As it turned out, they weren’t exactly thrilled to see him. Far from it in fact, several townspeople began sprinting out of the other town entrance when they saw him enter. He even recognized the armor on two of them as they made their daring escape. What brave rearguards they made.

He ignored the scrambling masses and walked to the kiln maker’s house. He attacked the wood in the same manner that the other humans did, rapping on the door with his knuckles. Unfortunately for the owner of the house, Chef didn’t quite understand his own strength. The first knock was enough to crack the wood. Out of consideration of his intermittent teacher, he decided to stop there.

The immediate response to his attempt at knocking was a loud and high pitched “yip!” coming from inside. The second and more delayed response was the door opening very slowly. When the woman saw her guest, she immediately turned pale.

“Make jug. Show me. Make mortar. Show me.”

His demands were simpler this time. Chef realized that he learned by doing, mostly because he couldn’t be fucked to pay attention to a long discussion. Unfortunately for Chef, his definition of ‘long’ was anytime someone spoke more than a couple sentences in a row. Or for more than a dozen seconds.

The door opened further as she let him in entirely out of the goodness of her heart. Her shaking legs and sweaty brow were sure signs that this was something she wanted to do and that she was absolutely not under duress. Definitely.

The frightened woman talked while Chef ignored as much as he could, simply reaching into his sack to pull out the clay. Well, some of the clay. He’d brought so much that it was somewhat impractical to whip it all out at once. Not with such an impressive size at least.

She took the clay, walked over to a table that seemed to have lots of gray residue on it, and plopped it down. Then she grabbed a nearby wooden bucket that Chef needed to learn how to make. The question died on his lips as he realized who he was talking to.

I’ll ask someone else later.

He instead just made a mental note that he definitely wouldn’t forget. She made her way to the stone or brick circle in the middle of town as he followed along. Chef stopped following, mentally at least, when she attached a rock to the bottom of the bucket.

Humans, he thought with a sigh.

Then, using some strange rope contraption and the bucket, she lowered it into the circle. The oddities continued. There was a splash that echoed out; and, moments later, she used the rope thing to pull out a bucket full of water.

“Smart.”

She shuddered slightly at his compliment, splashing some water out of the bucket as she made her way back to her home. Watching her get to work, Chef understood that he’d been entirely wrong about making the jugs.

She dropped the clay into the bucket and moved it around extensively. As time passed and the water got cloudier, she would pull off the certified non clay that rose to the top. Mostly it was grass from the overzealous digging he had done to get the clay in the first place.

Eventually, she got out another bucket and poured out some but not all of her gray water. At the bottom of the now mostly empty container she had used originally, Chef could see rocks and other things settled out on the bottom.

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She then took that same original bucket outside and poured it all out before rinsing it with water. Then, she took the newly cleaned bucket/empty and used it to pour the gray water back into. Each time she did this process, a little less sediment was left behind, a few fewer rocks in the bottom. The important thing to note for Chef, aside from the fact that he wasn’t doing any of this before, was that this was a three-bucket process. One rinse bucket and two clay buckets to pour back and forth from. Eventually she said something that got his attention

“…so, um, now you wait for it to dry out and become, well, less watery.”

This simply would not do. Chef slightly heated the water and used Rise to expedite the drying, satisfied by the look of shock on her face as he did so. Only a few minutes passed before she seemed satisfied with it. At that point it was slightly denser looking than his goop but only slightly.

She then went on about how normally you would have to wait or some other nonsense, blah blah blah. The gist of it was he had managed to make the clay mature and that normally took time. Of course, she spent several minutes to say that in a much more roundabout way, but that didn’t matter.

What did matter was watching her do the pinching and pulling and other very small, very slow, and very boring movements for the next two hours. Finally, she had made something resembling a jug.

When she started working on something else, stating it was for the handle and lid, Chef nearly began to cry. At sunset, the jug was complete, all the way through the cooking process. She had a kiln herself, much smaller than the one in town, and watching her continuously peek at the fire made him more than a little uncomfortable. She said it was to check the temperature which was a blessing, honestly. He really didn’t want to have to do all that.

His magic would thankfully let him skip half of the annoying parts.

Seeing the finished product and knowing how to make it was all that he needed though. As payment for the services rendered, he filled the jug with honey before handing it back to her. The confusion on her face was potent.

“This is honey.”

He said, pointing to the sticky golden substance. “Sweet and valuable.” She continued to look at him with an intellect equal to her recently created jug.

“For teach. I give honey. Thank you.”

He had said his piece, gotten what he came here for, and so he made his exit. As soon as he left the house, however, a small group of people were waiting for him. They scattered as soon as they saw him, which was odd, but Chef just walked back to the town entrance while holding the sack. It was lighter now that so much of the clay had been used, but the trade was worth it.

He hadn’t made it more than a couple steps outside of the village before shouting and sounds of running made him turn around. The father approached rapidly with a few people in tow. He had to catch his breath before talking, but the contents were hardly surprising.

“Sir Chef. I apologize for the inconvenience. Really, I do. But we simply cannot build any faster with the people we have. Too much time is spent on harvesting and preparing food for us to focus on the mill construction.”

He looked over at the bricks and clay staged for their project and had to admit that they’d made good progress. Perhaps it was time to give a little bit of food. If they could do what he demanded, of course.

“You do as I ask?”

The man paled a little and fumbled with his words before sounds of more shouting and running came from the town. This time it was the handsome man, running up with a small jug in hand that he cradled carefully. There was only one thing so precious that it would warrant that treatment.

“Sir Chef. Your flour.”

The handsome man proved to be a human of higher quality, the only one that could run through their entire town without gasping for breath. But that wasn’t the surprising part.

“Ah yes. Yes. You do as I ask. I bring food in morning.”

He began to walk away after safely storing the flour in his once again empty Breadbox. With his mask on they’d be none the wiser. He’d completely forgotten about demanding flour.

It was late when he got back to his cave home and realized a sad truth.

“I forgot to learn about mortar...”

He’d have to go learn from the kiln maker. Again.

“Fucking sack of green dicks!” he shouted, throwing down the bag of clay in the process.

Expletives really did make him feel better.