Today in gross kitchen!

Chef Alvin has seen himself in a difficult situation!

Only a few days ago, the Chef admitted his crimes to his family!

The sexual harassment of his sister was brushed off with a warning because she didn’t care, but he wasn’t forgiven for almost driving the family to extreme poverty, to the point where they had to ask the grandmother for food!

Then, in an impressive turn of events, Chef Alvin was presented with a totally new daily routine!

He is now training hard to achieve mastery in rice-treant cooking!

What do you have for us, Chef?

Good morning Chef. I have a nice plate of medium-sized grilled rice-treant with vinegar and garlic reduction.

Ok. Presentation is pretty bad. You should have put more effort in making the tentacles look less… tentacly.

I hope it’s at least cooked right and….

I can’t believe this.

I fucking seriously can’t believe this shit!

It’s pink!

Oh no.

Pinky treant! I can’t believe you served me raw, pinky treant! Are you trying to kill me young man?

No chef! I’m sorry chef!

Take this out of here. You don’t deserve to work at Fantasy World Fine Cuisine and Barbecue!

I’m sorry chef, but no one else wants to cook this chef!

… dammit.

***

Bonjour monsieur.

Today we have a nice plate of boiled rice treant. It has no salt or condiments because mother became furious when she discovered I used the vinegar last time.

Could I get you a few servings sir?

No?

I’m sorry sir. I’m required to make you eat it all.

No sir, you cannot ditch it on the ground. Please remember what happened the last time you ditched monster corpse in the yard sir.

Thank you sir. Have a nice day.

***

Welcome, to Alvin’s Crazy Show!

Today, will Alvin be able to… eat a whole raw rice treant?!

He is daring.

He is insane!

He is choking because this damn thing is still half-alive!

Thankfully he doesn’t have to breath to live!

There it is! Ladies and gentleman, Alvin, the treant eater!

***

One week.

Training the whole day. All seven days.

One week for me to be able to master this damn spell.

One week of endless treant eating. 

But I finally did it.

I finally grew my first rice crop.

Father have come to inspect it, and after pondering a bit he said it was ok.

He complimented me as well.

Now I only need to do this every day, while also producing enough rice to feed at least two adults and two children.

To put it on simple words, it’s impossible.

Because all of the aura I expended during the whole day was enough only to make the rice grass to grow ten centimeters.

It has to grow to at least fifty, and then made mature by adding another three days’ worth of aura.

So I have to work the whole week to get a single harvest.

I worked with a crooked smile as I realized the sheer amount of exercise I will be doing while my aura is depleted is bound to increase my aura recovery speed a lot.

On another words, everything changed but it also remains the same.

How ironic.

***

It has been a few weird months.

I progressed a lot quicker than I thought I would.

Eventually producing the rice took me only six days… then five, four, three…

Today I can produce a crop a day. So my aura recovery speed increased seven times.

I was even amazed this was possible at all.

I mean, the amount of food the family have been eating increased, but my own share is still roughly the same meager meal – since if I eat the rice I produced, it gives me back much less than what I expended to grow it.

How am I capable of producing more then?

Well, I unveiled the mystery by remembering my qigong training.

At the time, each training session was the same as thirty sessions of regular sword swinging.

I have a hypothesis on why this happens.

I think it’s related to my body’s capacity to produce aura without my conscious control.

If I try to control the process, I will get an increase in efficiency because I will be controlling my breathing, while also moving my qi inside the body to make it as efficient as possible.

What is happening is simple then –  since I have been doing exercise while my aura is exhausted after casting the magic it’s the same as doing body strengthening training and my body is becoming more effective as a result. 

Exercise does change the body after all. It makes the breathing and heart beats more smooth and regular, while also increasing the pulmonary capacity. Not to mention it also has a lot of other positive effects.

So this must be the reason why I’m able to absorb more energy from the food I eat, and thus have more aura eating the same amount (plus some treants).

And now, with autumn advancing, father will finally receive his annual stipend.

This means grains and foods, plus meat if there is some.

It also means I will be allowed to stop growing rice on this tub.

Father said I will still need to do it for some time since the debts we accumulated during this period are plenty – so they will be depending on my rice for a little bit longer in order to have some spare on the pantry.

But by my birthday I shall be released of it and go back to wood splitting.

I have a lot of training to catch up to.

Jacen has slowed down a lot since he goes out to play every day, but even like that he can clad his twig in sharpness already.

Even if his aura recovery speed seems to have halted at a certain point, his control is much more developed.

Well done poop-brother. Well done.

Oh?

How is my relationship going with the family?

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Ha… haha…

I’m fine.

I mean, you get off things easy when you are a young child.  Everyone gave me sharp gazes for a couple weeks and mother thought seriously if she would keep bathing me…. But eventually the thing with sister has been brushed off completely, and mother seems to have forgiven me. I guess in the end my confession didn’t sound so much as the one of an adult, but really as the one of a child.

The whole amount of sobbing and crying certainly helped.

So routine has almost returned to normal now.

My guilt trip was indeed unneeded. Give it a break, drama king Alvin!

Yeah.

***

My birthday has come!

And it meant nothing again!

Because I’m four this year no one gave me happy birthday… again.

Well, I’m getting used to it already.

Also, I have received a present of sorts.

That is, the family finally allowed me to stop growing the rice crops.

At least!

I was getting sick of casting this same damn spell every day. I did it for months. Months!

If it wasn’t for my night training I wouldn’t be able to endure it.

Ah, right, the night training.

I have hit a bottleneck there. I can get a meal’s worth of food with two hours of meditation, but I don’t seem to be able to increase the connection to the nothingness.

After a month of fruitless training I just decided to start to sleep normally instead of remaining awake.

Also, sister still accepts me in her bed normally, even after that thing happened. The only difference is… her breath gets a bit rough sometimes…

I’m starting to think, maybe…

No.

There is no way, right?

Yeah. This is all in my head. My perverted, good-for-nothing, family-destructive, woman-hazardous head.

Forget about this.

Let’s focus on doing other stuff!

Like learning sharpening from brother.

Poop-brother teaching me something. This day has come after all.

Sigh… let’s end this quickly.

***

Poop-brother…

Why…

Why are you a good teacher?!!

How?!

Better than sister, better than father, better even than mother?!

How?!

Don’t do this to me! I will start respecting you a little! Don’t…

Too late.

Goddamit poop-brother.

I will have to have you graduate from your position now. No more poop-brother. Just brother or Jacen.

Let me see…

First I do hardness… then I concentrate on where the blade of my twig should be… then I pull the aura lightly towards the center, creating a tension on the edge… and then I harden this part even more than the rest of the twig.

Less aura, tighter aura, but a harder aura. This creates a sharp aura.

….Poop-bro… no, Jacen…

You’re a genius of teaching.

A single lesson was enough for me to learn. And… somehow also enough for Ann to barge in and thank Jacen.

“I had never noticed the tightening part… well done.”

Well, brother is good at teaching, that is for sure.

But was him always?

No. I recall clearly he teaching me something wrong when we were learning sword techniques from sister.

He improved on this as well, uhm.

Well done indeed.

***

Ha!

Hahahahahahahahaha!!

Splitting wood! It is so easy now!

I have aura to spare, and I can apply sharpness to the axe. I can cut every log with a single strike!

Haha!

Aah, don’t mind me sister!

I’m just happy I can do this easily now!

“Alvin! Alvin! What do you… be quieter!”

Oh… mother just complained. I guess I got a bit overexcited, maybe.

But it’s impossible to help it!

I’m finally free from rice growing duty! Finall, free from the phantom paranoia of having to eat rice treants!

I’m so happy I could shout!

But let’s not do it. Mother is worried with something.

***

Of course, I’m back knitting with the hags as well. Sincerely, what a pain. It’s all bad jokes and gossip the whole day.

Aaah… spear training, I do love you. Please never leave, or I will have to endure even more village gossip.

Wait… did grandmother just joined in the conversation? She is rarely here on autumn, and it’s even rarer for her to take part on these conversations…

…

Seriously?  Your house’s ceiling is needing urgent repairs…

And you tell us just now?

Winter is almost here you know! We don’t have any time!

…it seems we will have visitors.

***

In the end grandpa wasn’t able to fix the ceiling in time. The hag’s husbands tried to help him, but the damage seems to be severe.

One of the secondary roof beans caved in. The whole thing has to be redone.

Of course, since autumn is harvest season no one had the time to help with that. So grandpa and grandma will move on our house for a while.

I wonder how will this affect us.

It seems me, sister and brother will sleep on the living room. Grandpa and Grandma will take our room for themselves.

…. I won’t have to endure hearing them at it as well, right?

Grandmother seems to be the reason mother is so composed in terms of sex, so they will probably hold themselves.

Still, grandfather isn’t even on his fifties yet, and grandmother has the body of an eighteen years old.

… steel the heard, close the ears.

On the plus side, we will be allowed to sleep near the fire!

It will be warmer than sleeping in our room, so it will probably be nice ~~

Besides, the house will be livelier.

I wonder if grandmother has any good stories for us to hear? I bet she knows some stuff mother doesn’t tell us.

It will be fun, hehe.