Chef stared at the thing in front of him for a while, as if he was trying to force it into proper shape and form with his mind alone. It didn’t work. At the very least, he could say with confidence that the cup held water. Just not quite the way he was hoping.

The cup before him had almost nothing in common with the jugs he had been given. Looking back and forth between his newest creation and his kiln, he finally accepted the truth.

“I have no idea what I’m doing.”

The other attempts were too brittle to work or simply couldn’t change shape enough, so he finally decided to just make it bigger. This ‘cup’ was nearly the size of his head with the bottom and sides thicker than two fingers. That combined with the coloring made it clear that his invention was closer to brick than ceramic.

And since it was really just a brick cup, he could use it to hold water. It just happened to be mostly held inside the brick rather than inside the cup. It was a rather porous material after all.

Sighing, Chef looked out across his field of dead animals in need of carving and decided to chase off the newcomers with a well-placed brick throw. The entire process was incredibly satisfying, especially watching the wolves scamper off. So at least these creations had some use.

Looking back at his kilns and other horrible creations, it was time for Chef to throw in the towel. Not that he’d ever seen a towel, but his defeat hung heavily in the air. Fortunately for him, throwing the rest of his failed attempts at anything that moved cheered him up pretty quickly. He was able to get back to work in no time at all.

The kilns were… they were fine. Something told him that his mortar wasn’t exactly as good as what the humans used. Maybe it was the way his first kiln had begun to sag after just a few days, but really it could just be nothing.

It wasn’t nothing. Another day of cooking, heavy baking, and carving went by before he went to sleep for the night. He awoke the next day to discover rain outside his cave which wasn’t all that odd, it rained all the time. Being a goblin, he didn’t care all that much about being wet, but it turned out that his kilns did.

Stepping out of his cave, Chef collapsed to his knees, hands shaking as the rain hid the manly tears falling down his cheeks. His kilns had collapsed, the domes no longer supported and sitting inside the circle. The walls were sliding as well, falling over when the wind picked up.

Nothing he could do about that while the rain kept up, so he just went out, grabbed some dead animals laying around, and went inside for some good old fashioned cauldron cooking.

Some moving of materials was necessary to not lose anything, especially since he’d mostly used the big pot for storage lately. He had the time to test out some things anyway, so he’d just start with the little pot. First, he made some milk and honey, surprised when he felt the mana loss. There was a sensation to using mana he discovered, and he got better at sensing its consumption the more he did it. Checking his stats confirmed his suspicion.

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Before, the mana cost of summoning a jug of honey was as high as 20 or more depending on size, though it was typically in the teens. This time, he’d lost just one point. Granted it was a small amount of honey, but it used to take way more. Trying it again with one of his pitchers confirmed his suspicion.

Maybe it’s the combination? It did say that Summon Flavoring combined with Sweeten. So what, sweets cost less to summon now?

He immediately tested some more, the vanilla powder proving to be less mana intensive as well. It didn’t take long for him to try and imagine more sweets as he activated his spells, and suddenly he felt an enormous chunk of mana leave him, dropping his reserves to below half.

The white thing in front of him was soft and mushy, but tasting it caused him to jump up and down with excitement.

Oh, this will go so well with those other things I was making! I’ll stir this up with some flour and the black powder, throw it in the kiln and—

Sadness. No flour, no kiln, just soggy bricks and broken dreams. A dejected Chef decided to throw the cream into the little pot anyway, stirring in some vanilla powder and summoning a little milk. After a while, he decided to get serious. Stirring with the occasional adjustment for flavor after a taste.

It was delicious, but it lacked any real substance. After a few slurps he decided to try using the white stuff as a soup base. That turned out to be the right move, the vegetables and meat cooked in the hot dairy tasting better than he could have hoped. All of this just proved that, while he might be ovenless for a little bit, he could still eat tasty food.

Sadly, it rained off and on for the next few days, giving him plenty of time to carve up and eat the food delivered to his doorstep. Really, he kept waiting for the animals to stop but they just didn’t. Where were they coming from in such numbers? How could a single forest’s ecosystem support such a massive culling?

Those weren’t his thoughts precisely, but even Chef knew something was off. He was still missing some of the other important questions though. Questions like ‘why would a bunch of weak humans build a village so far from the nearest city?’ Or ‘why are these animals somehow less resistant to poison?’ But he never took his eyes off the prize.

“Whatever, more food for me.”

Chef was many things, but he never was the most inquisitive. There was a wise saying in goblin culture: curiosity killed the goblin. And while humans weren’t smart enough to have a similar phrase or to understand it even if they did, Chef followed it quite well. Unless there was food involved, but that didn’t count.

Eventually the rain stopped, and it was time to rebuild the kilns. But first, he had to do something he really didn’t want to. The jug making didn’t work and his kilns fell apart after a light rain. The truth was obvious. He didn’t know what he was doing, and it was finally catching up with him.

He had to go learn how to do it properly. That meant talking to the slow woman. Again. He groaned in annoyance.

“Fuck! Shit! Fucking shit!”

The expletives made him feel better too, if only a little. Chef gathered up bunches of clay he’d dried out, filling the sack with it. The sack itself he’d emptied out before hand, once more just piling everything in the cauldron and then on furs when that ran out of room.

With a sack full of dreams of the clay variety, he made his way back to town.

“I’m sure they’ll be happy to see me.”