77: Aftermath

It wasn’t long before there was a knock at the door, and a moment later, Hari let Nathan into the house. Knowing he was on his way, not much had been said in the few minutes it took him to arrive—mostly just Micca trying to understand more of what had happened. The idea of a random dragon showing up for a snack was something she simply couldn’t accept.

And I didn’t blame her.

As Nathan entered, his eyes scanned the room and landed briefly on Micca—likely because he didn’t recognise her—but it didn’t linger long.

“So, want to tell me what that was all about?” Nathan asked, looking flustered.

I’m not sure if it was ideal or not, but Liane answered first.

“Dragon wanted a snack. Cat’s been telling its friends—good word of mouth. That’s really the goal of any chef,” she said with a laugh.

“I’m not in the mood for jokes,” Nathan snapped back.

“Despite the absurdity of that statement, it’s not a joke,” Hari said, in a far more professional tone. He shot Liane a look that earned him an eye-roll, but she didn’t say anything else.

Nathan let out a long sigh. “Care to elaborate?”

“Well, we didn’t hear the conversation—that was between the three of them—but from what Trev’s told us, the fight seems to be over. The shadow cat—Lily—encouraged the dragon to seek out Trevor for a snack made from the tail of the storm dragon,” Hari explained patiently.

“That… that’s absurd. You expect me to just believe that?” Nathan asked.

“You can believe whatever you like. You witnessed it just like we did,” Hari replied with a shrug.

A moment later, Nathan sank into a nearby chair. “What am I going to tell all the adventurers? I can’t tell them that story…” he said, exasperated.

“You’re absolutely right. You can’t tell them that,” Liane added. “That would just put even more attention on Trevor.”

“Too late for that. He had a shadow cat show up in the middle of a hundred adventurers and push him into a meeting with a dragon—in front of everyone. What do you think is going to happen?” Nathan said, rubbing his face.

“To be honest, the only thing keeping him safe right now might be the fear that anyone trying to grab him would have to deal with both a dragon and a shadow cat,” Nathan added with a short, humourless laugh.

“We need to figure out how to cook the dragon’s tail,” I said, the realisation hitting hard. “Lily told the dragon I usually take three days, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin…”

Hari looked at Nathan. “I don’t think I need to stress how important it is to make sure no one steals it,” he said with a stern warning.

Crisplet flared up bright red and shot off a burst of sparks, as if to second the threat.

“Stolen? Why would anyone steal the tail?” I asked genuinely confused.

“Trevor… you remember how much the drake scales were worth?” Jen asked.

“Yes?”

“Times that by at least ten for a dragon of that size—probably more, since you mentioned it’s legendary. Then you’ve got the blood, which is incredibly valuable for alchemy, and I’m sure the flesh has value somewhere as well.” She let that settle.

“Oh, sorry,” I said sheepishly. I’d just seen it as a giant piece of meat—and not even one that was mine, really.

“So what are we going to do then?” Hari asked, turning to Nathan.

“That all makes sense. Yes. I’d very much prefer to still be breathing next week,” Nathan said dryly. “I’ve got a couple of other teams in the city, similar level to yours. If the fight really is over, we can section off an area—”

“I’ll set up a location just outside the city,” Milo cut in. “We don’t want the dragon randomly turning up to collect its dinner and accidentally levelling half the buildings.”

“Yes—good idea. We can assign those other parties to help guard the area,” Nathan said, glancing at Hari for confirmation.

“Sounds like a plan. Tomorrow morning, we’ll start construction,” Milo nodded.

“So… back to what I asked earlier,” Nathan said, turning a tired look around the group. “How do we explain this to the adventurers? They’re going to be hounding me—and probably your whole team—for answers.”

Micca shocked everyone by speaking up.
“Tell them his guardian showed up to introduce him to a friend.”

There was silence for a long while before Nathan found his voice.

“It was a shadow cat and a dragon…” he said, staring at her like she was crazy.

“Yeah? And?” Micca retorted.

“Who’s going to believe that?” Nathan asked, frustrated.

“Sounds like everyone will—who saw what happened,” she replied with a smile.

“Fine,” Nathan muttered, getting to his feet. “I’ll send the groups out to you as soon as they check in. Just… please don’t get us all killed.”

And with that, he left the house.

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“Well, that certainly doesn’t add any pressure or anything,” Micca said with a laugh.

“What’s for dinner tonight?” Liane asked, glancing over. “Can you do one of the spiders?” She added, far too excited.

“No!” Jen snapped. “Absolutely not.”

“And you’re not eating any of that dragon meat either. The drake is bad enough,” Hari added, throwing a look at Liane.

“Woah, I wasn’t going to steal any dragon meat… this time,” she said, holding her hands up.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to cook, to be honest. I was feeling exhausted, so whatever it was, it needed to be simple. At least I was back in the house with a proper kitchen again.

I pulled out a couple of the spider legs I’d stored and, just for Liane, set those aside.

For everyone else, I pulled out the Thunar again and removed the rest of the fillet from one side of the fish, portioning it into nine Thunar steaks, I went with salt, pepper, and some of the Lemon Tea Grass I’d found on patrol. I also added a bit of Mana Truffle.

Then I got to work. Deciding to mix things up a little, I pulled out my pot and, with Milo’s help, got it filled with water. Into that, I added salt, some dried Blood Tears, crushed Virfolium, and a very roughly chopped onion for flavour. I placed the spider legs into the pot.

My goal here was to see if the system would allow me to apply essence to all the legs at once—rather than individually. And if it counted as spider leg soup… surely that would work, right?

I explained the plan to Crisplet and used Treant wood for the fire, mostly due to the surplus we now had after the Treant attack.

While the soup came to a boil, I started cooking the Thunar steaks on a stone plate using a bit of butter. I really should have prepared some vegetables or starch to go with them, but honestly—I was tired.