Colby could not wait to start experimenting with cheddar. He rushed down to the cave-cellar mix with the wheel of bandaged cheese. The mobile Core Constructs tailed after him, excited for more scrapbook time.

  But nobody said only the mobile Core Constructs could be down here. After resting the bandaged cheddar on a spruce rack, Colby scurried back up the ladder to the main Core floor. He grabbed Cheese Press and The Fantastic Cheese Fan under his arms, bringing them down to the aging space.

  The moment Colby set down the two Core Constructs, Cheese Bowl and Cheese-lander rushed forward. They each held one of Fan’s noodle-like limbs, preventing him from uttering a single pun. The rest approached the trembling Cheese Press, giving him reassuring pats on his wooden frame, calming him down.

  “Everyone ready?” Colby asked.

  They all nodded.

  Colby grabbed The Aging Book. With every flip of a page, photographs depicting special moments of the cheddar materialized, each one draining a massive amount of Mana. Even with the addition of Cheese Press and The Fantastic Cheese Fan, it still took Colby an entire day before he reached the end of The Aging Book.

  The cheddar in front of him had been aged by four weeks. Its once translucent bandages had developed a light layer of grey-white-blue mold. That didn’t mean the cheese had gone bad; the mold was actually beneficial. It helped to protect the cheese during aging.

  But before he could start testing out ways to make the cheddar into the sharp and deadly tool of defensive power it was meant to be, Colby had a prior obligation to fulfill.

  In the real world, the bandaged wheel of cheese appeared in his hand. Its creamy and nutty aroma filled the air of his bedroom. Thornelius’s nose twitched as he slept soundly next to Brie, but since there was a lack of veggies, it wasn’t enough to rouse the Thornwolf from his slumber.

  Unwrapping the cheese, Colby sampled a piece of the cheddar.

  It was smooth, firmer than mozzarella, and melted on his tongue the longer he chewed. But, it was devoid of any flavor—even air had more taste than this miserable excuse for cheese.

  Most young cheddar were typically aged between two and three months. Though it had been aged for four weeks, hardly any flavor had been developed. That extra month made a massive difference in taste. And this was why aging was so crucial.

  Hopefully, it wouldn’t affect how ‘sharp’ the cheese would be.

  Unfortunately, Colby’s hope was misplaced. Aging definitely affected the cheddar’s sharpness, but he’d find a way. He always did.

  Throwing the cheddar into his Inventory, Colby went back into his Core and retrieved the cheese from the door that connected his Core and Inventory.

  If this idea didn’t work, then he’d have no choice but to focus all his efforts on improving The Aging Book. Not like he wasn’t planning to anyway. One month of aging was nothing in the cheese world.

  Colby grabbed Curd-Cutter and sliced out a wedge of cheddar. He began shaving it down near the tip. Each stroke removed thin curls of cheese, sharpening the wedge. Bit by bit, the broad end vanished, reduced to a single fine point. When he was done, it no longer resembled a wedge of cheese, but more like a cone.

  “What do you think? Is it sharp?”

  Curd-Cutter crossed his string-like limbs together, forming an ‘X’.

  “Yeah, I thought so. But it’s still worth a shot.”

  Colby loaded the cone of cheddar into Smart Waiter and set it up to come out as a [Cheese Shot].

  Back in the real world, the cone shot out of his palm. It struck the wall with a soft thud, then slumped downwards, leaving a greasy smear behind.

  The pointed edge that he had carved out had crumpled, and the wall was undamaged—minus the cheese stain that he would have to clean up.

  That sucked. The cheese wasn’t sharp enough despite his creating an edge. It really looked like mild cheddar wasn’t sharp enough. He had to find a way to improve The Aging Book so that it could age a cheese past four weeks.

  But there was still one last trick up his sleeve before he called it quits.

  Colby went back into his Core and sliced out another wedge of cheddar. This time, as he carved a pointed edge using Curd-Cutter, he channeled the intent to ‘cut the fluff’. With every slice, the cheddar grew harder.

  When he was done, he had a hard, conical piece of cheese. It was nowhere as hard as compared to the young Gouda, but still harder than mozzarella. Hopefully, with a sturdier base, the cheddar might just be strong enough to hold a sharp edge.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  After loading it into Smart Waiter, Colby focused back on the real world.

  Once again, the cheddar shot out of his palm and struck the wall. But it didn’t drop. It was stuck there. And he definitely didn’t make it sticky, which meant—

  Congratulations! You have learned a new spell, [Cheese With An Edge]!

  Cheese With An Edge

  Level 1:

  Have you ever wanted to cut something using nothing but cheese? Well, now you can! Cheeses created with this intent are sharper than your average cheese, and we’re not talking about their flavor. Unless you like the taste of blood, it’s recommended not to consume cheese casted with this intent.

  (Each level slightly increases the sharpness of the cheese.)

  Yes! He had done it!

  Colby wanted to scream and shout, but it was four in the morning, and Brie became a real grouchy grouch if she didn’t get enough sleep.

  He rushed over to the wall and inspected his masterpiece. The cheese really had sunk inside the wood, albeit barely. But barely was a lot better than nothing at all. Colby yanked the cone of cheese out, revealing a little greasy dot where it had pierced through. Good thing it was small enough that you wouldn’t notice it unless you were really looking for it.

  In hindsight, testing out such a spell in his bedroom was a terrible idea, but who cared!

  With some creative spell intent, he had managed to make mild cheddar ‘sharp’. Had its flavor changed as well?

  Colby brought the non-sharp side of the cone of cheddar to his mouth and bit down. He immediately regretted it.

  The cheddar was hard. Not so hard that he couldn’t sink his teeth into it, but hard enough to make him wonder if he had chipped a tooth. As he slowly and painfully chewed, his jaw muscles working overtime, the flavors of the cheese melted in his mouth. There was still hardly any taste to it, just a small little uptick to the flavorless disgrace of a cheese—totally imperceptible to the average person, but not to a cheesemaker like him.

  Either way, Colby now had more ways to defend himself and, theoretically, a new way to intensify the flavors of his cheeses. And right now, it was time to rest.

  Colby spent the next few days creating cheddar, but no matter what he did, [Cheese With An Edge] remained at Level 1. And when he attempted the same thing with a piece of young Gouda, it wasn’t sharp enough to trigger [Cheese With An Edge].

  Everything fell back on The Aging Book.

  Incorporating special moments into the photographs helped to reduce the Mana cost, but it couldn’t extend the length of time between photos. And with a finite number of pages, the furthest he could age a certain piece of cheese was four weeks.

  Frustrated with the lack of progress, Colby decided to work on something else.

  He had been so focused on the chèvre with candied ginger that he had neglected trying to fuse it with ricotta. And ricotta was the key cheese to that sweet, fluffy cloud he gave to Elaine as an intermediary gift; he still had to perfect it so it could be a perfect congratulatory gift for her.

  Ricotta was a whey cheese made from leftover whey. The ricotta he had made was made using the leftover whey from halloumi. While the halloumi he made used cow milk, traditionally it was a mix of sheep and goat milk. And the best way to improve it was to go the traditional route.

  However, Colby only had access to goat milk.

  Su-sheep milk was expensive. There was no way his parents would allow him to use it, even with that one cheese experiment allowance a day that had been quickly discarded the moment he started collecting ingredients by himself.

  Su-Sheep were monsters of both the land and sea—mainly the sea. It made farming them more complex than land-based mammals as a result, expensive milk.

  Colby walked down to the beach, steering clear of the See-Star farm where Farmer Hound presumably was. The only canine he wanted was Thornelius. Conveniently enough, the Thornwolf had decided to accompany him. He rolled around in the soft sand, bolting the moment a wave came a bit too close for his plant-liking.

  Pacing around the coastline, with a hand over his eyes to block the glare of the morning sun, Colby gazed at the ocean. The only thing he could spot was the waves rolling in. That was immediately obscured the moment he walked into the cove right below the lighthouse. As he emerged from the other end, he saw something cheese-related, but not at all what he was looking for.

  It was Shell Gingers growing out of the cliff.

  He didn’t exactly have a use for them since his focus was now on Butterfly Gingers, but it did give him an excuse to try out his cheese.

  The [Cheese With An Edge] materialized in his hand. Holding the conical-shaped cheddar like an awkward chisel, he drove it into the root of the shell-looking plant. It was slow, laborious, and each strike made the tip bend slightly. Still, he was actually making good progress. It was far faster than when he had to manipulate a Lob-slice.

  Thornelius barked, forcing Colby to look up from his work.

  The Thornwolf growled at the ocean, and Colby turned, wondering what had gotten him so worked up.

  Clicks and clacks cut through the calm, rhythmic wash of the waves. Dark shadows began to rise from the coastline. A swelling mass of Lob-stirs, Lob-stabs, and Lob-slices emerged—far larger than the group that had surrounded Porter. Scrapes and clanks of biological utensils echoed out as they poured out of the ocean, their pin-like legs puncturing the soft sand beneath as they stampeded towards him.

  Curds!

  Even with his recent advances in defensive cheesing, it wouldn't be enough to protect him from that.

  “Let’s go, boy!” Colby shouted, picking Thornelius up.

  As he ran, Thornelius kept barking and growling. Glancing back, Colby realized something. The lobsters weren’t chasing him; they were being chased themselves.

  A swarm of white specks churned just beneath the ocean. Above them flickered a myriad of bright colors. Together they followed in a shifting mass that followed in the lobster's wake.

  Those were the Su-Sheep.

  They were like regular boring sheep, but instead of wool, they grew a coat of thick sticky rice. The colors at the top of their white rice coats weren’t sushi toppings, but merely rice imitations of them. Each mimicked a different flavor of seafood, shaped and tinted to resemble the real thing. Some special variants of Su-Sheep had a dark green ring around their coat, meant to represent the band of seaweed that held the ingredients together. But at the end of the day, it was all just rice.

  They swam through the ocean, bleating at the top of their voices as they burst onto shore. Sand spread everywhere when they hit land, scattering into a thick cloud as they ran after the lobsters.

  No, something was amiss.

  They weren’t chasing after the lobsters. Something was chasing both of them.

  The water split apart behind them. Emerging from the ocean was a large, bright red crustacean—a much larger version of the lobsters that were right behind Colby. Its size wasn’t the only thing different from the lobsters. A tailored suit was carefully fitted around its segmented body. And resting between its eyestalks was a tilted fedora.

  It raised its claws, showcasing the barrels that protruded from them.

  Gunfire rang out, echoing across the coast and causing Colby to flinch.

  What the curds was that!