170: Protection

It didn’t take long for the honey-roasted carrots to be finished. I didn’t bother infusing them, as the only buff that was coming from them was fire immunity.

After two hours had passed, I took the blood owls from their pot. The next thing to do was to tie the legs together with wet string or vines, then hang the bird over the fire to roast, while you turned it occasionally.

They smelt divine while they cooked. You could tell there was a spice to them, while the other marinade caramelised on the skin, giving it a deep golden brown colour all over. I made sure to get plenty of help from Crisplet for these since I only had the three and didn’t want to burn them.

Once everything was ready, I used Infuse on the Blood Owls, happy with the end result. The buffs were decent, but nothing over the top.

[Uncommon] Blood Owl Roast with Lowland Spices

• Fire Immunity
• +3 Perception
• +2 Endurance
• Minor Regeneration

I was intrigued by the name because I didn’t understand where they actually came from. In this case it said with lowland spices. Was that the entire combination I used? Or was there some part of it that counted as Lowland? Or, further to that point, what was Lowland?

I would need to ask Milo later. For now, I had a very pushy cat who was inching closer towards me, her eyes on the three roast birds.

I took out the knife and portioned them up, cutting each bird into quarters, but leaving half for Lily, passing it over to her. Liane just looked at me, hurt.

“If you have it now, you won’t get any when we have dinner. I only have ten portions,” I reasoned.

“Fine,” she pouted, arms folded.

I didn’t have to wait long before Jen poked her head through the door, seeing the four of us in the kitchen.

“Just letting you know Kathrine is here as well,” she said.

“Thanks, I was ready for it. I should let everyone know dinner is ready then,” I said.

Jen just shook her head. “I’ve got it. We’ll get everything set up. You just relax.”

Liane took it upon herself to set the table. Lily had already gone to sleep by the fire—well, asleep until I pulled out two of the fried spider legs for her.

The noise from the dining room grew much louder as I heard Darren and George joking with Luis as they entered. I went out to meet everyone and noticed that the three of them had blood on their shirts and were covered in dirt and sweat.

They had not even made it five steps into the dining room before Jen stopped them.

“Nope, not going to happen. You three go and tidy up. You’re covered in dirt and smell terrible,” she said, pointing for them to leave.

I noticed Hari had just opened the door to the dining room, looking much the same as the other three without the blood, and didn’t even get a step inside before he too vanished and went to clean up.

It wasn’t until after they had left that a new voice joined in with a soft laugh.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone scold my brother like that besides our mother,” Kathrine said.

I think only now did Jen realise who she had just addressed, because she looked mortified.

“No, no, don’t worry. It was great. He’s a guest; he should act like one, and our father is going to have a good laugh about this later when I let him know,” Kathrine chuckled.

It took another fifteen minutes before everyone had come back to the dining room. I brought out all the food, first bringing out all the fried spider legs. There were no traditions or rules here. Liane had helped herself immediately. Kathrine and Luis seemed unsure what to do.

“Please, just help yourself,” I said, now bringing out the blood owl quarters.

I’ll leave the desserts for now. I would serve those fresh. That way, the cream was cold and fluffy.

Soon everyone had at least a single spider leg and a quarter of the blood owl. They were fairly large, so no one tried to go for two pieces, which was helpful.

“Trev, what meat is this?” Milo asked, taking a bite of the spider.

“Phase spider,” I said.

I noticed immediately Kathrine spat out a small piece.

“I thought they were toxic?” She said, looking around. No one else had stopped eating. Even Jen kept going.

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“That’s not a problem. The legs are not toxic, and besides, it gives you major poison resistance,” I said with a grin.

Kathrine’s eyes went hazy for a moment before she let out a gasp.

“I knew it! So it is your cooking! On everything? How many buffs can you stack?” she said as a torrent of questions came out in a hushed whisper.

I couldn’t help but chuckle a little, but the comments didn’t stop there.

“Fire immunity again. Does everything have fire immunity? That’s not ideal when I mostly deal with fire magic. Well, I suppose I could shift it, attempt to incorporate hot material into the flame so it’s not simply fire…” She trailed off.

The table was lively. At the far end, Luis sat with Darren, George, and Hari, and they were joking about something that happened during training. I was thrilled to see them all get along. It gave me high hopes for when we left.