[A/N: Another huge Golden Ticket influx! Like before, 7 Chapters as a token of appreciation from me. Love you all.]

When the attack started, the mercenaries Adrian had hired, grabbed her. Claire’s guys followed their orders. They hauled Aria inside the mansion and locked the doors. So she just stood by the glass and watched the massacre happen. Knights swinging swords. Civilians running and burning.

It was terrifying. Not because of the gore though. Blood was nothing new to her. She had seen plenty of it in her past life.

What really scared her was losing this new life. Losing the only happiness she ever had.

If a raid hit the town, what was stopping another group from hitting Adrian on the road? She couldn’t lose her dad, at least not now.

But now, he was here. He was alive, but he looked completely broken.

"I messed up." Adrian whispered and dragged his hand down his face.

He blamed himself. He blamed his stupid E rank mana veins and the Pacifist’s Shackles curse for stopping him from fighting on the front lines.

He had the custom bolt action rifle sitting in his spatial storage. He could have wiped out that D rank knight from hundred meters away just by giving his solders the weapon and teaching them how to wield it. But he was terrified of the impact it would have. Revealing a firearm in an era of swords would change the world forever. It would put a massive target on his back and people close to him would suffer.

But looking at Aria’s teary eyes, he did not care anymore. Her vulnerability completely shattered his hesitation and he made a decision right then and there.

Money was useless if you were dead.

He was done playing the merchant game. He was going to focus entirely on military might from now on before he even thought about making more money. He could just use his dungeon for everything.

His main goal shifted and he needed Oresfall to become a fortress. He’d build an army capable of crushing any siege and turn this territory into a pure death trap for anyone dumb enough to invade.

Adrian crouched down to her eye level.

"You don’t need to be scared anymore." he told her as he faked a completely confident tone. "Papa is gonna keep you safe. No one is touching you while I’m breathing. Promise."

Aria just blinked at him. She totally didn’t expect him to sound that sure of himself.

She scrambled right onto his lap. Her tiny arms wrapped around his neck and she squished her face into his shirt.

"Love you, Papa." she muttered.

Adrian wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her head.

A minute passed quietly.

"Papa?" she whispered. "Can I sleep in your bed tonight? I had a nightmare yesterday..."

"Yeah, absolutely." he said.

He checked the window and saw that the sun was going down.

"We can sleep soon, but you gotta eat a proper meal first. Actually, everyone out there needs to eat." he said and sighed.

He then picked her up and carried her out of the room. They walked out the back exit together, right past the exhausted guards and the bleeding men sprawled in the dirt.

Adrian found an empty patch of dirt near the edge of the field and called in a few soldiers who didn’t have major injuries.

"Dig two fire pits here and place large stones on top. We’ll be making food for everyone tonight." he said and pointed at the ground.

The guys didn’t ask questions. They just grabbed shovels and began working.

While they worked, Adrian headed back into this mansion and went straight to the storage room,

’Hmm... potatoes and tomatoes mostly huh?’ Adrian thought as he checked the stock in the room and then used his dungeon to create two large pots. One was deeper and one was more on the shallower side but they both had the same diameter.

He got a few soldiers to move the large pots along with the bags of potatoes, tomatoes, pepper and salt.

Once he was back at the spot which was now ready, Adrian gave Aria a glance and took out a large pile of firewood from his dungeon before tossing them into the fire pits.

She stepped up, snapped her fingers, and a small fireball shot from her hand. The dry wood went up in flames instantly.

"Place the deeper pot on the fire and pour some water in. Half of it must be filled." Adrian told the knights.

They hauled heavy wooden buckets from the river that was connected to their town and dumped water into the massive pot.

Adrian gave instructions to the citizens who weren’t injured, and watched as they began to wash and cut the potatoes and tomatoes into medium sized chunks. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He then walked up to Burke and using his help, gathered a bunch of people who knew how to butcher animals. Damian took them to the place where the livestock was stored and Adrian moved on to the next step while this group prepared the meat.

Adrian got the soldiers to place the second pot on the fire pit and Aria lit the second fire too.

Adrian walked back into the mansion. He went straight to the storage room again, used dungeon link and pulled out ten massive wooden barrels filled with solid pork lard. He brought out a large wooden pot and a thick, polished wooden stick.

He walked back outside a few minutes later and told the soldiers to haul the barrels out along with the bags of flour, the large wooden pot and the stick.

"Open five of them." Adrian ordered. "Dump all the lard into the flat pot."

The soldiers popped the lids off. They scooped out huge chunks of white fat and tossed it onto the heated metal. The lard immediately began to melt and soon, it turned into pool of clear, boiling oil.

While the oil heated up, Adrian emptied the bags of flour into the wooden pot and looked at the soldiers.

"Bring me water." Adrian he said and the soldiers rushed over with fresh buckets.

"Stop." Adrian held up a hand. He tossed several handfuls of salt into the dry flour. "Now pour it in. Slowly."

He mixed the water and flour with the stick for a while before handing the work over to the soldiers.

"Knead it until it gets extremely thick and sticky." he said before he sat down on the ground right there.