The party had eaten lunch when the sun was high in the sky, and shortly after, they had a line of people with the fish they had caught. Now the sun was only a few hours away from setting, and the line of people had finally gone away.

Lucas wasn't sure how many fish he had cooked, but it was enough to use up all the oil he had bought earlier; the glass bottle sat uncorked and empty. Word must have gotten out about what he had been doing, as more and more people had showed up to the pond. Every time he thought he was almost done with the line, additional people would come along. Even though he had gotten into a pleasant rhythm, the limiting factor was the four plates.

Lucas would get a good speed going, only to be slowed down, having to wait for a plate to be freed up and then cleaned. No one complained about the wait, as this was their only way to get a meal. Cookie was a big help, being friendly, chatting everyone up, and telling them how the wait was worth it. The clearing around the pond was rather quiet now. There were only a few people fishing. He hoped they wouldn't come over and ask for help, as he had nothing left to cook with.

Lucas had no ingredients, only the smallest amount of salt and pepper. He didn’t know what he would do for the party when dinner time came around, which was quickly approaching. On the bright side, he had a pile of fish laying beside him, even after putting a decent amount into his backpack. "Oh man, I'm beat."

Cookie returned with clean cookware, plates, and forks. "That was fun, and we got to help so many people!" She set everything down onto Lucas's bedroll, which had been used more as counter space than for sleeping at this point. "You know what they say. If you want something done, you have to do it yourself."

"Huh?" Tony set his flute down, having gotten a decent grasp on it over the last few hours. "Are you talking about feeding people because the devs aren't?"

"I'm talking about how the game makers aren't doing anything to help all the hungry people!" Cookie huffed.

"That's what I said." Tony said. "Anyway, I will admit that you two did an amazing job. But..." He averted his gaze. "Even with everything that you did, you fed, what, fifty or so people? There are at least a few thousand people playing the game."

"Oh. I suppose you're right." Cookie sat down, looking defeated.

Raven shot a glare to Tony before giving a friendly smile to Cookie. "Don't think of it like that, Cookie. A bunch of people wouldn't have gotten fed if it weren't for you two." She shot another quick glare at Tony. "Tony and I shouldn't be saying anything, because we weren't able to help."

"Er, yeah. You two did a great job, like I said. You should be proud." Tony shifted around, avoiding the Elf’s gaze. "You can't be hard on yourself. We're only a small group, we can only do so much."

Cookie's face brightened up. "Aw, thank you. You're both too sweet." She turned to Lucas, who was organizing his things. "Art was the one doing all the hard work. Did you see how fast he was going, cutting up those fish and cooking them up? You would be great in a fancy restaurant!"

"Thanks." Lucas's face reddened slightly. "It's not a big deal, though. I do work in a restaurant, but it's nothing fancy. It's definitely nicer than fast food. I never want to work that kind of job again." He suppressed a shudder, memories of working in fast food flooding his mind. "Hopefully, no one else comes over for help. I don't have anything else to cook with."

"Ah, that explains why your cooking is so good and-" Tony stopped, eyebrows furrowing. "Wait, you used everything up? What're we going to eat for dinner?"

"We had a pleasant lunch. We'll be fine if we have to snack on berries. I can always find some more of those." Cookie butted in before Lucas could respond. "The big issue is, what are we going to do to help everyone? How many people went without food today? How many are going to sleep hungry tonight, only to wake up hungry and fight others in line to buy food?"

"Uh..." Lucas glanced at everyone in the group.

"Like I said before, we're only four people. What are we supposed to do? There are a few thousand people stuck in the game. We can't possibly feed them all!" Tony shook his head. "It's nice that you want to help everyone, but you have to be real with yourself. We went through all our cooking supplies, and now we won't be able to feed ourselves, let alone another few thousand people."

Lucas piped in as Cookie crossed her arms and turned away from everyone. "I mean, we have plenty of fish to eat now. I can grill them or roast them over a fire. The fish won't be very seasoned, which is better than not eating at all, I guess."

"So we have to scrounge together more cooking supplies tomorrow, because that went so well for us today." Tony grumbled.

"I don't care, we'll be fine! I can always search around for food in the forest. Tony can catch fish, and we're lucky enough to have Art who can cook it all." Cookie's arms shot down to her side, voice impassioned. "But I can't stand idly by knowing that everyone else is out there, hungry or starving! I don't want anyone to go hungry, and I certainly don't want anyone to starve to death!" There were tears in her eyes.

"Hey." Raven dropped her things and rushed over to Cookie. "Are you okay? You don't have to listen to Tony. He doesn't know what he's talking about. We can figure something out, right Art?"

"Uh..." Lucas's brain churned, trying to think of what to say.

"I'm alright, thank you." Cookie hugged the elf. "I was getting emotional there. I just can't stand the idea of everyone going hungry. That's no way to live, and we don't know when we'll be able to leave the game."

"I made a good point though." Tony mumbled, hiding his face behind his booklet.

"I know. It's not fun to think about. You two helped a lot of people, though. Don't forget about that, okay?" Raven slowly pulled out of the hug. "

"Right, don't forget about all the people you made smile. If nothing else, I'm sure they'll be back tomorrow and we can help them all over again." Lucas said. He couldn't help but think how word would spread around even more. Even more people could show up tomorrow, way too many for him to handle all by himself. Sure, he had experience cooking, but he could only do so much. He was only one person, and only had two pieces of cookware to use, not to mention the lack of plates and utensils.

The Draconian leaned forward, sitting cross-legged with his elbow to his knee, hand holding his chin. The voices of the party faded away as he got lost in thought. Maybe if he looked at this differently, he could think of a solution. His mind immediately went back to his school years, having to deal with seemingly impossible math problems. No, not like that.

This was more than a simple equation. His mind drifted to the countless amount of battles he had fought in the games he played. Real-time strategy, turned based tactics, and grand strategy war-games were his bread and butter. It was more like that. The first rule of battle and war was determining the goal, how to achieve it, taking stock of your resources and troops, and how to overcome your weaknesses.

The goal was to feed everyone, or at least the ones who couldn’t feed themselves. If he assumed there were two thousand people playing the beta, and a small percentage were okay on food, that would still leave many people to feed. Even with all the fish he had now, a single fish was only good enough as a meal for one person, since he had no side dishes. This was assuming that having the hunger status for a longer time meant you needed more food than usual to get rid of it. When the party had eaten, they had each eaten one fourth of a fish with a side dish, but they had snacked in the morning. The people he fed today easily ate a whole fish.

They would need a whole fish to get a single person out of hunger status. After that, a half fish, or a fourth of a fish with a side, would be a decent enough meal to keep it at bay. Even if he had the resources and labour to cook and feed nearly two thousand people, with the time limit of a single day, the initial process of removing the hunger status was a steep problem.

One that would require a large fish per person, or perhaps half of a fish with a decent side dish. Not that he had anything to serve as a side dish, anyway. Cookie alone had barely gotten enough ingredients from the forest to provide side dishes for four people. Lucas sighed. He had gotten pulled back into math. At least now it felt appropriate.

It helped that he was decent at math, something that came up often in cooking. The problem at hand was becoming a math problem to solve. It was clear; they needed more people if they were going to solve this. But how many would they need? Lucas hadn't paid too much attention to how long it took to catch a fish. He'd have to set that aside for now. For now, he could assume a fisher would need at least 30 to 45 minutes to catch a fish. How many fishers would he need, and how long would they have to fish to feed two thousand people? What if foragers were thrown into the mix? If a forager could collect enough food for side dishes, roughly half an hour for four dishes, how many fewer fish would be needed? Could half of a fish and a side dish be enough to feed a person and get them out of their hunger state?

That's not even considering the amount of chefs needed to cook all that food. How many chefs, cookware, and ingredients would be needed? Plus the problem that not everyone who picked the cooking profession would be knowledgeable about cooking. Would he need to take time teaching chefs how to fillet a fish and how to cook it? "Shit!" Lucas loudly groaned out.

"Cut it out!" Tony exclaimed, followed by a pause as his attention turned to his friend. "Art, are you good?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry. I was just-" Lucas looked over at Tony. The kobold was on the ground, sprawled out on his chest, looking as if he had been dragged around. Raven had a firm grip on Tony's tail, legs spread and braced against the ground. "What's going on?"

Raven gave a glare to the kobold, giving his tail a yank before letting it go. "He made Cookie upset again, and she took off into the forest to look for more food."

Tony scrambled to his feet, quickly backing away from the elf. "I said I was sorry, and you can't argue that I wasn't bringing up good points!" He took a few more steps back towards Lucas. "Wait, you weren't paying attention?"

"Sorry, no. I was trying to figure out how to solve the food issue." Lucas lowered his gaze. "I have an idea, but I was trying to figure the logistics out to see what we're up against."

Tony gave the Draconian a concerned look. "You were... Thinking? That whole time? We've been arguing for a few minutes now, and she went psycho and-"

"You think it's possible we can help everyone?" Raven interjected.

Lucas nodded his head. "I think so, but we'd need to recruit a ton of people. There is no way we can feed nearly two thousand people on our own." He let out a sigh. "And there isn't much time to figure this out. We need a solution today, and we have to figure out how to roll it out."

"Why do we need to do it today?" Tony glanced up at the sun, then pulled out his watch. "It's almost 6 PM, can't we do this tomorrow when we have a full day?"

"People might progress from hunger to starvation by tonight or tomorrow. We don’t know how fast it happens, or if you can die from starvation." Lucas stood up and stretched his arms. "If we can die from starvation, and it persists through death... People could die, respawn, and then die again shortly after."

"They could die twice in quick succession, and... end up like that one dude." Tony added, plopping down onto the grass. "Shit."

"What can we do to help?" Raven got closer to the two scaled men. "I can help you with the logistics or something." She held up her book, a quill sticking out from inside the pages. "I have a way to write things down."

"Yeah, I can help too." Tony pulled his pack from his back to pull out his fishing rod. "I can start getting more fish."

Lucas smiled softly. "Thanks, I could definitely use help to crunch some numbers." He turned to the kobold. "I'd say you have time to catch a fish while we figure this out. I still need to solidify some ideas. Oh! Can you time how long you take to catch a fish?"

Tony nodded, then went to the pond's edge, casting out his fishing line. "I can still talk if you need to bounce ideas off me."

Raven flipped to an empty page of her book, quill in hand. "What are you trying to figure out?"

Lucas stepped beside the elf so he could see. "Trying to do math. Specifically, about how many people would need to fish to feed two thousand people, while accounting for how much time it takes to catch a fish."

"Never mind, I'm out. I suck at math." Tony said.

"Um..." Raven raised an eyebrow to the Draconian.

"I know it isn't easy, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. This is just the start." Lucas didn't blame them for being confused. He wasn't sure about how to figure it out completely, either.

"What do you mean?" Raven asked.

"I'm going off the assumption that every person needs a whole fish to completely remove hunger, given how much everyone ate today. That means we would need two thousand fish, maybe less, but that could be lowered if we had more to serve than just fish." Lucas explained. Raven continued to give him a look of confusion, and he told her to write some numbers down.

"Yeah, good luck with that. I'll be here if you need non-math help." Tony said, as the other two worked behind him.

By the time Cookie returned to the group, Lucas and Raven were huddled side to side, pages filled with numbers and equations, while Tony was hollering about the fish he was reeling in. "I'm back, and I found some more food!" She gave a curious look at the new scene before her. "Good to see none of you killed each other."

"Hey, Cookie." Raven glanced at her friend. "Oh, that? Yeah, that didn't last long."

"What are you all up to?" Cookie asked, looking at Lucas and Tony. Both had been too busy to say anything.

Lucas stopped mumbling to himself when Raven nudged him. His head jerked up, and he looked around to catch sight of Cookie. "Welcome back!" He smiled at her, his mind processing what she had said. "Oh! I'm trying to figure out how to feed everyone."

"You are?!" Cookie was smiling as she hurried over to Lucas and Raven. "What do we need to do?"

"Well... First we need to get as many people who picked the fishing profession." Lucas pointed to one equation on the page. "If we can get a hundred of them, they should be able to catch roughly two fish an hour, and would get enough fish to feed two thousand people in... ten hours."

"That's a lot of people and time." Cookie said, voice growing softer.

"That's the worst-case scenario, which is still something." Raven nudged the Draconian again. "Tell her the other thing."

"I was getting to that." Lucas replied. "If we can get an equal amount of foragers, like you, then each pair of forager and fisher could feed about six people per hour of work." He continued after a brief pause, both of them waiting for more explanation. "Er, that means a hundred fishers and a hundred foragers could feed two thousand people in about four hours."

"See, this way takes a lot less time." Raven closed up her book. "We can totally do this."

“Wow, that is a lot less time." Cookie nodded. "I'm not a forager, though. I picked the tailor job."

"Wait, what?" Lucas turned to Cookie.

"Oh, yeah! I had forgotten about that. You said you used to sew in your free time." Raven said.

"How are you able to forage, then? When I looked at the different professions, botany was the one that had foraging." Lucas asked.

"I just walk around and look." Cookie shrugged. "Does it matter if I was in girl scouts? I learned how to forage, camp, and make fires from the time in my troop."

Lucas's eyes narrowed, his gaze lowering. "Wait, if you can find food without that skill, then maybe..."

Raven nudged Lucas's shoulder. "You're doing it again."

"Huh? Sorry!" Lucas gathered his thoughts. "That means anyone can help forage for food, and maybe botanists are simply better at doing it, or can find more. Either way, that should make things easier."

"What are you all going on about?" Tony joined the group, a yellow fish with black stripes wiggled on the end of his fishing pole.

"Art was telling us how we can help everyone!" Cookie clapped her hands together. "We just need to find volunteers to make it happen!"

"Uh, there is more to it than that." Lucas explained. "That's only the first part of the problem. I haven't even tried to think about how many chefs we would need to cook all that food or where we could cook and serve so many people. Not to mention all the plates and utensils we would need, or how we could get them."

"Oh." Cookie's smile faded. "I hadn't thought about all that."

"Yes, but we have somewhere to start. We just need to handle this one step at a time." Raven gave Cookie a reassuring smile.

"Didn't Art say we had to get this all figured out today?" Tony asked. "Seems like a lot of work and not enough time."

"I hadn't thought about that either. This is a much bigger problem than I realized." Cookie looked to the ground. "I suppose I got too hopeful after helping all those people today."

"I, uh-" Tony stammered after being given the harshest death glare yet by the elf. "We need to get the help of a bunch of people, yeah? Why don't we go talk to that Orc dude from the plaza. The one trying to calm everyone down."

"What a great idea, Lizard Boy!" Raven said in a sweet tone while firmly nudging the kobold away from their huddle.

Tony grumbled something and went to sit down at the barely burning campfire.

"That is a good idea. That guy was able to control the crowd, or at least tried. Maybe he'd help us recruit people." Lucas said, a hand holding his chin in thought.

"Oh, that'd be a good start! Recruiting someone that can help us get volunteers!" Cookie's smile returned. "Do you think he is still at the plaza?"

"Probably not. Why would he still be hanging out there?" Tony jerked, another glare being shot his way. "But it wouldn't hurt to check!"

"I'm sure we can find him! He was a big green orc, after all." Raven said with a smile.

"If not, we can always ask around for other people to help too!" Cookie said.

"Can we eat before we go? I don't want to be hungry if we're going to be working the rest of today." Tony unhooked his fish, plopping it down into one of the many piles of fish. "Art?"

"Sure thing." Lucas snapped out of his thoughts. He went over and plucked two of the fish from a pile. "This will have to be simple, half of a fish grilled over a fire." The Draconian sat down in his cooking spot, surrounded by fish. "I still have some salt and pepper still, so it won't be completely bland." He began preparing one fish, then glanced over at the multitude of fish still lying around. "My bag is nearly full, by the way. Can you guys store away the rest of the fish?"

Cookie hurried over and scooped fish into her bag. "This magic backpack is coming in handy now!"

"Egh..." Raven cautiously grabbed a fish by the tail, dropping it into her bag.

Tony gave a curious look at the elf. "You can kick a burning spider, but get grossed out by a fish?" He said as he casually tossed fish into his pack.

"Fish are slimy and gross." Raven commented.

"It's not so bad once they're dead. That way, they can't jump out of your hands!" Cookie laughed.