<~> Chapter 127

The camp had gotten pretty lively once all of the soldiers and delvers had returned from the dungeon. There were lots of new ingredients to inspect, so the crafters looked really motivated to check what we've brought back from the dungeon so far. Everything from samples of the sand and water in the dungeon, specimens of the plant life, and of course, piles and piles of dead crabs.

My friends and I were waiting by one of the crafters who was assigned to something that all of us were very interested in, the chef. The catkin looked to be a bit more dainty than most of the other crafters that came along. He was pretty slim and shorter than all of us, even a bit shorter than Luna, who was the shortest in our group, excluding Iris. The catkin had a lot of charm though. He had a huge infectious smile as he excitedly looked over the dead crab. His cute black ears flicked in excitement as he turned the giant crab carcass back and forth, completely unintimidated by the novel ingredient. I'm not sure I'd be as excited to eat something that looked as creepy as a giant crab if I didn't know better... at least before my transformation.

"You say you've seen similar edible creatures before?" he asked as he pulled out some tools to help crack the shell open.

"I have. They can be caught in the ocean, usually using cages. The edible crabs taste really good with melted butter and cheese. There are poisonous and toxic kinds though, so I'm hoping these ones are edible."

I looked at the tools he was pulling out. He unsurprisingly didn't have anything that looked tailor-made for cracking open shells, but that didn't dissuade him. He had various-sized hammers, a few different kinds of plyers, and larger tools that looked more like they would be used for farming rather than cooking. I doubted the dead crab would stay in one piece for long.

He nodded vigorously with a huge smile on his face. "I have some things with me to test if anything in them is dangerous. Unfortunately, it'll take some time to run through everything. If everything comes back clean, I want to be one of the first to try it though! Experimenting with unique ingredients is one of my joys in life."

I tilted my head in thought. "Do you have anything to test for metals? There are some metals that are bad for you to digest like... one moment..." I turned to Piper. ("Do you have words for lead and mercury? Both are toxic, to humans at least.")

"You think there could be lead or mercury in the meat?" Piper asked.

"It's decently common in ocean creatures," I replied.

The chef nodded. "We've known that lead and .... are bad to ingest for a long time now. I have things to test for those and other metals too."

("Quicksilver, a common name for mercury,") Luna told me before I had the chance to ask.

"So you said that they pull off this back shell first?" The chef was awkwardly trying to pull off the body of the shell with a wrecking bar, but it seemed he wasn't quite strong enough to do it at the angle he was attempting it at.

"Here, let me help," Piper said before walking over to him. The young guy blushed and took a few steps away as Piper took the wrecking bar from him. She got a better grip on it, wedged it in the gap in the shell, and cracked the whole thing open in one firm shove. He ran over and helped pull off the shell, but unfortunately, it splashed the two of them with the yellowish liquid inside.

"Oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to splash you with that!" The chef looked pale next to a surprised looking Piper.

Rather than get angry about it, she began to laugh. "Don't worry, I'm a hunter. I'm used to monsters splashing their guts on me from time to time. I just didn't expect it to spray out like that."

"Ah, that's the crab butter. Some people eat that, but it may contain toxins, even if the other parts are edible. I usually just get crab legs, not the full crab, so I forgot about that part..." I explained.

Piper and the chef pulled the shell off together and set it aside before peeking at the guts inside of the crab's exoskeleton. There was a mixture of guts and gills that had to be pulled away, but the rest of the crab came apart pretty easily from there.

"What's your name?" Piper asked the chef.

"Me? My name is Alto," the chef replied. "How about you?"

"I'm Piper. I'd shake your hand, but I'd rather not get more crab juice all over me," she said with a laugh.

The guy blushed and quickly turned back to the partially disassembled crab. "Yeah! Being a chef that specializes in cooking with monster parts can get a little messy..."

I pointed down at the inside of the giant crab shell. "Those are guts and gills. I don't think that's edible, even in the best case. From here, I think you just break the legs off the remainder of the shell, shake the rest of the crab butter off, and wash them. Normally, while eating them, you would crack the crab legs and eat them at the table unless you were using the meat for something specific like crab cakes, but these are a bit big for that."

"Crab cakes?" Several voices echoed at once. Maxwell had a look of disgust, and Alto had a look of interest.

Laughing, I shook my head. "It's not a dessert. It's just the name for crab meat in a mixture of vegetables and essentially bread crumbs, formed into a patty and fried."

Everyone laughed at me, which just made me confused by their reaction.

Piper shook her head with a big grin. "Helena, in draconic, cake is only used for sweets. What you're describing sounds more like how we sometimes use steak. So, crab steaks."

I sighed. "Fine, Crab steaks then. That's going to take some getting used to, but sure."

Alto tilted his head. "Draconic isn't your first language? I didn't realize. I just thought you had an accent. Is that why you know about monsters like these?" he asked.

I frowned. "Is my accent that bad?"

Luna shook her head. ("No! I think it's cute!")

I wasn't sure how to feel about that. "It doesn't make me sound stupid, does it? Celeste mentioned my accent too..."

("No! I like it, I promise. It makes you sound... exotic,") Luna said, floundering.

Piper waved my comment off. "You sound fine, Helena. Don't worry about it. It's actually gotten a lot better since you started learning."

"If you guys say so..." I said with a sigh.

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Alto looked at me, then down at the crab. "So, uh, how much of the legs might be edible?" he asked. He was obviously trying to change the subject to something less awkward.

I pointed at one of the giant crab legs. "Well... probably up until about here. It might be a bit more, though. The crabs I had were a lot smaller, so things might be a little different."

He nodded. "Can you show me how you take apart the crab legs too?"

"Sure. I always used a little cracker tool, but something like these would work if they were bigger..." I said while pointing to one of the pairs of plyers. People used to be able to do it by hand on the smaller ones, but I never bothered to learn it. Even though crab tastes good, I was usually too lazy to eat it that often. Though my taste in food has changed a bit since then..."

I pointed out the general technique for eating crab legs, and Piper continued to help Alto actually do the work and get messy. It was a bit difficult to apply the technique one for one, considering the size, but we managed. When I finally saw the amount of crab meat one crab contained, it was pretty amazing. If they had people farming these from the dungeon, it would completely open up a whole new source of food for the region. If that didn't sound lucrative, I don't know what did. Not that I knew that much about the economics of dungeons.

Alto grinned down at the different piles of meat across his butchery table. "Okay, it looks like we've gotten everything pieced out and organized. I'm going to put these in separate containers and begin the testing process. I should be able to tell you which, if any, parts of this monster are edible by tomorrow evening."

I looked at the monster meat, which was faintly glowing to my blindfold. "Will the meat still have mana inside of it once you've cooked it?"

The catkin nodded in excitement. "A lot of cooks will destroy the magic in the meat, but I know how to preserve the mana inside. Properly handled monster meat can strengthen delvers and hunters who've been empowered over time. It's such a waste to destroy proper monster meat."

"How is that done?" I asked curiously.

"Alchemy! Being a proper monster chef requires knowledge of potions and magic. It's not as simple as how to cook a monster. It requires proper knowledge of how to treat the monster parts too. It might seem a bit different since it's just food in the end, but cooking like a proper monster chef is just as involved as any of the other crafters here. I just deal with things like spices and herbs in addition to some of the more special ingredients that potion makers and alchemists use."

I was starting to salivate a bit from all this talk of eating monster meat, even though I fed myself quite well on that snake monster.

My eyebrows rose as I remembered something. I had passed out after fighting it... I never took stock of any of the changes that I may have gained from eating its heart. The moment I started thinking about it, I was able to 'feel around' inside of my chest, for lack of a better explanation, and discover a new knot of mana I hadn't had before.

("Luna, I got something from the snake monster, but I haven't tried it yet,") I told her.

Luna perked up. ("Something new? Did it change you, or is it something like the misty wolves?")

("It seems similar to the Floral king deer. It feels like it will use more mana than the plant magic I got from that but less than the misty wolves use. Should we go somewhere to experiment with it?") I asked.

Luna bit her lip. ("We probably shouldn't try to use it out in the open until we know what it is, but I'm really curious.")

I chuckled.

Alto looked up. "Hm? Is something funny?"

Piper laughed. "Don't worry about her. Helena and Luna like to talk to each other with Telepathy rings constantly. You can usually tell from the cute looks they give each other." Piper pointed out each of us as she spoke.

"My name is Maxwell, and this is Aria and Iris," he said, pointing out the rest of us.

Alto nodded. "Right! Sorry for not asking sooner. I got a little caught up in what I was doing. I really like working with new ingredients, so like I said, distracted," he said awkwardly.

Maxwell smiled. "Don't worry about it. I think we might get to know each other better since you're getting along so well with my sister."

The catkin shrunk down a little and blushed furiously in response.

Piper turned to Maxwell. "Huh? What do you mean?"

Maxwell grinned. "Don't worry about it. I'll see you later, Alto. I'm excited to try some of that crab meat if it can be eaten safely." Maxwell pulled Aria by the waist, and the two of them started to stroll away while laughing.

"What? Hey, why are you grinning? Are you making fun of me? Maxwell, come back here!" Piper started to stomp after Maxwell, who suddenly looked incredibly amused by the situation.

Iris scratched the back of her head as she watched them walk away. "Is Piper always that dense?" she asked.

Luna turned to her curiously. ("What do you mean?")

I looked at Luna blankly. "Luna, this guy clearly has a crush on Piper. Did you see the way he was flirting with her the entire time?"

("He was?") Luna asked.

"I was?" Alto asked.

I turned to Iris, who shared a look of confusion with me.

"You're joking," Iris said flatly toward Alto.

"I- I wasn't flirting, I swear!" he stammered.

I barked out a laugh. "This is so silly. I'll see you tomorrow, Alto."

"You're not going to say anything, are you?" Alto called after me as the three of us walked away.

"You really couldn't tell, Luna?" Iris asked.

("I... I don't know. Maybe he was acting a bit shy, but lots of people are shy,") Luna replied.

"What about all of the fumbling and blushing? He turned red every time she touched him," I pointed out.

("Okay... maybe I noticed that too, but I don't know... Do you think he was flirting though?") she asked.

Iris and I laughed. "Yes, Luna!"

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