We reached the entrance to the kitchen where a smiling waiter greeted us. “Are you ready to begin?”

“Yes,” Eldin said while practically bouncing on his toes.

The employee opened the door for us and bowed. As I passed him he whispered, “I wish you all good fortune in your endeavors.” It may have been my imagination but his words seemed to hold a strange sense of finality.

The door closed behind us while I took in the vast burgundy-floored kitchen. The whole area seemed unnaturally still which I attributed to its severe lighting and the lack of employees that would have been bustling about without this event. Despite that, the area resembled a normal elven kitchen that might appear in a fantasy setting. There were several stoves, ovens, and long prep tables. Stored in chilled metal containers, various prepared vegetables, dough, and butchered meat lined the wall, ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

This place even had quite a few extra doors. I wasn’t sure if those were part of the kitchen or entrances to random hallways.

Our goal, a massive antique stove located in the back of the kitchen, had been painted emerald green and given lovely gold leaf filigree. Aside from the black smoke stains that showed its years of use, the stove was seriously cute.

We walked across the kitchen to stand in front of it.

“So,” I started, “what’s wrong with it, and how do we fix it?”

“I’ll take care of this,” Eldin said while moving to a dilapidated toolbox someone left beside the stove. He took out a creepy-looking black wrench and pliers. “Lore, you watch my back and make sure nothing kills me. Mia, Go search for clues.”

“Exactly what would constitute a clue?”

“I’m not sure, but since there are two tasks in this area then that means there are at least two.”

“What about the doors connected to this room? Should I search in those?”

He paused for a second. “If they lead to places that are part of the kitchen then, yes. If they lead to a hallway or something dark and weird then stay away from it. I don’t want us to get too far apart.”

I nodded. While I’d never played D&D before, I’d seen the ‘Don’t split the party,’ memes.

First, I started quickly going through the kitchen’s main room, checking to see if there was anything unusual between the containers of vegetables, fruits, and meat but I didn’t find anything unusual. Then I rummaged through the drawers of spices. This place had a massive amount of weird ingredients and additives that I’d never heard of before.

It made me want to learn a bit more about cooking in the PPVS, but that would have to wait for a much later date. I used Observe on each item then listed them all out in a message I sent to Lore.

Mia: Any of these unusual?

Lore: Some are rare but not abnormal.

I sighed and continued searching for clues, but, honestly, I had no idea what would be unusual for this world. When I ran out of places to look inside the main kitchen, I opened each of the doors and discovered a hallway, a cleaning supply closet, a huge pantry, a cold room, an ice room, and an office.

I paused for a second then entered the office. While I wasn’t amazing at finding clues where something was misplaced or weird I could at least deal with some paperwork… Probably.

Before I started getting into it, since I was practically in another room, I peered around the place first to really make sure there weren’t any weird monsters hiding. I didn’t see anything so I started to glance through the invoices while looking up constantly and preparing to dodge if anything tried to attack me. This got old fast and I ended up relaxing more as I skimmed for information.

After going through several, random papers in a stack I realized something… this person was fucking messy. They had zero sense of organization.

I finished with the paperwork actually on the desk then I went through the drawers which was a weird thing to have since the PPVS had inventories. I guessed that the NPCs liked using them? Or maybe it just made things convenient in a working environment with more than one person?

“Huh.” When I opened the third drawer from the top, a letter from the owner slid off a stack of random junk. I opened the already unsealed envelope and began to scan the contents.

Well, this was interesting… they discovered a new and unusual ingredient from somewhere deep within a forest and sent it to the head chef to test out. Because this particular ingredient had a time limit for how long it stayed fresh they needed to slaughter the creature on site.

Could these murders have been caused by something they sent? Maybe. Or maybe it was something brought with the creature like the eggs of deadly spiders hitching a ride on bananas.

First, I wrote down my conjectures in my notebook then I let Eldin and Lore know about the clue I found.

Eldin grabbed a metal brush from seemingly thin air, poured some kind of liquid on it, and started scrubbing at the black sooty areas of the stove. “Well, that is a possible idea, but you should keep looking because there are false leads everywhere.” He then continued to ignore me.

I sighed. Fine, fine, whatever.

I turned to bring the envelope back. A scream from the hallway door echoed through the kitchen. I froze and jerked around to face Eldin who looked back at me. He rolled his eyes and continued scrubbing.

“Ignore all the screams you hear. Those are just our competitors dying.”

Well, he had a point.

I walked back into the office and dug around in the drawers again, this time searching for any hidden compartments like I’d seen in movies. My arm brushed against a pen knocking it off the desk and onto the chair. When I reached for it, I moved the chair by accident. It fell off and rolled under the desk.

Fuck. I reached under on impulse. The back of my hand, which should have touched the wood under-drawer, instead crinkled thick paper.

I seized the pen then pulled a large envelope out. Once I returned to the area with Lore I opened it and started reading. Fuck. It was a contract filled with legalese that made me want to cry. Like, I knew I wasn’t a dumb person, but legal nonsense was not something I’d been trained to read, especially not from an entirely different culture.

“Lore, I’m taking over so you can go through this.”

He raised a brow at me but the corner of his lips turned up.

“It’s very complicated legal nonsense.”

He grimaced and held out his hand.

I watched the room around me, and even glanced back to make sure no monsters were sneaking up on Eldin. After he skimmed a few pages Lore frowned, closed the document, and put it back in the envelope.

“It’s not important.”

“What is it?”

“Some legal documents about the duties of the head chef and a hiring contract.”

I scratched my head in frustration. This task was more difficult than I thought. “You’d think that something I found hidden under the desk would be something interesting.”

He frowned. “You said you found it hidden under the desk?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmmm.” Then he peered at the envelope itself and ran his elegant fingers along its edges and creases. “This is not the original envelope for this contract. This used to contain a stack of documents in a smaller sized paper.”

“Done!” Eldin said.

Congratulations! Your team has finished the first Repair Task! You have 15 minutes to start on your next!

Eh? They were timed? Or maybe the repair itself wasn’t timed but the after repair was?

Lore tossed what I found to Eldin. “Mia found this. The envelope is not original to the documents inside. Look at this fade here.”

“Interesting, whatever was in here originally was made at the older out-of-date legal paper size. I remember seeing something that size in the outpost’s museum." He shrugged. "Well, this could be something or it could be nothing. Since the original document isn’t here, just keep it in mind for later.” He tossed it back.

“We'll take the envelope but return the papers.” He grinned mischievously at me. “Your turn is next.”