Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 12: Dead Weight

Ezra glanced behind his shoulder as he dragged her along.

She slid on the wet gravel, lighter than he expected without the armor. Her ivory hair dragged through the shallow water at the river’s edge, picking up dirt and small stones.

Her bare chest rose and fell steadily and Ezra fought the instinct to gaze further.

’I should put something over her. Then again, she didn’t give me the courtesy.

What’s that saying go? Karma’s a bitch?’

He shrugged.

East.

She’d said east, so he dragged on.

The current moved the same direction, so he kept the water on his left and walked. Not that he knew which way was east—it seemed right enough.

The trees were different here, shorter, thinner-trunked and spread further apart. The canopy that had choked out the sky since he’d entered the jungle was gone, replaced by open air and a breeze that actually reached his skin.

He could see clouds. White and slow, drifting across a blue that wasn’t quite Earth-blue but close enough. Actually, they were closer to the ground than they should be. Miles closer.

’Does that have anything to do with the air? I’d bet my arm it doesn’t.’

The three moons had set too. He could still see the faintest edge of the green one near the horizon, but the other two were gone.

Ezra dragged her for another long twenty minutes before his grip started to slip. Her ankle was wet and his fingers were cramping, so he switched to her wrist, her good arm, the right one.

Easier to pull anyway. He’d totally forgotten to pull her by the good one first. She didn’t seem to be in pain, though.

Speaking of, her body left a trail in the gravel that curved with the riverbank, like a slug minus the slime. Well, there was slime, just the human kind.

She stayed limp, eyes pacing left and right. Dreaming of something, no less.

Ways to butcher Ezra probably.

A miracle given her condition, though.

He talked to her anyway, tensing his shoulders in case she suddenly rose from her slumber.

"You’re prettier when you aren’t talking. Y’know that?"

The sound of gravel shifting and water running was all that answered.

"You owe me a spear, by the way. That was my first ever weapon and you kicked it like it was a chihuahua. I guess I can’t blame you. I fucking hate those dogs. Well, I did."

The river bent south and the gravel bank gave way to grass and packed dirt—easier footing. He picked up the pace, such as it was. A limping man towing an unconscious woman by the wrist through dirt, he’d never think this was how his life would go.

Then again, he did wish the plane would’ve never made it. He got his wish, somewhat, and then some.

Grassland opened on the right bank, stretching flat and yellow-green toward a horizon he couldn’t see the end of. To the left, low hills with scrub brush and the occasional tree clinging to a slope.

The air smelled different here. Drier, less green. Something was blooming somewhere, or rotting, he couldn’t exactly tell.

Halfway through the bend, he spotted a cluster of berry-looking things growing in a bush at the water’s edge. Dark red, apple-sized, hanging in bunches. His mouth was already salivating.

He hadn’t eaten since the crab, and that’s excluding the STD Lamproctopus he stomped on this morning.

Ezra dropped her arm and it went dead on the ground.

"Don’t go anywhere, bird girl." He chuckled as he jogged to the berry bush. "Wait, you can’t anyway."

He put his finger out.

"Appraisal."

[ Dwarf Bloodberry — Common ]

> Profile: Non-toxic. Mildly astringent. High caloric density relative to size. Edible raw, flavor improves when lightly charred. Common along freshwater banks in temperate transition zones.

The detail was sharper than before. The old Appraisal would have given him the name and a sentence. Now it was spitting paragraphs. Level 4 was doing real fucking work.

’Yo system, what is... astringent?’

[ Bzzt ]

He cursed under his breath. To think they’d formed some sort of breakthrough.

Taking the risk, he picked a handful and ate two raw while walking back to her. It was tart, seedy, and barely had any flavor. But it was something. His stomach stopped twisting after the fourth one.

Then he heard a sound, faint and from the back of his head.

The trigger of a lighter, a beam so heavy it drew his breath and left him gasping. Fragments of the night came to him all at once, the purple eyes, the silence of it all.

He could never forget the explosions that came after, the teeth that looked human enough.

Ezra doubled over and threw up minced berry and spit residue. The bile went into the river and dissolved in the current.

His hands were shaking.

Both of them.

He stared at them like they belonged to someone else. They finally stopped shaking only after he heard the bird girl cough.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and steadied his breath.

She was still lying where he’d left her. Still breathing, too. Still dreaming of ways to butcher him.

He snagged a few more berries and upped the heat in his palm, letting the Palate skill work the outside. The red shriveled to half its size, then turned up darker.

’Looks about right.’

He ate one just in case. It exploded into his mouth and his knees nearly buckled.

[ Meal Consumed: Charred Dwarf Bloodberries ]

[ Effects Applied ]

> +25 Max SP

> Passive: Sated (Provides momentary fullness)

> Duration: 25 minutes

[ Event Summary ]

> Crafted: Meal (★) x1

> +75 Frontier Tokens

His status adjusted immediately.

> HP: 156/210

> SP: 205/205

’So even that counts? Can’t I just keep stacking berries on top of berries?’

[ No, the host and its party may only partake in one meal buff at a time, albeit the host may find to their satisfaction a range of threshold upgrades in the Frontier Market ]

’So now you want to talk. Anyway, that makes sense.’

Ezra made his way to the bird girl and dropped three berries over her face. They bounced off her cheek and landed near her hair.

"Hey. I got you brunch." He crouched down and nudged her forehead back and forth. "You there?"

Nothing. She was out cold.

He picked up the berries, dusting the dirt away, and paused. This was the closest he’d been to her lips. They were cracked, dry, and shivering despite the morning sun beating on his shoulders. Even then, they were plump and pale in a way that convinced him if he looked away it’d be a sin.

Ezra brought one above her lips, and squeezed the warm berry juice down the gap of her open lips. It pooled in her mouth and she started gurgling.

"Swallow it."

She eventually did.

He fed her the last two charred berries, had to help her chew by moving her jaw himself.

"I don’t even know your name," Ezra muttered, standing back up and grabbing hold of her right hand. He started pulling again, the buff of the passive working through his muscles. "Then again, you don’t know mine either."

The river straightened and the banks widened in the same stride. Ahead, where the water curved one more time toward something he couldn’t see yet, there was a smudge on the horizon. Grey-brown. Squared edges. Not like any rock formation he’d seen. They were... familiar.

Walls, it had to be. Or buildings.

Hard to tell this far out still.

But it had to be something built by people.

He kept walking.

[ Ping! ]

He braced for another migraine. It didn’t come—just one notification, clean and quiet.

[ Quest assigned: Reach Harken ]

He knew better.

If something from afar can be seen from this distance, it was safe to say it’d take the entire day yet to reach it. Anything could be standing between wherever far that was and the gravel he stood over.

But it wasn’t like he had a choice. Besides, she’d been holding tighter by the second.

He couldn’t just not do it.

Worse yet, the System changed the first quest thrice over in the span of eight hours. It was unreliable at best.

But that was a problem for another day.

’Alright, I’ll bite.’

[ Quest accepted ]

> Objective: Deliver yourself and your companion to the settlement of Harken.

> Reward: 2,500 Frontier Tokens

> Failure: Death (either party)

"Look alive, bird girl. Or I’m not getting my paycheck."