Arcane Chef - Slice of Life x Adventure LitRPG

I made sure to run outside first, collecting Crisplet from the tree, before making my way into the kitchen. I was too excited to try something crazy for lunch. Deciding to see what Archie had in the cold room, I spotted several chickens there. Grabbing two, I went back out to the kitchen, spotting Lily.

A quick trip back into the cold room, I grabbed an extra three chickens, deciding to go with five overall. With Crisplet already having started the fires, I decided to mix it up with the wood today—something I had not done in quite a while.

A simple seasoning of dried herb mix, fire salt, and pepper, along with some oil, cooked over a grill with Thornroot since it was probably the wood I had used the least.

While it cooked, I was distracted by Sylverith, who still had the book in hand.

“Are draconic runes very different from human ones?” I asked.

There was a part of me that was genuinely worried I just simply wouldn’t be able to comprehend or do any of them, especially since Milo made it seem like it would be quite difficult and complex.

The question seemed to give Sylverith pause, though, as she considered the answer. Putting the book down, she pulled out a piece of slate that appeared to be blank.

“They will certainly be different. A human’s runes are based on structure. You preset the spell size and shape, and then just apply mana. A draconic rune; you only set the concept, and the mana and intent dictate the rest. Where the trouble will arise is that you need to understand the concept from a draconic point of view,” she explained.

She drew something on the slate that looked vastly different from anything I had seen to date. It wasn’t even a circle like the ones I had practised.

“This is the concept of light as I know it. The shape symbolises the rays and the fleeting nature of it. When I activate it, I will use my mana to imitate light mana, while giving it the intent to spread out from the rune,” she said.

It began to glow before the slate shattered and turned to dust.

“Wait, the lesson started already?” Milo said from the doorway, just stepping inside.

Sylverith laughed. “Worry not. Young Trevor was just wondering what the difference between draconic runes and human ones was.”

Milo shook his head. “Everything.”

A piece of coal hit the back of my head.

“Sorry, Crisplet, just got distracted!” I said, pulling the chicken off the grill. They smelled great. It had a smoky, fiery hit, with just the right amount of char on the outside. Stacking it all up, I used Infuse on them before portioning it out.

I got to Sylverith and paused. I knew her form could eat. I didn’t know how much, though. My confusion must have been clear.

“Just the one piece. I’m always curious to try something new,” she said.

I divided it up for everyone, ensuring Lily had two chickens and Liane had a whole one.

Once everyone had eaten, Liane, not wanting to join in with the rune conversation, led Crisplet out front, while Milo, Sylverith, and I stayed in the kitchen. Apparently, the draconic runes tended to be more explosive than regular ones.

I pulled out a piece of parchment and a charcoal stick, ready to practice.

“Put that away. This isn’t something you can just learn the lines of and repeat. First, we need to discuss the concept of time, and this will probably be difficult for you to grasp—not because you don’t understand that days go by, but you need to understand it from a draconic perspective,” Sylverith started.

Milo was already taking notes as Sylverith spoke, clearly not wanting to forget anything.

“Milo, dear, you’ll need to promise me you won’t share this knowledge outside of the people in this room,” Sylverith said.

“I swear,” Milo said immediately.

“Okay, well, let’s focus on speeding up time as the first one, since it will be the most useful of the three. Time, from a draconic perspective, is abundant, and something you’ll rarely be concerned about. If Lily succeeds in her goal, you’ll understand this, Trevor,” she said with a chuckle.

“Speeding up time would be the final one a dragon learns when dealing with runes and time, as the idea of needing to speed it up is something a dragon generally has no hunger or desire to do. If we want a year to pass, we just have a quick nap. However, for humans, this might be easier to grasp,” she said, before picking up the stone slate and starting to draw with a claw that appeared on her hand.

Taken from NovelFire, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She soon showed the rune, which looked to me like a jumble of lines that made no sense.

“Let me explain the concept here. This is known to the system as the draconic rune of erosion. You’re convincing matter that time has passed, rather than commanding time to pass. Where the difficulty is for dragons is that you need to genuinely want time to pass. The difference between the desire for time to pass and the performed desire is the difference between a successful rune and a broken one.”

As she spoke, the rune on the slate lit up with a light green, and the stone crumbled away to dust as it aged before our eyes.

“For you two, I want you to think of a moment where you truly desired time to move faster, and channel that. When drawing your rune, you focus your mana on the rune and allow it to guide the pattern until the loop is closed.”

A soft grin spread across her face. “However, a concept is not enough for draconic runes. To activate them, not only do you need to understand the concept from the person who drew it, but you also need to channel your mana with intent for that concept to perform an action. So when I activated it on the stone, the concept was for time to be burnt away, while the intent when I activated was for that time to slowly burn until the stone was dust.”

Milo, who had been silent until now, seemed to grasp it first and attempted to draw something, but nothing happened.

“You can’t draw this on paper. It needs to be carved. It needs to be real,” Sylverith said with a chuckle.

I felt this might work in my favour. I still had plenty of melons left, and since my ability would require this to be done on a food-related item, now I just needed to figure out where to even begin. At least for Milo, there was a base rune he could copy. For this, I was essentially being told it was a feeling.

“Trevor, remember: think of a moment where you truly wished for time to pass quickly. Channel that feeling, that emotion, with your mana. Do not overthink it, or it will fail,” Sylverith said.

I watched as Milo started to carve something into a piece of wood and immediately felt disheartened. He had picked it up so quickly? It became apparent very quickly that it was not successful. Sylverith just chuckled before commenting, “Milo, you need to truly desire time to pass. Channel the emotion of when you really wanted it to move quickly.”

Looking down at my melon, thinking of a moment like that was easy. I could point to any number of beatings I received at the orphanage, being told it was training, and I wished with all my heart that it would end and it would no longer be my turn.

I thought hard about the feeling—the wish it would be over—then I hit my next problem. How do you channel mana into a feeling?

I landed on how I pushed feelings to Crisplet with mana. Perhaps it was the same, and I pushed that desire for time to speed past as I scratched the first thing that came to my mind into the melon.

It didn’t look pretty or like anything. There was an odd shimmer of blue to it…

Wait. Did I succeed? Sylverith was looking at me, not saying anything.

What happened next felt like it happened in slow motion, so much so that I thought I may have triggered the rune the opposite way, but the melon exploded with such force that it threw me from my chair and spread the melon on every surface.

“Damn,” I muttered.

“Don’t be upset! Most dragons take several months before their pieces start exploding,” Sylverith said.

“Wait! Months?! How long does it take to learn these?” I blurted out.

Sylverith seemed to ponder for a moment. “About a decade or two.”

Even Milo dropped his chisel at that.

“You know we don’t have a couple of decades to learn this, right? That’s a lot of time for us,” I said.

“Of course I do, dear! That’s what makes this so interesting and exciting. It’s the whole reason I agreed to this!” Sylverith grinned.

I went back to practising. I was surprised I was having far more success than Milo, but it seemed Milo was having trouble picking a moment where he truly wished time would hurry up and move. For me, I had a whole stack of those moments.

“Milo, do not worry. You will find something. Us dragons, with an abundance of time, rarely ever truly wish for time to hurry up. That’s why this rune, of the three time ones I know, is the most difficult. We often need to focus in on something as small as a blink of the eye where something was stuck in between our teeth, and we wished it would hurry and be free,” Sylverith said.

She made her way over to me, looking at the counter and floor that were now covered in burst melon. “For yourself, you clearly have the moment. What you seem to lack is conveying that feeling into the item. How are you doing it?”

“Uh, the same as when I push a feeling to Crisplet?” I said, hoping it wouldn’t be stupid.

Sylverith nodded. “You need a more genuine connection with the feeling, but that’s a great start. Keep working on it, and outside of our lessons I want you to converse with Crisplet more. Really push what you’re able to convey to him. That will allow this ability to open up. Right now it’s too basic to convey your intentions into the rune.”

We continued on for a couple more hours, with neither myself nor Milo finding any success. Milo did finally have one that cracked, but that was it.

We had to stop in the early afternoon when I ran out of mana unexpectedly. I didn’t think I had been using a skill, as I only got experience on a success, so I wasn’t keeping an eye on my mana, but apparently every time I pushed it out, I was draining some. I don’t know why this came as a shock to me. It made sense, but when I nearly collapsed on the floor, Sylverith called an end to the training, saying we could pick it up tomorrow.

Milo helped me upstairs to my room, where Lily was asleep on the bed, and left me to rest.

“I’ll let you know when dinner is ready. Just rest, get some mana back,” Milo said.

I was excited to see where this would go, but too exhausted, and I quickly fell asleep.