702 Bread

"Relaxing sure is hard," Jin mumbled to himself after he woke up to a series of sludge crystals once again. As usual, he took a few for himself and the rest was absorbed by the System.

After the impromptu lunch, Jin decided to man the store for a few hours allowing Yun to take a break. Ironically, some of the new regular customers mistook him for a brand new employee and kept asking for 'Lady Boss Yun' instead.

Jin figured he should try to come out in person a little more to make sure that his presence was still felt. Or perhaps, that should be placed into consideration when he creates the new shopfront instance.

After that, the group dinner was a slew of reviewing the city defences for one last time. Despite her absence in the previous war room briefing, Lynn wasn't entirely out of the picture. She had merely focused on what she's best at.

Feeding the cultivators good food so that they could be in tip-top form for the fight. The Sub System User also revealed that they had prepared an energising breakfast for all the soldiers so they should be able to even exceed their peak conditions.

"We've even prepared emergency snack packs for the soldiers in case the fight drags on too long," Lynn added and Jin asked if the cultivators have such privileges as well.

"Add that option in the Pandamonium mobile app store. We can earn a lot of money from those people." Qiu Yue chimed in immediately. She also suggested offering the first snack pack with a 50% discount to entice people to try it out.

Other than that particular issue, Qiu Yue was mostly the one educating them about the latest changes to the city defences, and everyone except for Kraft was listening intently to all of it.

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"Morning Jin." Lynn greeted him after she heard Jin coming down from the stairs.

"You're really making breakfast for us? I figured you'd need to be in the Kitchen instance to oversee the production for today's meals?" Jin asked groggily as he took out a carton of milk from the fridge to drink.

"Silly, did you already forget that I promised to make breakfast for everyone at the end of our dinner conversation last night? Can't go around breaking promises." Lynn smiled with her eyes closed so she could smell the fresh bread baking in the kitchen's oven.

She woke up early to try out baking bread after receiving some tips from Qian Qian. The older woman was also currently awake in her bakery instance to finish up the last few orders for the soldiers' breakfast buffet.

"Anyways, you woke up at the perfect time. Come and take a whiff of this." Seeing how the Cultivator of the Perfectible Penguin Ruling the Kitchen Hell was so focused squatting at the oven to sniff the making of the bread, Jin copied Lynn and smelt the bread.

While the general scent was full of wheat, focusing his attention on the oven and watching it bake did make him start to feel very hungry even though with his cultivation and yesterday's spread of food, there was no actual need to eat for another day. (It's a surprise how all those extra calories escaped from Jin's body, though he suspected they might have been used up during his cultivation.)

"Were you aware that Qian Qian is an accomplished food science graduate? She even published a few research articles in the Journal of Cereal Science."

"What is it about?" Jin asked as he opened the cap to the carton of milk and started sipping it.

"She had discovered that her traditional methods of baking allowed a special form of fermentation to happen, despite the fact that according to modern culinary arts, this should not be possible? It's crazy, and many peer reviews tried to disclaim her thesis as fake, but all failed." Lynn rambled about some facts that Jin had no prior knowledge of.

His culinary knowledge was at a point where he had been amazed that cereals had their own science behind them until he thought about it logically.

"Does that mean you were also one of the doubters? That you actually didn't believe it, until you saw it?" Jin asked to try to keep the conversation going when it was exceptionally rare for Lynn to ramble on like this.

"You got me. I was taken aback by it until Qian Qian quickly took one out for me to analyse. Of course, I had to use Ayse's lab on standby to do so, and everything she claimed was true." Lynn admitted with her eyes open and with elation in her expression.

"Then we can consider ourselves lucky to have a hidden expert in our midst." Jin replied as he heard the 'ding' from the oven and Lynn had already put on the pair of oven gloves. As she took out the bread, the aroma of it spread throughout the house. It was strong enough to attract the sleepyheads out of their room.

"What is that heavenly smelllll~?" Peppers shouted in a slurred manner as she was leaning her head over railings from the second floor.

"Smells like a good hearty breakfast," Kraft answered as he picked Peppers up by her waist and brought her down with him. Unlike her usual antics, she did not make a single noise and allowed him to do so.

"Indeed. We are truly blessed to have Lady Lynn in our household." Zeru mentioned as he came in from the backyard with a towel in hand. He had never missed a day of training in his life, but all the more he would not miss this tasting of freshly baked bread.

"I won't say no to any of Lynn's food." Yun had already teleported into the living room upon System's notification that the bread was ready.

"Too bad, Milk and Qiu Yue are not here with us." Lynn lamented while she was preparing the side dishes and that prompted Jin to help out by taking the various fruit jams from the cabinet. It was already a rare occasion for Lynn to make breakfast in the morning, yet an even rarer situation had occurred for the Devilman was helping arrange the cutlery.

Even Zeru was taking the various cartons of drinks from the fridge and assisted in pouring everyone's favourite drink. It looked like a harmonious family dinner picture… If it were not for Peppers. It would have been okay if she had sat down quietly at the dining table without contributing but nope.

Her curiosity for the freshly baked bread led her to sneakily try to pinch a small portion of bread aiming to have the first taste while everyone was distracted with their various tasks.

"Don't you dare." Yun immediately pulled Pepper's ear and dragged her by her red panda pyjama's collar away from the heavenly bread before she even had the chance to touch it.

"Noooooooo!!" Peppers moaned as she ended up tied by Yun's binding spell. Even though the mage Bellator had the power to break the spell easily, she was acting as the child of the family, yearning for the bread to be served to her right now.

The rest of the group chuckled at Pepper's behaviour, and they continued aiding Lynn with the breakfast before the big fight.