Melia stared fondly at her team as they took a well-deserved break. [Sunrise] wasn’t used to the demanding pace Melia was forcing them to slog through, but they were holding up wonderfully. They’d worked throughout the morning to consistently improve their time, and now it was time for lunch.

  “I’m starving,” Ellesea complained as she flopped down onto a large rock. She was smudged with dirt, her clothes were filthy and scuffed, but otherwise she was unharmed. Much like the rest of her party, which in normal circumstances would be considered something of a miracle.

  “Move over, Short Stuff,” Jessica griped, elbowing Ellesea as she muscled her way into the rock. “We all are. You’re the smallest, so you need the least amount of food. I claim half your share.”

  “Pft, please,” Ellesea scoffed, but scooted over. “If we’re going by that logic, Al gets all the food. He’s the biggest.”

  Jessica and Ellesea both turned toward their final founding member. The [Paladin] was lying down on his belly, reaching toward a slow-moving stream, his face half submerged under the water. If somebody didn’t know any better, they’d assume he’d drowned.

  “No, no,” Jessica countered, “He’s clearly getting his fill of water. Man cannot live on bread alone, and all that.”

  “I’m pretty sure that saying doesn’t mean they should only take in fluids.”

  “Relax,” Melia interrupted their good-natured bickering. “There’s enough to go around.”

  She pulled out several small containers of food, leftovers from her cooking spree two days ago. Though practically mirrored, Jessica and Ellesea’s reactions were nearly the same. Jessica’s eyes went wide and she had to lick her lips to stop herself from drooling, while Ellesea shut her eyes and let out a blissful moan.

  “I love you,” she said as Melia handed a container to Jessica. As soon as the gnome got within arm’s reach, she picked her up, food, body, and all, pulling her into a tight hug.

  “You say that,” Melia giggled while holding the container tight, “But you just want me for my food.”

  “Well,” Ellesea had the decency to blush. She put Melia down and greedily reached for the dish. “Among other things. But yes, with food like this, it’s hard not to.”

  “Did they save any for me?” Alastair asked with a slight smile, finally walking over. His hair was drenched and the top half of his torso was soaking wet, but it was unclear if that was from the river or all the sweat pouring off his body. Of the three fighters, he had the most physically demanding job.

  “Don’t worry,” Melia laughed, “I wouldn’t let them do you dirty like that.”

  “Not that we wouldn’t try,” Jessica said without a hint of shame. She’d retrieved a set of camping silverware from her inventory and was stuffing her face with rice. She savored a mouthful, unwilling to waste a single grain, when she heard a slight crackle.

  It was too hot to make a fire for warmth, as evidenced by Alastair already starting to dry out, but that did not stop Ellesea from summoning a magical flame. She used it to carefully reheat her own portion, and soon the smell of warming food filled the area. Jessica stared at Ellesea’s small flame and followed her fork as she brought a mouthful to her lips.

  “Elsie,” Jessica whined with her best puppy-dog eyes. The small [Mage] was unmoved.

  “Trade you for a piece of sausage.”

  Jessica balked, clearly affronted. She had a limited supply of sausage! Once it was gone, it was gone! Then she’d be out! And she’d never get to experience something this divine again!

  …unless Melia decided to cook for them again, which Jessica was definitely going to ensure.

  But the smell from the reheated food was doing something fierce to her stomach and her resolve wavered. It only took a few seconds for her to cave. The leftovers were already a nine out of ten, but reheating them brought them to a whole new level. Not to the same state as they were when Jessica first tasted it two days ago, but she doubted anything would ever match that.

  Jessica fished out the smallest, most shriveled piece of sausage and speared it with her fork. With great reluctance, she handed it over to Ellesea with a shaky hand.

  “Stingy,” Ellesea sniffed, but she had a small, victorious smile. She chomped down on the bite of sausage before Jessica could retract her offer, but then set out to reheat the [Hunter]’s food.

  Melia smiled at the byplay and decided she’d wait a little bit longer before offering them seconds. She gave Alastair his own portion, taking inspiration from Ellesea and heating up the food. Unlike the [Mage], Melia didn’t use fire and infused a rune of warmth into the dish itself. The two girls stared at Alastair’s plate with undisguised envy.

  Alastair, the [Paladin] that he was…lorded his food over them by taking a slow, drawn-out bite, chewing obviously and swallowing loudly.

  Their head snapped back to Melia, their demands unspoken, but deafeningly loud all the same.

  “I told you we have enough!” Melia laughed, taking back their empty containers and giving them seconds. Jessica looked like a dehydrated man who had been wandering through the desert, and now she’d finally found an oasis.

  “I don’t think there could ever be enough of this,” Jessica eventually said after scarfing down a mouthful.

  “Seriously,” Ellesea nodded. She was more reserved than Jessica, but her plate was diminishing just as fast. “I’ve tasted noble cooking from professional [Chefs], and this makes those dishes taste like street food.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with street food,” Melia said offhandedly, thinking of all the tasty skewers she ate the last time they visited Horizon. She’d have to visit them again the next time they went.

  Jessica looked at her as if she were deranged, but she shrugged, saying nothing. Normally, talk was cheap, but right now her mouth was a valuable tool for getting more of that food into her belly.

  “Surely it can't be that much different?” Melia eventually asked. Ellesea and Jessica both actually paused eating. Jessica stared at her, dumbstruck, while Ellesea sighed deeply.

  “Melia, I say this with all seriousness, I’m not exaggerating at all. These dishes, that [Pan Fried Trout] in particular, might be the finest-tasting food I’ve ever eaten. Don’t be deceived, that’s not downplaying everything else, and it’s not comparing my own dreadful skill. We all know how horrid I am at cooking. But my family’s [Chefs] are not. My father employs two: Dmitri Adaloff and Marie Antoine, both in their high 300s. For a chef in Horizon, that’s very respectable, but not the best. I’ve been to parties hosted by other families, higher-ranking nobles than my own. Their food is even fancier than our own. And even those don’t always give buffs like yours did.”

  “There’s only one place in Horizon that might top these dishes,” Alastair nodded seriously. “A restaurant in the castle district. Supposedly, they have a Grandmaster titled [Chef].”

  “Have you ever eaten there?” Melia asked.

  “Gods, no!” Jessica laughed out loud. “You need a reservation months in advance. They wouldn’t let people like us in. They’d take one look at our clothes and toss us out the door.”

  “They’d toss you out the door,” Ellesea muttered softly. She must have been proud of her wardrobe.

  “I’ve actually heard they don’t have a dress code at all,” Alastair said thoughtfully. “Supposedly, the owner is fond of adventurers. So long as they make a reservation, anybody can go.”

  “Yeah, but like, those reservations are usually gobbled up by nobles and wealthy merchants,” Jessica countered. “They’d look at you weird if you showed up dressed like this. You really want to sit through a fancy dinner with everybody mean-mugging you?”

  “No,” Alastair chuckled, “But this and that, Jessica. Two different things.”

  “Have you ever been?” Melia asked Ellesea.

  The young noble girl shook her head. “I’ve heard about it, yes, and it’s as popular as they’re saying. My father took my mother once for a special occasion…he had to plan it a year in advance.”

  “Wow,” Melia let out an appreciative whistle. “Sounds super fancy.”

  “You wouldn’t know it by the name,” Jessica grinned. “It’s called Penny’s. And looking at the building from the outside, it looks closer to a gated mansion than a restaurant. They even have a carriage house for your drivers to park and wait.”

  “Huh,” Melia said thoughtfully, a memory stirring. “…Penny’s, you say? That’s…interesting.”

  “How so?” Jessica squinted her eyes. She knew that look. It was a dangerous look.

  “Oh, nothing really,” Melia shrugged. “It’s just…I knew a little girl, once. Her dream was to be a famous chef. She was an orphan, see, and she didn’t want anybody to ever go hungry again. Her name was Penny.”

  Ebonvale’s third expansion focused on “the far east”, which was vague shorthand for all things Oriental, Asian, or ancient Chinese or Japanese. It was also the first time the developers attempted to fix their crafting system. It wasn’t a complete fix (or even a good one), but it added something that stuck around. Daily quests for crafting professions. Different classes had different implementations, but few were quite as memorable as the [Cooking] dailies. Other classes, like [Carpentry] or [Leatherworking], simply had players turn in materials at a guildhouse, where they would earn bonus materials, extra money, or small boosts and buffs.

  [Cooking] was different. They introduced an npc, a small child about 8 years old. She only rewarded the player with ribbons, a currency they could use to exchange for various things. Mostly ingredients, or if they saved enough, one of those fancy, classic chef’s hats. The most popular reward, by far, was a flippable table. It did exactly what it said on the tin: it was a table, and the player’s character flipped it. It was one hundred percent a meme item, and it even included a rage-face emotion on the player while they flipped it. Despite its popularity, it was somewhat rare because not only was it expensive, but players had to first reach the required reputation with the child before the vendor let them buy it.

  Melia, in her grind to complete quests and raise her reputations, obviously acquired the hat, the table, and a large stockpile of all the “rare” seasoning ingredients, which could only be found from that vendor. Long after the expansions moved on and the npc became obsolete, Melia still went back and completed her quests. Partially from habit, and partly because those ingredients were used in fun recipes that did more than simply give stat buffs.

  The curry that gave players temporary flame breath, and the refried beans that occasionally left toxic-looking green fart-clouds behind were particularly memorable.

  Now, Melia might be somewhat oblivious, but she wasn’t an idiot. The fact that the super high-end restaurant was named “Penny’s” was probably more than a simple coincidence. She wasn’t sure if the Penny she knew as an orphan quest giver was actually involved, or if it was a descendant, or simply named in her memory. A hundred years had passed since those days, and the npc was hardly an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. Chances were the name had nothing to do with the girl Melia once fleeced thousands of ribbons from. In fact, the name of the restaurant might not actually be a name itself: it could be “pennies”. For all she knew, the small copper coins, the lowest form of currency, might be called a penny.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  If that was the case, it was probably some twisted sense of humor at work, calling the fanciest, most expensive restaurant essentially “dirt cheap”. Regardless, Melia thought it might be interesting to investigate.

  “Maybe we should swing by some time,” she eventually remarked. Her friends said nothing, but she could tell from their faces they were internally screaming something like, “That’s not a place you just ‘drop by’.”

  ?

  Lunch while out “on the job” was an interesting affair. Normally, the group would set a watch and take turns eating rapidly, usually some tasteless stuff like field rations, which were filling but bland. Here, [Sunrise] didn’t need to worry about that.

  For some reason, monsters didn’t tend to spawn nearby Melia, which the group couldn’t blame them for, and when they did, she quickly dispatched them. The fact that they had been working overtime, hunting far more monsters than they strictly needed to, much faster than they were used to, gave everybody a larger appetite. Combined with the need to replenish more energy than normal and the fact that their food was extra delicious, the group was very content to sit there and digest for a while.

  Eventually, Jessica, unable to sit there and watch perfectly good monster corpses disappear, spoke up.

  “Hey. If you’re going to keep killing them, mind if I join your party? I want to test out my new skill.”

  Melia, as always, refrained from joining [Sunrise]’s party proper. As expected, her lower-level teammates gained no experience because of the vast difference in their levels, but Jessica wasn’t as concerned with that at the moment since the group wasn’t doing anything anyway.

  And while she could technically rummage through the corpses all she wanted, no matter who killed them, actual skills for looting were a bit pickier. Unless they were fighting something like a [World Boss], her new [Looting] skill would not trigger unless she, or her party, was responsible for the kill.

  “Are you sure?” Melia asked. She had not forgotten what they told her about the first time she invited them to a party, and on some level, it still scared her. Jessica paused, looking a little shaken, but nodded firmly. After several seconds, she was out of the old party and Melia tossed her another invite.

  To Melia, nothing changed. On her end, she accessed her system screen, created a party invitation, and sent it to Jessica. There was no indication that it was different from anybody else’s, no different from how it was in the game, and definitely no sign of a gigantic system-dragon heralding the apocalypse. Once she sent the invitation, that was it, and all she could do was wait to see if somebody accepted.

  Jessica clearly saw things differently.

  Melia watched her body go rigid, her eyes go wide. The subtle way in which she seemed to shrink into herself, making herself smaller and possibly less of a target. Her eyes focused on something that clearly took up her entire concentration, and Melia wasn’t sure if the shadow she imagined crossing over her face was real or not.

  Jessica’s shoulders tensed tighter as she scrunched her eyes, but after several seconds of nothing happening, she let out a breath and relaxed. Now she was a part of Melia’s party…though she looked more exhausted than she did before they sat down for lunch.

  “Okay,” Melia asked tentatively, “Now what?”

  “Now?” Jessica startled, but quickly regained her confidence. “Now we wait until you kill something.”

  Melia took heart that something as simple as using the system to invite her friends to a party wasn’t actually hurting them, no matter how scary it seemed.

  Thankfully, they didn’t need to wait too long until the next group of water goblins respawned. A small, child-sized form slowly resolved into being, striding forward leisurely as if it had simply been out for a calm afternoon walk. Its lithe body was blue and muscular in a sinewy way, covered only with a loincloth of dubious material, with several necklaces made of shells hanging around its neck. Instead of any hair, it had a large fin atop its head; it had the sharp, pointy ears common to normal goblins, but its eyes were large, glassy, and mostly black. It gave Melia the feeling of something icky, dwelling in damp, creepy places where the sun couldn’t, or shouldn’t, reach.

  She dispatched it with impunity.

  Her cut was precise, despite coming from a gigantic blade, and the [Gorblin] fell over with a wheezing warble, dead. Melia glanced over to where Jessica was sitting next to the rest of the team.

  They’d gotten used to Melia killing the random respawns, but Jessica was staring at the dead monster as if seeing it in a new light.

  This wasn’t the first time her skill had kicked in, but it was the first case where she had adequate time to actually investigate it.

  “Whoa,” she said, leaning forward. From what Jessica described the first time it triggered, Melia understood that what she was seeing matched up pretty well with what players saw when they killed something back in the game. In the game, the entire corpse of the monster would start sparkling, emphasizing that it had treasure the player could take. In real life, only certain areas of the monster sparkled, showing exactly where Jessica should start searching.

  Her skill was only level 1, so it was basic. She also didn’t have any other applicable skills to enhance her [Looting], such as a [Chef] might when harvesting a [Wild Boar]. Also, the system’s definition of “loot” was…debatable. The sparkles on this [Gorblin] were concentrated on the beads making up its necklace. On closer inspection, they seemed to be made of some sort of ivory, and Jessica could admit that somebody, somewhere, might pay a few coins for it.

  The problem was that Melia nearly beheaded the thing, and blood still poured from the wound, no matter how clean a cut, directly over the necklace.

  Jessica didn’t want to touch it.

  She crouched down next to the monster and grimaced as she reached forward, clearly trying to decide if grabbing the thing off its chest was worth all the ick. Suddenly, her eyes went wide, and the necklace vanished from the [Gorblin]’s chest.

  “Whoa!” Jessica recoiled, standing up quickly and then stumbling slightly. “Whoa,” she repeated, raising a hand to her head. “No! I’m fine!” she assured everybody as various cries of alarm reached her. “Just a little woozy. Stood up too fast, and I used a bit of mana. Wasn’t expecting that. But look!”

  Jessica held out her hand, and Melia could see the necklace dangling from her fingers…still dripping with blood. Jessica’s triumphant grin turned into a frown.

  “Dude…,” she grumbled, quickly walking over to wash her hands off in the stream.

  Melia was intrigued. Did [Looting] allow people to take things directly off the bodies of dead enemies? She supposed it made a little sense, as she watched the dead monster dissolve back into mana and disappear. [Sunrise] spent the rest of their rest theorizing exactly what [Looting] could do, how far it could reach, and what it might look like at higher levels or even evolve into.

  They allowed themselves a longer lunch than normal, but that didn’t mean they wanted to waste their time or leave Y’cennia alone for too long. They’d traveled several hours away from town, which meant they still needed to walk all that way back, and they wanted to make it back to Lakeridge before dark. Jessica left Melia’s party, none the worse for wear, but happy to be back in a “normal” party once again.

  Melia could tell the thought of being grouped together with “the [Destroyer of Worlds]” was growing on the [Hunter], and Melia herself didn’t feel as bad for her…less-than-standard invitation process as she had when she first found out about it. It still creeped her out that the system took her invitation as a personal challenge to scare the pants off her friends, but she supposed she wasn’t an ordinary individual. She understood how overpowered she was, and whatever “power” put her here clearly had ideas about how she should use hers.

  And for the moment, her power was exclusively reserved for eradicating water goblins. Jessica’s [Looting] never triggered from any of the kills Melia made on their way back, since she wasn’t in the same party, but it did crop up quite often from the ones the rest of [Sunrise] were a part of. It wasn’t every kill, and Melia wondered if there was some sort of hidden option for party settings the system didn’t openly advertise. It reminded her of the various rules for group looting the game had, including personal loot that rarely dropped only for individual players, or free-for-all, where everybody could grab anything, first-come, first-served.

  By the time they turned around to head back, [Sunrise] was acting like a well-oiled machine, very comfortable with their setup and team composition. Melia wouldn’t quite put them into the same category of players familiar with mass-grinding, or even those select players who were desperate for that one last level before they hit max cap. For whatever reason, plenty of people decided completing quests would be too slow and often thought, “just one more kill, one more kill,” all while usually still having half a bar of experience to go.

  Melia didn’t know if they were starting to trust her more to keep them safe, or if the knowledge (and fear) of her class and level gave them the confidence to take in fights rapidly without their usual precautions. But by the time they reached the safer areas close to Lakeridge’s bridge, they were moving through camps at least two, maybe three times their original speed. When they initially set out that afternoon, they’d only planned to kill a limited number of mobs before heading back, but with Melia’s oversight, they’d killed hundreds. Enough that they lost count. All things told, this single day was probably equal to, if not greater than, an entire week of regular outings for them.

  It wasn’t anything crazy. Nothing impossible or unheard of. Established guilds with mentor teams raising up younger parties could easily match or surpass [Sunrise]’s pace today. But Melia wasn’t interested in any of those other parties. [Sunrise] was her party, and she’d match whatever pace they were capable of.

  They reached the gates of town, visibly the same as when they left earlier, but riding a high and feeling like kings. Each of them had gained a handful of levels, which was still somewhat common for their rank, but they knew it would slow down. Melia was perhaps the most satisfied of all of them. She’d gladly come out with them any time, and if she had her way, that streak would continue.

  ?

  “Cennie! We’re home!”

  Ellesea and Alastair rolled their eyes at Jessica’s antics. But in a way, she was right. Ordinarily, this inn likely would have become their home...if they hadn’t stumbled across a generous dragon.

  Though saying that, they probably would have chosen a much cheaper inn if they were still operating on their previous budget. This inn wasn’t the ritziest joint in town, but it was respectable, comfortable, and most importantly: safe. The team didn’t want anything to happen to Y’cennia or her equipment since she mostly stayed back at “base”, and Melia was fully on board with making that happen.

  “Y’cennia, you here?” Jessica called again, having not heard an answer. Getting ignored on her first shout didn’t mean anything. Jessica was loud and she knew it; Y’cennia might simply be ignoring her. Or she could be focused on a job. OR she could still be laid out in a food coma if she ate any more of that fish.

  “Coming!” came a vibrant yet exhausted reply. So it wasn’t the last option then. That was good. Melia didn’t plan to force the same meal on her teammates for so many days in a row, even if they insisted it was still the tastiest thing they’d ever eaten.

  A shock of orange hair rose from above the back of one of the armchairs, followed quickly by a pair of arms (and ears) stretching toward the ceiling. As the group moved closer, it was clear she’d been busy working, not napping. Her equipment sat strewn about in chaotic organization known only to those who created it, the portable fire underneath her cauldron still smoking after being recently extinguished. Y’cennia capped off a vial of faintly luminous green liquid and stared at the potion intently. Melia did the same.

  ?

  [Lesser Swiftwind Tonic]

  ?

  Level: 300

  Quality: 3 stars

  Made by: Y’cennia Mckenneth

  ?

  On use: raises Agility by 25 for 10 minutes.

  ?

  She didn’t seem overly pleased with the result, which Melia assumed was due to the middling quality. Y’cennia was following her plan perfectly, which focused heavily on cranking out a huge quantity of potions over any sort of quality increase. As she set the vial into a rack full of similar potions on the table, her frown vanished into a smile as a thin golden light washed over her. Her earlier weariness seemed forgotten as she turned toward the rest of the team with a gigantic, beaming smile.

  “You guys! You’re just in time! I hit level 375!”

  For a split second, the room was plunged into stunned silence. Then their brains caught up, each one yelling out their congratulations, Jessica pulling the catkin into a tight hug. Alastair patted her on the back gently, while Ellesea gave her gentle encouragement.

  Melia didn’t miss the way the small [Mage]’s smile was slightly forced. Her place as the highest level in the group had finally been dethroned.

  [Sunrise] had made excellent progress today, even by Melia’s understanding of how this world generally looked at leveling. Each one of them had gained 14 levels, bringing them (even Jessica) firmly into rank 3.

  Y’cennia basked in the light of their congratulations and her accomplishment. And it really was hers. She’d slogged through multiple 12-hour days, doing nothing but incredibly repetitive, rote tasks, crafting potions over and over. A normal apprentice might craft a dozen in a day; Y’cennia made hundreds. It paid off. There was no trace whatsoever of the flighty, slightly unsure catgirl that first greeted her back in Hammerfall, unsure of her place in the team and worried about being replaced. Her shoulders were no longer hunched and she carried herself with the confidence of a self-made woman. All it took was a little boost from a generous benefactor, but all the hard work was hers and hers alone.

  Looking at the potion, which was acceptable for the level, Melia thought it might be time to adjust the training plan slightly. If Y'cennia continued on track, soon she'd be making potions none of them could use. Jessica was the only one who would really benefit from an [Agility] potion, and before today, she was too low level to use it. After a full day of grinding, Jessica was only level 313.

  “Only”.

  As if gaining 14 levels in a single day wasn’t a triumph of its own…for ordinary, average adventurers like they used to be.

  “Well, congratulations are in order!” Melia chirped brightly, pulling her thoughts back to the present. For her, level 375 was a bit of a hidden milestone. By itself, it didn’t really mean anything, but it was at the point where the most efficient leveling method changed from one expansion to the next. Instead of trying to muscle her way through tricky, expensive endgame recipes from the last expansion, at least how it would have been viewed in the game, Y’cennia could move on to the entry-level recipes from the next. They’d be much easier, with fewer ingredients and better payoffs. It was the perfect place to pause and have her try to increase her quality. But that was a conversation for later. Right now was for celebrating.

  “What do you want for dinner? I’ll cook you something nice.”

  Y’cennia’s mouth opened, and the words flowed out seemingly before her brain could catch up.

  “Fish!” she practically yelled. Jessica, who was closest to her, physically recoiled. Ellesea and Alastair laughed, while the catkin started to shyly blush.

  Well, if that’s what she wanted, Melia supposed one more night of fish couldn’t really hurt.

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