NOVEL NEXT [Vol-1] Ch.18 Boiled Vegetables
Well, first thing today, I want to set a second fire in the cavern so that I don't accidentally extinguish my fire again while I mess with boiling water. After getting the second fire going, I fill the pot with water, and move it over the fire, and begin patiently waiting for it to boil. I make sure I have two spare buckets nearby as well. One for the boiled water, to prevent cross contamination, and a second in case I end up vomiting for some reason.
After I boil the water the first time, I place a raw lion root into the water. While it boils, I make myself a stone fork to prod the root with. After a few minutes, the root starts to soften, and the water gains a milky color to it. I give the root a little longer, before removing the pot from the fire. Once the root is cooled enough, I first attempt the taste the root, being careful again, since I know lion root to be mildly poisonous while uncooked.
Unfortunately, the root still seems to be poisonous after boiling. I also test the water, and the water has gained a small amount of poison to it as well, which means it won't be useful for eating or drinking. I pour it all out into the waste water bucket, then rinse the pot with more water before refilling it, and beginning the process again.
This time, I try boiling a recently seared lion root that I know to be safe to eat normally. This time, as it cooks, it goes from its very hard texture, to mushy relatively quickly. So much so, that I don't really have the option to eat it with a fork, instead, I have to make a spoon to eat it. Although it's edible, it doesn't taste like much of anything. While I'd like to experiment with adding flavoring to it in the future, for now, I want to finish my testing.
Instead of disposing of the recently made gruel, I craft a small jar out of stone, and pour some of the gruel in, and set it with the other foods that I'm checking for expiration times. I then pour a second jar, and this time seal the top with stone shaping, and store it with the other one.
I rinse the pot again, and this time I want to boil the stale lion root. I'm mostly just doing this to see if it preserves its edibility longer or not. This time, it turns to mush in the water even faster than the seared lion root, and I can still taste the stale flavor to it. I again jar it up and store the two different jars with the others, making sure to label them so that I know which is which in the future.
With a little bit of time left in the day, I decide that I can boil one more thing. Having experimented with what I wanted to today, I decide to go back to the idea of seasoning. This time, I grab two lion roots, and a single sweet rock flower. Although the sweet rock flower is wilted and no longer rigid, a quick taste check tells me it's still edible and sweet. While the water boils, I sear the lion root. Then, once the water is boiling, I add the lion root, and a sweet rock flower into the pot, and mash the lion root until I get a thick mixture close to that of mashed potatoes, and I give it a taste.
It's not as bad as just mashed lion root. It has a slightly sweet taste to it, that makes it more edible than before. For now I'll also store some in jars to see how long it lasts. I also move some sweet rock flower over to see how long it will last as a flavoring. Well, the next two days I'll be back to working on the storage room. I went through quite a bit of lion root today, so after that, I should go back out to harvest more. I'm also thankful that my fire didn't go out due to a pot breaking. I'll just let the other campfire burn itself out in the cavern tonight. With a full belly, I crawl into bed and go to sleep after a day of experimenting with boiled foods.
The next two days go by quickly as I continue progress with the stairwell. By the end of the second day, I've reached the space where the storeroom will start. Unfortunately, I'm greeted by something unpleasant back in my own room. None of the watery stored lion root has lasted. All of them are at varying stages of molding, the worst being the sweetened mashed lion root. I empty them into the garbage water bucket for today, since tomorrow I need to go out anyway and I can dump it outside at that point. The oldest of the charred lion root has also gone bad now as well. It's unfortunate, but I suppose if I'm eating lion root, I'll have to harvest it every six days at most.
The next morning comes quickly, and I get up to begin a day outside. I eat what is left of my second lion root harvest, grab my garbage bucket, and head up to the surface. Once there, I go off to the side, and dump the garbage. With some rain, it'll wash away. I don't want to accidentally use this bucket for carrying fresh water, so I take a moment to mark the bucket different than my other buckets, and take it back down into the cave before setting out to gather lion root.
Every time I gather lion root, I'm always disappointed that I have to hike quite a while to reach it. On the other hand, I've gotten pretty good at maneuvering through the mountainous terrain now, so my pace has gotten better. I just wish I could find another easy source of spuds. That would make my life much easier. Maybe I'll do some more exploring once the storage room is done.
The other downside I run into with lion roots over spuds, is that in the evening, once I've harvest my few days worth of lion root, I still have more work to do. I have to cook them, so that they don't go bad as quickly. So for the rest of the day, I sit by my fire and cook lion roots, and set them aside to store for the next few days of food.
The next two days are spent in the eventual storage room. I begin the process of shaping the room to match my idea for it. I want it to have two tall floors inside. Right now, the space is a large slanted area. What I want to do is divide it at the half way point on that slope, and make that one floor, lowering the higher part, and building a floating floor over the other half using the excess stone. Then the lower half can similarly be carved out some to make free standing shelves and other storage devices. All of it traversed by stairs.
The first step to the process is shaping supports throughout the lower storage area that will support the floor above. I plan on being extra cautious, so I build them plenty thick, with the intent of also making the floor extra thick. I don't have any information about my building materials to actually math out how thick I need everything, so I decide to err on the side of caution for all of it.
By the end of the second day, I've got the beginnings of the pillars done. They'll need finishing work as the floor gets built, but for now, this is good.
As I go to sleep though, a familiar feeling sweeps over me again.
<EPIC IMP>
HP: 488/488
MP: 120/120
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Magic: Stone Shaping
Available Traits:
Improved Dexterity: Increases dexterity and manipulation beyond what your form would normally allow.
Mighty Imp: Greatly increased stat gain per level as an imp.
Iron Gut: Negates some negative aspects of eaten foods.
Available Species:
Goblin
I've got two new traits I could pick now. While Improved Dexterity is still very tempting, the other two options give it a run for its money. Iron Gut would probably solve a lot of my food issues. On the other hand, it probably doesn't improve the taste, so "food" would just be a broad term for garbage. If I had iron gut offered when I was eating raw imp, I might have picked it then, but now, I have a few things that are edible, so I feel like it would be a waste to take.
The other thing that concerns me is Mighty Imp. It's vague, similar to when I took mana affinity. I've still been scratching my stat totals into the wall from way back when. This will likely obscure the values even further. As much as I hate the idea of obscuring the data further, being stronger is appealing. Although I still don't really want to be a goblin if I can help it. Frankly, I don't want anything to do with the fireball goblin, and I feel like taking that path will ultimately lead to me serving him. For one, I don't know if goblins require water, and I've got a nice place for myself here. I think I'd rather continue living in my current place.
Although Improved Dexterity would be nice, I think the compounding effect of Mighty Imp is what I'll take. I'm making an assumption at this point, but when I prestige, I seem to keep some percentage of my stats, and I'm pretty sure at this point it's based on stats gained. So increasing that should help me down the road. Especially as leveling continues to slow down as I prestige. There is also the obvious benefit that whenever I do evolve, if I do, that I keep all my stats at that point, so having better growth just means more then.
I pick Mighty Imp as my trait choice, and let the darkness overtake my consciousness.