What would shock everyone that wasn’t Chef was that almost everything actually did go according to plan. Not quite everything, of course, since life can be a bit unpredictable, but the broad strokes turned out as well as could be expected. That is to say that it was going very well until it wasn’t.

Why is that bear glowing?

As it turns out, if you gather up an entire forest with the intent of funneling all of their stats and experience into one predator, then you will artificially create a super animal. If you do this in a forest like this one, that super animal is likely to be a big ass bear. And now, said big ass bear was gently glowing green as it sat upon the ground. It appeared to be meditating.

Around the bear were the littered remains of over a hundred woodland creatures, little but bones and fur remained. The herbivores were directed to the outer circle while the predators would fan out to catch them, distancing from eat other until the final confrontation. The results were what he wanted in experiment one.

Minus the gently glowing bear of course. That was unexpected.

He had a series of hyper poisonous rations that he was planning on rewarding the victor with, but he was feeling a bit nervous. He’d gained two levels from assisting the bear in its rampage, but he remained pretty sure that the poison didn’t do much to it.

There was a chance, just a chance of course, that by eating around a dozen different poisoned animals in their entirety that he had developed the Poison Resistance skill. And Chef was pretty sure that he couldn’t strangle the bear to death.

Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained. He would have his Turducken or he would die trying! He finished mixing some Chief jerky with the super poison he had concocted and hoped it would be enough as he set himself up for almost certain doom.

He had originally had a lot of Chiefsteaks but then he only had a couple, and he ate those while he watched the blood brawl below. He also originally had over a dozen rations, but now there were only six untainted pieces with the rest being used for this final gambit as he dropped them directly below the tree branch he hid in.

It would either work or it wouldn’t. Not like his odds of running from the glowing bear were all that good.

The rations weren’t on the ground for more than a couple minutes before glow-bear sprang into action. It rose and rushed towards the smell without hesitation, pulsing green light following it as it went. It was fast, way faster that Chef was, but that probably wouldn’t matter.

Within moments it was already eating the first ration. After a few seconds he had scarfed down the last. The apparently bottomless stomach the thing had was impressive. He’d seen it eat so much in the past couple hours that it honestly made no sense. How could one bear have all that power?

Glow-bear looked up and locked eyes with Chef.

Uh oh. That’s definitely not good.

It began to try and climb the tree. Chefs first instinct was to run, which wouldn’t work very well on account of being stuck up a tree with a glow-bear at the bottom. His second instinct was to throw stuff at it and so he did. Everything that wasn’t part of his cooking supplies was hurled at the approaching bear, but unfortunately Chef wasn’t great at throwing. Most of the branches he tossed missed and the rest did nothing. How unexpected. The bear was at least. The fact that throwing a twig at a bear’s face would anger it more than it would hurt it was a rather obvious thing. Well, obvious to most at least.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The bear rose up the tree, slowly but surely approaching the goblin at the top. Chef was panicking as he metaphorically ran around in circles and was not so metaphorically freaking out. When the bear was halfway up the tree, he had an idea.

He summoned the hottest cooking fire he could on the thickest part of the branch as he stood on the other side of it. Looking below, he saw the bear notice the flame, a natural repellent to its dumb animal kind—

It kept climbing. Ok, new plan.

Chef pulled out his pot and looked around his bag for anything he had. And then he saw it: his two vials of grease. Pouring those in the pot, he had an idea and summoned all of his bone jelly into the pot as well and used almost the last of his mana to push Stir to the limit. It felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing his brain, but Chef pushed through.

The bubbling mass was at a ridiculous temperature, Chef could tell even through his resistance. And so he grabbed the pot, felt the burns on his hand as he turned the fire down to embers with Set Temperature, and stepped up to the tree trunk.

Even with his resistance to this heat, he could feel his health dropping quickly. He didn’t have to wonder long about what it would do to the bear. It climbed up, now just a couple feet away, Chef could feel its rotten breath on his face.

He poured the pot directly onto the bear’s head. A substance somewhere between molasses and oil slowly fell onto the bear, too thick to shake off and too liquid to avoid while clinging to a tree trunk.

The glow-bear let go as it screamed in agony, letting some of the substance into its mouth. It was over thirty goblin feet to the bottom of the tree; Chef knew because he was even higher up than last time and had felt every foot of that drop.

Chef grabbed his bag as he made his way down, ignoring the splitting headache as he reached the bottom. The bear was flailing wildly as it tried to free itself of the boiling substance tearing into it both from within and without. It really shouldn’t have opened its mouth to scream. Rookie mistake that.

Chef pulled out his knife and waited for the bear to tire itself from its desperate attempts to no longer be aflame. Which had happened at some point. Turns out whatever temperature he could get his fire up to was hot enough to also set bear fur on fire. That was good to know.

Eventually the bear collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath as blood bubbled out of its mouth. There was hardly any fur left on the thing and much of its flesh had been burnt past what he would normally eat as well. He could only guess what its throat and mouth looked like, but Chef was more excited that anything.

He snuck up to the thing as it tried to recover with that green glow it had. Quickly, as quietly as possibly, Chef used two hands to stab into the bear’s neck, pulling the knife with all his force as he turned and ran away from the flailing beast. It didn’t even give chase, exhausted as it was. All it managed to do was thrust one massive paw in his direction before once again collapsing hard onto the ground.

It stared at him defiantly even as blood poured out and into its throat. Chef couldn’t help but smile. The smell of cooking flesh was in the air, his Turducken slowly bleeding out. Life really was good.

He rested by one of his embedded cooking fires and began to slowly bring it back to a full flame. Set Temperature seemed to only take his mana if he made the temperature really high or if the change was very fast, so he took his time with it.

By the time the fire was really going, the bear had fully collapsed and was ready for another stabbing. Chef had no intention of disappointing the beast, so he delivered. Specifically, he delivered his sharp kitchen knife into the bear’s throat, again. And again. After seven stabs and dodging the sloppy movements of the near dead beast, Chef was ready for the main course.

*Ping*

“All in a day’s work,” Chef said, ignoring the pinging and the messages. He had other priorities after all. He stepped forward, resharpening his knife.

“But now. Now it’s time to feast.”