“It’s true that in mana-rich areas like these we unliving don’t *need* to eat per se, but most of us still have a fondness for eating good stuff, you know?” - Jerrod of Ashendale, One of the oldest known Unliving in existence, circa 328 VA.

To Aideen’s surprise, the snail’s carcass was left unbothered by the other snails when she returned after an hour-long bath where she made sure to scrub hard and clean every nook and cranny. She was uncertain whether that meant the snail was poisonous, or they just don’t eat their own kind.

After another hour which she spent on observing the other snails, she noticed that most smaller predators avoided the region, and the snail carcass was still mostly untouched, other than by a few ants which had nibbled and brought bits of it back to their lair. No particularly large predators seemed to approach the region, so the snails probably had some sort of deterrent effect on things.

One of the things Aideen came to check out was whether there were edibles in the region, as chances are if she was to mount an expedition to found a city, it would not be done entirely by the unliving, but also living people as well to handle the jobs they lacked the skill and capability on.

It was part of the reason why she had sampled the fruits and several kinds of local vegetation that looked edible previously, and now, she gave the dead snail below a look and sighed.

Aideen climbed down from the tree and used a knife to cut a reasonably sized chunk of slimy flesh off the snail’s back, from a region she had not struck during the struggle earlier. The yellowish-brown color of the snail seemed to only permeate a slight depth into its skin, as most of its gelatinous flesh was more of a milky white in color.

With a reasonable chunk in hand, Aideen brought it away to a quiet clearing she spotted some time ago and started to cook there, with part of the gelatinous flesh frying on a makeshift skillet of hot, flat stone, while the other half cooking in a stew of sorts with some other local tubers and herbs she had tried previously and found to be edible.

As it was heated, the gelatinous meat turned nearly translucent and curled up as its outsides browned and crisped. Aideen had cut it into slices and just cooked it directly on flat stones over the fire. She picked up a well-cooked slice from the makeshift skillet and brought it to her mouth with not a little trepidation and bit into it.

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A moment later, she opened her eyes in surprise as she chewed on the crisped, nearly crunchy flesh. Most of the outside had crisped while the inside still gave a bit of a chew, but most surprisingly, the flavor was actually quite pleasant, rich and mellow with a distinct savoriness to it. Other than how the chewy inside still gave off a bit of oddly slimy mouthfeel she didn’t mind the meat at all.

The addition of a bit of crushed wild garlic - which grew abundantly on the forest floor - made it taste even better, the sort of thing she wouldn’t mind eating on the regular even. Contrary to the crisped fried pieces of meat however, the bits she tossed into the stew had absorbed the liquids aplenty and had ballooned in size.

Aideen had chopped the bits that went into the stew into neat squares, but now they looked more like balls instead. A bite revealed that it had indeed absorbed plenty of the liquid around it, though the distinct savoriness was still present, if more subdued. The texture also changed after boiling, into something closer to squids or octopi.

It was only after she gave the raw flesh a taste as well that Aideen noticed the slight tinge she had missed previously, of a toxin that was particularly dangerous for humans in particular. The toxin in question would have given dwarves and elves stomachaches as well, though goblins and hardier therian breeds were unaffected.

As an unliving, what food Aideen ingested were “digested” into mana instead, so she had not felt the aftereffects of the toxin at all, other than how she noticed it by taste. She gave the cooked bits a few more tastes but could not detect the flavor anymore, so it was probably something within the snail that produced said toxin when raw but not when cooked.

All that information went into detailed notes, as it would hopefully play a role in the future. Unliving like her may not need food to survive, especially when in mana-rich environments like the forest around her. Ingesting food to replenish their mana after heavy usage remained a common useful habit, however, and most of them had kept their fondness for good foods and beverages even when they no longer strictly needed them.

Aideen had found that the fruits and herbs she tried so far had a notably rich mana content in them. Most foodstuffs had some mana content, if at times only as slight traces, but those that grew or were raised in mana-rich areas would have more. The Forest of Despair was definitely one of the mana-richest areas Aideen had seen in her life, as even the things she tried in its outskirts were already rich in mana compared to most.

She wondered whether the mana would be even richer if she went deeper in. For an unliving like her, areas with rich mana content like these were the most comfortable places to live their life on, but if it would have taken too much effort to convert the area into a livable one, she would have thought several times over first.

The swamps to the north had been one of those “too much effort” cases. With how waterlogged and muddy the ground was, it would have taken many earth mages years of effort to convert them to solid ground that could support a building on top of it. Aideen just hoped that the Forest of Despair kept giving her pleasant surprises as she went deeper.