Wraithwood Botanist

B2 - Chapter 34 - Soul Cooking

Lithco walked out from behind me, put a fancy blue cushion on the dirt, and sat down.

How much do those pants cost? I asked sarcastically.

"They’re trousers," he said aloud, dusting off the charcoal pants. "And it’s not about price. It’s about being civilized."

I rolled my eyes and continued speaking telepathically. What part of my request translated to the way you dress?

"You requested confrontation. I doth provide."

I picked up a pebble and threw it at him like a child. It bounced off him the moment before I heard the real pebble hit the ground. Kline’s ears twitched, and he looked at me. Narrowed his eyes at Lithco and then went back to sleep.

Lithco raised an eyebrow. "Are you done?"

I pouted. Yes. Well? You gonna tell me?

"Ah, yes. Soul cooking. I can’t tell you much about it without a skill, but I can say three things. First, it allows you to process the soul-force meat so it cooks normally. Second, doing that will refine it, increasing your soul force intake significantly—making it a wildly sought-after skill amongst the elite. Lastly, if you get good at it, you can even align beast-specific soul force patterns with your own. It’s called Adaptive Soul Refinement, and it allows you to steal certain elements—like soul force—specifically designed to harden a beast’s skin and make it part of your own. You’re nowhere near that level, but that’s one of those spicy benefits of a platinum technique."

I grimaced. But it’s out of my class...

"Which means you needa spend a diamond."

I cupped my hands into my face and groaned, capturing the attention of the lurvines. I blushed and stared ahead, refusing to increase the perception that I was crazy by staring into dead space like I was having a conversation.

They know I’m speaking to you, right?

"No~pe. These beasts don’t have a guide."

You’re kidding.

"I’m not. But that’s a discussion for later. Now then, I assume you want to know if it’s worth it? Hmmm?"

I held still. Yes.

"I don’t think you have a choice," Lithco said. "You need power now, and this’s crank it up for all of you now in a way that doesn’t require effort. No need to thread. Build cores. Do shielding. You just throw around some meat and it’ll get the job done."

I grimaced. I had two diamond requests left, perhaps the last two I would ever get, but there were advantages to this skill. I needed to eat three times a day, and this would give me power during every meal. And, at the very least, I wouldn’t have to eat burnt meat that took me ten hours to cook.

Do it... I whispered weakly in my mind.

I got the chime and got six books, five skills, ten tutorials, dozens of recipes, and a variety of spells. I didn’t even look at them. I just opened up the tutorial.

Teach me.

"Let me change," Lithco sighed. He got up and walked behind me. A minute later, he returned in chef gear, and I almost blew a gasket. I threw around some sarcastic remarks; he responded with sass and snark. We moved on.

The lurvines watched me untie the bear meat from one of the lurvines and take it back to my pop-out stove, which blew up into a wood fire stove just by adding some mana. I then pulled out cooking knives I got from the Big Bag ’o Tools and a core container. I gave Kline the third evolution core and brought some to Aiden and the lurvines. Then I sat down in front of a flat rock with the bear meat on it, knife in hand, waiting for Lithco to teach me.

We began.

2.

"Soul force aura makes you stronger and resilient to the elements," Lithco explained, duplicating my knife, rock, and meat to work with. "So, naturally you have to remove those elements to make it weak to fire."

Makes sense... I whispered.

"To do that, we need to learn spells. You have enough spells to process up to fifth evolution meat... although barely. And, like all things, it’s gonna take you time to learn it. Thankfully, the beast’s dead, and the foundational breakdown spell’ll process just about anything. It’s like trying to chisel a statue with a jackhammer, but it will work. That’s what we’re gonna learn today."

I nodded.

"Because someone I know’s got a bad habit of pushing things too far," Lithco said. "And if she does that here, she’ll lose her mind and body and soul in seconds. So it’s best to feel the risks around a teacher."

I released my hands from the dirt and grabbed my forearms. They felt cold and looked sickly pale.

"Wood Wide Web, Soul Cooking—Soul Pacts," Lithco said. "All the diamond-level spells you just bought have the ability to destroy your soul. So don’t fuck around."

I nodded.

He nudged his head to my backpack. "Get weaker meat."

I felt deep hesitation.

"The only way to overcome this type of trauma is to jump right back in," Lithco said gently. "But... try to trust me. It’ll be okay."

I did trust Lithco. I learned to be wary of his lessons a long time ago, but even that wariness wasn’t a bad thing. From the beginning, his warnings and lessons had helped me to survive. So I trusted his sincerity and pulled out the meat I had marinated.

I put my hands on it and Purified it. Then I touched it.

Okay... I said.

"Let’s begin." Lithco began chanting, and so did I, sides splitting with aches, soul strained with fear. Yet the minute I started pulling the aura from the meat, it felt like there was a gentle stream that I could wrap around my soul core. It wasn’t comfortable. It still had force and power, but it didn’t even affect my mind."

What’s... going on? I asked.

"When your soul force is stronger than what you’re interacting with, you have control over it. Before, neara was breaking out of the meat, but now, you’re unraveling the aura and any neara that does make it into your soul is within your cleansing tolerance."

Oh... I kept churning my core and fighting against the pressure. Amazingly enough, it started fading after a few minutes until I could barely feel it.

"That was step one," Lithco said. "Now it’s time to purify it."

I groaned but followed along he started chanting. The moment he hit his stride, my eyes widened in amazement when I realized that it was a rudimentary version of the cleansing spell I was using in the river. Very rudimentary. It was like playing tic-tac-toe when I was accustomed to chess.

Can I... I asked Lithco.

"Yes, you can use your cleansing technique."

I did, and soon, the energy within the meat turned smooth like whipped cream, uniform and mixed.

Is this right?

"That’s better than alright. Start up your stove and try it out."

I opened my eyes and looked at the meat. It looked dull and lifeless, but then I realized that it didn’t have an external soul-force glow.

I turned and found Aiden hugging his knees. Kline was to my right, sitting straight, eyes fixed on me.

I grimaced under the pressure but pulled out my cast iron skillet, used separation to remove the rust from my last trip into the water, put it onto the heating array, and heated it up. I waited for a minute for it to heat up, created a water drop on my finger, and let it drop into the pan. It sizzled and turned to steam.

I then pulled out marinated steaks and hesitantly threw them onto the pan, trying not to get my hopes up.

The second the steak reached the meat, it sizzled. Oh, yes, it sizzled. And it smelled incredible. I took in the aroma of strange edible plants and herbs from the marinade and then waited a few minutes before lifting it with a normal fork.

It was browning.

It was actually fucking browning! I wasn’t waiting a year and some change to get meat. It was browning in real-time.

"Oh fuck yes," I whispered aloud.

Lithco laughed as he looked around. The lurvines had slowly walked up to me and Aiden was trying to shoo them away. As for my little warrior, he rudely jumped onto my lap to get a better shh~niff, and I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t blame him. It was food. Real fucking food. I felt bad that Halten was dying while I felt so much joy, but it had been months since I ate something that didn’t taste like charcoal and disappointment.

Twenty minutes later, I sliced up slices of the medium rare steak and took a bite.