Too Stubborn to Die

Returning to the hallway, Aaron glanced around in search of Mo’han for a moment before turning to his status screen and placing his remaining free points into Perception.

Perception mightn’t have seemed necessary to an extent, thanks to the mana sphere, but Aaron was quickly understanding how important the Stat was.

Perception seemed to govern how one saw everything. He had long been wanting to improve it, as it aided his ability to follow many threads of fate at the same time, and the previous trial had only made him want it more.

Aaron theorized that very high perception could notice all kinds of details, including picking up on the strengths and weaknesses of Skills themselves.

Thanks to his natural gift for dying, Aaron had figured this out the hard way. But had he been normal in this regard, his mediocre Perception never would have cut it. But he believed those who focused on the Stat would have an amazing ability to read and figure out their opponents.

Perhaps he would never be a Perception-focused fighter, but he understood the importance of at least improving the Stat to a level where it would provide more benefits to his path.

With that thought in mind, he brought up his status page.

[ Name: Aaron Dober ]

[ Age: 23 ]

[ Race: Human ]

[ Grade: F ]

[ HP: 9100 ]

[ MP: 4900 ]

[ SP: 8000 ]

[ Class: Brawler, lvl 23 ]

[ Profession: Ogre Taste Tester, lvl 18 ]

[ Stats ]

[ Strength: 77 (+17) ]

[ Vitality: 91 (+19) ]

[ Fortitude: 80 (+26) ]

[ Dexterity: 92 (+36) ]

[ Agility: 122 (+41) ]

[ Intelligence: 5 (+5) ]

[ Willpower: 49 (+17) ]

[ Charisma: 5 (+5) ]

[ Perception: 21 (+7) ]

[ Titles: Shadow Trials Trailblazer, Stamina Control Prodigy, Mana Control Prodigy ]

[ Traits: Fate Weaver (Alpha), Moderate Blessing of Oozagh the Rotund, Moderate Blessing of Yendal the Empty-Handed ]

[ Racial Skills: Inspect, Lingua Multiversa ]

[ Profession Passive Skills (3/3): Questionable Recipes, Conductive Gut, Adipose Fusion ]

[ Profession Active Skills (2/6): Concoct Toxic Gloop, Oozagh’s Breath ]

[ Class Passive Skills (2/3): Faux Core, Equal and Opposite ]

[ Class Active Skills (5/6): Thick Skinned, Relentless Scourge, Gorgon’s Time Dilation, Overclocked Haymaker, Gust Step ]

Eyeing his Stats, Aaron also wanted to keep focus on Fortitude and Agility. Even though he had many means of producing additional energy, Fortitude was still helpful. Besides, it also strengthened his skin and made him hardier, even if it didn’t provide HP or heal like Vitality did.

But for at least a little while, his focus would be on Perception, since it was by far the lowest out of the Stat he actually used regularly. After all, he didn’t even know if he had a use for Charisma, and whilst boosting his Intelligence would be a nice ego stroke, he didn’t see how it would help in his current situation.

During his fight with Yendal, Aaron realized that his power was pretty good already, or at least she hadn’t mentioned anything about it when he landed a haymaker. The real problem was hitting her, despite how much better he had gotten.

This had led Aaron to increase his Dexterity and Agility, which he still recognized as important. But he felt as if his current bottleneck was more related to keeping up with the action mentally, rather than his body lacking.

Of course, his Stats were still lacking relative to normal trial takers, but the point was that he needed his eyes and senses to be able to match the pace his body could move at.

For example, Agility and Strength provided the explosive power needed to hit a fast and elusive target. Whilst Dexterity and Perception provided the coordination and accuracy, it was painfully obvious which was letting him down right now.

Okay, at least I know what needs to be done Stat-wise.

But the reality was, Stat allocation only took up a small part of his thoughts. What really mattered, at least as far as the immediate future was considered, was his Class evolution to an E grade.

Sure, E grade was the least important evolution, and his path certainly wasn’t set in stone. That said, if he had a better idea of where he was headed long-term, it would certainly help the outcome of his results. That and Douglas had mentioned that the Class evolution you take had an effect on what Class evolutions would be available at the next evolution. Essentially, everything you did altered your path, and your path could lead just about anywhere. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea to ensure that you were heading in the right direction.

The stronger the foundation, the better the structure.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

For now, he decided to bench the thought. He still wanted to invest some time in his cooking.

Sooty was a good helper in some ways. There were always plenty of ingredients waiting for him, thanks to the little guy, and a cooldown was never missed. However, it was becoming clear that he needed more than just kinda rare ingredients.

Perhaps if he had higher rarity ingredients, they would pave his way to better results by themselves. Still, at least he had plenty of ingredients at his fingertips. Perhaps that was far better than what those in the Tutorial experienced?

Aaron thought on this. Whilst he believed rarity was important, he knew that it was only part of what was important about Professions. Oozagh had given him a clue, but he doubted that was all there was to it.

Ogre cooking was wild and cared little about the negative effects. But no path was that simple. Mindlessly throwing ingredients together wasn’t how you reached the peak, and Oozagh was a magnificently powerful god. He wouldn’t have gotten where he did if that’s all there was to it. To think otherwise was silly.

His understanding of paths was increasing. A path didn’t necessarily need to lock you into a narrow-minded outlook, but it needed to believe in something. It needed to be aimed in a specific direction. And perhaps more importantly, it needed to be guided by some kind of laws if it was to be powerful.

What Oozagh had shown seemed almost lawless, but couldn’t be possible. A lawless path wouldn’t lead to godhood. But Aaron also doubted that the god was trying to trick him, or anything to that nature. No, it had shown him the path’s direction, but tweaking it to fit himself would require his own input, Aaron realized.

He thought on this. So far, the only rule his cooking really had was that there were no rules. No, that wasn’t right, was it? Its underpinning rule was that ingredients were sought for their potential benefits with zero regard for side effects. That might have sounded loose, but it was still a rule.

But it would need more than that if Aaron were to take it far. There was also the possibility that he didn’t need to take his cooking too far, and he could focus on his martial abilities, but that seemed like a complete waste. Not just because it wasn’t making the most of his cooking, but because it also meant making the most of his blessing and relationship with Oozagh.

Problem was, he didn’t know what kind of cook he wanted to be besides what Oozagh had shown him. He hadn’t been any kind of cook before the Integration, and he’d only taken the Profession because it had been offered to him.

Aaron’s thoughts drifted to Oozagh. The formidable ogre had been the reason he took the Profession in the first place, and perhaps that was a better place to start, rather than the broad concept of cooking.

Why had he agreed to Oozagh’s terms in the first place? Well, the guy was built like a brick wall… well, a cushioned, jelly-like brick wall, but still.

Wait, ogres… big and plentiful… right…

There was something about this thought. He had lingered on this before. The martial path was about control. About doing more with less, but cooking was the opposite. It indulged in abundance.

Am I even a cook? My Profession is a taste tester, after all…

What did taste testers do? Well, they ate and rated food, right? But there were also tasters that protected kings from poison, and things like that, right?

Maybe it’s less about cooking and more about subjecting my body to all sorts of foods? Was that a better path, Aaron wondered? Was he destined to walk the path of some masochistic eater?

He wasn’t sure about that. Not that he entirely shied away from the thought. It felt important, but also incomplete. His cooking had gifted him powerful boons, after all. Why reduce its path to something lesser?

There was something else bugging him as he thought about it. Wouldn’t it make sense if Profession and Class worked with some degree of unity? Sure, maybe they didn’t need to. But what if both fed into one another? If you had a Profession that worked with your Class, allowing you to make the most of it?

This brought him back to thinking about his Class and its path. What was he? Aaron wondered. He was precision, accuracy, power, fate, and energy. Narrowing that down, he thought of himself like the Vitruvian Man. What were his perfect proportions? How should he balance himself to round out his abilities? If he pointed himself toward three main elements, they were martial, fate, and energy. Where did his cooking or taste testing lie within that?

Perhaps it represented the body itself. Strengthening the vessel within which all other elements of his path rode. Without a strong vessel, everything else fell apart.

No, it was staring him in the face. Energy! Food, abundance, Oozagh in general. It was all about energy when you broke it down.

Yendal taught him precision, skill, and most importantly, martial ability. Fate was his own thing, and Oozagh was the endless well of uncontained energy.

Unlike Yendal, the god of gluttony wasn’t about minimizing. It wasn’t about doing more with less. It was about consuming, and what did it do with that consumption? It converted it to energy, but not in a linear way. Everything was a product of energy in some way, and his cooking could fuel it all. [ Adipose Fusion ] was an obvious example, but Aaron pondered that it was just the tip of the iceberg.

He thought back to his first meeting with Oozagh. Despite his plentiful rolls, he was sure he had broken something in his hand when punching the ogre. This was the truth of embracing consumption and growing stronger because of it. Everything was in abundance, including overpowered Stats.

This was the clue he had needed. Oozagh’s directions had shown him the way, but he hadn’t seen the forest through the trees. It wasn’t just about mindlessly throwing strong ingredients together, but following a path of abundance and near-limitless energy. That was what he should keep in mind when forging his foundation, he realized.

This is it—the foundation of my Profession. I will use ogre cooking to give me access to energy, which I will use to fuel everything else. I will embrace Oozagh’s gluttony.

Cooking isn’t about delicious food, but raw power!

Heading back to the kitchen, Aaron entered a possessed haze, his mind focused on how he saw his path developing as he created new dishes. Combining new and old ingredients, he would forge this path.

It was lucky that every time he returned to the kitchen, it was spotless, because his misadventures in it left it anything but. Gloop covered most utensils, and a slimy surface was present on just about everything, which was strange, since he was not cooking with anything slimy. Green and purple stains, and enough mold and bacteria to send a strongman to the ER, were present.

It was a horrid sight, but that was just what he needed. He took dairy products and did questionable things to them before returning them to a cheese aging cabinet. Anything that would boost their properties, he attempted.

And as Aaron had assumed, there was more to ogre cooking than Oozagh let on.

Wild concoctions exploded in his face, burning his skin away but not dissuading him. Even though he did not care about side effects, it did not mean that just anything could be combined.

Chemical and magical reactions popped and sizzled, but instead of concern, a smile marked his face.

This was what he wanted. Not failure, but to understand the limits of his ogre cooking. Before, it had felt pathless, but now, he was starting to see it. The direction his cooking was supposed to take was gradually forming before him, and every failure took him one step closer to realizing this.

“What is that smell?!” Mo’han exclaimed as he entered the room.

Aaron looked over from his fuming pot. What was the alien doing in here? This was a fifth-level station!

“Wait, don’t you have to be at the same level of room as me to enter?”

“Oh yeah! Good news, A-ran! I just finished the fifth stage and figured it was about time I checked out the crafting station.”

Of course he did, Aaron groaned.

But his disappointment at being shown up once more quickly faded, because a thought entered his mind.

Wait, what was Mo’han’s Profession anyway?