What a disappointment. Chef paid five big copper coins for this butter recipe, and all he’d been missing was a hide bag to shake the milk in? Really? He’d been so close to figuring it out on his own!

Well, not really, but the simplicity of it still stung. It was just like the flour making all over again.

Fortunately for him, the guards had long since started providing him animals for cooking, so he was able to get a hide bag fairly easily. It probably wouldn’t last very long considering how his old outfits held up, but that didn’t matter.

He finally had butter, and it was delicious.

Chef discovered that basically anything would taste better if butter was added to it. Whether it be his sandwiches or the kebabs, butter just added tasty flavor. He couldn’t wait to get out of here and try making a proper pie.

In the meantime, Chef sat on the stone floor in his tiny cell, eating buttery cheese bread while sipping milk and honey. He had learned long ago that metal heated through his magic didn’t hurt him, so he’d been able to take a bunch of his small coins, heat them in his hand until they became soft, and then bend and shape them into a cup.

The guards had looked at him with sheer horror during the entire process. Either what he did was incredibly impressive or he had wasted a lot of their money on his new cup. He didn’t really care which.

Truthfully, being arrested had been one of the best things that had ever happened to Chef. That must have been why he’d felt so sad to hear the news.

“What do you mean you’re letting me out?”

The nameless guard who tried to tell Chef his name on five separate occasions scratched his head awkwardly. The fact that the man was wearing a helmet made the motion even weirder.

“The order came down this morning. You’ll be executed tomorrow, so we’ve staged an escape route for you.”

Chef leveled the man with a stare that he was quite convinced looked very unimpressed. It seemed to work.

“Don’t look at me like that, goblin. We don’t want you to die, and the baron is really serious about this. He hired someone from outside the city to hold the execution, and they should be arriving tonight! Please just escape. It would be such a waste for your food to be lost forever, never to be tasted again!”

The second guard nodded emphatically. Just a couple weeks ago, this man had been so opposed to the Chef and had refused to eat what he had cooked, but look at him now. Chef was proud to know that his food could have such an effect on people. He was also a bit worried by it, but he’d have time to consider these things later.

“But I like it here. Everyone likes me and just lets me cook.”

The two of them looked even more sad than Chef felt. It was quite clear that nobody wanted this to happen. Well, aside from a ridiculously dressed man and his bratty daughter, but they didn’t count.

“Fine, I’ll escape my death. What do you need me to do?”

Chef spoke those words through a sigh which demonstrated a total lack of concern as well as excellent breath control. It was possible that he could have had a career as a trumpeter or singer had he dedicated the time and effort to it. But that’s beside the point.

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“Just bend these bars and crack our helmets before going that way. Another guard will direct you from there.”

The man pointed further into the prison before they both took off their helmets, placing them on the ground.

Escaping the prison was doable even without bending the bars on account of him being goblin sized, but they obviously needed Chef to make a scene. Heating the bars and dumping mana into both his strength and punch allowed him to knock out one of the bars entirely, snapping the steel as it flew into the far wall.

“Oops. I forgot how strong I am. My bad.”

The men smiled slightly at the small monster.

“It’s fine. Just don’t use that much strength on the helmets or we won’t be able to explain how we survived.”

Chef nodded up at them before testing how hard he had to hit a metal helmet to crack or dent it. The answer was not very hard at all. He didn’t even need his skills to do so. In fact, he didn’t even need his full strength. It still took a lot of effort to crack steel though, so his enhancements really did a lot. Like an insane amount. That was good to know.

“So, I just go that way until I get more instructions?”

Chef double checked the plan after cracking one helmet and denting the other. Both men nodded as they waved at the goblin.

“Yep. Good luck out there, little goblin chef. Don’t forget that most people are just happy to eat your food, so there’s no need for us to be enemies.”

The goblin with the Mass Murderer title found himself agreeing with the prison guard as he continued down further into the dungeon. He was continuously pointed further and further down the path, taking a long set of spiral stairs to descend further into this stone box. It didn’t take long for him to find his way to the last floor. In fact, that was a bit of an over exaggeration from the whiney goblin.

The worse the criminal, the further down in the dungeon they were placed. Each floor had a spiral staircase heading up and down, but they were placed on opposite ends. The idea was that, should a prison escape ever be attempted, those at the bottom would have the hardest time making their way out, exhausting them in their climb and fight to the surface. It also had the side benefit of allowing horrible and unethical practices on those prisoners that would never be allowed out on the bottom floor.

Chef had been on the second to last floor already, and while the sights and smells on that final level had been much more horrifying and graphic than he’d expected, they were really more nostalgic than anything.

Maybe these people aren’t so different from goblins after all. Chief might have been into something.

Ignoring the screams of pain and horror, Chef continued following the nice guards’ directions. In total there hadn’t been more than five of them, but they all looked the same to him. Humans without striking features like the handsome man or intrinsic value like Therace tended to just… blend together to him.

His next contact was a large man with damaged armor. He smiled down at the little goblin before gesturing towards what was most definitely a stone wall. After several seconds of silent direction, Chef decided to illuminate the man.

“That’s a wall.”

Much to his disappointment, he only got a nod of agreement from the burly boy.

“It sure is, Mr. Chef. But you see, breaking through that wall is your only way out of here.”

He was worried this would happen. Once again, he was going to be forced to dig like some newborn.

Digging and mining is child’s work. Why should a fully grown goblin have to do it?!

With a sigh, Chef activated his skills and began to attack the wall. The effect was immediate as stones began to tumble and fall before his incredible might.

That’s what should have happened and would have too if this weren’t a fake wall. But sadly for everyone involved, this was the entrance to the secret tunnel leading out of the prison, or more accurately leading into it. The barons of old had used this path on several occasions to imprison and torture people without publicly arresting them in the first place. It also allowed them to secretly visit certain prisoners for interrogations, negotiations, bribery, etc. Truthfully, most prisons had a fake wall with a secret passage in its bottom flour.

So, when the powerful fist struck the look stone, it flew into the tunnel before shattering on the rock wall within. The goblin just stood there confused until his quiet company coughed loudly for the third time. Looking over, Chef saw that he’d been holding out a large metal hammer for him to use.

“Oh. Right. Yes.”

Grabbing the man’s weapon, he got to work on removing his stone obstacle so that he could continue following the nice guards’ path out of the prison.

It was a really weird day.