Come morning, I awoke to find Thomas already at his seat and Flor was already gone to do her part and sell the potions to try and help the sick people that were affected by the bugs.

I remember the quest and sit up before walking over to Thomas.

“Thomas, I have cleaned the city’s alleyways and even found and got rid of the people who were behind the bug problem.” I said.

“You seem awfully energetic. Something happened besides that?” He asked, looking at me with a raised brow.

“Hm… Let’s just say I got some weight that was on my shoulders, off yesterday. The relief of this feels amazing and I think it may have changed my personality a bit towards the brighter side.” I said with a wry smile.

“I see, it must have been a big weight. Glad to hear of it. And I have noticed almost no bugs on the way nor was there a smell of rotting flesh though the trash from the garbage is still there.” He said.

“I got rid of all of it and am making good use of it in my bug cultivation.” I said.

“So you are breeding bugs?” he said.

“How do you think I got rid of so many bodies? That said I wasn’t the culprit.” I replied.

“Of course, no benefit for you if you were one of them. Well I was told by the king that those who resolve this I should give what I see fit so…” He said and got up.

He pulled out a leather pouch and handed it over.

“For good serves and heavy dirty work done, have this.” He said and handed the money pouch.

Opening I found five coins. The thing was that these five were five gold coins. My jaw dropped spectacularly to the ground. My pay for working the library night shift is 20 c, cleaning 1 alley was 1 silver which is 100 c. I got 5 gold coins which are 500 silver coins, 50,000 copper coins.

“Also, you have been complaining about only having the bread to eat all this time. You said you wanted the cooking skill to make your own food so here. I went out of my way to prepare this for when you finally accomplish this task.” He said and handed me two books. One was a glowing book that was the skill and the other on top was titled, “Preparing Ingredients: Cookbook for Beginners.”

A bright smile spread over my face even more than before but before I could say anything more he pulled out one final thing.

A strange box that seemed to glow but had no key hole. There seemed to be a force around it.

“This box has been handed down by the king’s family for generations until several years back where it was handed to my family. I don’t know what it’s for but there is a strange energy around it and for some reason I feel that it reminds me of you. Don’t ask me what I don’t understand either but there is a strange similarity between you and the box.” He said.

“Wow… thanks, this is a lot for such a small request.” I said.

“A small request that would have killed the population.” Thomas said cutting me off. “Don’t try to belittle the task because it was simply corpse gathering and bug killing. It was no less important than if a spy got into the city and was about to assassinate the king.” He said

I couldn’t refute his claim so instead I thanked him for all he gave me. He in turn bowed and said it was a pleasure working with me and if I needed anything to come speak with him.

From there I store everything in my inventory and with a happy smile and thank him once more before giving a nod and leaving.

“Welp, still got a week but with the city free what do I do…” I mutter but instantly the books enter my view as they come out of the inventory. Without hesitation I learned the cooking skill.

Cooking

Basic Level 1

Cooking is that art of taking raw ingredients and turning it into eatable food that not only smells good but can entice any being.

3% improvement in cooking.

I nearly cried, finally I got the skill I wanted for so long but had no time to search for since I was constantly training or cleaning the town.

The book on preparing the ingredients was a plus though I didn’t look into it.

What I did take out was that strange by and used Identify on it.

You have failed to Identify.

You have failed to Identify.

You have failed to Identify.

You have failed to Identify.

You have failed to Identify.

You have failed to Identify.

Hey genius you failed to Identify.

Good job you have NOT identified

Failure.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE SMART ALECK COMMENTS!?!?” I shouted as I sneered at the last three messages.

I put away the box, pissed, before shrugging it off with a sigh.

I couldn’t really do much besides training…

“Like hell I will go train. I’m starving and I was stupid not to try and cook when I had all my tools for it.” I said and quickly ran to the market and bought lots of vegetables and some meat, oil and so on for cooking, that included the firewood.

Then I found a quiet spot near the edge of town in a clearing away from houses and lit the fire. First I made a campfire with several stones around it to keep the fire from spreading and then started the flame with a few ember spells.

After a good flame was made I took some longer sticks and with some thin rope I tied one end of them making a V shape. I made two and put both on opposite sides. Then another thick branch was dropped on top of the two V shaped ones.

On the large heavy metal wok I had I took some rope and tied it on one side of the hand then took it over to the fire and supported one side with a stick I held it in place and tied the other side making it hang over the fire at a satisfactory height.

I message Flor and tell her I was cooking and I told her my location. She was excited to eat something besides bread.

Chat closed, I pulled out a wooden table for preparing ingredients and then took out what I got. Then using the book on preparing them, since at least half of the stuff isn’t from earth and i needed to see how to prepare them, I began cutting, splitting and cleaning all the ingredients. Meat like rabbit meat had to have cuts running along the filet or it would become too hard and it couldn’t be fried for a long time.

When all the preparations were made I put several strips of uncooked bacon and a few slabs of pork meat on the wok. The sizzle was enticing but my objective was to literally cook the oil out of the meat and fat.

Pig fat is much healthier than plant oil when frying. Taking care to not let the meat and bacon stick to the wok, I kept moving all the meat and fat around and slowly but surely it released it and let it gather at the center while leaving a bit all over the metal disk.

Seeing it was ready I got the other filets that have been salted and seasoned and put them on bringing a satisfying sizzle to it. I also got several greens and put them as well and then some lemons were cut and dropped over the meat before I flipped them bringing a new round of sizzles from the oil.

Instantly the area was filled with that smell of frying meat.

The rising number players had filled the town and this area had a road that went to the gates so with the smell of frying meat it also drew the attention of the bread eating players that began to drool and swallow hard.

When I looked I saw them looking like predators but after looking a bit I found some wood I could turn into a small sign. With a piece of charcoal, I wrote on the wood to make a sign before planting the small sign facing the road.

[NOT A SELLER! BEAT IT CAUSE I AM NOT SELLING!!]

Lots of them were discouraged but some warrior class didn’t care and came up.

“Hey! What’s the meaning of this sign!?” He shouted.

“Can’t you read? I’m making food for myself, not to sell. Shoo.” I said towards him.

At my words he kicked the sign.

“Fuck you! I have only had that shitty rye bread so you WILL make me food.” He shouted.

“Okay so you want food, 10 gold for a small bite.” I said making his jaw drop as well as the other people around me. “I already said I wasn’t going to sell my food so if you want food you will buy it for that price.” I said and turned to my food quickly to not let it burn.

At this point Flor arrived and saw that idiot and then the sign. Her face turned serious.

“Droso, who is this idiot?” She asked.

“Like you said, an idiot, want his name, ask him.” I replied in an equally cold tone to compliment her own.

She looked at the trash and scoffed and waved her hand.

“Shoo! You’re going to ruin the taste of the food being here. Shoo shoo.” she said.

The man being shot down by a beauty at the first sight might have been too much because the man lost it and pulled his sword.

“YOU BITCH!” He shouted and took a step to start rushing her but before he could the instrument came whistling into his face and slammed without reserve breaking his nose and causing him to slam into the ground.

“Damn bastard distracting me. You guys, can you move him.” I asked some warriors that were watching.

“If you give us some food then we will agree.” The leading one said.

I thought he was rather smart and opportunistic.

“Do you already go outside and hunt?” I asked.

They all nodded.

“Give me the meat on you and I will make the food then.” I said.

Instantly, they ran over and threw the trash very far from us and returned, handing over several dozen kilos of rabbit and wild dog meat.

From there I began cooking rapidly while taking bits and preparing the food until one wave after another they came out.

Even at high game level, someone with newbie level skills can’t compare to a level 1 with real world skill.

The only thing I regretted was that I didn’t have the proper ingredients for making garlic cream and garlic bread.

While I cooked we spoke with the warriors and it was interesting. These guys were policemen and formed a party with people from their patrol group and planned to form a guild once more of them came to play.

After the talk even Flor opened up enough to not remain in serious mode when around strangers.

I guess eating good food also helped make her mood better.

We got friend invites from the group and accepted. One never knows when friends will be needed right?

They split off as I cleaned up my wok and dismantled the camp before dousing the fire.

“So what are you going to do now?” Flor asked.

“Well, I still got a week here to go before I can leave so I guess just spend it training in the training hall until then. As well as breeding my bugs with all the bodies I gathered.” I said.

She nodded. “I will be working on my craft skills so just call on the chat if you need help.” She said and went of her own way with a wave.

I picked myself up and after storing everything I head my own way with a level 2 cooking skill now.

For the next week I spent in the training hall and during my breaks I would check on the bugs.

I would breed several combos from the separate stat bugs and then from the first few I would breed them even more intensely. With the huge amount of bodies I could easily get a large number of bugs.

As for feeding the carnivorous ones I would let them out at night and after watching them I saw they would hunt fresh meat from animals already. Just so you know, the spiders were about half the size of a human hand but the hive ones use numbers to slowly entangle their prey before dragging it over to a safe spot. Come morning they have at least 30 rats bundled up for me to drop into each nest. It’s a scary hunting pace. Still exp from these animals are miniscule. I have found that bug diets are more important than level but eating a living animal seems to give more exp.

Just like when the blood suckers sucked those players and gained 4 levels. I somewhat thought it was a good idea so during the week I look around for cocky bastards and when they go to sleep in game or are alone I would send several blood suckers to fill them up. With the pain numbing poison they would get their fill and return without the player being any the wiser. I normally aim for the back where it's hard to impossible to see by the victim.

The ones I have the hardest time growing now are the Biting Midges and Bug Hunter Midges. They are bug eaters exclusively as of right now. Oh right, the dragon flies at the last day of my month long trap finally began pupating and their habit turned from Murky Pond into Murky lake and the (undeveloped) state disappeared which meant I could enter because it was big enough now.

I knew there was no vegetation but things still grew bigger which I was happy for.

Most of my strongest bugs could already be called monsters due to the size being much larger. Oh right Toxic Blood suckers have also ranked into a true monsters species. They are called Vampiric Mosquito. It came from doing what their name suggested and having strong stats. They appeared after I bred the Int, Wis, Dex bugs with the Str, Agi, End. In short when I combined all the high potential bugs it made the next rank one. The highest potential possible made a powerful species.

Their poison from before has ranked up to 4th rank and they are a bit longer than my hand. Their basic stats, when they first hatch, were a scary 5 all around. There was even a variant where one with high intelligence and Wisdom both at 10 formed a queen variant. It was nearly double the size and was a true monster bug. They formed a species hive mind though that queen.

I worried that what I have been doing was a bit wrong since I attacked players for this but I never injected poison and it wasn’t that bad since they barely lose hp.

Anyway on the final day I got this message.

Beginner city restriction lifted.

Queen egg has begun to hatch

I quickly remembered what the original queen had said that she cast a spell on the egg to hatch only when my restriction time ended.

I looked for a safe place and found an alleyway where I could open the portal and enter the Queen’s palace.

The queen’s palace looked nothing more than a smooth circular cave with a single exit.

The portal closed behind me and as I looked around I saw that in the center of the room was a cradle like pedestal with a shaking egg in it.

Cracks were forming from the top.

I walk over and watch the egg as it hatches.

Soon a small piece breaks off and the baby inside seems winded but seeing light she let out a little screech that I could tell was her happiness.

She was clicking and letting out lots of pheromones that signaled for help.

“You get out with your own strength.” I replied.

The little queen let out a screech of displeasure but continued hitting the shell by using the crack to open it wider.

After several breaks and several pleas for help she finally got out.

The baby queen was small and pink in color. She had no exoskeleton. She had a small abdomen coming from her tailbone She had two legs that were segmented like bugs would be and two arms in the same manner. On her head were two stubs where the antenna would grow from. She had two large black eyes but for some reason I could tell where she was looking.

Suddenly a new wave of pheromones came from the baby.

[Hungry]

That is what it meant. After some thought I realized that this was the bug comprehension skill. I haven’t had any bugs talk with me until now but now it felt strange that I could understand the meaning.

Looking at the baby I wondered what she would want.

“What kind of food.” I asked.

Suddenly I felt like there was something invading my mind for a moment before images of the rats but then me cutting up the meat and cooking it.

“Cooked meat? Can you eat solids?” I asked.

She opened her mouth and I instantly saw gums.

“Like hell you can. I’m getting you milk.” I said.

The little queen let out a screech that showed her displeasure but I opened the portal before she could do more. Even then her mind was abuzz in my head. I asked around if there were bottles for feeding babies. Sadly there was none so when I returned she looked at me triumphantly as I summoned up rotten rats.

“You won't get sick from these will you?” I asked.

Suddenly she sent information to my head.

Queen Race

A race of sentient bugs, they are beings that live alongside Arthromancers. They naturally have information imprinted in their minds to help their partner. *****

****

****

As babies though fragile still their immune system can keep them safe even when they eat rotting meat. Diet as a baby must be rotten meat that has become soft from the decomposition. Diet of this kind should only last until the queen has grown the exoskeleton and can run around herself at which point she must eat fresh raw meat until reaching full adult height, this is the child stage. Suggested allow for them to hunt their own food once they reach child stage and have their exoskeleton.

So she was born knowing her place. I still don’t feel good feeding rotting rats to a baby but I can’t do anything against it can I?

I chop apart the rotting rat slowly feeding her the tail first one piece at a time then the meat itself.

She eats three rats before she falls asleep.

“This is going to be a very strange relationship.” I mutter and leave the little palace.