96: Knowledge

I watched my experience rapidly increase over the night. I’d made sure to extend the buff for maximum duration on Lily’s meal, and she’d clearly taken my plea for help to heart.

Between yesterday and today, Lily had gotten me close to thirty thousand experience, with my level currently sitting at 19,307 / 22,200—only twenty-nine more notifications, and I’d hit level twenty-five.

Which is why I was still up well past when everyone else had gone to sleep, sitting on a stone bench that Milo had set up just outside the structure where Hari and Liane were keeping watch.

“Getting close now?” Hari asked, knowing full well why I was still awake.

“Yeah, super close!” I said excitedly. It was definitely getting colder now—you could feel the chill in the air. That meant we weren’t far from winter setting in. I didn’t know if it snowed this far south; I’d always heard it stayed much warmer here and didn’t snow as much, but I didn’t know the truth of it.

“Does it snow here in winter?” I asked, attempting to distract myself from checking the notifications every couple of seconds.

“Yeah, during the peak of winter, it still snows down here. You’d need to go to the island with the demons to get no snow—or even further south than that,” Hari said, watching Crisplet chase some small creature that was burrowing away.

“Further south than the demons?” I asked, confused.

“Of course. We can’t really travel there easily, but the world isn’t a small place—it doesn’t just drop off a cliff into the void,” Hari said with a chuckle.

“Have you been down there?” I asked in awe. I hadn’t known about this. I knew there was a continent to the east that we had boats to—it’s where most of the elves came from—but the only elf I knew who actually lived here was the one who ran the temple Amanda went to.

“No,” Hari said with another chuckle.

“I’d say there might be fewer than ten people in total who could make that trip across the ocean.”

“Do you know anything about it?” I asked.

“Not really, no. I heard there are a couple of tomes in the capital library that detail the explorations of a space-specialist mage from several centuries ago—someone who supposedly reached their land and documented it. But it could just be a madman writing a tale; we don’t know,” Hari explained.

“I wonder if the dragons could make it across,” I said in wonder.

“Okay, I stand corrected—there might be eleven people in this world who could make the trip, because I wouldn’t put it past you to convince a dragon to try, eventually.” Hari let out a proper laugh.

Looking at my notifications again—only fourteen more kills to go.

“Will we reach Grey Rock tomorrow?” I asked curiously.

“Yeah, most probably. The boys are looking stronger already, and I think they’ll be able to ride the whole day tomorrow.” He nodded approvingly as he said it.

“Anything we need to worry about in that town? No storm dragons or anything?” I asked with a nervous chuckle.

“No, not this time. Honestly, I’ve been to that town a handful of times, and outside its Temple of Waves there’s nothing that really stands out. Oh—but don’t worry, there’s no creature watching over this temple,” he reassured quickly.

Seven more kills to go.

Taking a deep breath, I looked up to see Liane lying on the roof, staring at the sky.

“You’re not sleeping up there, are you?” I asked jokingly. The next moment she appeared sitting beside me and flicked my ear.

“You can’t even tell a decoy from your own friend! Tsk tsk,” she said with a chuckle, before vanishing again.

“You get used to that,” Hari said, laughing as I spun around to see nothing. “She’s troublesome at night, but always there when she’s needed.”

Then it happened.

Notification:

You have earned 100 bonus experience for a buff used in combat.

…

You have reached Level 25 in Arcane Chef.

You have +2 unspent stat points.

You have gained a new ability.

You have a new ability selection.

You have 1 available ability selection.

“I just got to level twenty-five!” I said excitedly before pulling up my selections.

Congratulations on Level 25!

Choose from the following options:

Mana Pan

• Skill type: Active
• The perfect tool does exist.
• Allows you to create a pan of various sizes out of Mana.

Essence Memory

• Skill type: Passive
• A true chef never forgets a flavour.
• Once an ingredient has been used, the user can recall its base properties, any buffs it contributed, and the pairing result when used in successful recipes.

Feast of Power

• Skill type: Active
• A meal everyone can enjoy.
• Can prepare one ‘Feast Dish’ per 24 hours, and it will grant increased buff quality and increased buff time.

Culinary Echo

• Skill type: Active
• The memory of a meal can linger in magic
• Allows you to create a simplified version of the previously cooked meal, retaining some of the buff structure without duplicating the original ingredients.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Manaflair Crust

• Skill Type: Active
• Flavour is magic. Smoke is memory. Crust is transformation.
• When exposed to ambient elemental, magical or environmental energy during cooking, the crust passively absorbs traces, subtly altering its nature.

The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t show the old skills. It also said to select one—so once I chose this one, would all the ones I didn’t pick appear on the other list to be chosen with the replacement skill?

I hoped so, but there was nothing I could do right now to find out, and I wouldn’t choose a skill until I’d at least discussed it with Milo. Still, looking at the options, there were certainly some fun ones there. Essence Memory seemed incredibly useful!

But I also knew exactly what Milo was going to tell me: “That skill won’t do anything for you that the notebook can’t.”

I chuckled to myself as the voice of Milo echoed in my head.

“What’s up?” Hari asked, looking over at me.

“Oh, nothing. I got a skill that’ll allow me to perfectly recall any buffs and pairing results after they’ve been successfully created—but I know exactly what Milo’s going to say when I tell him,” I explained.

“That you have a notebook?” Hari chuckled as well. “He’ll do that. But for my own piece of advice, notebooks are all well and good, but in twenty years, how many ingredients will you have used in your life? How many notebooks would that be?”

“If it were just the buffs that an individual ingredient shared, that’s one thing, but letting you know every pairing result as well…” He paused, smiling. “It removes the unknown.”

And honestly, it was a very good point—one I hadn’t considered. Right now, I was using largely the same herbs, and although I occasionally mixed it up with an odd ingredient here and there, we were leaving the forest behind.