The tunnel was really long and had lots of random and sharp turns before finally reaching, surprise! It’s another stone wall! This one, however, was smooth and had no handy guards around for providing direction. That was a bit fortunate for Chef, since that also meant no spectators to see him fuck this one up as well. Not that he was planning on embarrassing himself again, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t expecting it.

Reinforce, Enhanced Physique, and Empowered Strike siphoned his mana in sequence as the tiny goblin threw a blindingly fast punch towards the smooth rock. The wall shattered, revealing some metal bits and moving parts in the debris. Granted, all of the debris was moving on account of the whole explosive force thing, but some of the flying shrapnel looked like it was previously part of some hidden contraption to open this not-so-false wall. Looking over at the nearby torch, Chef picked it up out of curiosity, resulting in the sound of gears turning and nothing happening.

Whoops. I mean, they already want me dead, so fuck it. They can make a new one.

Putting the torch back, Chef made his way into a poor excuse for a cave. This place was only slightly bigger than those human houses back in the village. It could barely even fit two dozen goblins!

The perfect home for a lone goblin on the run if one didn’t factor in the whole ‘directly connected to the city prison’ part. That really made it a bad idea to set this place up as his new home. Really, it would be quite stupid to just hang around the first place they’d go to look for him.

But, then again, he was feeling rather hungry. Surely there would be no harm in stopping for just a short while, just long enough to fill up on some tasty food.

He got to work, immediately making some bait and laying it out while building an impromptu mud oven. That Craftsman skill really put in work, allowing even the shoddiest constructions to hold up for lengthy periods of time. This mud oven and his copper coin mug were proof of that.

Animals began approaching not long after, giving him plenty of time to prepare his oven and make the dough. For the first time ever, he did so with butter and milk.

This was an exciting moment for Chef, as he sat there, waiting for the meat and vegetables to cook. In this instance, waiting looked a lot like manic dough creation with a slight mad scientist flair. He was trying everything he could think of with the improved recipe, whether it be honey and vanilla powder or onions and cheese. There was no such thing as too much or too far when it came to food experimentation, not for Chef.

The difference between the butter dough and his poor substitute was enormous. Well, it was honestly fairly small, but even a tiny increase in quality from the heavenly flavors he’d been making before would be incredibly noticeable.

Either way, his nonstop experimentation and consumption required nonstop supplies. That was a guarantee for everything on the menu except for the prime ingredient, butter. Much like the cheese, summoning butter directly drained way too much mana for it to be at all viable considering his stomach capacity and digestion rate, but Chef had another idea to try out.

Having made a couple more hide bags, he dumped some mana into one particular spell for each bag and just sit back as they quickly moved back and forth, shaking themselves automatically.

Turned out that the Stir spell, like his other spells, had a broader application than most would initially assume. If he threw enough mana into it, he could make any object move back and forth more and more quickly. Of course, the faster he moved it or the heavier/larger it was, the more mana it would take, but a hide bag or five was no big deal considering his mana stores.

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He discovered this just as any true goblin would, by being bored and trying to make one of the now overabundant animal corpses around him dance. While the performance was anything but graceful, it did alleviate his boredom and teach him a valuable new life skill. Neat.

Wait. Couldn’t I have just used Stir to grind up my ingredients before getting the Grind spell? It would have been more roundabout but…

He could have been making flour from the very beginning.

Chef’s ego had been taking some hits since arriving at Berics, not that he ever paid attention to the name of this city. Learning more cooking recipes and about his skills left him with a very bittersweet feeling. On the one hand, it was never too late to learn something new and helpful.

But on the other hand, it was really embarrassing how long it took him to figure this shit out.

Depression crept in once more as Chef used buttery dishes to run away from his problems. There were also those baked breads he’d heard so much about and needed to try. Oh, and who could forget that stuff the humans called gravy! He needed to try and make some of that before drizzling it on some bread and boar meat. Then he’d try the—

“I can’t believe you’re still here. Seriously, I thought you were smart.”

Chef identified the jab at his intelligence as the mindless prodding of the uninitiated and unwise. After all, everyone knew that the best meals were worth dying for. Besides, what was the point of living if you had to do it hungry? If he was going to be on the run, he might as well be full.

Rather than rise to the provocation, he simply held out an extra pie he was planning to eat but hadn’t gotten to yet.

“Make yourself useful, human. Taste test this for me and compare it to the ones you bought in the past.”

Chef didn’t even turn around to greet the man as he continued to shovel different foods into his mouth. With the discovery of food preparation automation via stirring, he could make decently good meals constantly. If he was better at multitasking, he could probably even make enough food to feed an entire city every day.

Sadly for Chef, he had a one track mind. He also wasn’t exactly a philanthropist.

Nerick sighed and walked forward, grabbing the offered pie.

“You really need to be more cautious, Mr. Chef. Most people take a very ‘kill first, ask questions never’ approach with goblins. It wouldn’t be any good if you died simply because you didn’t pay attention to your surroundings and got jumped.”

The human had a point. He was normally quite observant thanks to his big numbers, but he tended to get a little absorbed in his cooking, especially when he got a new ingredient to try out. The baked ball of butter-honey proved that he could get a little carried away.

“Your concerns and observations are noted, Mr. Guard.”

The man took a break from smiling happily at the taste of the pie to frown at him.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Huh?”

The man looked at him for a second before looking away. Then came the head scratching and the wringing of hands. Awkward really was the best descriptor for him.

“You know my name but never use it. You just call me Mr. Guard instead.”

Confusion overwhelmed Chef’s senses. It was a common occurrence for him ever since he left his tribe due to ‘creative differences.’ Namely that they wanted to eat him raw while he insisted on eating them cooked. Fundamental disagreements like that really were destroying the modern family.

“It’s your job. You call me Mr. Chef and I call you Mr. Guard.”

There was a long pause as the two looked at each other.

“My last name isn’t Guard, it’s Summers. Guard may be my job, but guards aren’t all named Guard.”

“Huh.”

This was the first that Chef had heard of this. He’d just assumed that the naming conventions were similar. Wait, did that mean that Therace’s full name wasn’t Therace Cook?

Wait.

“So this whole time I’ve just been calling people by their job and not their name.”

His business partner looked at him, mortified.

“By the divine, you had no idea, did you?”

Chef put his head in his hands, refusing to look at the man.

Spending time with humans definitely wasn’t good for his mental health.