Chapter 10 – Creative cooking

Together with her companion Fen, Sophia had arrived in a forest after a long journey. They made camp near a clearing inside the sea of trees, and she immediately wanted to explore the area.

"Hey Fen, are there really any vegetables around for me to eat? All I can see are trees, obscenely oversized ferns, and moss covering the ground." They came here to get Sophia a wider variety of food, but she couldn't see why. "Well, I can detect some monsters hiding. They're getting farther away, though, but…"

"Don't be so hasty, girl." He urged her to be patient. "Come, follow me." Guiding her, the wolf walked a little bit around the edge of the clearing before entering the forest. There, the two made their way through the undergrowth until Fen eventually stopped. "There, personally, I'm not a fan, but they're edible." He gestured at a spiky scrub with groups of small, red fruits growing on. Laspberry's the name of it."

"Lasp…berry…?" Sophia tilted her head at the familiar-sounding name, taking a closer at the fruit. "Yeah, those are raspberries, no matter how you look at it… What's up with all these close but somehow different sounding names?"

"How am I supposed to know?" For the wolf, her names were the close but not quite ones.

"Fair point… How do they taste?"

"Mostly sweet, slightly sour from time to time, but they have way too many seeds for my liking."

"Yep, raspberries, alright." Now being sure that it is indeed the same fruit, Sophia gathered a couple and tasted them. "Delicious!" Tasting the first non-protein-based food since coming to this world, the girl was delighted about their sweet taste.

"Good for you."

"Mhmm… Mmffhm!" Having stuffed her cheeks with the fruits, she still tried to say something.

"Eat or talk, not both."

"Hmf… Ah, sorry about that. They were just too good." Quickly swallowing the berries, she continued. "Is there anything else edible?"

"There are a lot of herbs. Actually, I like to use some of them on my meat from time to time."

"Is that… so?" Sophia was trying not to laugh at the thought of Fen, a freakishly large wolf, carefully garnishing his food. "Herbs are nice… but also a little lacking."

"There's also a root vegetable around. We should be able to find them somewhere around the clearing if I had to guess. It's a starchy tuber that's pretty popular amongst humans, as they like to crawl around in the dirt… to dig them up."

"Okay, leaving the remark aside… It sounds like it should be a potato… That would be perfect! Ah, wait, not potato, huh? Let me guess… po… bo…? Tato… how about a do? Okay, Bonado, it is! How close am I, Fen?"

"The name's Diseko."

"W-Wha-?!" Sophia almost tripped over her own feet and fell down as a reaction. "S-Seriously…? This is way too off from the template until now!"

"I'm just kidding, the actual name is podado."

"That's too close!" Her reaction changed to the complete opposite. "Why even bother?!" The girl's protest wasn't directed at Fen but at whoever named it.

"You seem to be familiar with the plant. Can you find them on your own? I'll go hunt some real food the meanwhile."

"I think I should manage." Sophia had seen a potato plant before, finding it shouldn't be much of a problem, at least as long they look the same in this world.

"Great, let's meet up at the camp then."

"Okay." She agreed, and the wolf immediately disappeared into the forest. "Now then, let's go and gather some!" Feeling motivated, she began searching for the potatoes, podadoes, that is.

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About 20 minutes went by before Fen showed up at their campsite again. There, he spotted Sophia tempering with something. Putting aside his catch, something resembling a deer, he called out to her.

"I'm back. Oh, it seems like you found them, huh?" He noticed the small mountain of lumpy vegetables next to the girl.

"Ah, yeah, no problem. Magic's really helpful. I managed to get them without getting dirty."

"Oh?"

"I simply removed the soil around them."

"Ho, that was a clever idea."

"Hehe~. Right now, I'm trying to find out what to actually do with those po… dados." Sophia held up a single of them while thinking of a way to prepare it. "Maybe I'll simply cook them, after all. With my limited resources, that would be the simplest and best thing to do. Yeah, let's go for that!"

"You seem to be having fun."

"Hmm… Maybe, yeah, it's interesting to replace technology with magic. But, unfortunately, I don't have a pot to cook, so…" She looked at the ground in front of her, and a perfectly round hole, about 30cm deep and wide, appeared. "That's big enough, I guess? Ah, but will water even stay in there?" As she said so, the surface of the earthen hole began to change. Sophia had used more magic to compress and smoothen the soil. "Okay, looks better already, but it's still quite soft… Oh, how about I bake it with fire? It would become something like a clay pot, maybe? Let's give it a try." Lost in thoughts, the girl set fire to the hole she had just made by pouring in her magic power to light a fire.

"What are you doing, Sophia…?" Fen was watching and listening to her mumblings until now but just had to ask.

"I'm cooking, can't you see?"

"Ah, is that what it is?" The cooking the wolf knew was nothing like this.

"Well, I have to admit getting a little bit creative."

"You… You already have a good grasp on your magic, have you not? Those were some fine skills. Your growth is almost scary." Fen was surprised how she's been using magic like it was absolutely nothing.

"Being labeled as scary by a legendary beast…" Sophia wasn't happy.

"What do you plan to do with that hole?"

"Put some water in and use it for cooking the po… dadoes." As she said so, the pot started to slowly fill up, thanks to her magic.

"I see, but how do you plan to heat it up?"

"Ah, that's…" Sophia hadn't thought about that before. "Let's see… Hey, Fen, when you taught me the fire magic, you said to imagine a heat source and pour my power as fuel into it until it catches fire, right?"

"Yes, that's a way to imagine it." He wasn't sure what she was going for.

"Does it have to be, uhh, flame up?"

"Hmm?"

"Whatever, let's give it a try-" Focusing on the hole with water, Sophia closed her eyes to concentrate better. "Okay, if I do that… then use it to… Yes, that could work, so… let's see…" Mumbling some incoherent words again, she seemed to have come to a solution. Looking confident, she opened her eyes and looked at the water. A couple of moments later, steam already rose, and bubbles formed. Soon after, the water was magnificently boiling.

"What are you doing…?"

"Boiling water?" Sophia questioningly turned her head, not understanding why Fen was so confused.

"I can see that much, but how?"

"Hmm…" She thought about what she actually did. "I imagined a heat source inside the water and poured power into it until the water began to boil. The source being underwater means that it didn't turn into fire. Well, it probably would eventually if I use more power, though… probably."

"What an outrageous girl." Fen heaved a sigh.

"Outrageous? I'm just boiling water."

"That might be true, but the way you're doing it is…"

"Ehh? I don't see a problem."

"Yeah, it's fine. You're strong, so you can be as creative as you want, using magic however you like to… I'm just losing my confidence a little."

"H-Huh? Don't tell me I did something you can't?!"

"I can do it, effortlessly even, but you're only using magic for a few days and already using it in such ways."

"So that's how it is… Don't worry about it, Fen."

"What do you mean?"

"It's all thanks to you teaching me in the first place." Sophia was incredibly grateful to him. "Without you, I still wouldn't know the first thing about magic. The reason I'm making such progress is because you're my teacher."

"Thanks. Well, it seems like I found a good pupil. Still, I have to step up my game if I don't want to be overtaken." Some strange kind of flame lit inside the wolf as he got motivated by Sophia's growth.

"Let's just get ready for lunch." Not wanting to deal with him, she continued her preparation.

Washing the podadoes with water magic and throwing them into the makeshift pot, she let them boil for a while. In the meantime, Fen skinned the deer he had caught earlier and prepared it for grilling. According to him, it's called teer, causing Sophia to roll her eyes again but ultimately ignoring it.

Once the meat was grilled and the podadoes cooked, the two shared another meal together. Using some herbs she had gathered, Sophia was pretty happy about her meal this time, finally having some decent variation. Fen stuck to his meat-only diet, though he helped himself to some of the herbs.

"By the way," The wolf suddenly addressed her.

"Hmm?"

"You can simply create boiling water with magic in the first place, without all those fancy extras."

"…" She didn't, no, couldn't answer. Sophia also decided not to talk to him for a while afterward.