36 Madness

Elizabeth was left gasping and stumbling on her feet as the last feral dog left her alone. This being only the second time she had entered a fight, she still had no control over how much Inner Strength she used. So at the moment, not only were her energy reserves almost entirely spent, her eyesight was blurring and her body felt exceptionally feeble.

Each and every move she made in those moments when confronting the three dogs were made with her body unconsciously pushing itself to the utter limit; resulting in all her attacks being extremely inefficient with regards to energy-to-output.

Though her body did its best to keep her in fighting form, what with all the adrenaline still rushing through like a geyser, with the medical knowledge she possessed, Elizabeth knew that she had, at most, a couple minutes before her body stopped producing natural painkiller-type hormones and she truly felt the damage she had thus far sustained.

She could imagine how bad the pain would feel after her body cleared up a bit. So, it was with a tinge of madness clouding her eyes that Elizabeth decided to go over and pick up one of the dog carcases lying on the floor and start butchering it with her blade.

Elizabeth barely had any Inner Strenght left, so opting to treat herself with Acupuncture would not only take time in meditation. But, given the dispersal effect her current level of Acupoint gave, she would definitely not be able to treat herself before the true pain kicked in. And with the level of focus, her Acupoint Skill demanded, she didn't dare bet on herself in being able to treat herself thru the pain.

So, instead of immediately focusing on treating herself, Elizabeth chose to "cook" herself a magical meal. From her conversation with P, as well as with her personal experience thus far, Elizabeth understood that all the beings in the Shadow Realm had some level of Inner Strenght, Qi, or Magic. Cooking with these energy infused ingredients exponentially boosted the effects of her dishes. Needless to say, those dogs which were clearly some of the higher ranked prey in the forest would have quite the sizable amount of Inner Strenght built up within them.

Elizabeth didn't have much to work with as she wasn't in a nice kitchen. She was surrounded by the forest vegetation and the only thing resembling cooking equipment that she currently had on hand was the Inferioria blade. Worse still was the fact that Elizabeth wasn't planning on using fire this time. With her Inner Strenght, she might have been able to start a fire, given her knowledge of forging arts. Unfortunately, time was ticking and she neither had the luxury to meditate and get more Inner Strenght, nor the patience to wait for the meat to cook.

There were some herbs around her, but without knowing whether or not they were poisonous or not, she didn't dare try her luck. She could only hope that the dog meat wasn't toxic to her else she would be doubly screwed.

o, there Elizabeth could be seen, still bleeding and breathing heavily as she chopped up a piece of the dog off. With just raw meat, the only dish Elizabeth could think of making was Tartare, so she picked a fist-sized portion of meat. She limped over to a nearby tree and stripped off a section of bark to act as a chopping board, lest she mince the meat on the ground and eat dirt along with the Tartare.

Sadly, Elizabeth had yet to find a source of water, so she could only flinch as she became increasingly bloodied; partly because of all the blood squirting out of the meat she minced, and partly because her own wounds which were still open and fresh. By the time the minced meat's texture fit the profile of Tartare, Elizabeth was so stained with blood that others would think she just came out of a slaughterhouse.

All while she had been mincing the meat, she had been gradually infusing what was left of her Inner Strenght into the meat in accordance with her [Saintly Cooking] principles. When she was done, the ground meat before her was ready for consumption, leaving her reserves of Inner Strenght in the single digits range.

[+150 Cooking Exp

Cooking Level 3 (755/1,750) → (905/1,750)

Status

Name: "Dog Meat" Tartare

Grade: Low-tier Mortal Grade Meal

Description: Crafted by the user, this is a magical meal imbued with Inner Strength and various Sub-Basic level principles of the path of cooking. This is the first meal the user has created out of spiritual ingredients. Even though it's just raw ground meat, given its treatment and initial ingredient quality, it stands as a magical meal.

Effects: For Level 7 or below: + 1.5 Strength + 1.5 Speed + 1.5 Endurance + 1.5 Defense + 1.5 Intelligence for 5 hours + 150 Inner Strength recovered and natural regeneration is ever-so-slightly promoted.]

Elizabeth looked at the mess she had made and felt her stomach turn as she envisioned herself eating raw meat that she had personally cultivated. However, given that the outcome of not eating it would result in a definite deterioration to her already poor health, and the fact that she was already feeling gradually increasing bursts of pain… The madness that caused her to start this endeavor returned and overpowered her into bringing the "Tartare" up to her mouth…

"Uh… I think you're forgetting something..." P's voice entered Elizabeth's ears and stopped her for just a second before the madness driven by the pain she was experiencing, drove her to ignore those words of advice.

.

.

.

Elizabeth ate a bite of the "tartare" she had just made and felt an initial burst of disgust as she realized what she was doing. She almost started vomiting, however, after the food entered her stomach and started the most basic level of digestion, the effects of this "spiritual meal" began to take effect.

Elizabeth stopped, both from retching and from eating, as her she felt a cool breeze start abating the pain she felt. Her wounds were still in very poor condition and blood still leaked everywhere, but that cooling sensation was enough for her to temporarily ignore the madness spawned from pain. Elizabeth still had a majority of the tartare in her mouth as even in her maddened state she wasn't driven to eating dog meat in droves.

Thus, as she felt the extremely mild effects from just a bite's worth of tartare, she wanted more… She swallowed more and more pieces of the tartare in her mouth and the cooling sensation intensified. Yet by the time her first mouthful of food was consumed, Elizabeth had yet to feel the cooling breeze from dying down; she wanted even more....

Elizabeth didn't know why, but she felt compelled to shape the ground up dog meat before her into a less savage appearance. Perhaps it was a psychological trick she was unconsciously executing to prevent her from losing whatever was left of her self-identified humanity. She used her blade to shape the meat into the patty shape, tartare was usually presented in. But before continuing to eat, she recalled P's warning.

Now that she had calmed down, she looked at the food before her with covetous eyes, as it was the precious medicine that would make the pain go away. She then looked below her and found the half butchered dog lifelessly lying beside her. What could she be forgetting?

"Fuck!" Elizabeth couldn't help but curse as she looked into the half decimated head of the dog. Embedded in its brain, an unassuming cloudy bead could be seen dully absorbing the light that shined on it. In her haste to abate the pain and heal herself, Elizabeth had actually forgotten one of the most important aspects of spiritual cooking; Core Preparation!

She knew of the existence of "cores" since she absorbed the [Temporal Meditation] technique and of how to prepare these cores in her magical meals since she learned of [Saintly Cooking.] All living beings that possessed and or cultivated energy possessed these "cores," but in the Mage/Martial Practitioner Realm, these were not "true cores." Rather, beings around Elizabeth's level only possessed Magical Fragments.

As Elizabeth looked at the unused and perfectly intact core of the dead dog before her, she rejoiced at its intact state as her dirt bullet would have utterly annihilated it had she pulled the trigger mere millimeters more to the right. Ignoring all pretense, Elizabeth directly plunged her hand into the dog's brain and picked the core out. In her hands, it was about the size of a finger bone's segment. Thus confirming that the dog had been between Level 5 and 10 when it was alive; in other words, a Pawn-level beast.

Elizabeth took the Magical Fragment and held it between her thumb and index finger. Given that she had already completed her magical meal, she either chose to use the core in a different meal or incorporate it into the tartare as a garnish. Its effects would be significantly downgraded from such an action. But, considering her lacking reserves of energy, it wouldn't do her much good to recover her energy to make a different meal.

So, with the lackluster amount of Inner Strenght she had acquired from eating a mouthful of her tartare along with what was originally left of her reserves. Elizabeth completely exhausted what remained of her Inner Strenght as she charged the Magical Fragment in her hands until it began cracking with the pressure her energy introduced.

Unfortunately, it didn't fall down as a crystallized power as she intended, meaning there was still space for more energy to augment the core. But, because it was already at the breaking point and Elizabeth was no joke herself, with 20 Strenght, she managed to crush the core in her fingers with physical pressure.

As the core crumbled and fell down as a fine powder from her fingers, it almost looked like salt. After it completely covered what was left of the tartare, Elizabeth resumed eating.