"Do you have any leads on finding us, or a new home?" asked Rock. "It's not that I don't appreciate your generosity, but I'm sure you understand that I'd like to make my own way."

"Yes, I get it," said Kevin. "After the conversation I had with the Magi Guild yesterday, I'm going to be taking a quest, or I guess a job in about two weeks. After that, they're going to help me help you."

"A quest? Is it dangerous?" asked Rock. "Please don't risk any more danger on account of us. What you've done is already enough. And I know that you came in at a much higher rank in the Magi Guild than I did in the Adventurer's Guild. I'm starting from the bottom." He grinned.

"I thought new members of the Adventurer's Guild started at rank E."

Rock laughed, clearly in a self deprecating was. "That's true, but they said since I'm a goblin, and since I didn't have an ID card, and I didn't have anybody in the guild to vouch for me, they were starting me from F."

"Doesn't that mean that they're starting you on a very short leash?" said Kevin.

"That's a good way to put it."

“I’m trying not to get angry that they did this because you’re a goblin.”

“Not all,” he corrected. “Some of it was because I’m a goblin.” Rock sighed and leaned his head back. “Part of the building is burnt–the Adventurers Guild. Some goblins did that a week ago after getting kicked out for stealing. I want to feel angry too, but I just feel tired. Right now I’m more mad at the other goblins that keep acting up and making life harder for the rest of us.”

“Oh.”

Rock had just joined Kevin at the table where he was eating his breakfast. Kevin took the lull in the conversation to tuck into his eggs a bit more. The older goblin waited patiently for Kevin to finish a few bites before saying, "Our whole group is grateful to you, Kevin. I guess I just want to make my own way in the world, and everybody else feels the same way."

Kevin nodded. "What's your plan now then, at least for the next two weeks until I can do my first Magi Guild job?"

"Well, I'm a rank F adventurer. That means I'm still eligible for E and F rank quests on the board. Some of them are repeatable, like gathering quests. I figure I can do some of those, maybe keep doing them because they're hard to fail, and that way I can rank up from F to E.”

"That makes sense." Kevin took another bite of eggs. "But why aren't you bringing the others with you?"

"They're not adventurers." Rock frowned..

Kevin pointed his fork. "Whether they're adventurers or not doesn't matter in this case, right? The repeatable quests reward a certain amount of money per whatever herb or whatever else it is you go out to get. So why don't you just take the entire group with you out in the woods so you can search more efficiently and then split the reward amongst all of you? That way, they can work too and you will rank up faster. The only reason other adventurers probably don’t do it is they’d have to pay the people who help them, and they wouldn’t get to keep any extra, but you want to pay the people who’d be helping you and you don’t care about keeping any extra. You'll have strength in numbers, that means safety. Also, once you work your way up the ranks, you can sponsor them so that they can get an adventurer ID card easier than you did and you will all be the same rank."

Rock's jaw worked a few times before he finally got out, "That is actually a really good idea, Sir Kevin. I will talk to the rest about that."

He can’t decide whether to call me Sir Kevin, Lord Kevin, Master Kevin, or just Kevin like I asked, Kevin thought. He decided to let it go. Getting all the goblins to stop using any honorifics at all was an argument he knew he probably wasn’t going to win. "I'm glad I could help. Actually, I'm going to be going to lunch at Moonlit Leaf restaurant. If you want to tell everybody to meet me there around lunchtime, I would be happy to buy everybody some food."

Rock got a complicated expression on his face and opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but instead just bowed his head. "That would be appreciated, Lord Kevin, thank you."

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Of course, don't worry about it.”

Kevin got up and left the inn. He truly had no attachment to the money his parents had given him. Easy come, easy go, he thought. But eventually, he was going to have to earn his own money, too. Although he didn't have to worry about money for most things for quite a while, if he started lavishly spending, his coins would vanish.

Budgeting was fine now, but what about the future? What if he had a sudden, important purchase he needed to make, or…hospital bills? He shook his head and stopped thinking about it. That was a subject it would do him no good to stress over right now.

Now that Kevin had made plans for lunch, he was looking forward to it. But there was also the matter of killing time for the next couple of weeks and the weird spoon that the Morrigan had given him. He took out [The Spoon of Perfect Seasoning], squinted at it, and put it back in his pocket. Today was going to be the day he actually tried doing something with it.

He had time to kill, and he kept thinking of the spoon. Morrigan was not a silly or flippant goddess. It cost the gods to send their Champions anything, too. If she sent him something, it was likely in his best interest not to ignore it.

Kevin went to the market and bought a pretty decent selection of herbs and spices in a small travel bag. It was perfect. After he bought the spices, Kevin poked around in some of the bookstores and at the book vendors, an activity he’d dreamed of while spending a couple decades living in a cave. He liked the idea of turning it into a habit.

When he asked around and found it was getting close to lunch time, he headed to the Elven restaurant, Moonlit Leaf. The male elf at the door, whose name Kevin kept forgetting to ask, waved and smiled. By this point, even if the elves had harbored any uncertainty towards them for being goblins, regular patronage had thrown it out the window. Now they all knew Kevin.

The other goblins came in after him and unceremoniously sat down at the table around him, all starting a conversation that was familiar to Kevin. They were talking about eventually building a town of their own one day. The fact that the town they used to live in had been so poorly guarded against monsters or bandits was something that all of them were keenly focus on now that they'd survived their ordeal.

Kevin listened with half an ear as he considered what to order, and eventually, when the server came around, he asked for the same thing he always got: a strange combination of chicken, gravy, scones, and vegetables.

The meal he’d ordered had always been delicious before. However, when his food came this time, instead of eating it immediately, he took [The Spoon of Perfect Seasoning] out of his pocket and carefully considered his plate. Nothing immediately obvious was happening, and he noticed that a couple of the goblins were surreptitiously watching him, wondering what he was doing.

He tried taking a bit with the restaurant’s spoon while holding [The Spoon of Perfect Seasoning]. Nothing happened. He tried tapping the plate. Nothing happened. He wasn’t sure about actually touching his food with the artifact, that would be the last thing he’d try if all else failed.

Then Kevin waved his spoon over his food, and he was momentarily startled as he suddenly…understood something called a “flavor profile.” It wasn’t in words, or shapes or colors. He could…think in tastes. In multiple lifetimes, it was one of the most bizarre feelings he’d ever had.

Once his spoon had activated, Kevin immediately got a better sense of how it worked. But the sense of potential, that something was missing kept growing. Like he was possessed, he started digging in bag of spices. Eventually, he found what he was looking for: a green leafy herb. It was external, all created by the spoon, but his new instincts were demanding, begging that he add some of the new herb.

But not directly.

Kevin broke the dried leaf in half. Then he kept crumpling it with his hands until had had what was barely thicker than powder. To one side, he barely noticed some of the elves watching him. When he sprinkled the powder over half of his food, two of them moved closer.

Then Kevin repeated the same process, but this time with a different herb–rosewort. After breaking off a very specific amount of the rosewort, he proceeded to break it down, spending more time than for the last herb. When it was truly a fine powder, crushed between his strong fingers, he finally added it to his dish on a different portion with just a hint of overlap.

Kevin grabbed a clean knife off of the table and began moving the food around carefully, distributing the herbs in a way that he couldn’t explain but made sense in his head.

The two closest elves were next to the table now. One of them, an older looking woman, said, “May I please taste what you have done here?” The other elf, a younger male, hissed at her but she ignored him.

“Sure,” said Kevin, even as he made the last few touches to his food, combining a bit of his side dish, newly modified with the extra seasoning he’d added, and put it on top of a scone.

A window popped up in his vision:

[The Spoon of Perfect Seasoning] 1 / 3

Kevin took a bite with a fresh spoon at the same time as the Elven woman did. Their eyes met a few second later. She stared at him with undisguised curiosity. “Who are you, chef?”

“I’m not a chef, can’t claim that title,” said Kevin hastily. “I’m just, ah, a hobbyist. I dabble. I’m a dabbler.”

“Well, you just dabbled your way into my attention.” The elf smiled, and the surrounding goblins looked on with absolute fascination. “My name is Piney Scent. I am one of the two head chefs of this restaurant. May I know your name?”

“It’s Kevin. Uh, Kevin Brightscales.”

“Well then, nice to meet you, Kevin Brightscales.”

The male elf standing next to her, dressed in an apron and obviously from the kitchen as well, scoffed. “He just put something on the dish. That’s strange or rude, not remarkable.”

“Then try some,” challenged Piney Scent.

With an eye roll and a smirk, the elf went back into the kitchen to get a fresh spoon. When he came back, it seemed like every Elf working in the restaurant was watching. The man casually took a bite, chewing quickly at first, but slowed down dramatically, until he turned to stare at Kevin with confusion.

“Not so simple to explain away now, is it?” asked Piney Scent. She turned to Kevin. “I take no offense to you changing our dish. It was excellent, and I thought could not be improved any further. I have learned something today, so I thank you. Now I want to think about this.” She addressed the wait staff. “Comp their meals today.”

“The entire table?” asked the man who usually manned the front counter.

“Yes. And find out where our guests are staying so we can invite them back some time with a discount.”

He nodded, and Kevin casually put [The Spoon of Perfect Seasoning] back into his pocket. Part of him felt a little guilty to be getting all of this attention for talent he didn’t actually have, but…life was hard. His inner pragmatist told him to just shut up and accept his good fortune.

A day later, he got a written invitation to work part time in the Moonlit Leaf kitchen, paid. It didn’t take Kevin long to think about it.

But as he left to give his official answer, he reflected how ironic it was that he’d told his parents he wanted to stop cooking for others when he left the cave, but now he was going to be working in a restaurant.