How many boars does it take...

    There was a small breeze coming from the ocean below the cliff-face above is a green, lush forest, with a campsite that has been setup.

A fire was burning brightly at the camp fire, with a Salamander holding a piece of meat of some kind over the fire. "... will you not burn this time.." He rumbles lowly staring at it. His black scaled tail gently thumps the ground as he peers harder at it.

    "You think... with me knowing how to do steak..." The Salamander rumbles gently to himself. ".. That this would apply to the game, but no. No. It doesn't. /Apparently/!!" He growls out, as one could swear he nearly went chibi with his tail pointed up for a moment at his frustration.

Then with a heavy sigh, he pulls the meat away from the fire, giving it a few sniffs. ".. Way to go Xander." He pokes at the charred edges. "... You burnt another one." Then tosses it onto the pile behind him, before trying to reach for another piece of meat from his inventory, only to see-- he had none.

Xander's face slowly goes dead-pan. "... I really need to talk to Mikage about hunting tricks.."

    A middle aged man who looks like he's wandered out of a ramen shop. "Ooh please do not disgrace another." he says as he steps into the light of the fire. He smiles and gives a bit of a bow "I'm Hifumi pleasure to meet you." he offers and taps his fingers on the small wooden case on his hip.

    Mizuki follows her nose just in time to see the pile of burnt steaks, and Xander about to light up another one. "No, don't waste it!" but she's too late. "Aww..."

    She approaches. "You have to have the Cooking skill or it doesn't work. I tried to peel a carrot once and it caught on fire."

\     Xander peers up as the middle-aged man shows up. He raises a brow gently, "Disgrace another?" He looks around, trying to see who the guy was talking about before his eyes fall back on him. "You mean-- my horrible skills at cooking?" He chuckles. ".. Yeah.. maybe made three ... something possibly edible, one that is, and the rest of the seven are... Yeeeeah."

    The Salamander looks over the man, giving him a quick examine trying to see what he could see and if the name matched up to the one he was offering out. "Hifumi, huh? Xander. A pleasure." He then extends his clawed hand to the downed log near the fire. "Have a seat, sir."

Then Xander uses the stick in his hand to push a few kindling further into the fire. "What brings you out here?"

Peers over at Mizuki as she shows up, "I am aware... But trying to do this with no menu. Figured if I keep at it, maybe eventually I'll also /gain/ the skill." He places his hand out to the side, "After all, no pain, no gain."

Xander chuckles softly, "Funny bit though. I did lose three of those seven exactly that way. Poof! Up in flames. The one that can be eaten, I did by just using my magic and bursting it with some fire." The Salamander shrugs, "Odd results really. Care to sit as well?" He asks tilting his head to her.

    Mizuki blinks. "Wait. Did you say that even without the cooking skill, you successfully cooked a steak /once/?" She looks skeptical. "How did it taste?"

    Hifumi nods his head "Yes, well I'm still working out exactly how all of this will function." he says "I'm actually hunting down herbs, mushrooms, wild vegitable. Need to find out what this world's flavor pallet is like." he says as he settles down on a rock.

    Xander looks over to Hifumi, "Well, the biggest news with crafting is that it is best to do stuff manually, not with the crafting menu. It seems that is the secret to possibly cooking without it being salty wet crackers." He rubs his scaled chin. "I haven't tried it with potion making, but I haven't had time to sit down and work on new healing packs."

Xander frowns a little. "That and I'm worried if I /do/ something like that without the menu, I might accidentally poison someone."

The Salamander does open his inventory and pulls out a few herbs, "But here, maybe you can have better luck. These are what I used in my healing pack. Hope they serve you well."

    Those draconic eyes then look back over to Mizuki who seems skeptical of what he has done. His tail sways slightly across the grass. "You want to try it and see for yourself?"

    Mizuki nods as Xander repeats the discovery about crafting; She'd heard, but maybe Hifumi hadn't. "You still need the appropriate skill, though. Sadly all I have is Appraisal, but at least I can ID stuff. So far it's mostly good for telling what crafting skills can make use of a rare material, or reading item descriptions that sound like they were written by the devs."

    "Antidote herbs are a pretty common drop from the monsters around Alne and Carmina Gadelica. Well, a rare drop, but since you kill so many of them..."

    Xander makes that offer. "Sure, I'll try it." Whatever he hands her, she tries to appraise first, then cautiously licks, then bites into.

    Hifumi takes the herbs "Thank you." he says and produces a wok? He puts it on some stones over the campfire. Then he produces a wooden block and some green pepers or something that looks like them. "You have more of that meat?" he asks as he produces a chefs knife from his little wooden case. He starts cleaning and chopping the peppers. Produces a bit of oil and pours that into the hot wok as it starts to immediately smoke. He tosses in the peppers and starts shuffling the whole wok.

    Xander pulls out the cooked pork roast loin from his inventory and hands it to her. It smells like roasted pork loin. It appears to be roasted pork loin grilled by flames. Even the fat has a bit of char from the flames.

The lick tells her the same. It is a roasted pork loin. So, when she bites into it. Yep. It tastes like a camp cooked roasted pork loin that's been done over an open fire.

The Salamander watches her reaction. "So?" He asks her tilting his head gently. "What do you think?"

    His attention turns to Hifumi, "Sadly no." He grumps gently, "Beyond the three that-- came out burnt, still, edible, but a bit on the.. tough side." Xander admits. "If I was a hunter, I'd just go out there and go kill another boar, but the drop rate of meat is not that high of rate for me." He raises a brow, "Unless you think you can do something with the already cooked ones with what you are making there."

Though he shifts his weight slightly, "At the same time, I don't mind trying to hunt down a boar or three and see if I get lucky."

    The were fang's sharp teeth easily tear a bite off the huge piece of meat. "It has taste. It tastes like cooked meat!" She smiles. "It's good! but if the success rate is only around ten percent, I'd need a huge amount of drops to make cooked meat regularly."

    She hmms. "I guess it'd work better if we killed animals and then butchered the corpses, get more meat that way, but... I don't, IRL I mean, know how to properly do that so I'd probably just make a disgusting bloody mess. And still waste a lot of meat; I don't know if beasts respawn the same way monsters do."

    Hifumi adds some mushrooms to the peppers. "Sure, just... you can either slice it up or cube it?" he asks to see if he needs to deal with the meat slicing too as he keeps the veggies dancing in the hot oil.

    "Sadly, while I wish that was an option," He says to Mizuki. "Everything goes up into digital wisps of light when it dies. So, whatever it drops, is what it drops." Xander admits with a gentle shrug. "The thing I am figuring out is that any mentality we had about how we did things before has to be cleared out from our minds." He gently taps his head with his claw.

"The game has changed and that was clear against the Floor one bosses. There was two, instead of one, and they actually seem to set a trap for us." Xander says softly as his brows furrow. "Kind of like how the goblins have actually gotten smarter as well..." Those words said much more softly.

    Then he goes to stand up, stretching his legs a little as he does. "The success rate is probably higher if I didn't /try/ to actually cook them. That one was done out of frustration, when I placed it on a flat stone and just burst flamed it with my fire magic." He then stretches his hands above his head. "Tried it with a second one, but burned it for to long. Everything else," He motions to the meat on the ground. "Was all the failures of trying to do it the more... real life thinking way."

His tail twitches softly as he looks to her once more, while making a boyish grin, "Probably should stick to burst flaming them huh? Seems like better results!"

    Xander then looks over to Hifumi, watching him work with the wok. His eyes watch him add things and it already smells fairly good. His tail twitches gently as he hrms, "I could." He crosses his arms over his chest, "But I can't guarantee that it wouldn't become a mess when I do. I don't exactly the trust the system to fully behave."

The Salamander then goes to open his menu pull out the three pieces of slightly overly cooked meat. These pork loins don't smell as great as that one did. He pulls out a knife from his inventory then and finds that flat stone he used earlier and goes to see about cubing up the meat.

    Mizuki blinks. "No, it's... use the inspect tool. Monsters are different from Beasts. If it has the Hand icon, it's a Beast. Monsters drop items. Beasts drop corpses... well, unless you blew them up with a fireball or something, obviously. I tried killing one once but I didn't know what to do with it, so I sold it to a Lander butcher... sadly that meant it got turned into tasteless food items." She tears off another bite of meat and savors the flavor.

    Hifumi nods his head "Well toss that cut meat into the wok." he says as he keeps tossing his wok.

    One attempt is a failed as it becomes digital fire. Xander narrows his eyes with some annoyance and rumbles, "... behave." As his hands ignite the knife with fire as he goes to work on the next one, getting it cut up into cubes.

Xander lets out a sigh of relief as he wasn't sure that was, going to honestly behave. He then picks up the cubes in a cloth, before handing them over to Hifumi.

    He only casually glances over to Mizuki, "I normally don't do crafting." Xander admits, "Though from what I was aware, in dealing with them. The items that drop, such as meat, is based on your hunting score. So, if you got a whole carcass to carry back to town." The Salamander grins, "You gotta have a nice hunting score! Kinda envy you there." He admits with a friendly smile.

His attention turns back to Hifumi, "So what are you cooking by the way, cause it smells amazing!" He looks down at the wok, continuing to watch the man work.

    Mizuki blinks. "Really? Well, I only tried one time... I don't have hunting skill, but maybe it's like with this meat, sometimes you get lucky." She also turns and looks at the wok curiously.

    Hifumi smiles "Just bell peppers and beef... well... the closest thing I've found to bell peppers, some mushrooms, and whatever that meat is looks like boar." he says as he flips the meat and veg then produces a trio of wooden plates and pours the mix out "I'll be able to do better once I have a kitchen, and once I have some more ingreedients and I can get stuff like pickles going." he chuckles

    Xander continues to watch Hifumi, as he produces the plates and picks up one, offering it to Mizuki first, before he goes to take a plate himself.

The Salamander goes to sit down and while maybe not very civil, he uses his claw to pick up one of the peppers and take a bite out of one of those first. He chews with his eyes closed, then swallows before he speaks, "Going to guess you focuses on cooking before the expansion? Though given you did this by hand..." Xander raises a brow, "Cooking something you love in real life?"

Xander looks over to Mizuki, "Nothing wrong with luck. Luck can be great... It can also be horrible, when you don't want it." Then he goes to take a bite of mushroom.

    Mizuki stuffs the pork into her inventory as she's offered the plate. "Ooh, mushrooms!" she still has no silverware so she decides to just pick food up with her muzzle like an animal. REAL FOOD IS WORTH IT! She savors the taste. "It feels like a lifetime since I've eaten anything like this..."

    Hifumi nods his head "Yah, I'm a chef." he says and after cleaning his knife and packing it away produces some chop sticks and takes a bite. "Mmm... yah... need to get more of the spice trade. Need more herbs... need pickles, need soy, need tofu, need need need... so far the only solid contact I have for getting my inn running is liqour." he sighs and eats more, but it seems he's not been eating crackers so he isn't have some mouthgasm, this is just 'dinner' for him.

    Xander gives a nod to Hifumi, "Chef huh? I figured like, just good in the home-life kitchen, not an actual Chef!" The Salamander grins. "And that all sounds amazing. I've been mostly living on fruit, nuts, and... salty wet cracker tasting food." He sticks out his tongue a little.

"Most folks have, so if you can convince them that you could provide them great food, I'd bet you'd get more people to help." He picks up a piece of the meat and looks it over. "Hell, I'd even see what I could do to assist and I know a Kobold in a bandit camp that could use some pointers... And maybe even a better place to work from."

Xander then takes a bite of the meat. He chews on it happily, as his tail sways slowly behind him. ".. This reminds me of the stuff my mom use to make. This is /better/, but she did make a great soup."

    "A chef?" Mizuki turns towards Hifumi. "You're gonna be real popular here! Oh hey, where did you get utensils and chopsticks? I have no idea where you'd get most ingredients... there's a wererat enchanter running around who sometimes shows up at the end of the rat duty though, and he's really good at harvesting tasty rat meat. It's pretty good even raw, so cooked..."

    Hifumi chuckles "Well I hope to get my Inn built outside of Dun Loireag." he says and smiles. "I'm looking forward to it."

    "Dun Loireg huh?" Xander says softly, "I'll have to keep that in mind." As he goes to finish the meal. The Salamander also nods in agreement to Mizuki. "Couldn't say it better myself." He looks back to Hifumi, "People have been dying for cooked meal. Like actual /cooked/ meals that taste like something. You probably can even get some adventurers of all kinds to help get the things you need if you post it up on the notice boards."

Xander then goes to place the plate down before he stands up, "Speaking of that, I'm going to go do a little more hunting and herb finding. Feel free to stay here at the camp, maybe if I find some good quality meat, I'll give you some!"

Then the Salamander looks over to Mizuki, "Same to you, feel free to stay here for a while if you like." Then gives them both a wave before he walks off into the forest.