanks to their short supply and his need for flour. But after making the shovel and digging out some clay, he was going to make the entire dome and whatnot for the kiln out of the clay, and fire it all at once from within.

The perfect plan. Shame it didn’t work.

Turns out that cooking the clay on just one side was, in a word, useless. It became hard on one side but stayed soft most everywhere else. The other problem being that he couldn’t actually get the dome to stay up when it was made of the soft clay. So he went back to gather more stones, having come up with a brilliant plan. This time, he used the stone to build a very small dome with an opening at the front and a chimney on top. The secret to this one was the clay that he had gathered and wasted with partial cooking. He could actually use those as mortar, keeping the stones together.

This one worked really really well. At least until it didn’t. The weight of the stone eventually collapsed the whole thing, but he’d managed to fire up a good number of bricks first. He rebuilt the stone kiln five times in total, getting new clay each time. It took a full day before he finished making the bricks for his main kiln, and he hadn’t even started assembling the kiln. Fortunately, the stat increases he had gotten from eating all those animals were making it easy to dig out clay and pile stone, but it was still annoyingly slow.

The next day was spent almost entirely on building the kiln and setting it up. He didn’t have a proper metal grate for cooking on just yet, so he just used his pan for the time being. Chef didn’t really have enough hands to use two pans and a pot all at the same time anyway, so it wasn’t all that much of a loss.

That night, he cooked the rest of his first two boars along with most of the third. He left the fourth one’s meat in the cauldron that was currently full of salt. Of course, with the sack full of foraged things, he had been forced to preserve the meat in the salty cauldron instead. This left limited options for cooking, but those problems would be solved starting today.

It was time for some oven cooked bacon. He didn’t know the names for the different cuts of pork obviously, but he discovered their value all the same over the past few days. Firstly, boar was by far the most delicious animal he’d ever eaten, aside from Chief of course. But some of the boar meat was even better than that. It took some experimentation, but he was slowly beginning to get a feel for which ingredients went well with boar versus bear or rabbit. And thanks to there being a pan in the oven and not a grate, he could even throw oil or garlic in there with the boar meat, letting the juices pool and flavor the meat. He might have gotten just a bit overzealous with his additions though, finding the ingredients spilling out over the sides of the pan from the sheer number of them. Now out of space, he ended up stuffing the meat with even more wild vegetables and spices. It wasn’t like he could just not try every combination he had. And waiting until the second boar for some of these was equally crazy.

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Firing the oven was as easy as pointing and using mana refueling it just as simple. He’d discovered the day before that he needed to add wood to get above a certain temperature unless he was willing to dump all his mana into it. Which he wasn’t. But when he was cooking food instead of bricks, his normal cooking heat was just fine or maybe even preferable.

It didn’t take long for the incredible aroma to spread throughout the clearing, which actually got chef to go make a quick batch of poison goop for distraction. The first investigators arrived before his food was finished, proving him to be a goblin wise beyond his years.

A small pack of wolves began to fan out in the clearing, but Chef just dunked a few of his least favorite cuts of boar he had left in the goop before throwing them to the salivating creatures. They hesitated briefly but hunger won out as it always did. By the time he finished off the drugged-up creatures and dragged them back to the cave, his food was done.

His first bite told him everything he needed to know. His time had been justified, his labor worthwhile. Tears fell down the goblin’s face as he ate the entire thing in one sitting. The savory cocktail of flavors was a first for him since he’d never infused one meal with so much flavor. But thanks to his sophisticated palate, he was able to pick out the flavors individually.

*Ping*

He just needed to focus and ignore the notifications rude enough to interrupt his inner monologue. Focusing on the tastes, Chef could tell which ingredients improved it the most, which he needed more of. He had wolves to carve, vegetables to forage, and more cooking to do, but as late as it was those could wait. Could wait at least. Chef began skinning the wolves immediately, almost as fired up as his oven.

It used to be that eating would leave him sleepy and lazy, but now his bottomless stomach just left him wanting to do even more. He didn’t really want to eat the wolves, their meat his least favorite he’d had thus far. No, Chef had a new life motto based on the results from the food delivery service earlier in the week: ABT. Always be trapping.

He chopped up some of his vegetables and mushrooms that did the least for him, having collected them before tonight’s discovery. Doing the same for the roughly carved up wolves, he spread the food throughout the clearing. The poison itself was a mixture halfway between the super potent and the land mine moat that killed the boars. Having stayed up late and feeling sleepy, Chef turned off his oven and got in his bed of furs.

There was still so much to do, but for the first time he was truly content. Things were finally starting to go his way!