The creature had gray fur and was larger than his chest, easily three goblin feet long. It sat at the foot of his hill, gnawing on one of the corpses he had long since forgotten.

“Oh shit.”

One of the long ears twitched at the sound, no doubt displeased by the expletive directed towards it. Chef had never felt such extreme terror in his entire life. It was only thanks to his extraordinarily efficient digestion that he didn’t soil himself in fear.

It remained focused on its meal, luck remaining on his side for the moment. Still, he was conflicted.

He had recently synthesized incredibly powerful and long-range poisons. The timing of this intruder was perfect to test out just such a thing. Too perfect.

After all, if it lived then he wouldn’t. It would eat him and he’d be dead. That wasn’t ideal. There was no guarantee that he could take the thing, which wasn’t really different than usual. But normally, Chef only engaged with creatures that left him little choice or were born to be eaten. And while fear was a powerful motivator to spur action aggressively or evasively, he was always food motivated.

But a rabbit? I really don’t care for their meat. Maybe if it were something juicier…

After eating boar nonstop for weeks now, Chef had little interest in rabbit stew. Even if it was a particularly large one. It was the stringy texture and gamey taste that turned him off, and mollifying the meat with a soup or stew could only do so much.

So instead, Chef decided to hide and wait for it to leave. It didn’t take long for the creature to eat the bloated corpse it had chosen before scampering off into the woods with a full stomach. Fortunately, most animals had little desire to hunt, kill, or eat when full.

Still, he didn’t dare to move until several minutes had passed. At that point Chef decided to try working the metal into a shape more fitting for him. If dangerous monsters could just hop up to his metaphorical doorstep, then he needed to be prepared to defend himself against them.

The metal didn’t bend or break under his strength, even when he tried to use leverage to his advantage. With limited options available to him, his next instinct was to heat the thing. After all, he’d seen glowing hot metal being used by humans. Knowing that it could withstand the heat of his kiln, Chef had to really push the temperature to get high enough. The kiln was the obvious choice.

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By adding enough wood, he was able to get the temperature to… stay the same.

Huh. I thought that would work.

Sadly, Chef had been used to working ceramics that fired quite a bit below the melting point of bronze. What he also failed to consider, among many things, was that the kiln, if supplied a steady stream of wood and air, would burn at even higher temperatures. But the biggest thing he had missed was that a kiln design like his simply couldn’t hit those temperatures.

Oh well. Time for plan B.

Unless, of course, he cheated.

Set Temperature was part of Kitchen Magic which he had recently leveled. Thanks to that increase in power, the temperatures he could reach had gotten quite a bit more powerful as well.

By dumping a huge amount of mana into the fire, Chef was able to defeat his own kiln design and successfully melt the bronze. The bronze that was just sitting in the open kiln mouth. With nothing but the brick below to catch it.

It was an unmitigated disaster. In the few seconds it took him to decrease the temperature, the bronze breastplate melted into a running liquid that spread to cover much of the brick on the bottom of the kiln mouth. He’d even managed to get some to run all the way into the kiln body proper.

“Ah fuck.”

Chef eloquently phrased his displeasure at his own mistake. Of course, with the temperature having dropped, the bronze solidified on top of and inside the crevices in the brick. But, since the brick itself didn’t break, Chef got an idea.

Remembering the shape of the breastplate being good but the size being bad, he set out to make a big chunk of brick. With the form wet but unfired, he lied down on it, making a chest shaped indentation in the substance.

The result was… well it wasn’t perfect. For one it demonstrated a not insignificant protrusion for his stomach. Something he hadn’t noticed getting. But more importantly it was far from smooth. That was an easy fix though, and soon a smooth Chef shaped mold was ready.

With that finished, he went about elevating his gunked up kiln while firing the mold in his other one. This was a little bit trickier, but he had plenty of brick pieces strewn about his hill from his various activities. Mainly the brick balls.

He propped up the back of the kiln so that the mouth would be at a lower elevation, packing dirt in the gaps along with adding a couple more bricks to ensure the heat could stay in long enough.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would work. He was sure of it.

When the mold was finished, he placed it in front of the kiln mouth and got excited. Too excited as it turned out. Chef hadn’t considered the importance of a ladle. For one, height influenced splash as he discovered several seconds in. But more importantly, the narrowness of the spigot helped direct flow in only one direction.

It was a success in the sense that he got most of the bronze from inside the kiln to outside of it. The downside was that half flowed onto the hillside.

“Ah fuck.”

It took several more hours until he finally forged a breastplate that showed off all of his best features. Excitement shone on Chef’s face as he looked down at his work of art. The untempered metal shone back up at him, giving him a perhaps unwise increase in confidence.

“Now time for the back piece.”