Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 110: The Blue Terakos

"Now that’s what I’m calling real food!"

The team gathered after another hour to feast on the meat Elena had cooked. From the very first bite, the rich, savoury flavour and deep aroma made them feel the staggering difference between this and the Blue Serpentile fruit they had survived on for so many days. The meat was marbled with a translucent fat that seemed to melt on the tongue, releasing a burst of energy that travelled straight to their weary bodies.

Even Luke’s eyes went watery from the sheer sweetness of the fat, and he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret for the days he’d spent grumbling over the blue fruit. As for Elena, she stood tall, radiating the quiet pride of a master chef. She watched her friends’ reactions with discerning eyes, satisfied that her efforts had hit the right mark and taste buds.

[Ding! You consumed the Blue Terakos meat!]

[Ding! Your senses are slightly enhanced!]

The first swallow brought these notifications flashing across John’s field of vision. ’As expected,’ he thought, chewing slowly to savour the taste. He had been waiting to see how consuming different food from this world would alter his interaction with the environment.

As the nutrients hit his system, he looked toward the horizon. The far distant fog code shifted before his eyes. The colour of the fog, which had been a dull off-white, transitioned into a brilliant, pure white—resembling a crisp, early morning mountain mist.

’I should probably keep that name of the blue cattle to myself,’ John mused, taking a second glance at the system notification. He realised it would seem incredibly bizarre and suspicious if he suddenly corrected Elena’s naming of the Terakos.

To the rest of the team, they were Blue Cattle; to the system, they were Terakos. To avoid unnecessary questions about his source of information, he decided to let Elena’s naming convention stand.

"Phew! That meal made me feel like I’ve returned to the academy and had a proper lunch with my friends," Luke groaned. He had ignored his personal limits, devouring massive portions until he eventually collapsed onto his back, looking lazier and more bloated than refreshed.

Elena didn’t look much better; her movements were sluggish as she ate way too much of the meat. However, Ricky, Cissel, and John remained surprisingly energetic.

"Let’s finish butchering this Blue Cattle while they recover," John said, restraining a laugh at the sight of his two fallen teammates. He turned his attention back to the massive carcass. "Do any of you have an idea how to store the excess meat? We can’t just leave it out to rot."

"Leave this... To me..." Elena struggled to gasp out the words from her position on the grass.

The other three exchanged amused, slightly baffled looks. They were beginning to wonder if Elena’s storage device was actually a portal to a fully stocked warehouse.

John, Cissel, and Ricky spent the next three hours in a cycle of labour, carving the Terakos into various large, manageable pieces. Cissel, ever the pragmatist, was fascinated by the thick blue fur. She carefully skinned the remaining, cleaning it with deep focus.

Eventually, Elena and Luke managed to shake off their lethargy and join the effort, bringing the task to completion a few hours later. When it came to the preservation phase, Elena’s expertise truly shone. She produced several large bags of coarse salt and even more bundles of rope from her necklace.

She worked diligently, rubbing the salt deep into the muscle fibres of the large cuts. "Like this, the salt will keep the bacteria away, and the tight rope binding will shield the inner meat from the air," she explained, her hands moving with professional speed, telling others this wasn’t the first time for her to do so. "In the worst-case scenario, if the outside gets a bit tough, we’ll just shave the edges and still have healthy, prime pieces to cook."

"..."

This was a field where even Luke, their second foodie, lacked any real experience. They stood back and let her take command of the preservation.

As they had nothing to do while Elena did her work, and it looked clear that she’d take hours to finish, John turned his gaze toward the distance. He wanted to investigate the new type of trees appearing at a distance from the riverbank. Yet Luke didn’t like the idea.

"We have plenty of meat now, so why would we go after the fruit again? We need to prioritise different resources."

"We need to see if we can use them as fruit grenades!" Cissel replied, her eyes sparkling with excitement. She wasn’t thinking about eating the fruits; she was thinking about weaponising them.

Luke simply sighed, rubbing his bulging stomach. "Can’t we just have one day where we don’t blow something up?" Yet it felt no one shared the same viewpoint as him.

"Fine, I’ll go and check the river alone," Luke said, pausing to squint at the opposite bank, "The monsters aren’t smart enough to build rafts, and there isn’t any bridge around.

There must be a way for them to cross back and forth—perhaps a spot where the riverbed is shallow enough to wade. That would be the perfect spot to eventually build a bridge of our own."

Luke was clearly trying to justify his absence from the upcoming fruit-gathering trek. After tasting the meat, he didn’t need anything to remind him of the torture of living on fruits only. John, however, didn’t mind the split in the team.

"As you’re at it," John added, "check to see if there is a suitable place to plant the seeds we have. We need fertile ground near the water, but not too muddy, if we want them to take root quickly."

"Good, more fruit trees then. Fine!" Luke rolled his eyes, turning toward the riverbank while John, Cissel, and Ricky set off toward the silver-leafed orchard.

The trees had looked nearby from the fence, but the scale of this world continued to deceive them. It took nearly an hour of steady trekking through the grass to finally arrive at the base of the new orchard. As they walked, the distance provided a rare moment of quiet, allowing John’s mind to drift back to the army of machines they had barely vanquished.

"Do you know if there are other types of war machines like the D-1000s we met earlier?" John asked. Even with his system, he was still oblivious to the broader world history that folks like Cissel and Ricky seemingly knew a lot about.