Severin had to try hard to suppress his urge to immediately leave the kitchen and run towards his relatively modest alchemy station. But even he knew he couldn’t afford to do so right now. He still hadn’t even started making the food for the adventurers waiting outside in front of the kitchen or inside the Emporium’s main building. They were already getting impatient. At least that was how Severin explained the restlessly moving dots on his minimap to himself.

Severin definitely wasn’t the most conscientious shop keeper one could imagine, but even he cared about his reputation and preferred a happy customer over a disgruntled one.

Introducing this new way to order one’s food beforehand – even requiring it – and then not being able to deliver on it, didn’t sit well with Severin; especially not on the very first day he introduced this new service.

He grit his teeth and got to work. But not without thinking about his new quest.

“There really is no reason I can think of for it to not also work with alchemical ingredients.” By now it was no exaggeration that Severin had crafted thousands of potions and other consumables, using the System provided ingredients. Even without paying special attention to it, it was pretty much impossible for him not to pick up on a few things, such as the specific properties of certain ingredients or the reason for some of the very minutely controlled temperature changes.

For those reasons, Severin was rather confident in his ability to come up with a new alchemical recipe.

“Judging by the fact that the reward is unrelated to my current professions, I suspect I could’ve triggered the quest with any other job as well. Like if I was a [Blacksmith] and somehow managed to come up with a new alloy.”

Knowing his own capabilities, Severin couldn’t help but let out a self-deprecating snort. ‘Guess it’s a good thing I chose to become a [Cook] instead.’ With that thought in mind, he decided it was finally time to taste the pizza that was cooled down to a suitable temperature by now.

For simplicity's sake, the pizza was rectangular shaped; before absorbing the System’s knowledge Severin wasn’t especially confident in his nonexistence dough tossing skills, which normally were responsible for the traditional round shape. With a single long cut, he now sliced off a sizeable piece and took his first bite.

“Haha, as expected.” Something that looked like a satisfied smile soon appeared on his face but stood in contrast to his following words. “It’s horrible. The cheese is strange. And the sauce…” He couldn’t find the right words to describe his creation. The lack of taste testing had become clear, but he also decided that there was never really anything he could’ve done to save it. That was especially apparent to him after double checking with the newly updated recipe.

‘Looks like my definition of a dash differs slightly from that of the System,’ he had to admit to himself.

Nevertheless, the smile on his face didn’t fade and instead he continued eating not only the slice in his hands but even going so far as to cut off another piece afterwards. With more pride in his voice than was warranted, he determined, “Though it’s a bit salty, it’s clearly still pizza! And that beats bread and salads all day.”

And another generous piece was cut off.

But this time didn’t directly stuff his face with it. Instead, he intended to keep it for later, as it soon disappeared into his personal inventory space. Then he stored the remaining half in the store’s inventory, followed by a precisely counted number of salad dishes. ‘That should hopefully appease them for now.’

>

>

> With a completely new dish available today and a batch of bread already sold in the morning, this revelation, while it didn’t come as much of a surprise, still brought Severin some sense of relief.

>

> Judging by the tone of her transmitted voice, Emily was already very busy and taking a look at the swiftly decreasing number of dishes inside the inventory also confirmed that guess. Pleased seeing that his excuse of a pizza also remained untouched inside the inventory for now, Severin returned to his work, which at this point mostly comprised waiting.

“Ah! I almost forgot checking the buff. Let’s see. Okay, first there is a slight increase to one’s total HP. Kinda meh, but I guess it makes sense considering that it’s the same dough just used in a lower quantity. Well. That is, if one disregards the fact that mixing some flour and water and whatnot shouldn’t result in any magic properties to begin with.” Severin decided not to dwell on the thought of what would happen if a regular non-[Cook] person tried to mix these high-quality, but otherwise ordinary looking, ingredients together, and instead turned his attention to the next line of the buff’s tooltip. His eyes began to shine. “Haha! That’s more like it. And the new recipe should only further increase its potency. Does that mean the salad also…? I mean, isn’t it basically just the vinegar missing?” Since he previously hadn’t cared about the salad, Severin still didn’t know its effects. Now he could hardly wait to get outside and confirm his suspicion.

“If that’s already the effect of an ordinary low-level salad, then what about the real food?” He became excited just thinking about it.

“Damn bread. Can’t I just turn up the heat to speed up the process?” Severin became more and more impatient, not wanting to miss his customers’ expressions; though realistically speaking, it was already too late for that, anyway. For a moment he considered simply leaving the kitchen and trusting that the System would prevent any possible accidents from happening, but in the end Severin still had enough sense to refrain from doing so.

More to occupy himself than for any other reason, Severin began eating again while ‘working’.

“Right. There is still another tooltip. One that shouldn’t be too different from the actual product.” Guided mostly by his boredom, he expected little. If the ‘mechanics’ - as he called it - behind the food’s buff-effects were indeed as he suspected, then the resulting tooltip of the product itself should also follow the same logic. Yet when he read through the item’s description, something caught his eye. Or rather, the lack of it.

“No mentioning of a decrease in efficiency or the need to store it in any specific way. If anything, with all the moisture, it should be more prone to turn bad. Not less. Is it random? Or is this the System’s way of recognizing the glory of a cold pizza left over from the day before?”

Beep

“Ah! Finally.“