Frankie seemed to have jinxed them with his words. After Abel’s first catch, he had only managed to hook another 3 fish while Frankie himself only caught a couple of snappers by the time the sun had come up.
“I think we should call it for now Frankie, I still need to prep the boar leg.”
“Alright…”
Frankie replied with a deflated voice, feeling bad about their haul this week. It was better than last time but not as big as he’d like it.
“We caught enough to make some fried fish on the side, don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah I know, let’s head back home.”
He still sounded a bit down but knowing his personality, he’d get over it after a while. They packed up their belongings and started walking back home. When they reached their house, they found Melly was already up and making breakfast.
“You guys stink of fresh fish, go and shower... the both of you!” She shooed them out of the kitchen, unable to stand their smell.
While Frankie went upstairs to shower, Abel took the fish to the storage room so he could gut and descale them. Once he was done, he placed the fish in the fridge and took the boar leg out, placing it in a vat of cold water before heading off to take a shower. After he came out and had a light breakfast with the couple he changed the water in the vat for the first time. He’d have to repeat this process for the next couple of hours until the meat was cool but not frozen.
Frankie and Melly said they’d give the house a deep cleaning while Abe would just have to prep the meat. He carried out the Yang style 24-step a few times before changing out the water again. Once he was back, he got started with the 108-step long form. Just as he was about to finish up and go change the water again when Frankie popped his head from out the main house.
“Bro, what are you doing?”
“Just exercising, what’s up?”
“Nothing. It’s just, I haven’t seen you do such exercises before so I was curious.”
“It’s a martial art I found online… it’s similar to yoga-strecthces and helps increase blood flow and ease muscular tension. I don’t have a high-end pod so I have to work out when I can, I felt stiff the first few days I was online.”
Abel was inwardly sweating, he forgot Melly and Frankie were home today and practiced out in the open. Thankfully, Frankie wasn’t one to pry so he let him be after hearing his explanation. He couldn’t exactly explain how he learned these movements. Fortunately, there were similar martial arts for enthusiasts so he could easily find a substitute with a quick Exploro search.
After changing out the water, he carried on with his exercise and kept at it. He’d take a small break when needed to make sure the water in the vat was cool and finished 5 sets of each exercise.
Around 2 hours later, when it was close to 10 am, he deemed the meat to be ready for seasoning so he got it out of the sealed plastic bag and started trimming off the fatty pieces and cleaning it up, making it easier to roast.
When he was done, he patted it dry with some paper towels and started making deep incisions along the leg to allow the flavor of spices to penetrate into its depths and further ease the cooking.
He minced some garlic and chopped up some spices like thyme, rosemary and sage, then added some black pepper and salt. He mixed them all up in a bowl and added a big dash of olive oil before he started to thoroughly rub it on and inside the leg, making sure to marinate it properly.
As soon as he was done, he got another plastic bag and sealed it well before placing it back in the fridge.
“Hey Frankie, the leg’s ready for whenever. I’m going to sleep alright?”
He called out to Frankie from across the yard and heard a vague response of “Alrriiiiiighttt”
Finally, he crawled into bed and instantly fell asleep.
******************
While Abel was dozing off in the real world, back in the world of Faeron, three girls logged online.
“I can’t believe the weekend’s nearly over!”
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Aria complained about having to go back to school the following day. They had been gaming non-stop since Friday evening, only going offline to get some sleep or a short bathroom break.
They would visit the training citadel for a couple of hours every day since their last encounter with Abel and they were on the precipice of clearing the training course. If they weren’t training their weapon proficiency, then they were hunting beyond the northern gates.
The north of the city leads to a couple of mountain ranges with a greater diversity of monsters than the Hollow Forest to the south. They wouldn’t stray too far but they were getting some real practical experience on top of their daily training.
They had improved greatly compared to a week ago. Aria finally started pitching in and dealing some damage instead of staying at the back to add buffs to her friends or debuffs to their enemies.
Mia could finally shoot a normal arrow and deal some damage. While her speed could still use some work, she wasn’t missing 97% of her shots anymore and didn’t need to solely rely on active skills to deal damage. In fact, she had finished the training course 2 days ago, being the only one among them to actually “graduate” from the training citadel.
Sophie saw the greatest difference. Although she was merely a cleric from the church of Aurora for the time being, she didn’t need any of her friends to protect her anymore. Lifting a hammer with her low strength stat was difficult at first, but after she got a customized a hammer from a smithy, she was able to deal damage to some monsters if they ever got too close.
Their overall strength saw a great increase and some nearby players would always ask to party with them. It was unknown whether it was due to their beauty and youth or because of their strength but the girls no longer had to try tricking random people into carrying them and were working hard to build up their own strength.
“It’s just another few weeks, once we’re done with our end of year exams we’ll have all summer to play as long as we want.”
“Maybe you do Mia, your parents might not spoil you as much as little pepper but your big brother certainly does.”
Sophie’s words caused Aria to look a little embarrassed but she couldn’t refute such a truth. If it wasn’t for her innate kind character then she would have been spoiled rotten long ago.
“You should still be able to play more often… this is our last summer before university, I doubt your parents would be so strict. Just come spend the summer at my place, we can order another pod for you when you get here.”
“I’ll see how it goes…”
Sophie’s voiced trailed off as she finally saw the whisper Abel had sent. Her friends picked up on her distraction but waited for her to speak. A minute later, she smiled and turned to her friends.
“Red Sky sent a message. He says he has information about a new dungeon he found and asked whether we’d be interested”
“Of course we are!”
Aria jumped and answered before her friend could even finish explaining.
“I haven’t finished yet. He says there’s also a merchant and some other guy that are interested in the information. If we would like to know more, then we should meet him tomorrow morning at the location he sent, 7:30 am Velskryn time.”
“We’ll be in school…”
“It’ll be lunch break. We could leave and go to a gaming lounge to log in for a few minutes?”
“Ewww you’re actually going to use one of those public pods who knows who else used before you?”
Both Mia and Sophie rolled their eyes at their pampered friend. Although they too were pampered, but they wouldn’t be disgusted by using another pod beyond their own, especially if it was for a few minutes.
“Well then you can stay at school and have lunch on your own.”
“Don’t leave me behind pleeeeeeeeease!”
“We haven’t even decided yet.”
Mia sighed at Aria’s antics. They were merely discussing things but the girl would jump to conclusions on every topic.
“So, what do you think? Should we go?”
Sophie asked, not sure what her friend was thinking.
“I’m not sure. This merchant obviously wants the information so he could sell it at a profit. I don’t know what this other guy he mentioned wants while Red Sky obviously wants to make some coin off of this deal. If we pay now and the merchant sells it to the public a few minutes later, we won’t gain anything. There wouldn’t be a difference between doing this and throwing our coins down the drain.”
“Red Sky was quite upfront about it, he said we should come if we’re interested and that it was too long to explain in a message. If we want to know more then we should go, if not then it’s also fine. We’ll probably hear news about this dungeon in the next few days if we don’t go tomorrow.”
It was obvious Sophie was more eager to go and hear more about it. Whether it was because of her curiosity about the dungeon or something else, Mia wasn’t sure. Sophie was an expert when it came to holding a poker face, keeping her tone calm and preventing others from gleaning her real thoughts.
It was a skill she built up over the years due to her background and rarely would others get to see the real her. Her 2 besties were the exception most of the time, but even they would sometimes be kept in the dark about her real thoughts. It was a rare occurrence but it would sometimes happen due to habit.
Aria just wanted to go so she could be ahead of the local player base, even if it was for an hour. She didn’t think about it too deeply and didn’t care about how much it would cost.
“If you put it like that, then it can’t hurt to go and hear him out.”
“Then it’s decided? Should I reply telling him we’re coming?”
“Yeah”
“Yaaaaaaaay”
“I thought you were too disgusted to come with us?”
“I thought of a great idea! I’ll wear that F&N hoodie I ordered by mistake.”
“You hate that hoodie though?”
“Exactly! I’ll wear it when I use the pod and then I can chuck it away without a care.”
Her friends laughed at her response but they didn’t refute her. They actually thought it was a great idea and they could even do the same thing as her.
“We should go to the training citadel, I should be done by today hopefully.”
“Yeah me too. I can’t imagine how that guy did it in a single night!”
Aria nodded at Sophie’s words, excited at finally finishing that monotonous training course while Mia just sighed. Although Red Sky was an absolute freak to finish it so quickly, her friends were really too slow!