Chapter 25: Chapter 25. The World doesn’t stop when you log out.

We made a camp of sorts. They set up a sort of little pavilion for Rik, Shiana, and Mae, which I had to help with by cutting holes in the floor with my claws for them to peg it off with. I wasn’t sure why they needed a tent, since we were protected from the weather, and Cassie and I were fine with bedrolls on the other side of the cave.

And then they started making noises and continued to do so for almost an hour, which made me grateful they had put up the tent. I resolved to ask Mae if she had any illusions that blocked sound next time, though. It didn’t get me going, probably because that’s a biological response and I didn’t think this body was technically mature enough to react, but listening to someone else’s fun while you are trying to sleep and Cassie was keeping her eyes open away from the fire was not my definition of a good time.

I was woken up by Shiana walking towards me with her hand stretched out, as if to rouse me from slumber. Fortunately, kobolds didn’t seem to need much sleep, and she stopped when I rolled to my feet and started rolling up the wool blanket I had spread beneath me. I had to sleep on my belly, because of my tail, or curled up on my side with my tail wrapped around me, but I seemed to be able to sleep in almost any position easily except flat on my back.

“I am waking you up to watch for the next period. Nothing unusual happened during my watch. The others should be waking up within the next two hours. Cassie Stonebender and Mae Bei-Ling asked me to inform you that their combined foodstuffs are stowed in the non-inventory bag between the pavilion and the wall, and have requested that in return for regular last watch and uninterrupted sleep, you assume the duties of camp cook.”

“I have decided that that sounds equitable, and have placed mine and Rik’s non-ration food supplies with the others as well.”

“Are you tired?” I asked her.

She shook her head, “No, Elves do not require a full night’s sleep as long as we are permitted to meditate for four hours. My class does not require time meditating to refresh my spells list or request magic from a deity.”

I nodded. “Tell you what, I have more rolls, but would like to see if I can make something for breakfast. Would you like to keep watch while I work on food for the party?”

She nodded and started looking around while I went behind the pavilion, where I could hear Rik’s loud snores. Cassie snored fairly loudly as well, but from what I understood, snoring was not something kobolds were capable of doing. I guess being a monster that had to sleep with one eye open for murderhobos came with an advantage.

There were the expected items that the girls had listed the night before, as well as stacks and stacks of rat steaks that I guess we had gotten killing the dire rats. I took a look at Cassie’s sausage and wrinkled my nose, it was dark and kind of foul-smelling, but I could probably use it in small amounts to enhance a dish, and I started tucking the meat items into my inventory. A hundred pounds of meat is not actually much in terms of volume, and by the time I was finished, I still had about two-thirds of the space left. A quick check showed that the rolls were still steaming, which was great because it meant no time passed in my soul space inventory.

I was very surprised, though, to find a huge pile of vegetables. Wild onions, turnips with their greens, mustard greens, collards, cattail roots, ginger, Dandelion leaves, and about a dozen kinds of fruits and berries from wild pears to ground cherries and a good five pounds of blackberries. There were even large plump grubs and various types of beetles, and another thirty pounds of various lumps of meat marked as ‘hare’ and ‘fowl’ meat, the corpses clean and dressed, if small. There was even a jar of honey with a chunk of comb in it and several pounds of raisins, and some bark strips that looked like cinnamon and willow bark, as well as dozens of eggs from various types of birds wrapped in moss.

I was salivating a little. It had been a while since I had eaten anything fresh that wasn’t a mushroom. I had a lot of salt since apparently salt deposits were collected somewhere in the dungeon and kobolds collected it, but seeing the sugar, Honey, and eggs got my mind racing. “Shiana?” I asked her.

“Yes?” she replied, looking at me closely.

“Where did all the greens and eggs come from?”

“We have been adventuring outside the city for several days. Rik told me to ‘do the scout thing’, which I assumed meant practicing my survival skill, which includes foraging and small game hunting. I was unable to set snares, however, as that requires preparation time as well as waiting, and we kept moving.”

“The survival skill? What is that?”

“It includes tracking, snaring, foraging, small game hunting, camp food preparation, campsite scouting, food and water sanitizing, and minor medical abilities. It is not as effective as full gathering or trade skills for each of the effects, but it is a feature of all survival-based classes. My current specialized environment is the forest and meadows, but with time and exposure to new environments I can gain bonuses in those zones.”

“And the two of you have been eating nothing but newbie rations, the moldy bread?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why haven’t you been cooking real food and eating that?”

“Because Rik never told me to.” She replied.

Ugh. “Could you teach him to cook?”

She shook her head, “No. I do not have cooking skills, I have survival skill. It is a class skill from the scout class. He cannot learn it because it is not a feature of the Sensual Overlord. His class permits him to gain 1 trade skill and 1 gathering skill. If he were to take a specialist class, such as Master of Beast girls, he could gain survival as a class feature.”

“He can only learn a single trade skill and a single gathering skill? Why?”

“Because as a sensual overlord or any of the harem lord classes, he is expected to take advantage of the abilities of his harem rather than becoming a crafter himself. That is why there are no trade-specific specialist classes attached to the harem lord classes.”

“So none? He couldn’t become like… a merchant with a harem or something?”

She shook her head. “No, that would be overpowered, and violate class balance.”

Right. AO was all about balance. Although it didn’t seem to mind the fact that he could become a one-man army with his harem of pets that didn’t count towards a party maximum. I bet that, somehow, it was something special that only certain people had access to. Maybe it was expensive?

You are reading story The Chronicles of Alandia, A Kobold’s Tale. at novel35.com

I went ahead and stashed the items in my inventory. When all was said and done, It was starting to get a little full, so I put my mind to preparing breakfast.

I used my pot to start heating the water. This was one of my grandmother’s favorite recipes. I didn’t have any vanilla or milk, but overcooked rice added a sort of creaminess to it and would still allow it to set. I didn’t have a dutch oven, but I did have a pot with a lid, so I mixed sugar, honey, salt, and carefully-scraped cinnamon into a bowl, carefully cracked the eggs to make sure none of them were already forming, and when the water started boiling, I carefully poured the hot water and mixed eggs into the bowl with the mixture and mixed them together until they firmed a little.

I cooked the rice in the hot water, until it was crackling and falling apart. A good rule of thumb for normal rice is double the water to the rice you are using, but in this case, I went triple to keep it creamy. Afterward, I let the rice cool a bit, mixed it with the rest, and added several handfuls of raisins as well as a handful of tiny mushrooms that tasted similar to nutmeg and were supposed to increase blood circulation. I then covered the pot with its lid, and carefully tucked coals around it as well as a burning piece of wood on top of it.

Shiana had been producing the wood so far, so I asked, “have you been foraging firewood as well?”

“I still have enough firewood and tinder to create a fire for three more days for cooking if we bank the fire at night, while we sleep. In cold climates, that time may be less if we need the fire overnight to avoid being harmed by the cold.”

I let the stuff simmer within the coals for almost an hour, before people started waking up, and spent the time pulling stone plugs out the walls and carving them into bowls. Fortunately, whatever stone the walls were made of was not sandstone, so I had high hopes they would do for storing leftovers.

“Okay, folks, I only have two bowls, and we might have to start worrying about water soon. Shiana informs me we have 3 days' worth of firewood for cooking left, although we have lots of food we could eat raw if we had to.”

Rik nodded, “I will have to disappear for a while then too. About a week, so let’s say a 3-day run for the dungeon, total?”

Cassie nodded.

“Hopefully we can clear a couple of floors, get the first bonuses, and then when I get back, we will be in a position to tackle the third floor, and maybe get first bonuses from there as well.”

Cassie shook her head, “Not a chance.” I agreed with her.

“Why not?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“I am not going to sit, in a dungeon, for a week, waiting for you to come back. I am willing to stay until you have to go, as long as we can get to a floor exit, but I am not going to stay here, no water, no fire, camping, and twiddling my thumbs until you get back. I may be a dwarf, but dwarves live in cities, too.” She said, irritably.

“But I thought that… uhh…”

I shrugged, “The world doesn’t stop when you go away, Rik. The rest of us can take the downtime to train, work on skills, or work on resupplying, but we cannot do it stuck in a dungeon.”

Honestly, it shouldn’t have to be said, but I get the impression there was a lot about this ‘game’ that he did not exactly understand yet.

He nodded slowly, “Right, can you give me about half an hour?”

Shiana said brightly, “I can stay! But I might be dead and have to respawn when you return if I am left in a dangerous zone.”

Rik was holding his band with his right hand, and his eyes were flicking as if he was reading something. Did he have like a telnet link or something? Or maybe documentation files he could access? I had no idea, but we settled down to eat while we waited.

The rice and raisin custard didn’t turn out perfect, but it was still a tasty breakfast. If I had milk or a real or dutch oven, it would have probably set a little better while it baked, but it was certainly edible, and I had been adding in moderate bits of energy while I prepared it.

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