True to his word, Ben let everyone know about another batch of bar-b-que late in the evening. Mostly it was the original crew who showed up to socialize, but Ozzy saw a few people from Layla's and Sammy's groups. He walked back and forth around the pit, now and then moving one of the large pieces of meat with his tong, but the pit seemed to be cooking the meat evenly without much help from him. Mostly he was just waiting to see if he got another notification from the pit when the time was up. He was a little leery of jumping in to haul out a chunk of meat from a pit that used screaming humanoids as an ingredient in recipes.

The fire in the center still shot up out of the pit like a roaring beacon but the smoke stayed in the pit, swirling around and around. Some part of the magic? The heat from the fire was going straight up, the cooking was being done by the hot smoke. And the way it moved acted like a huge convection oven. Ozzy shrugged, magic was a complete unknown to him, let alone the intricacies of a complex subject like bar-b-que. Humans have been arguing about the best way to smoke and char meat since they discovered fire.

As far as he could tell, it was twelve hours after the pit had lit up so spectacularly, the flames died down to embers and the smoke in the pit started to drift out.

[The Charnel Pit of the Butcher has finished its task!

Tasty Dark Roasted Sedge Beast x 24 may be safely removed.

You have earned a total of 120 experience in Pit Alchemy and 120 experience in CHA.

Pit Alchemy and CHA have both reached Rank 1.

You may select a new recipe from this list. Recipes not taken will still be available for selection at a later time.:

1) Hickory Smoked, Honey Glazed Bacon (Instantly cures 25 health and stamina per 4 slices eaten.)

(Requires cured hog bellies, honey, and hickory logs.)

2) Ham of the Apocalypse (A one-pound serving grants +50 Health, +50 Mana, and increased Health regeneration for 1 Day.)

(Requires hog legs, salt, spices, screaming charcoal, and a barrel of dark mana.)

3) Dragonfire Smoked Sausages (Adds +100 damage to all Fire, Heat, or Smoke spells cast for 1 hour.)

(Requires meat ground by a butcher in a grinder of darkened steel. Casings from sedge beast innards. Peppers of the kind not eaten by sane humans, onions, garlic, horse radish, and just a pinch of paprika. Also requires the aid of a smoke elemental to turn the sausages as they cook. Care should be taken when eating more than one sausage per hour.)]

There were a lot of implications to this message and the name Pit Alchemy got some clarification. He could create enchanted barbeque that gave buffs like potions! While he wanted to know more about the other two options, Ozzy selected the bacon recipe, being the only one he had a chance to make right now. He was anxious to try out the recipe. Tomorrow was a day off, he'd have to go hunting up some pigs from one of the local farmers, assuming they didn't have another TPK when they went grinding for experience.

"Ok, should be safe, but let me go down first, just in case." Ozzy jumped down into the pit with a large wooden trough one of the carpenters had made for him. He sliced open one of the carcasses and watched as clear juices ran from the cut. The meat tasted good, not quite as good as the stuff from the barn fire, but close enough. It lacked the finishing touch of the dwarven whiskey. But considering how horrible the sedge beast meat normally tasted, this was great. He'd feed the crew, take some over to Suzette, and save the rest for the legion.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

After filling the trough, he held it up over his head for Jon and Chad to grab hold of. He needed to build a better way to do this. At least a set of stairs to make it easy to get up and down. He wondered if changing anything about the pit would disrupt whatever odd magic was going on here. He left the rest of the carcasses down in the pit to cool.

After he climbed up from the pit, he saw Billy and Vern with heaping plates of meat. Someone had brought out the beer and some bread to go with it. Billy wandered over to talk. "This is good, Ozzy. Ben says you just started cooking it this morning. Scared the shit out of me when that fire shot up, got to tell you. I was glad to learn it was just you cooking and not another damned demon.

Ozzy decided not to mention what he suspected about the pit. "Yeah, sorry about that; I wanted a hot fire, but it sort of got a bit out of control. This is an old family recipe for pit barb-b-que from way back. Thought I'd try it out here in the game."

Billy talked around another bite. "Well, it tastes fine. And cuts off days of smoking the old way. Is this cured and ready to ship?"

Ozzy took a bite and nodded. "Yep, it's cured all the way through. A bit more moisture in it than curing in the smokehouse. I think we should break up the meat, pack it in barrels, and salt it down well. Celery powder would be good."

"Celery? For taste?"

"Nope. For the nitrates. Helps preserve the meat. Just need to dry out the celery well, then feed all the pieces through a grinder. Sprinkle a couple of pounds into each barrel as you add the salt and meat. Will keep a long time that way."

Billy liked the idea. "Plus we can charge more, it's easy to store excess for shipment, and easier to ship. I like it. Start doing as much of the new recipe as you can. The Legion will buy it all. I'll get the farmers to start another field for celery."

Billy was quiet for a moment, then continued. "Things are running pretty good so far. Hell of a start, and I know it was hard on you and the other workers. But with the meat processing, the brewery, and the dungeon, we should be ACME's most profitable group. If we get that city opened up, the skies are the limit."

Ozzy said, "I sense a 'but' at the end of that."

Billy looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot. "Yeah, there sure was. There may be some problems coming up the road. Famco wants the area, so they'll be causing trouble. Plus, I'll have to call you a liar if you repeat this, but I can't trust everyone in ACME. Layla is in it for Layla. And I'm betting Sammy is already in Famco's pocket, despite what Vern thinks. So keep your eyes open, and if you see something, talk to me. Don't talk to anyone else."

Ozzy looked around at the people eating the food he'd cooked. Some were old friends, some he barely knew before this job. But they were all becoming friends. But not Layla, Sammy, or Vern. They were here for themselves or the glory of ACME. So was Billy, but Billy had the most to lose here and had the most to gain by keeping his crew of workers happy. He could work with Billy, for now at least.

"Yeah. I can do that. And I'll let some of the others, the ones I have the most trust in. Suzetter and Ben, for sure, and Rolly." Saying that, he realized he hadn't seen Rolly in a couple of days. "Hmm, you haven't seen Rolly lately, have you? He's been really busy out in the fields. I should save him a plate of food."

Billy took a second to bring up a screen with his roster of workers on it. "He's assigned to work with the sheep and sedge beast herds, so I don't see him much, but it has been a couple of days. My roster shows him somewhere out in the pasture area. " Billy noticed something else on the list.

One of his workers had somehow changed their name. Checking, he saw that all of ACME's files now listed that person by the new name. He needed to have a small talk with Benjamin Franklin the 7th at some point and ask how he'd done that.