Wild Gourmet: Chapter 7

A long, deep breath and a quick steadying on the stone body of the grill were both necessary to keep Brand on his feet as twenty stat points filtered into his being, amplifying his body, mind and soul at once. He was not sure what a level three rare class was supposed to feel like, but he doubted very many of them ever got to feel like this.

“Did you just level?” Neil blinked at him. “You feel like a bigger threat now. Much bigger.”

“He even looks bigger.” Moira circled Brand a little bit, as if she wanted to poke him experimentally but didn’t quite dare be rude enough to do so. “My brother filled out like that when he got his class, but it took longer. What gives?”

“It’s this class.” Brand said. “I’m not sure, but I’m starting to think it’s pretty good.”

Tracking hadn’t gone up, really, but Brand also hadn’t made much of an attempt to track anything. He was sure it would pick up when he finally got his head in the game and started using all of his skills. He resolved to do it tomorrow.

In the meantime, the excitement over his overall powerup faded quickly. Even with as noticeable a jump as he had made, nobody had access to his specific stat increases and so had no idea of the magnitude of what had just been gained. He liked it that way, for now. So long as he could keep the expectations of the others reasonable, he’d have more room and less pressure as he figured out the exact shape of what he was becoming.

“So.” The quiet man who Moira had called Shou finally spoke to Brand, drawing near and talking in quiet tones. “Did you happen to get the claws from those cranes?”

“I did.” Brand had packed them at the end of the butchering process almost as an afterthought. In terms of money, they weren’t worth very much. Still, they were worth something, as all claws and teeth of dangerous beasts tended to be. “Why? Need them?”

“Need? No. Want, yes.”

He pointed off into the distance, presumably at either his own home or some wreck of a building Brand hadn’t seen. “I found an anvil, back there. And a hammerhead that I had Shemi fit a handle to. I was thinking I’d try my hand at smithing. That’s your weapon, right? That kitchen knife?”

“Yeah. It’s not great.” Brand said. “You think you can do better?”

“If I get the class, sure. And if you defeated four of the cranes, there should be plenty of tries. There’s a good chance I’ll get you something out of it. Of course, I might not, either.”

It was a gamble, but Brand decided it was only a small one, at that. The claws weren’t useful to him, and he guessed he’d have a huge pile of them before more than a few weeks had passed.

“Sure. Do it.” Brand said. “Just fish them out of my pack. How many days should I wait before I check on them?”

“Days?” Shou blinked at him, confused, then laughed. Even his laughter was a soft thing. “I’ll be working on these all night, Brand. Don’t worry. Just find me tomorrow and I’ll tell you how it went.”

When Brand finally did inventory on the leftover meat, there was quite a bit more left than he thought there would be. Nobody knew exactly why, but cooked monster meat lasted a great deal longer without risk of spoilage than more conventional farmed sources of meat did. There was enough by far to provide the protein portion of a big stew, which in turn would be enough to feed the whole town through the day.

Of course, that was provided he could get enough vegetables from his new gardener friend to make the limited supply of meat stretch into multiple meals. Somehow, he didn’t think that was a problem. The gardener had talked long enough and enthusiastically about his plans for growing that Brand thought he’d be more than up to the challenge.

That was an element of the town he was already beginning to enjoy. During his childhood, he had hardly been old enough to really understand how people got fed, clothed, and housed. It was too complex a machine for him to have possibly got a handle on. In the military, he had come to understand much more, but in an environment where people only did what was necessary to fulfill orders and survive.

Bell was shaping up to be different. There was a certain hope in how people were going about their business, whether it was the yet-unclassed lumber harvester, the city infrastructure expert, the over-enthusiastic but inexperienced guard, or anyone else he had met. They were all driving their own progression through levels as quickly as possible, trying to get to useful levels of competence as fast as possible so they could help people.

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It wasn’t anything Brand had been thinking about when he decided to settle in Bell. He had figured he just wanted hard walls and a safe place to sleep while he figured out his own path. It wasn’t until he was deep into the process of feeding all the current residents that it had begun to occur to him that a town might just end up being more than a source of shelter and resources.

Of course I don’t have any way of knowing what that even looks like. I’ve spent my entire life waiting for a war to end and now I have no idea how to live now that it has.

Once the sun started setting, Brand had stayed above ground long enough to watch the others wander back to their work and beds before climbing down the stairs into his cellar. Today, he was much less exhausted than he had been the night before. That left more time for him to take care of his own business, most of which was not pressing.