—–
At the end, Rita ended up buying the [Dark Spirit Possession: Lv1], [Staff Master: Lv1], and [Soul Drain: Lv1] Skills. The first Skill allowed her to become possessed by dark spirits to enhance her power and magical strength even further, the Staff Master gave her some new fighting techniques that she could use with her staff to fight at close range more easily, and Soul Drain allows her to slowly drain HP and MP from targets she is fighting, which was a stronger Drain that I already had.
“Alright, I am ready!” said Rita, getting up and ready for the challenge.
“Not yet, we are hungry and our Satiation meter is low, especially yours! If your Satiation goes to zero, you’ll begin to lose a small percentage of your health every 10 seconds.” I said.
“Eh?! Is there such a horrendous mechanic? What a hassle…” Sighed Rita. “But yeah, my stomach feels weirdly empty though, even when I just ate dinner back at home…”
“See? You need to eat, let’s make something simple. I got some Crow Meat here, and also we got a lot of mushrooms, how about some grilled meat with mushrooms?” I asked.
“Hmm, fine, sure… Is there anything to drink?” asked Rita.
“Oh, drink? Yeah! I got this dew juice, it has Morning Flower Dew, Fruit Juice, and water. It is a staple drink for the Squirrel-folk.” I said with a smile, taking out all sorts of ingredients from my Inventory. Rita grew more and more confused.
“Y-You’ve done so much in just a week of playing the game?!” She asked.
“Yeah, I even healed the squirrel-folk from a deadly disease,” I said with a proud smile.
“I-Incredible, you’re really unbelievable.” said Rita. “You’ve become completely addicted to this game!”
“Hahah… I like it a lot now that I think about it… Well, you brought it to me, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Well, yeah…” Sighed Rita. “A-Anyways, can I help with something?” Wondered Rita.
“Hmmm, you don’t have the cooking skill though… In your case, you would need to go buy food somewhere, or eat raw materials harvested or gathered from your surroundings, like eating the moss and the glowing mushrooms from here… Or maybe going to the marketplace and buying food from those with the Cooking Skill.” I said.
“Eh? And what if I try to cook anyway? Don’t tell me I’ll be suddenly interrupted or something.” said Rita.
“Well, go ahead and try,” I said. I really didn’t even know what would happen.
Rita grabbed the crow meat and tried to put it on a stick with the mushrooms I was cutting, however, the game suddenly detected she was doing something similar to the “act of cooking” and suddenly gave her a shock of electricity in her hands, making her drop the items on the floor.
SPARK!
“Ouch! W-What the…? How come I can’t cook?!” asked Rita angrily.
“Well, that’s how it seems to be… As much as it is realistic, this is still a game… Oh, I also got some goat cheese! Want some? But eating it alone is not really that good though… No, maybe let’s save it, I need to make some bread but I left the flour with Acorn, sadly.” I sighed.
“You’re really invested in this cooking gameplay,” said Rita. “It is such a pain that I can’t cook. How come a Sorceress can learn Alchemy but not Cooking?! Every Job Class should be allowed to Cook and Craft!”
“Well, if that were the case, those that pick the classes that are designed for it would feel completely useless, wouldn’t they? You’re a sorceress, you curse and do magic, I do the cooking and other stuff, we complement each other rather well… I think you can still cut stuff, so here, you can take care of cutting the crow meat into chunks alongside the glowing mushrooms, they seem delicious and I want to taste them!” I said.
“Okay, alright…”
Rita helped me by cutting off the fresh white meat, which kept itself fresh inside my inventory, and also I cut down into smaller pieces the glowing mushrooms. We also added some of the mushroom drops she got from beating those guys from before entering the dungeon.
I generated some wooden sticks and stuck the meat and the mushrooms on them, and then, I covered the meat with a sauce made out of citric lemon-like juice, some salt, and also that red spice that the squirrels enjoy, all while also putting some aromatic herbs on top. We left the skewers slowly warming above the flames produced by the tiny Sunlight Spirit, and the delicious scent of the meat and the mushrooms being cooked was very nice.
“How do we eat now?” Wondered Rita. “I guess we can just eat standing up– Eh?”
“Hehe, no need to worry about it, let me just… Ooof!”
I quickly stretched my arms and unified them into a big mass of wood, creating a wooden table by generating four legs on this mass of wood and stretching the body into a table-like structure, shaping it to my mind. After that, I just detached the wooden table from my hands and lost some HP, and done!
“Y-You can create anything with wood?!” asked Rita. ．
“Yeah! I don’t know if Dryad was originally intended to do this, but I can just do it,” I said. “It costs both MP and HP though, so it is not something I can do so easily!”
“You say that while already converting your two hands into seats for us!” Rita said, as I was doing just that.
“Hahaha, my HP recovery is pretty fast, even here, it still counts as if I am in the forest because the dungeon is inside of it…” I giggled.
And ready! I made a table and two seats. They looked a bit rustic, but they seemed to be good enough and serviceable for the moment. I can carry them around through my Inventory if I ever need to as well, so there’s no biggie here.
“So you can create any items you want with wood? Have you thought about learning some sort of Carpentry Skill or something?” asked Rita.
“I don’t have any in my Skill Tree, but maybe I could get one in the future,” I said.
“But can’t you just produce armor and weapons like this? Wooden armor and weapons are still pretty strong to be honest.” said Rita. “And this is a game, right? Maybe you could sell those items, a lot of wooden weapons and armors, and shields too! How about furniture? You could sell that too to other players! I wonder if they could buy them? Oh, and what about making your own house? You could craft your own house out of wood. And can’t you manipulate wood as well? So you could just use the trees from the forest…”
“Eeeeh? I-I could do that I guess…” I sighed. “But something happened that had made me a bit fearful of interacting with more players… You see…”
I explained to Rita what had happened in that livestream where I was caught one-shotting a Boss, she heard it slowly and clearly and quickly grew rather terrified of what had happened.
“W-Wow, a lot of creeps, huh? They know your face and everything, and even if you can cover the appearance using some sort of system function, your name is still visible…” said Rita. “And you got the title of Legendary Warrior to boot, didn’t you say it was troublesome?! Why are you still using it then?”
“B-But it has good stats!” I cried.
“R-Right… I guess there’s no helping it. I’ll stand by your side whenever we go to this marketplace and I’ll protect your back from any creep!” said Rita.
“Rita I don’t know if that’ll work, and it’s not as if they can do anything to me as I am not a PvP player, and I have all the block functions activated, nobody can get closer to me unless I authorize it, nor touch me or anything, so being assaulted by creeps is not the problem here… It’s the other thing, I will cause too much of a fuss and verbal abuse is still a thing! Also being watched by everybody will be so troublesome… I am just really worried, I guess.” I sighed.
“Hm, you gotta grow some spine, Elayne, don’t be so overly concerned, if they can’t do anything to your avatar then just ignore… You’ll be with me so it’s going to be fine! …Well, for now we should eat the food and then get going, I don’t want to stretch this too much,” said Rita.
Rita gave me some words of comfort and suggestions that made me think. Perhaps I could really abuse my skills and sell products made of wood? But I also kind of want to see if I could sell vegetables, fruits, and also potions. I remembered that in this game it was possible to make a profit out of selling items… So there’s the possibility I could even make a living out of it! Rita also wanted to do the same, so maybe we should work together towards that goal.
Although that girl, Elisa, offered me a job as her chef or something, I doubt I can even work as one. I was terrible when working under pressure, and I really don’t want to move out of my comfort zone to go work for her… Even if their pay might be good, I was already happy with my job with Mark. Although if I can earn money through the game, I might begin working less through the week… Hm…
Ah! The food is ready, the smell of grilled meat and mushrooms is really nice.
—–