Chapter 25: Dish #1?

Pang blinked as he watched the atmosphere around the Innkeeper change.

In the blink of an eye, it changed from guarded to lighthearted. The great black-and-white spirit couldn’t help but narrow his eyes at the metaphorical brightness.

The change was, in fact, completely natural. After all, Finn had just overcome the denial/still-shooked stage and actually entered a ’hey-this-is-kinda-exciting’ stage.

In retrospect…what did he have to go back to? He had no family, no friends, and a group of rich people after his arse. Here…he could start over—with a few magical cheats that could allow him to build buildings at the press of his fingers, too!

Immediately, he ran out to get a few more sunberries and their leaves. He also took a few pieces of brightsweet pear, and he headed back to his kitchen.

He mashed them all together. Their taste should match. The two fruits, even if they tasted different, had that sweet natural flavor that would in theory allow them to complement each other.

Brightsweet also had the ability to slightly lessen fatigue and help with wounds, while the sunberry had restorative properties. They should not have negative chemical reactions. Probably.

He taste-tested a bit to get the right proportions in terms of the taste and texture that he wanted. It took him about five minutes, adding a few sunberry leaves to add herbaceousness, texture, and maybe health effects too.

Although the brightpear tasted like watermelon and was juicy, he had to cook it a bit to make the texture a bit viscous.

He turned to look at his cooking area. It was really amazing. Sadly, there was no gas, like there was no lighting or water. Fortunately, he was a hiker and had done some hunts before so making fire out of wood, leaves, and rocks was fairly easy for him. He just had to carefully bring the fire inside the house and use it to manually light up the cooking area.

Anyway, with this, he cooked the fruit mixture over medium heat, stirring it perfectly. There were also 10 sets of wooden plates, bowls, and utensils in the cabinets. Fortunately, he didn’t have to live like a caveman and carve his own plate and spoon.

If he needed more…only then would he have to make them. Honestly, though, considering where he was and how there was no sign of humans after all this time, he wouldn’t expect any more than 10 customers at a time.

“Just a jam,” he said. “It’d last me longer, and could go well with other things that I hope to discover in the future.”

Anyway, he saw that the fruits were ripe, many were overripe, so they’d have just gone to waste if he hadn’t taken them.

He used [Dish Analysis] Skill on it when he finished, just out of curiosity.

[Herbal Sunberry-Pear Jam (Unranked): Combination of sunberries, sunberry leaves, and brightsweet pear. A spoonful increases recovery by 0.5% for 10 minutes.]

[First Food with Effect Created! Permanent Boost +1 Dexterity!]

“Huh, what is this?”

The Great Panda jumped over the counter, looking over the jam. “Impressive, but you really don’t like to read, do ya?”

“As mentioned in the room descriptions, making food in the Inn’s Kitchen adds a probability of increasing regeneration or other buffs,” the Great Pang said. “Pang is surprised you did it on the first time though.

“Who knows, someday maybe you’ll be able to make decent essence food.” Pang didn’t have cooks for masters before, but their shared knowledge as spirits mentioned some things.

“I see…” Finn said, shrugging, before pondering how to eat this.

Because he didn’t have bread or crackers, he…decided to treat sunberry leaves as some sort of salad instead. They were relatively soft and easy to chew. They were a bit bitter, but with the sweetness of the jam, he reckoned it’d be balanced out. If he layered them well enough, he could treat the jam-on-leaf as a biteable snack.

He layered the jam on the leaves. He was never squeamish about food, and he didn’t mind that it wasn’t washed. He had lived months on trash, after all, and he was also a hiker.

He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when he threw a piece in his mouth, but he was fortunately not disappointed.

He enjoyed the sweetness of the jam, the tartness bursting in his tongue, on top of the slight bitterness and crunch of the leaves.

The syrup was soft and slightly buttery, but the leaves added a herbal freshness that balanced everything.

He didn’t mash it too much, so there were still some chunks of fruit meat he could bite into. Each one added zest to each taste, and combined with the syrup, it was quite a treat.

Most importantly…it was a new taste. There were some similarities to earth fruits, but not much. In the end, they were different little things.

And he was fascinated.

His eyes shifted to look at the Panda, who was staring at the food. Then he looked away.

“Do spirits eat?”

“No, we are beyond mortal needs,” he said, eyes sliding to look back even when he was facing away. “But…essence food—even borderline ones—can be accepted.”

Finn’s lips twitched upwards, and he made the leaf-jam wrap for the panda, too.

Nom

The Panda munched on the makeshift snack and paused, blinking, and for a moment Finn thought he’d spit it out. He didn’t, though. Instead, he chewed it slowly, and there was a curious expression on his fluffy face as he swallowed it.

Finn always felt good when watching people enjoy his food. It had been a while, however, since it was in such a simple setting outside of the high-end restaurants he worked for.

After becoming a chef, he had never cooked at home, and he didn’t have friends or family to cook for, either. He was just too busy making a living.

Was it strange that he experienced this in a strange place after all these years? And it wasn’t even with a human.

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