The rest of the day passed with a great deal of monotony. Even though each of the eggs I had found was the equivalent of a dozen chicken eggs, the ogre warriors seemed to be bottomless eating pits. If I didn’t sneak eat while making endless dishes for the warriors, I would have never gotten a bite to eat.

Chief Kerkek soon had every outcast in the village out looking for eggs and his warriors hunting for more boars. My new cast iron frying pan helped out. I was able to cook up an omelet the size of a medium deep-dish pizza with bits of rage badger meat, fried potatoes and an assortment of other vegetables every couple of minutes. Or I would have been, but when I tried serving non-mana infused food to the brutes, they complained and I found myself being cuffed by the chief.

He was careful enough to make sure and not cause me any serious injury, but getting backhanded got old, fast. I didn’t know how long I could put up with this before I just decided to take my chances in the forest. It came to a tipping point when one of the warriors tried to take a page out of the chief’s play book. He had grown impatient with how long it was taking to make his food and decided an open-handed blow to my face would speed things along.

I might have to take it from the chief, but this level five warrior just wasn’t far enough above me for me to let that stand. I went with the slap and then stumbled back to my frying pan, acting as though the strike had cowed me. Instead, I pulled the pan off its spot over the fire and spun to deliver a devastating cast iron back hand.

It caused all the food I was cooking in that batch to be ruined, but the pan moved through the air more easily than I had expected. The masterwork craftsmanship kept the handle from being anything other than warm. Not so the fiery bottom of the pan, though. There was a crunch followed by the sound of sizzling ogre flesh when the pan connected with the disrespectful ogre’s face.

He had completely discounted me. Even if I was the shaman’s apprentice, I was an outcast, and he didn’t think he should need to worry about me. The pan hit in a surprise attack and dealt critical damage (54) but that was only a little more than a 10th of the warrior's HP. I felt the rage rising within me, but I fought it. If I wanted to make a statement here, I needed to fight smart.

The outraged warrior was slow to react. He stood there in shock as I smashed him twice more with the pan for another (22) and (18), respectively. But then he did what I’d been waiting for. He roared in outrage. Since he was only a couple feet from me, there was no way that I could miss.

My free hand shot forward as I shouted, “Flameburst.” The spell went off just as I had planned inside his open mouth. I channeled extra mana into it, but was moving too fast, so I only got the spell up to 150% efficiency. My fingers were burnt by the spell but his mouth exploded with a devastating critical. Teeth flew in every direction as he took another (232) damage.

I had honestly expected it to do more damage, and once again I was reminded that my spell craft was still woefully ineffective. So, I gave into the rage and continued to beat him with the cast iron frying pan. The Flameburst might not have blown his head off as I had expected, but his HP was down to 40% and he staggered backward.

His foot must have caught on a rock or something because in conjunction with my blows, he fell to the ground. Before long, I found myself being pulled off of him. Two of the higher-level warriors pulled me back while Kerkek and Tulbat looked on. The former was laughing while the latter glared at me.

It was that glare which helped me bring the rage under control. I looked down at the ogre I had been attacking. Where his head should have been was a bloody stain. Apparently, in my rage, I had continued to beat it long after he was dead. The loss of time in my rage was a bit, but I braced myself to be sent to respawn.

“Outcast no killz warrior.” Tulbat was arguing.

“Ogre way is strength. Ooglie one show himz strength. Youz warrior was weak. Let outcast kill him,” the chief replied.

For a moment it appeared as though the two would fight, but then Tulbat stalked off. The glare he shot at me should have sent chills down my spine, but in this half raging state, all it did was make my blood pump more as I spat out a short laugh in his general direction.

Kerkek strode over in two long steps. He grabbed my wrist and stripped the pan away from me. “Strong is good. Killz ogres not goodz. Me warn once. Ogres no killz ogres.”

Then he tossed me to the ground. I still couldn’t assess his level, but he was clearly over level 13 since I should have been able to assess anyone up to ten levels above me. Shemi had said he was level 30, but I was taking a trust but verify approach. That meant that anything I wanted to try against him would be doomed to failure, so I bit my tongue and took it.

The rest of the day felt like it lasted forever as I continued cooking. Once all the eggs were used up, I began frying up portions of the charging bird. They didn’t really have anything for me to create a batter with, but given enough time, I hoped to be able to create proper fried chicken.

The big gains of the day were a bit all over the place. I had gained more XP from killing the ogre warrior than anticipated, and I couldn’t make the math work. As far as I could tell, I should have gotten 58 XP but for some reason instead I had gained 116 XP. None of my notifications explained the gain. I knew that there were certain zones where players could gain double XP for PvP kills, but that had never been my thing.

My only guess was that because the game classified me as an ogre, it applied the same principle to killing ogres. That was going to make things interesting. I started having homicidal daydreams as I was forced to cook all day for the entire tribe. The fact I had watched a few cooking shows back on Earth didn’t mean that I was thrilled with this process. And I certainly wasn’t going to spend the rest of my digital doing this.

The skill gains were good, and I did manage to create two more recipes. The rage badger omelets granted -50% to Rage Cool Down and +2 AGI for 2 hours. I kept feeling like if I could imbue more mana into the recipe, then I would be able to increase the effect.

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Interestingly, when I used some of the limited supply of salt and pepper we had on the omelet, I made for the chief, the bonuses jumped to -60% and +3 AGI for 3 hours. So, ingredients did matter. Now it was just going to be a process of experimenting until I could get my hands on a recipe.

The second recipe was for seared bird and it granted +2 AGI for 2 hours. So it was the least effective of my recipes so far. I assumed if I could learn to make a batter and breading for the meat, it would taste even more like chicken and hopefully would give better boosts.

The skill gains for cooking came quickly at first. I assume it was because making the omelets was different from the bacon I had cooked before. The repetition was enough to push me up to cooking 10 very quickly, but then it seemed to stagnate. I managed to get it up to twelve when I experimented with cooking the bird meat, but once again it froze there.

The same thing happened with my mana channeling skill. It stopped increasing at ten. I assumed that was because I was using the same process. But trying to put mana in too quickly had ruined more than one pan of food, so I was just sticking with the slow infusion.

For some reason, my skinning/butchering skill only went up to seven. Maybe cracking eggs wasn’t good for the skill. Or rather, that should have been obvious to me. I did, however, manage to get another skill point in blunt weapons. The cast iron pan truly was a weapon if used properly.

The longer I performed the same cooking activities, the less my active mind was required to be involved. For much of the afternoon, I daydreamed of what I might have been doing if I was back on Earth. It made me a bit angsty. It likely wasn’t healthy, but then again, how healthy was it to have my mind crammed into a digital world against my will.

When I got over moping, the sun was already starting to set and the line of ogre warriors waiting for my food had died down. The experience with the warrior today had only driven home my need to level. I had originally intended to hold off on leveling so that I could increase my skills and find new ones. But I didn’t like being pushed around, especially not by some AI run digital creatures.

Then I had agreed to strike a balance between levels and skills, but as of yet, mana regeneration hadn’t been an issue. What was an issue for me was the need to be strong enough to be respected by the other villagers. I knew outcasts were always outcasts, but Shemi certainly had their respect. Well, maybe it wasn’t respect. She at least had their fear and since I wasn’t planning on staying any longer than necessary, that would suffice for me too.

So as the sun set, even though I was weary from cooking, I once again snuck off into the forest. I was pretty sure this time that Shemi saw me leave, but she didn’t make any move to stop me. I guessed she was probably thinking that stupid is as stupid does, and maybe she was right, but the forest was one of only two ways that I knew of for leveling.

The other still felt a bit too murdery. When I didn't get a faction hit for killing the ogre warrior and instead got a small boost, it became clear that they really did respect strength above all else. So, initially my plan was to start killing ogres. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it for some reason. Rather than spend too much time worrying about it, I went out into the forest.

Fortunately for me, all the monsters I had killed the night before had respawned and I was soon making great progress. The levels didn’t objectively make that much difference, but I can say without a doubt that the enemies were easier now. The level three and four rage badgers or jungle cats were easy prey for me now. I got less XP from them. But the ease of killing them helped balance it out.

That was especially true when I got attacked by multiple groups, since I received the numerical bonus. It wasn’t that being bitten and clawed didn’t hurt. It did, more than a little. I often hesitated before an attack, but then I focused on my goals and jumped back at it. Armor would have made this so much easier, but I had to make do with what I had.

I found I could maximize my skill gains by alternating between spells, spear and frying pan. The latter led to another important discovery. The frying pan was very attuned to me after a day of cooking with it and during one particular tough fight with a pair of level five rage badgers, I thought to infuse my mana into the pan.

It flowed in like it was a desert and I was dripping water into it. The pan soaked up my mana and added extra damage. It was a godsend as the pan was far too weak without the extra heat damage, but I could simulate that by pouring mana into it. I was careful when I realized that the pan was vibrating. There was logically a limit on how much it could hold, but it was enough to allow me to put down those monsters.

My XP haul for the night was enough to get me to level four, even though I gained less per kill. When I caught a glimpse of the alpha jungle cat, I fled, just thankful that I had seen it first. It was a bit disappointing because I was less than two hundred XP from level five and hitting my first threshold. I was just going to have to suffer another day of cooking.

This time, without the reset of death, I stumbled back into the cooking area which had become my workstation just before dawn. I needed to get a fire started. My Flameburst spell had gone up to Basic 12 after another night of monster hunting. It wasn’t much, but gains were obviously slowing past level 10 and it would still make starting the fire easier as my control increased.

The gains in Regeneration were more exciting to me. It was up to Basic 10 now. That meant it was restoring 7 HP every second for 11 seconds. Soon, it would last long enough to cast before a fight and count on it to help close up minor wounds, as I was otherwise engaged. I looked forward to that because no matter how much I tried; I couldn’t get used to the pain that came with killing monsters.

That was the last thought I had though as suddenly I heard the sound of a heavy object rushing towards my head and then got the notification that I was being sent to respawn.