Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 26: Little Gremlin

The little girl was awake before him, staring at him through the bars.

Her purple eyes caught the glow of the torches and drilled into the side of his head.

’Creepy little gremlin.’

Ezra sat up and the shirt gave an audible moan across his shoulders. Meanwhile, the trousers had ripped further in the night.

At this rate he’d be naked again by noon and he’d have come full circle from the beach.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor. Neve?

No, not her.

A guard came down carrying two wooden bowls and slid one through each cell’s floor gap. The man didn’t look at either of them.

Not like he could blame him. It was either a creepy little girl or a naked man with a scavenger for a pet.

Ezra picked his bowl up. It was some kind of grain mush, cold already from when it was first made. Leftovers, or throwaways if Ezra was betting on it.

"Appraisal."

[ Crude Soup — Common ]

> Profile: Mashed grain and Gigaworm segments mixed with lesser herbs and potatoes. Simple, effective, and rightfully distasteful.

’Well, that explains the chunks of grub in the liquid. Also, I thought Appraisal has Threat now?’

[ Bzzt ]

[ Soup is not a living target ]

Patches sniffed the bowl once, gagged, and went back to its jerky.

Across the corridor, the girl hadn’t touched hers.

’Me too, this shit is gross.’

Ezra took out the two tiny bags he’d hid behind his back and held them up in the air.

’It’s worth a shot. Worst-case scenario it’ll taste like ocean-water.’

Using Embercap spore made no sense given it only applied to cooking. This was definitely not that. That left him with the salt.

He opened the tied ribbon on the salt bag and sprinkled just a tad. Too much would dilute the actual ingredients used to make the soup, and too little would leave the taste of shit on his tongue. Credit to Palate Arts, no less.

He brought the rim to his lips and drank. The grainy puke texture was still there, but with the salt sprinkled in it was pretty much a regular tasting soup.

Like closing his eyes and imagining it was his mother’s homemade soup, except for his mouth. Not like he remembered her cooking. Was there ever any to begin with? Fast food didn’t count.

[ Consumable activated: Renewal Salt ]

> SP regeneration accelerated for 1 hour.

The opened bag crumbled to dust. He’d used just a few sprinkles and the System treated it as a single use.

’You weren’t kidding, huh?’

[ No ]

Ezra’s legs started twitching. Being at full SP in a cell without anything to do was a bad fucking idea.

But it made the soup better. He drank some more, letting the chunks of Gigaworm down his throat without even chewing.

He glanced at the girl who was still staring. Her bowl was at the ground and she hadn’t moved an inch.

’She’s not eating.’

Not his problem; he had enough as is.

But she just kept staring.

Even after he waved her off.

"What do you want?" Ezra said, burping as he set the bowl on the ground. "An autograph?"

She pinched her nose. "It stinks, you stink too." Then she looked at his empty bowl and at the smudge still on his lip. "How can you eat that?"

Ezra burped again, and he was loud about it too. The Gigaworm meat did something weird to his stomach. That, or it was the salt working overtime.

"Hello-oo, I’m talking to you," the girl growled.

Patches turned suddenly, pulled from whatever the hell it was doing in the corner. It saw the girl and deemed her a non-threat and turned back around.

"Uh..." Ezra paused. What the hell was he supposed to say? That a magical System gave him a sack of salt that made the puke soup taste better?

Across the corridor, her bowl sat on the stone floor getting colder by the minute.

’She’s not gonna eat it like that. I wouldn’t either, and I just did. With the help of the salt, no less.

Market.’

The golden text brimmed to life. He scrolled past the consumables he’d already memorized and found the salt. There were two left in stock. Same price. Same single-use fuckery.

He bought it without a second thought.

[ Transaction confirmed: -150 FT ]

[ Received Item: Renewal Salt ]

[ Wallet ]

> 9,200 Frontier Tokens

The sack materialized in his hand and he tossed it through the gap at the bottom of the bars.

It slid across her cell floor and stopped against her bare foot.

"Sprinkle some in the soup. Just a pinch." He thought about what a full bag of Renewal Salt would do to a twelve-year-old’s body. He imagined her exploding. "Just don’t overdo it."

The girl pulled the ribbon and sniffed it, looked at the soup, then at him, then back at the soup. Then she sprinkled more than a pinch. Probably half of the bag at least. She was smiling about it too, teeth white and too clean for being out here in the middle of a desert.

Ezra opened his mouth and she was already drinking before he got a word out.

’She’s gonna explode.’

Her eyes went wider than they had any right to be, like she’d just got away with murder. She drank again, longer this time. She even chewed the chunks of Gigaworm floating in the broth.

She swallowed once, then twice. Out came a little burp that she refused to apologize for.

"It’s good," she said, wiping her mouth. Her face was neutral now, as if she hadn’t just eaten the best meal she’d had in months.

Ezra waited for the buff to kick in, for the girl to suddenly spasm and clang against the bar and wail like a rabid monkey.

But she didn’t twitch or buzz or seem to notice anything happening inside her at all. She just pulled her knees to her chest and watched him with those purple eyes again.

’Not even a thank you. Whatever. It’s a relief though, that she’s still normal. The alternative was explaining to the guards why a girl was foaming at the mouth.

Technically, I gave her a drug. Does Harken have drug laws?’

The guard’s boots came a minute later. A second set followed behind it. This one had a different rhythm altogether. Lighter, quicker, and mildly annoyed.

It was the commander.

Same darker armor, same wyvern skull insignia.

Same disgust on her face, too.

"You have two counts now," the commander said, holding up her gloved fingers. "Unregistered physical contact with the Honored Slayer, and putting your hands on the registrar."

’The registrar? When did I touch the regi...’

[ You extended your arm outwards and held physical contact against the chest of a female registrar, a Class-III misconduct ]

Ezra ran his palms up his face, sighing between his fingers.

"Un-fucking-believable. I want a redo—"

"The Honored Slayer has waived both," she continued. "Her authority as Ruby-tier permits her to dismiss conduct charges involving her person, and she’s extended that privilege to the registrar’s complaint."

’My hero.’

"That is the only reason you’re walking out."

The bars opened and Ezra stood up and the ceiling reminded him that Harken was not built for his height. He ducked through with Patches at his heels, paws digging through its teeth for leftover jerky.

"Registrar will find you. Stay inside the walls."

"The same one from yesterday?"

The commander didn’t blink at all. "Yes."

"Fuck," Ezra sighed again.

The corridor was narrow and carved from the same volcanic rock as everything else in Harken, steam hissing from every crack.

He passed the girl’s cell on the way out. She was sitting the same as before, except the bowl was empty and the salt bag was dust on the floor beside it.

Her wrists were red and blistered, the skin at her elbows dry and taut. Weird, considering the metal cuffs she walked in with clattered to the ground the moment she set foot in the cell.

"You want an autograph or something?" She was smiling with all teeth.

’Brat.’

Ezra pinched his nose and said, "I hope the giant rats get you."

He walked up the stairs and didn’t wait for her to respond.