Good news, everyone!

We didn’t get visitors. In fact, Ambition’s door stayed firmly closed and Mel, Berry, and I talked and played a game of cards (while I anxiously kept an eye on the timer ticking down in the corner of my vision, as well). It was pretty pleasant, minus the whole anxiety about cooking things.

I didn’t know why I bothered being worried, anyway.

The cooking system was flawless. Sure, you needed to pay attention. But the timer was right there. And it got angry and red as soon as time got closer to the last five minutes of cooking.

Which was, of course, when I excused myself to check on my creation.

Walking into the kitchen was like walking through a perfumed reminder of all the amazing food I’d eaten in Kinon. Only that perfume was a curry of meat and vegetables simmering away in a pot.

My eyes instantly watered, as did my mouth.

Holy shit I was hungry.

I hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning. Which was on purpose. I knew we’d have to test these dishes before we opened in the early afternoon, and it just seemed silly to fill up on some porridge just because it was breakfast time.

But it meant I was producing enough saliva to water an entire field of crops by the time I had even gotten to the stove.

Retrieving the pot from the stove was delicate work. I only had so many types of cloth protection for my hands, and the pot was heavy with curry and had been in the fire for an entire hour.

Not exactly the easiest thing in the world.

Once I’d securely rested the pot onto a bit of cloth towel (to keep it from scorching my new workspace), I opened the pot and released a fountain of delicious steam right into my awaiting face.

The liquid inside was a reddish orange, with a consistency like stew. Not quite watery, but still liquidious. The surface was unblemished - there were no streaks of fat or unblended curry paste, even though I’d just tossed everything together into the pot - except for the little mountains of potatoes or onion that broke the surface in a picturesque fashion.

Perfection.

It was about then that I realized I was just staring into the pot.

And that I was almost drooling.

I stopped leaning over the delicious concoction before me and wiped at my face.

Right. Time to plate.

Putting food into bowls seemed, on the outside, just like normal-ass cooking. Here I was, scooping curry into four bowls like anyone else in the world. If they knew what the hell curry was, of course.

But cooking for adventurers was different.

In order to activate the stat boost for each bowl, I had to sacrifice an amount of the experience points I would have gained for completing the meal. For something like a simple meat kabob, that experience drain would be miniscule, since the stats given were almost nothing and the buff didn’t last all that long anyway.

But [Mari’s Massaman] was more complex. Each bowl required nearly a tenth of the available experience pool, meaning I got a little more than half of the experience for making the dish at the end.

It meant that I was going to level slow. Painfully so.

But this wasn’t about leveling up. If I wanted to level fast, I’d go open a food cart down in the market and just make fried dough all day. Simple. Easy. Fast to cook, fast to serve. Loved by all.

I was looking to make money, however. And fried dough didn’t bring in the money. Not if you wanted to be competitive enough to sell all day.

So, I gladly sacrificed the experience points to activate the stat boosts on the curry. And HP +25 and Attack +3 was nothing to sneeze at.

Hopefully the dish was good, and Berry would tell all of her friends.

Just like before, there was only a single icon next to each finished bowl of [Mari’s Massaman], which was disappointing but expected.

Hot Food: This dish currently gives full stat effects. As it is meant to be served and eaten hot, the buff will degrade by 10% for every ten minutes it is left to cool off. If you are not ready to eat yet, find a way to store it so it stays hot for longer.

I shoved the two extra bowls under an overturned metal bowl to keep them warm, and then brought my bounty out to my friends.

Their faces immediately lit up.

Everything I’d been through, to that moment, was absolutely worth it to see how happy my cooking made them.

Fuck any sort of drug. Just cook for your friends and the joy it’ll bring you is a thousand fold more addictive.

Berry and Mel made encouraging noises as they dug in. At first, Berry seemed to struggle with the spice level. It was a bit more than I was expecting, even. But it was a good pain, a thing you acknowledged and accepted and then ignored as you continued eating.

Each chunk of [White Potato] was perfectly cooked. They held together, structurally, until they touched your teeth, and then they fell apart into a curry-soaked mash. The [White Onion] had a little more bite left to it, and still required actual chewing.

And the [Chicken].

While once solid chunks of uncooked meat, the chicken was now nearly liquified it was so tender. It had fallen apart during cooking, resulting in strips and chunks of curry-coated flesh that offered no resistance to my teeth.

I was pleasantly surprised that the dish wasn’t fishy tasting, either. I could have sworn it was making me add too much [Shrimp Paste], but either the [Ginger] or [Garlic] masked it, or it just got absorbed by the heartiness of the available vegetables.

No one talked while we ate.

At first, I chalked it up to us all being worried that Duncan or Mari Belle or who the hell else knows would show up and ruin another lovely meal.

But it became very obvious, very quickly, that one one talked because they were too busy stuffing their face.

Talk about an ego booster.

I decided to just ride the silent high and enjoy my meal.

Almost at the same time, our empty bowls clattered to the table, all but licked clean inside. The cacophony of clattering spoons was almost perfectly timed.

I laughed.

Mel belched.

Berry giggled.

“Alright,” I said, hesitantly, to break the silence that followed, “give me your critiques.”

“No.” Mel glared at me, although it was just out of the corner of her eye and seemed very half-hearted. “I refuse.”

“Ditto,” Berry said, although she wasn’t glaring. She was grinning.

“Well, why the hell not?!”

“Error: no critique found.” Mel snorted with laughter. “Seriously, Harper, I don’t know what else to say. ‘Please cook like that for me for the rest of our lives’ sounds a bit… extra. But I mean, that’s basically the general idea of what I’m thinking right now.”

I blushed and looked to Berry, who nodded. “She’s right. I’m going to be so pissed when I actually have to start paying you for these meals.”

“Pff,” I said, not sure exactly how to respond otherwise.

“I’m not joshing, Harper. Although… Alright. There was just slightly something missing. Can’t really put my finger on it.”

“Rice,” I said, glad to have a complaint to latch onto. “The dish is usually served over a bed of rice. Helps soak up the liquid, makes the meal more filling, and provides a nice vehicle for the spice. I just… well, forgot to buy some.”

“I’ll be sure to pick some up this afternoon,” Mel said. “Because I agree. A bit of rice would have taken that from perfection to astronomical.”

“Man, high praise, and you haven’t even tried the last dish.” I looked towards the kitchen. “It’s… well, it’s something else.”

“Ugh, I don’t know if I could eat anything more,” Berry said as she groaned and held her belly.

“You sure? I’ve got another two dishes of curry keeping warm in the kitchen…”

Her eyes lit up, and then she laughed uproariously. “Don’t tempt me. You’ll have to wheel me out of here to get rid of me.”

I threw the adventurer a grin and a nod before I collected the dishes from the table. “You two just sit here and digest. I’ve got to do some washing up before I can finish cooking anyway, so it’ll give you some time.”

“Want me to lend a hand?”

I turned to look at Mel, completely intending on teasing her. But the joke was gone as soon as I laid eyes on her eager face, split by a subconscious and satisfied smile.

She seemed to be positively glowing.

The extra HP looked good on her.

With a lump in my throat, I shook my head and looked away. “Got it, thanks,” I said, when I remembered how to form words again. “Need to burn off the calories anyway.”

“Oof, yeah. I could use some calorie burning,” Berry whined.

I opened my mouth to respond, but Mel was already talking.

“While I’m sure Harper wants to say some inappropriate joke to that,” Mel said, quickly, robbing me of the comment I’d been forming, “we could go for a walk if you want. Pick up the rice now. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour and will let us work up an appetite, too.”

I shrugged. “Better idea than what I was going to suggest,” I said with a shit-eating grin.

“I knew it. You’re such an ass, Harper.” Mel tossed her head, flicking a mass of hair over her shoulder. She rolled her eyes at me, but I could tell from her grin that she was being playful.

“That’s me. Resident ass. And badass chef.”

“Seriously.” Berry looked at the empty bowls in my hand. “Keep cooking stuff like that and you’ll be the most popular eatery in Mystic Falls.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just awkwardly turned back to the kitchen. “You guys be careful out there. Let me know if you catch a glimpse of Duncan still around.”

“If he’s still in town and I see him, I’ll murder him. Don’t worry.”

“I know, Mel. I know.”