The canteen in the prison was cleaner than usual. It was in the middle of Helheim and it was split into 3 parts: the guards, the visitors, and the prisoners.
This segregation was made to make visitors to this prison camp as comfortable as possible. Of course, I am not talking about visitors for the prisoners or the guards, but the inspectors.
Prisoners-of-war were dirty beings not because they were an enemy of this country but because of how they made our appearance. Our prison uniforms were made out of similar material to the sacks that held our food and because we didn’t have any form of hygiene, we were often smelly.
It did not matter to us prisoners though, after all, we were just trying to survive.
When I arrived at the canteen, I approached the main guard in charge of cleaning the canteen. His uniform was different from the other guards, which made it obvious that he was the one in charge. He wore a metal helmet and he had shoulder guards, unlike the other guards who had leather helmets and no shoulder guards. Their uniforms were similar except for the fact that he had blue with silver accents instead of the typical blue with yellow accents.
“Excuse me, mister, can I volunteer to be a chef,” I said with puppy eyes.
“W-well of course little girl. Just go find the guard with the apron and chef hat in the kitchen.” He said trying to hide the fact that he was entranced by my cuteness. Or at least that’s what I thought, I have no idea to be sure, but who can resist these cute eyes.
“Thank you, mister!” I said with a bright glowing smile.
“Y-your welcome l-little girl now run along now.”
I headed towards the kitchen and I saw that it was already bustling with activity. They were more prisoners than guards working the kitchen and they were even trusted with holding knives and other sharp objects. Prisoners often volunteered to do manual labor out of extreme boredom, and these tasks were not constricted to stereotypical gender roles. God these guys have figured out how to make even high-ranking nobles children do work.
I looked around to see if I could find a guard matching the description of what I was told early. Unfortunately, I could not find a guard that matched it.
I approached one of the prisoners with a funny looking hairstyle to see if he knew where he was.
*Poke*
“What?”
“Do you know where the head guard for the kitchen is?”
“Oh, he’s behind the building right now, I think he’s complaining about how the broth is not right or something.”
“Okay thank you.”
As I walked to the back of the building, I thought about why I didn't bother to charm that boy.
Was it because I found him attractive? Was it because his hairstyle was too weird that I didn’t want to associate with him? Or was it because I wasn’t into boys around my age? Am I into males anyways?
I tried to think about these questions logically, but I was rudely interrupted by loud yelling.
“You donkey! That’s not the right flavor!”
As I headed to the source of the noise I saw the guard that matched the description and 3 prisoners were around him. The 3 prisoners were an orange apron and what looked like make-shift shower caps (no my eyes do not deceive me).
The guard that oversaw them was tall, maybe about 189cm. He had orange hair and green eyes. His build suggested that he was familiar with combat. His accent reminded me of one of the Highlanders tribes of the Saxon Kingdom, perhaps this guy was a mercenary?
As he continued yelling at the other prisoners, I slowly approached the group trying to show that I had no objective in mind. When I reached the group, I tugged onto the guard’s apron and placed my hand in a fist shape on my mouth.
“E-excuse mister?”
“WH… ahem… I mean what is it beautiful?” he said looking at me with a gentle smile.”
“A-are you Mr. Head Chef?”
“Yes, but please, call me Gordon.”
“C-can I-I help you cook?” I said with a nervous look.
“Of course, love, is there anything you want to do in particular?”
“I want to cook the Giant Crab!” I said with sparkles in my eyes.
“The Giant Crab is heavy and no one else can help you right now, are you sure that you could do it by yourself?”
“Y-yes,” I said with full confidence.
“Alright beautiful you can go fetch the Giant Crab then. It will be in the storehouse near the main gate.”
“Okay, Mr. Gordon,” I said with a bright smile and hurriedly skipped away.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Now, where was I? Of right, the broth is not correct! After all, it tastes bland and I cannot taste that fact that you even put care into it!”
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When the little girl was here, I felt a sense of bliss. She reminded me of a little girl I used to tutor over for a lord in the Saxon Kingdom. That little girl was even a Dark Elf, but there was no way that little one was that girl. After all, that girl that tutored for has probably blossomed into a fully grown woman by now. There is no way that girl had forgotten about me or that I have forgotten what she looked like either, even though it has been 8 years since I saw her.
Thinking about it, the girl that I tutored for was probably dead or has been sold as a sex slave. The town that her father was a lord for was close to the border. I vigorously shook my head to forget about these bad thoughts, there is no point in thinking about her, after all the Saxon Kingdom is on the brink of collapse after these 5 years of war.
To force myself to forget about it I began to stir the pot that I was working on more intensely.
“C-Chef? Are you okay?”
“I’m FINE!”
“O-okay chef…”
“Now let me taste the broth!”
“Yes, chef!”
“Bleh what the fuck is this, are you trying to fucking kill the Duke?!”
“N-no Chef!”
“That’s what I thought!”
“There’s something missing with this broth and I can’t tell what it is…”
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As I approached the main gate, I realized something… I forgot to ask Mr. Gordon what the storehouse looked like. If I asked a guard about it they would probably escort me and watch over me suspiciously.
After panicking for what felt like an hour (it was actually 30 seconds), I decided to investigate myself. Now if I were a storehouse what would I look like? I tried to remember what a storehouse looked like in the game, but all I could think about was the Eastern Trade Company. Eastern Trade Company? Of course, the Eastern Trade Company?
The Eastern Trade Company often sponsored the building of storehouses and warehouses because the economic growth potential outweighed the cost of building one in the first place. All I had to do was look for the building with its crest.
The Eastern Trade Company crest was an anvil on top of a wagon being pulled by a mammoth so finding it should be no problem. No another problem lies… where should I start looking?
If I oversaw building a prison camp, where would I put the storehouse? Thinking about it… why would a storehouse be near the main gate in the first place? I would attribute this to the bad level design by the developers, but this was real life, so some genius decided to build the storehouse near the front of the camp near the main gate. You know where someone could easily destroy it. After much thought, I decided to conclude that some big-brained merchant probably placed it there out of convenience so I can’t really complain too much about that logic.
Anyways, after some deliberation, I decided to go in the opposite direction of the mage barracks because if common sense serves it would probably be far away from them at least.
As I strolled around, I realized how much of a beautiful day it was. The air was warm and crisp. The sun was shining brightly but was not overly burning. The smell of the outside world was calming, and the texture of the ground felt softer than usual… or at least in this part of Helheim.
As I looked around, I realized that these buildings looked decrepit as if this camp were the ruin of some old city or some dungeon. The buildings looked like they were patched up in a hurry and some of the tents looked like they were built by a child, which I am pretty sure they were. The walls were the most troubling part, after looking closer you could see that they weren’t secured at all. One strong enough fireball or a catapult could easily destroy them. It was as if the person who built Helheim did not care at all or they had no budget at all.
I decided to shift my strategy to looking for the newest looking building rather than looking for the crest of Eastern Trade Company. It is easier to look for shiny new buildings rather than some small crest on a building.
After several long minutes of walking all over the place, I finally found the damn storehouse. It was a wooden building with no windows. It had a wooden door, and you could see the frame of it. God, even a building that was paid for is poorly made.
When I entered the building, the warmth of the air slowly disappeared as the door behind me shut. The building was being lit by magical particles and it was obvious that these particles would not disappear any time soon. The room temperature was somehow being regulated to be cold enough to store food. It was probably an ice elemental that was bound to this room.
As I walked around the storeroom, I noticed that the floor was made out of paved stone. It was smooth to the touch and left a cold sensation on my feet. The feeling reminded me of touching a glass door or window on a snowy day.
The smell of the storehouse smelt more like fish than anything else so looking for the Giant Crab was a problem, but hey where’s the harm of staying in this room for too long? From what I remember from when I played the game a Giant Crab had a green cephalothorax and brown abdomen. The rest of a body’s color depended on whether it was a male or female. Males were mostly green while females were mostly brown. The Giant Crab was based on the coconut crab except that they were much larger.
To be honest, I don’t actually remember much because I installed a mod that gave the Giant Crab a monocle and a top hat. What a spiffing Brit I should say.
Looking around the storehouse had a bunch of food items around that were obviously delivered recently because they weren’t frosting over. There were a lot of potato sacks around and a lot of cabbage. Those damn cabbages.
After a while of searching, I finally found the Giant Crab, it was all the way at the back of the storehouse. It was stored around several high-quality looking ingredients, like actual meat products. It looks like this world does have food safety regulations.
However, the thing that disgusted me was that the Giant Crab was dead. It was a known rule in my previous world that you must kill crabs a few minutes before you cook them. But this was an advantage for me since I needed the Giant Crab dead anyways.
This exploit relies on a bug in the system where you can constantly cast < Soulbound > on the Giant Crab to gain skill points. At my current level, I can cast it 2 times per minute then I would have to wait 1 minute for me to regain MP. However, since [Soulbound] was a novice level conjuration spell and since I have the |Novice Conjurer| passive ability I could cast it 4 times per minute. After doing some quick math, I could cast it 120 times per hour. Which is enough to gain 12 levels. Being SR3 at the age of 13 does not sound bad at all. Assuming that a 13 years old can become an adventurer in this world.
When I cast [Soulbound] the particles and the orb were similar to [ Raise Lesser Dead]. The feeling however was different, rather than having a feeling of something leaving, it felt like I was absorbing something.
I aimed the orb at the Giant Crab and shot it. The Giant Crab glowed an ominous purple aura before a wave of magical particles started flowing towards me. I pulled the cracked lesser soul gem out of my bra and it was glowing.
Now I had to get rid of the soul out of the cracked lesser soul gem. To do that, I placed my hand on the cracked lesser soul gem.
“[Soul Release]”
Then magical particles started leaving the cracked lesser soul gems before it stopped glowing. Thank god it was the same process as the animation in the game. Now it is time to rinse and repeat.