42 Doing It For The Energy...

The next morning, Elizabeth woke up feeling unusually comfortable. Even though she literally fell asleep on the cold hard floor within an isolated cave, the egg that she held onto throughout the entire night was both large enough and comfortable enough for her to confuse with a pillow. The egg also provided her with such a soothing warmth, that when she woke up, she still laid on the floor for an extra couple seconds.

When she did wake up though, a quick look at her internal clock suggested that it was still rather early into the morning; dawn had yet to rise from the horizon. So, while waiting for the sunlight to decrease the level of danger she would be taking from leaving the cave, Elizabeth decided to reforge her armor.

She set aside her Demonic Beast Egg and walked over to the still lit campfire. Elizabeth lit her mini forge furnace and after another bout of nervous hesitation, she decided to reforge her armor set; one piece at a time. Only, after thorough consideration for her options, she decided to mix in Enchanting to the reforging process.

Never in a million years did Elizabeth imagine that her first implementation of Enchanting would take place right there and then. But for the circumstances, it was the best idea she could think up.

For this reforging, Elizabeth was planning on integrating Quartzite plating to her armor set by inlaying her red-fabric based armor with Space Enchantments. Naturally, given her complete lack of experience with Enchantment Forging, Elizabeth opted to go through a couple of test-runs before messing around with her armor set.

Fortunately for her, the inscription pen that came with her forging kit would work perfectly for the low-level Enchantments she would be working on; at least for a time… So, after picking out a rather large chunk of material to start working on, Elizabeth began yet another tiresome round of Forge Refining.

For something as important as her own armor, Elizabeth would obviously not cut corners, hence her lack of hesitation when it came to refining down several kilograms worth of Quartzite. Sadly, such an endeavor would literally cause her to contemplate suicide… She could only refine two bullets with her current reserves, each bullet weighing 7 or 8 grams. For her current plan, she would need about 5.5 kilograms worth of Quartzite to complete upgrading her armor set. Just this "small" project would make yesterday's cycle of exhaustion look like a joke!

Yet the future wasn't really that terrible, as Elizabeth would be using most of the material for her chest armor piece. For her leg and arm braces, less than a kilograms worth of Quartzite would be used. Her waist armor would come in at the second heaviest at around 1.5 kilograms, and the rest would be spent on guarding her upper torso. She still needed some sort of foot and head protection — since that wasn't included in the armor set. But, there was already too much on her plate as she thought this through. So, those thoughts were sent straight to the recesses of her mind.

Eventually, when a familiar clear orange flame came to life, Elizabeth began to refine down the Quartzite that would eventually become arm braces. To her surprise, she could actually refine much more than a couple of dozen grams of Quartzite each session as she didn't have to switch focus from refining to engraving; what she did when making bullets. Of course, that only amounted to her getting an extra 10 grams of material refined per session…

Elizabeth managed to finish her first four sessions of Quartzite refining before her stomach started pestering her for food. She found it annoying having to stop to eat food, but when she recalled how spiritual meals could help her recover Inner Strength without having to go through meditation… all sorts of devious thoughts crossed her mind.

'Heh… Meditation is overrated anyways. I'd be best to just meditate for improving my Intelligence Stat when I have a skill as OP (Overpowered) as Cooking.' Elizabeth thought to herself, as the menacing laughter that came out her mouth proliferated around the sealed-off cave. Her creepy laughter was so immoral that even the unborn Demonic Beast, still in its egg, apparently started subtly shaking.

Elizabeth's eyes locked onto what remained of the dog corpse as she began to think of how to strip away the most amount of edible meat. She would no doubt be eating a lot, considering the sheer volume of material her refining would take up, so it was of pertinent importance for her to get the most out of what she had.

With her blade in hand, a rather calm Elizabeth began to dissect the dog corpse entirely. Even though she had been staying in the forest, and partaken in two battles already, it was a wonder how the scent and gore of what she was doing didn't appear to register. She just silently cut away until all that was left were bones and waste.

The only time Elizabeth frowned or showed anything close to disgust was when she came to the internal organs as she cut away. With her knowledge of cooking, she fully understood how the nutritious and healthy it was to consume visceral organs. It's just… again, the thought of eating them after personally harvesting them from the source herself… She almost couldn't do it. Almost…

It was probable that she wouldn't dare keep such disgusting things with her if she didn't know of their intrinsic value. But, she did. She knew all too well. It would be quite the hassle for her to eat just these organs alone — especially now that she didn't have a dire need to do so — but for her future, she bit the bullet and decided to go through with cooking up some… viscera.

BUT, there was no god-damn way in hell, she would subject herself to eating these organs one by one; that much would probably cripple her mental state for a while. Instead, Elizabeth took it upon herself to use up the leftover bones along with the water in her pouch to make sort of soup.

She set up a hanging station for her purse and drank a couple gulps of water before beginning the process of making soup. Adding to it most of the organs she planned on eating along with some bones. With that setup, Elizabeth left the soup to cook over the campfire by itself after parting with half of her Inner Strength to keep the meal spiritually developing; she added that Inner Strength to the largest bone, which would disperse it in her meal automatically.

With that out of the way, Elizabeth went over to her furnace and cooked all the meat she stripped away. By the time she finished cooking up the last steak, her "soup" was done as well.

[+750 Cooking Exp

Cooking Level 3 (1005/1,750) → Level 4 (1755/3750)

Current Effect: Increases the buffs received from Low-Mid grade Mortal-tier meals by 40%

Status

Name: "Dog Meat" Steaks (x5)

Grade: Low-tier Mortal Grade Meal

Description: Crafted by the user, these are magical meals imbued with Inner Strength and various Sub-Basic level principles of the path of cooking. An impressive stack of steaks.

Effects: For Level 10 or below: + 1.6 Strength + 1.6 Speed + 1.6 Endurance + 1.6 Defense + 1.6 Intelligence for 5 hours + 450 Inner Strength recovered, and some fatigue is alleviated.

Name: Visceral Soup

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. Uh… I mean it's good and all, but this is literally just some organs boiled in very watery bone stock. Like… what the fuck?

Effects: For Level 15 or below: + 3 Strength + 3 Speed + 3 Endurance + 3 Defense + 3 Intelligence for 7 hours + 1,750 Inner Strength recovered, and all fatigue is removed.]

"What the fuck indeed..." Elizabeth couldn't help but sigh as she wholeheartedly agreed with the soup's derisive side comment. Thankfully, she wouldn't have to eat the entirety of the soup in one sitting as she was mostly going for the effects of restoring her Inner Strength.

Elizabeth set aside the soup for the end since even though it was done cooking, in the spiritual sense anyway, she could let the bones continue to contribute as much as possible in masking what she no-doubt believed would taste horrible.

She ate most of one steak before abandoning her still unsatisfied stomach and continuing the Quartzite refining process. No matter how much her stomach cried in protest, Elizabeth ignored it all, as she would continue eating in a couple minutes anyways. It would be highly idiotic for her to waste her precious Inner Strength "potions" as she had come to know these steaks; that being 99% their purpose.

Yet by the time she finished her fifth steak, she still felt somewhat hungry. In truth, there was a part of her that wished she would be too full from eating to go through with actually eating the soup. But now that the moment had actually come, she felt torn on the issue. On one hand the thought of eating "Visceral Soup" was still horrifyingly bleak. But, she was still in the mood to keep eating.

In the end, she decided to just get the experience over with, resulting in her lowering the "soup purse" from its hanging station, built of wood and branches.Since she didn't have a spoon, she drank the soup's stock straight from her purse, almost as if it were a bowl, while the organs that had boiled were picked with her "branch fork."

Elizabeth took a sip and if she was honest with herself, it was pretty good. Next was a bite of… liver, and it wasn't half bad. Granted, she definitely had taken on the appearance of a bloodthirsty demon, what with her covered in blood from dissecting the dog and the soup of organs positioned by her side.

As per usual, her cooking was phenomenal and the taste of her food just as great by proxy. It would only take some adjusting of her mentality to accept such actions before she would stop making such unsightly faces as she ate…