Wild Gourmet: Chapter 6

Brand cleaned the skin from one of the breast cuts and set it in his pan, placing it over the heat of a small fire. He allowed the pan to grease with the fat from the meat as he slid it back and forth over the metal surface of the pan. He left the meat much rarer than he had with the Eberhund, then set the cooked meat on a piece of paper he had spread on one of the stones of the demolished farmhouse.

Pulling out a good handful of the cress, he ripped it apart and all before tossing it in the heated fat in the pan. Cutting one of the small onions into eight slices, he added them to the mix, cooking until the air was full of the smells of fried meat and sauteed vegetables.

The food didn’t need much spice to be good, but it needed some. Brand took a few small pinches of powders from the precious supply Moira had given him and added them to the mix, then put the Krallenvog meat back into the pan and got everything back up to the same temperature once more.

In many ways, it was the first complete meal he had tasted in weeks. He would have liked to have bread, but the absence of grains did nothing to stop his eyes from watering with joy as he took the first bites of the steaming-hot meat and vegetables. The food was rich, much too rich for the size of the serving he had made himself, but his half-starved body more or less held a parade over the sudden influx of nutrition.

He waited until every last scrap of food in the pan was consumed before he looked at his notification. It was about as good as he thought it would be.

“Wow. There’s more to have?” Brand flexed his arm. Between the new strength and endurance, his body felt incredible. It was more growth much faster than he had ever expected he could get from any class, let alone a class someone like him could get.

He packed up the remainder of the meat and began the long walk back to town. No longer tortured by hunger, he felt the time fly by as he marched across the good road back to town. He had an early start that day, which meant it was little more than morning when he hit the gates of town, heavily laden with meat and vegetables.

Neil was leaning up against the wall outside the gate as he approached, obviously dozing. Whether it was because his skills alerted him or just because Brand wasn’t trying to be that stealthy, he woke up as soon as Brand was in loud-talking distance.

“Brand!” All the suspicion from the day before was gone, replaced by a bored young man’s excitement at seeing a perhaps interesting face. “I heard you went hunting, but I didn’t see you leave.”

“You can’t guard the gate every hour. I must have slipped through during a gap.” Brand drew nearer. “I suppose when the town gets a few more guards, we can solve that problem.”

“It’s not really a problem. There are no more armies, so there’s nobody to attack.” Neil picked up his spear and gave a few jabs to the air around him. “I just get experience for every hour, regardless, and for doing my best.”

Brand didn’t correct him on the idea that there were no threats now that the armies had fallen. He had seen too many army patrols come back carrying the severed heads of bandit groups that had destroyed villages, taking advantage of the mayhem of war to line their pockets. There were more threats out there than armies, but he’d pick a better time to tell the boy about them.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

For now, they were likely safe simply because nobody in town had anything worth stealing. They weren’t quite starving, but it seemed like a close thing. That, at least, was something Brand could fix.