Arcane Chef - Slice of Life x Adventure LitRPG

After that announcement from Kara, she promptly left the house, saying she had many other matters to attend to in the wake of the disaster that had occurred. It seemed like everyone was preparing to leave right away, but to me there was still a major issue.

“Uh, I know we need to leave as soon as possible, but we still need to prepare the meal for the Cat, and I’m not sure taking the corpse close to the forest to butcher it will be good for us?” I said hesitantly, as everyone turned to face me.

I saw Jackson swear under his breath, but he followed it straight up. “You are absolutely right, but how large is this corpse? That head you showed was massive, and going to the palace now is out of the question,” he said, looking to the others.

“We could take it to the knacker’s place directly and get him to cut off a portion for a couple of scales—if the place still stands, that is,” Jen offered.

“Why not just bring him out of town a little way, have Milo create a structure, and do it there?” Liane added.

Milo just shook his head. “I’d normally have preferred that option, but my mana is still not fully recovered from yesterday, and I’m sure it’ll be required again today. I imagine if the knacker’s is damaged I could repair it. Besides, we need to make sure he’s okay and his building is even still standing before we make those plans.”

I strapped on Crisplet’s new brazier, which Crisplet happily sat in. I marvelled at how good it looked. I also noticed the glow coming out of the lattice-like design; in combination with the two runes that were clearly lit up, it had a very ominous vibe to it.

As we all prepared to leave the house, I was surprised to see that Jackson was also still with us. Maybe he’d break off at some point.

We all followed Hari as he led us through the city. Looking around, I was surprised: unlike yesterday, when everyone had been shaken and distraught by the events, today the city was bustling with activity. Everywhere I looked, people were fixing their buildings and rebuilding.

We even passed a pop-up market where merchants were selling stone bricks and lumber.

“Do they just have that stuff ready?” I asked as we passed another merchant who had a massive wagon loaded with lumber.

“Some would. It’s not the first time Boltron has had to recover from an attack—although it’s certainly the first time it’s been that large from the mountain. And unfortunately, disasters are great for profits, so they buy it while it’s cheap and sit on it for moments like this,” Jackson said. There was a bit of disgust in his voice.

“As we discussed before, Trev, most merchants care about their bottom line, not the people,” Liane said. I just nodded, remembering finding out that I had been short-changed myself by someone I had trusted.

“Not all merchants, though. Micca is my friend—she’s merchant class. I never saw her taking advantage of people,” I said. I felt I needed to defend my friend; she had only ever helped me, and in all the time I spent at the inn I never saw her take advantage of someone.

“You found a rare one then,” Liane said with a smile.

As we travelled through the city, I felt like we were getting closer to the knacker’s just by the time we had travelled. I’ll be honest, I still had no idea where everything was, and despite getting the map, with all the chaos that had happened, I’d had no time to look at it properly. I hadn’t even had a chance to look at the Runescribe notes I’d received from Char.

I was hoping once we reached our destination I’d have a bit more time for cooking and for study—and also to finally push to level 20! I was so close to a new level.

Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me.

“Are you staying with us today, Jackson?” I asked.

“Oh yes, I will be while you’re in the city. We felt it best that you and your group had a guild representative for the time you’re here, in case someone tried to take matters into their own hands,” he said.

Hari nodded. “Just makes our final tasks easier.”

“What do we need to do besides the meat?” I asked curiously. With the chaos, I had forgotten everything we needed to do.

“The only other thing we’ll be doing in the city is going to the guild to sell some of those monster parts for funds. After that we’ll head to the stables and leave by this afternoon—we don’t need to tempt fate,” Hari explained.

“Wait! What about supplies?” I said, concerned. I really was running out of a lot of things.

“We’ll stop by Divinmere and buy supplies there before heading on.”

Okay, that wasn’t too bad. I kind of wanted to see that town anyway. With how close it was to Boltron, and it being right on the edge of the lake, it looked stunning.

We reached the knacker’s, and the building didn’t look too bad from the outside. Several windows were broken, and there was a large crack in one of the walls, but from the outside it didn’t look terrible.

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When we tried the door, it appeared to be locked. Maybe he wasn’t in today?

After Hari knocked on the door, we heard some movement inside. Then Clacks appeared in the doorway.

“Ah, you lot. Look, I’m sorry—we’re not open today. Not by choice, mind you; there’s been some unfortunate damage to the building,” he said, clearly unhappy with the situation.

Milo stepped forward. “Perhaps it’s something I can help with?”

Clacks opened the door wider, and as we stepped inside we quickly saw the issue. The room where we had dropped off the Galvonson was now full of sunlight and debris, with a large rock sitting in the middle.

Milo seemingly took the challenge, because before I knew it the massive rock was sinking into the floor. Beams of rock stretched across the roof, meeting in the middle before a sheet of stone crept over the open hole, sealing it from the elements outside.

“That should hold until you get it repaired properly,” Milo said, nodding at his work.

Hari had already started picking up the large pieces of roofing that had fallen and was carrying them to the side of the room. Finally, Milo used a gust of wind to sweep the dust from the ground, collecting it in a corner with the rest of the debris.

Clacks just looked on with the rest of us as his destroyed workspace was restored fairly quickly to working order.

“Uh… thanks?” he said, sounding a bit confused.

Hari came back to the group. “I’ll be blunt—we did that because we are in desperate need of your assistance. This time here, and not at the palace or anywhere else. Also, we need help now, so we’re going to show you something. Do you mind stepping back to the wall?”

“What do you mean?” Clacks started to ask, but followed us to the wall all the same.

“Trevor, if you could,” Hari asked. I just nodded and removed the corpse of the drake from storage.

It landed with a thud that shook the room, so much that more dust rained down from above. Milo’s watchful gaze was there, making sure nothing else dislodged.

Both Jackson and Clacks had their jaws practically fall open.

“What the fuck,” Jackson said. Clacks just made sounds like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

“Right, we don’t need it fully harvested,” Hari began, grabbing Clacks’ attention for a moment before his eyes drifted back to the creature.

“Clacks, time is of the essence here. We need you to separate a large portion of meat. You may keep five scales as payment, if it can be done now,” Hari said. At mention of the scales, Clacks’ attention locked on Hari.

“How large of a chunk do you need—what cut?” he asked.

“At least torso size, and whichever will be fastest. For obvious reasons we can’t have this in the open for long, and no one can know. Remember your oath from yesterday.”

Clacks nodded, then approached a bench, pulling out several tools including a saw, some large pliers, a giant knife, and a variety of others.

Watching the man work was amazing. He climbed over the corpse like it was a giant rock, before finding the spot he was looking for. Using his tools, he started removing the scales on the monster’s back with great effort. I also noticed he must have been using class-related skills, as some things were happening far more easily than I thought possible.

It was amusing watching Crisplet while the man worked. The little elemental seemed to be testing just how fireproof the scales were. It blasted one of the freed scales with a stream of fire, then that stream grew larger and larger. It kept checking the other side to see if it had burned. Surprisingly, it wasn’t until the stream of flames was larger than the scale that the surface behind it began to burn—and even then, the scale itself was completely undamaged.

It only took an hour for Clacks to remove forty-five scales and cut out a large chunk of meat, about the size of two torsos, from the rump of the drake.

I quickly stored the meat he had separated and brought down. When he was done, I stored the corpse again, leaving behind just the scales. I tried to store some of those, but it was not allowed. It seemed my ability did not see scales as edible in any way.

In the end, he took six scales for his efforts, which I later learned would be worth over ten gold, and we took the rest. After saying our goodbyes, we left the knacker’s and made our way to the guild.

“You realise how much money that corpse is worth, right?” Jackson asked me. I just shrugged. I actually had no idea.

“No, not really?” I said, and Jen just laughed.

“You’re sitting on a literal fortune and you have no idea,” he said, shaking his head and laughing a little.

“Doesn’t mean much if we can’t butcher it though,” Hari added.

As we entered the guild, I noticed the mood inside was not its usual jovial nature. All around us it was sombre—tired faces, dirty adventurers. The atmosphere was tense. The usual store selling roasted meat was not operating, and most people sitting at the tables were asleep, or looked asleep on their feet.

The job board was completely different. There was just the same large notice posted around the pillar offering rewards for repairs. It also offered rewards for assisting the mages on the wall.

All other eradication and collection jobs were currently not available. All the counters were full of tired and dirty adventurers as well, likely getting their rewards after working through the night.

We went past them and up the stairs to the stores above, making our way to this guild’s loot house. Even before we had fully entered, an old man called out to us:

“We’re all sold out of construction tools, I’m afraid!”

When we kept walking inside, he finally put his book down and looked up. This store, like the last loot house, was stacked with random items—parts of monsters and weaponry littered the shelves, both broken, old, and used.

“Good, that means you’ll have plenty of gold to pay well for what we have today,” Milo said, stepping forward with a large smile.

The man’s eyebrow shot up. “Selling, huh? Well, give old John a look then—what have you got?”

Milo started pulling out several items: a single talon, the giant beak, and a single feather to start with. The man looked down at the items, then deflated a little.

“That it? The beak and talon are nice. I can give you ninety silver and seventy-five silver respectively. The feather, eh… three silver,” John said, turning the talon over in his hand.

“Come on now, you and I both know you can do better for the talon and beak. They are both pristine and undamaged,” Milo countered.

“Hmm, I suppose… just not a lot of demand on weapons right now,” John said, still making sounds as he inspected the items.

“And how about in a couple of weeks, when the creatures of the mountain come down looking for a new source of mana now the dragon has left? There will be a lot of need for weapons then, no?” Milo said, banking on what-ifs.

This did seem to work, however, as John responded, “I suppose you’re right. Alright, eighty-five silver for the talon, and one gold for the beak.”

Milo just nodded. “Sounds good to me.” He then pulled out the six other talons.

John’s eyes widened. Then Milo dropped his bombshell. “I have at least nine hundred more of the feathers too. So it would be twenty-seven gold for them all. I’ll cut you a deal and we say twenty-five gold for the feathers, six gold for the talons, and one gold for the beak. Thirty-two all up. Sounds good?”

John opened and closed his mouth like a fish. “I… I don’t have that sort of money here,” he said, stuttering his words.

Milo then drove the nail into the coffin, pulling out one of the scales. “Ah, then you wouldn’t be interested in buying the Scales of an Ancient Drake either, then?”

This stopped John in his tracks. He stared at it, eyes wide.

“Wait here. I will need fifteen minutes to fetch the boss. Do you mind waiting?”

“That’s fine,” Milo said. “Let your boss know this is not the only scale either. We’ll be waiting just outside for your return.”

And with that, we left the store to wait outside while John dashed out, shut the door with a sign reading Closed, and ran down the stairs.