Chapter 7: I can eat this?
"Greetings, Adventurer, please allow me to give you my thanks. I, the village elder and leader, am highly grateful for your services here, and would love to present you with a reward. Please, call me Elder Coron. I am the leader of this village." The elder bowed respectfully with both hands clasped around his cane.
His silver hair was tied back in a ponytail. His thin silver eyebrows sat above his eyes. He had silver pupils and a long flowing silver beard that surrounded his kind smile. He had the aura of a kindly grandpa.
"Elder Coron, I was truly just looking out for myself, I'm quite injured and exhausted, is there a healer or anything like that in this village?" Kai liked to receive rewards, but he was exhausted and hurting, he wanted to take a nap somewhere, but didn't want to die from some shadow infection or something.
"Please, allow me," The tall elder stooped down before Kai and reached a glowing hand to Kai's chest. Kai felt a pulse and warm energy flow through his body.
'This must be gramps' mana. Hopefully he's a healer,' Kai thought as he felt the warm mana flow to his wounds and it began to sink into them, but as it did the warmth turned to hellfire, 'What the hell gramps are you a lover or a fighter?!'
Kai sank to his knees with his teeth clenched as the mana worked on his wounds. The sensation lasted a minute or an hour, but when it was done Kai felt renewed.
'That was nothing like the Goddess' healing!'
"Elder Coron, thank you for healing me," Kai said with a bow towards the Elder as he regained his feet.
"No, Adventurer, thank you. You have saved our First Village from further heart ache. Many have died in this plain of tall grass... My kind and yours both..." The Elder trailed off as he looked into the grass in the distance, eyebrows furrowed as he seemed lost in thought.
Now that he was closer to the Elder and paying attention, he saw noticed the Elder's skin was a Rose Pink color, he hadn't noticed in the dim torchlight.
"I'm glad it helped. Do you know of any place I would be able to sell this corpse? I know it may be too late and if so, I'll just set up by this tree out here and wait until daylight." Kai put on the guise of a nice Adventurer, looking for assistance, but not wanting to be a bother to anyone.
'Now that I've gone through that hellfire healing, hopefully I can get a bed out of them or something... I'm completely beat.' Kai thought as he carried on with the Elder.
"Please, we have an inn for wandering folks such as yourself, and I would provide a free room for you as part of your reward and they could even whip up a stew for you if you are hungry!" The Elder seemed really nice and talked to Kai in a jovial manner, so Kai planned to get every benefit he could from the geezer.
"That would be wonderful!" Kai replied excitedly, he didn't have to feign this excitement. Kai couldn't wait to have some delicious food. The worst part about living on the streets for Kai was the lack of good food.
People would sometimes give Kai a chance and allow him to do some small tasks for food or a little money. This wasn't common, though, and many people openly shunned Kai. He could also purchase some decent food every once in a while, but he would mainly buy vegetable nutrient solutions to make sure his body got what it could, and they didn't taste good at all.
So with Kai's lack of cuisine experience, anything that wasn't a rodent was sure to be a grand meal. In his old world he had no way to improve his life, or at least not one that he could figure out. But in this new world, he had strength and he planned to be the strongest person here so he'd never go back to the terrible sort of life he had before.
His main goals were simple. Eat the best food whenever possible. Get strong and finish this tower for that sweet sweet cleaning ability. He couldn't wait! With his power he'd be able to get the best food whenever and no one could stop him, and with his cleaning ability, he'd always be immaculate!
Kai was smiling like a lunatic as he thought of all this and the Elder cleared his throat as he saw the expression.
"Ahem, Esteemed Adventurer, what might we call you?"
"Kai"
"Ahem, Esteemed Kai, please, allow me to show you to the inn so you may... uh... wash up perhaps. After your long journey I'm sure you're tired and famished. Let us go now and we'll have a meal prepared as you clean up," Elder Coron had a wry smile on his face as he saw the blood drenched lunatic smiling away, dragging a huge dead coyote around.
"Sounds great! Should I leave this body outside the gate and get it in the morning or what?" Kai blinked at the elder, he kept asking about this body but no one would tell him where to take it!
"That would be a fine ingredient for the stew, Esteemed Kai. If they prepare it with the Shadow Coyote, it will allow you to absorb further Shadow Essence as well as it is highly nutritious and provides various benefits due to it having absorbed ambient mana to get to the level it was at." Elder Coron explained as he led Kai down the road, creating a bloody trail in their wake.
The village wall was a large construction of sturdy timber. It rose like giant pikes out of the ground, standing firm and protecting the entire village. It stood 20 feet tall and looked impressive.
Kai marveled at the grand wooden buildings inside the village. Each one seemed to be crafted from beautiful deep brown planks, and the trim on the buildings had exquisite carvings running all along them. The carvings glowed and provided light along the village road.
'Must be some type of magic, it looks beautiful. This whole village is such a stark contrast to the messing concrete world of modem day,' Kai thought as he followed Elder Coron.
They quickly arrived before a tall three story wood building. It continued the trend of having the glowing carvings along it's roof and along the outside of some windows. The faint blue tinted glow from the carvings gave the place an ethereal presence.
The elder advised him to leave the beast's corpse outside and entered to speak with the owner of the inn on his behalf, after a few minutes he was directed to a washing station on the other side of the building. The guard that had followed the elder and Kai previously met them there and provided Kai a new leather backpack that looked sturdy as well as a change of clothes.
Kai entered the wash station which turned out to be a small one story building that didn't take up too much space compared to the inn. The insides were well equipped with a shower that even had hot water as well as basic toiletries.
Kai's eyes brightened seeing the luxury of this place.
'Even their out house is better equipped than I ever was on Earth!'
After an hour of soaking in luxury, Kai was dressed and in the dining room, enjoying his third heaping bowl of Shadow Coyote stew. The dish was slightly spicy, and had a wonderful balance of vegetables and herbs. When Kai smelled it, he had to clench his mouth shut to stop the torrent of drool from shooting onto the floor.
There were a few other guests in the inn and from all the commotion, they joined in and Kai allowed them all to enjoy the wonderful dish. With grateful goodbyes, patrons slowly returned to their rooms in the inn.
'I didn't think my life would be instantly so much better here! Sure, I have to fight monsters and what not, but what's good without a little bad for comparison, eh?' Kai thought as he lay on a mattress that felt like a cloud, swiftly sinking into sleep.
A knock sounded and Kai was instantly standing with both of his Tusk Blades drawn. He scanned the spacious room as he crouched, prepared to commit violence.
His heart rate slowed as he noticed there was no one in the room with him. He opened the door to see the owner of the inn.
"Sorry if I've woken you, Master Kai. We've prepared a wonderful breakfast this morning that would prove beneficial for your advancement, if you'd like to join us." The owner stated with an apologetic expression on his face.
Kai was surprised to hear about benefits of his advancement, but what enticed his eyes to open wide was the word breakfast. He didn't hear anything about payment, either. It was like a switch flipped in his brain as he heard those words, and his full focus landed on the innkeeper.
"Please, honored innkeeper, don't allow me to keep us here any longer, lead on." Kai's excitement was palpable and it caused a smile to bloom on the innkeeper's face.
As he munched on the golden omelette before him, Kai couldn't help but close his eyes in bliss with a wide grin on his face. The fluffy golden eggs were stuffed with various peppers and vegetables along with a delightful bacon type meat that almost melted in your mouth.
The innkeeper was nearby at the bar watching Kai with a slight smile on his face. He had explained to Kai that all of the ingredients contained faint traces of essence and mana that Kai would be able to absorb as he ate, just like the coyote meat they'd used in the stew.
He also advised him that these sorts of ingredients could be found in many meals in the First Floor, as there were many beasts and various vegetables and herbs that soaked up mana naturally.
As Kai cycled the foreign essence into his mana, he continued devouring the food. Once he finished he just sat there, not moving a muscle in complete contentment. He eventually made it back to his room and went straight back to sleep.
As he stretched in the afternoon light beaming through the window in his room, he thought of his status and took a look at any improvements it might show.
[Status]
Main Stats:
-Agility: 24 (14+10)
-Dexterity: 28 (18+10)
-Fortitude: 22 (7+15)
-Mana Capacity: 45 (7+38)
-Strength: 12 (7+5)
-Willpower: 70 (53+17)
[Equipment - Hidden]
[Skills/Abilities]
Acrobatics: Novice Tier 4 (9%)
Cooking: Novice Tier 1 (38%)
Dagger Proficiency: Novice Tier 1 (65%)
Elemental Proficiency:
Air: Novice Tier 1 (1%)
Earth: Novice Tier 1 (1%)
Shadow: Novice Tier 2 (5%)
Goddess' Blessing: Novice Tier 1 (2%)
Mana Cycling: Novice Tier 1 (80%)
Sleight of Hand: Novice Tier 9 (25%)
Survival Instincts: Advanced Tier 3 (90%)
Throwing Skills: Novice Tier 6 (66%)
Kai's eyes opened wide seeing consistent changes across the board. He could now train with two more elements because of that breakfast! Kai smiled evilly, picturing himself as a true force of nature, dominating all the floors and consuming every beast possible, gaining affinity to all the elements and mana types.
Kai saw his base stats had increased from all of the running and fighting he'd done, his body was still exhausted, but he felt content laying on that bed.
The biggest surprise to him was that the Goddess' Blessing value had actually lowered on the stat sheet, but his base for both Mana Capacity and Willpower had continued to grow higher. 'Perhaps the Blessing is a temporary boost that is slowly integrated into my base stats?' Kai mused before leaving his room.
Over the next few days Kai spent time in the village recovering and getting to know many of the local people. As news spread about Kai killing the Shadow Coyote, many people came to meet him as he was becoming somewhat of a celebrity.
Kai didn't care much for all the attention as he preferred to be more low profile. But with the attention came goodies. He was able to spend those days purchasing healing supplies and equipment made from the coyote.
He got a new cloak that was lined with the coyote's midnight black fur and gave nice stat boosts, as well as a ring and a charm for his necklace. He checked the stats of his new equipment.
[Equipment]
Coyote Bone Ring: +2 Dexterity +3 Strength (Superior)
Coyote Tooth Charm: +4 Agility (Superior)
Shadow Coyote Cloak: +5 Agility +5 Dexterity (Superior)
A few humans resided in the village as well, but Kai mainly avoided them.
After his mini vacation he began to feel stifled. He had spent the past 5 days living a life of luxury he'd never dreamed of. He'd spent most of his money and was left with only 20 silvers remaining. He'd stuffed himself full with beast meat and gained many new elements to work with.
He loaded his new backpack with his four healing potions, two jars of healing salve, rolls of mana infused bandages, and packages of dried rations the innkeeper had prepared for him, along with a few cooking implements. He had also talked with the innkeeper's wife who was the main chef there and was able to learn all the necessary spices for their amazing food, so he went and purchased a load of those. When he cooked in the wild now, he'd be able to make something good.
He'd never had so much stuff in his life and he was feeling good about his journey ahead. He'd asked Elder Coron if there was anything else they needed help with near the village and the elder told Kai to meet him in his office.
'Ah, I hope gramps has something good to kill,' Kai mused as he walked into the wide square building that held the elder's office.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
ColdRamen
ColdRamen This chapter doesn't have much action but it's setting up for the next big arc, let me know what you think so far.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
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