Edibility

Teyo stood over the bats corpse's. As he knelt over and looked at the bats and activated his ability various parts of the beast began to hue different colors. Most of the main torse tinted red whilst some things like the eyes and wings shaded blue. It's nails and wings even tinged faint purple. Teyo had no way to understand what he saw but he knew which parts were likely to be edible. " The red seems to be the meaty or fat bits." He began to cut into the beast and remove strips of meat.

After a quick hack job he ended up with a decent chuck of meat approximately totaling to around 8 pounds per bat! much of what was left were other bits and organs. He had seen a few different organ with a red hue like the liver kidneys and heart but decided against gathering those due to his inexperience in cooking them. He did however find a nice surprise inside the bats. Near their heart lay a small gem the size of a fingernail. It had a wonderful shimmer to it even in the faint torchlight. After wiping off his hands on the bats fur, to little result, he walked back to the group.

" So I got a bunch of meat off those guys. I avoided the yucky stuff like eyes and guts. But with this and a little bit of time I'm sure I can whip us up some stuff. Can we get a fire going?"

Dorian, Jack, and Sadura all looked at him in disgust. He looked very menacing, like a murderer who played in the corpses of his victim. Suffice to say they all at least respected that he went into his role as a butcher without any qualms or quesyness. Jack responded to him first.

" We only have the torches right now and unfortunately I don't think we can spare them, unless you want to go blindly in the darkness. I think if we can get to the checkpoint maybe along the way we can find something, we should just take what we can and be ready to cook it soon."

" What do you want me to do walk with this pan of meat? You have a second torch that's not even lit yet. Let's just use that I can try to cook some thin strips over the torch fire. Sadura can you spare a couple arrows?"

Sadura by this time had removed all of the guts off of herself to her best ability. She responded rather shallowly. " I only had 10 arrows. I was only able to retrieve a few of them. I'm down to 7. If we do this I won't be of much help in the future."

This time Dorian spoke out and surprisingly in support of Teyo. " You won't have a future if you don't get healed up, sides aren't you curious?"

Sadura sighed with contempt. " I guess you're right. And I am."

Teyo was missing something here in the conversation so he asked. " Curious about what?"

Dorian smiled and shook his head. " Wow I didn't expect to have to tell you of all people. Remember those wild fruits? The flavors were out of the world different to what we can eat outside. I mean who's to say bat taste like bat? Normally I'd be totally against it.. But well why not?"

Teyo's mind was blown. " Damnit I totally didn't think about that. You're probably right! I will say though I don't have any seasoning or anything it's just going to be plain. Unfortunately."

Sadura gave up two arrows. Teyo cut the strips of bat into thinner pieces in his pan. After he skewered them onto the arrows Jack lit the other torch with the current lit one and they combined the flames for Teyo to cook with. Teyo stood there slowly turning the meat like hotdogs on a stick by campfire for a few minutes.

"Cook" he activated his cook ability causing the meat to shimmer in his eyes alone with a quick grey flash. The smell that came off of the bat meat was rather familiar. It smelled like venison! A game filled odor of the wild had been nutured within the strands of meat and they overflowed with popping grease like that of a duck. After removing them from the fire and allowing it to cool down for just a moment the team passed around the arrows. To their surprise even plain the meat was rather tasty even in the novice level of cooking. Cooked plain meat was something they all could accomplish but it was the first time they could really begin to see the benefit of Teyo's chef class.

" Wow even though it's just bat it really wasn't that bad at all, and I gained 4 points of health. Thanks Teyo." Sadura gave him a light punch in the shoulder.

Dorian nodded his head in agreement as he continued to eat off an arrow. Out of everyone he seemed to enjoy it the most. At that moment Reilly even woke up. She looked around at everyone.

" Holy cow, that smells good! Also I'm sorry Dorian!" Reilly jumped into him with a big hug. " I couldn't do anything to those darn bats thanks so much for protecting me. I couldn't get my skills to work."

Jack responded sharply. " You have to activate skills by calling them out. Be careful I'm sure you have a mana bar don't waste them. Also what skills do you have? Any healing spells?"

" Oh yeah I have one! It's called Bless, it says if I use one point of mana I can heal everyone 2 health as long as they are close to me. And I also have Spark and Bounce. One is a shock of electricity and the other is if I fall I can bounce instead of landing improperly. I only have 10 mana though. And Bounce and Spark cost 2 each."

Jack smiled. " Awesome, I think we could all use a Bliss. Those all sound very useful though what kind of class is that?"

" I'm a Novice Mage. hehe. What about you guys?"

" I'm a Squire." Jack responded

" Sentry" Dorian said.

" Archer"

Everyone seemed to be a little more open and chatted for a little while about where they lived IRL. To everyones surprise they were all relatively in the same age group the oldest was Dorian who was only 23. Sadura was the youngest at 18, but you had to be at least 18 to play Wish Legacy anyway. As they talked Teyo kept cooking the bat meat. He decided that since everyone was a bit more friendly he would show them what he found.

" Hey so do you guys know what these are? " He said as he brought out the two little gems from the bats.

Jack of course seemingly was the only one to make a guess. Reading the manual would have really helped! " Oh yeah those should be experience gems! Where did you find them I thought the bats dropped them but I could find any on the ground."

Teyo told them bluntly. " Well it was next to their hearts. So do you know what to do with them?"

Jack shook his head no in response. " To be honest the manual only said you can gain experience gems by killing monsters, beasts, or random activities, it didn't say anything about how or what to do with them. How do we even divide them ? We only have two and there is five of us."

Dorian piped up. " Well if we are to be fair about it perhaps we just divy one per person around in a loop. The role you play shouldn't matter because unlike you two who have obvious means of killing, and Reilly who uses magic, the opportunity we get to kill is based on our teamwork. " Dorian spoke rather sound logic causing all of them to agree. Teyo went and dug through the other bat but couldn't find the other gem it was the one that had been cleaved in half.

" Well we have two. I'll give Jack and Sadura one first and we get the next ones." Teyo gave them theirs first since they inflicted the killing blows. He'd rather not come to that as an overall decision but decided it was for the best considering Dorian and Reilly hadn't done anything but defend. He would have kept one for himself but he knew he would get more opportunities. Everyone agreed.

Before they went back to exploration, Reilly used her first spell. As she cast bliss a bright light coalesced at the tip of her staff and shot out above everyone's heads then burst like a firework, the remnants that fell onto everyone healed them. Even at a low level her spell was dazzling.

.....

After another couple hours of traversing the cave they came to a small pond. It carried a faint shimmer in the torch light and tiny luminous fish swam in it's gentle ripples. A crack in the far wall across the pond was what fed the pond through a steady stream of water. Above the crack was a hole in the ceiling that let out a glow as if by daylight many meters out. The pond was surrounded by stalagmites like a natural barrier but without stalactites on it's roof. Dorian almost stepped into the pond before Jack stopped him.

" Hold on, something isn't right. A pond before the exit? We've been going awhile and haven't encountered anything but a couple more bats. If we think about it by time alone shouldn't we be near a checkpoint?"

Dorian shrugged his shoulders. " Yes, don't you think that's it? Finally we can get out of this pitch black."

" No that's not what I'm saying. That's probably it ahead yeah. But all we've done is kill some bats, the difficulty is increased cause of our game mode and we even have a fifth person. Don't you think there should be something before the checkpoint, maybe a little more challenging?"

" Dude come on it's level one you think they would throw the book at us? let's just get over there and get a moment of relief." Dorian spoke as he stepped into the water walking backwards.

No one moved as he brazenly walked across the pond. Teyo knelt down and inspected the fish. "Discern Ingredients"

The fish in their luster turned purple in his eyes. And as he look out into the pond he began to see more of them even more clearly. It was full of tiny minnow fish. Dorian seemed to be making a clear path separating them. In their darting madness they began to cluster. It was at that moment that Teyo realized something.

"Dorian out of the water now !!"

As the parting minnow began to group their forms shifted and in their liquidity they began to ball. Large luminous beach ball sized cluster began to form in the water. After dispersing as minnow they clustered and transformed into large balls of slimes! Their hue tinted blue. Quickly Dorian began to trudge through, he had almost made it to the other side so he quickly got out and onto the distant shore. Everyone Backed up from the waters edge as they began to see small waves begin to come to their position. Teyo pulled up his pan and knife and Jack held up his sword in front of the ladies. Dorian on the other side alone left them defenseless! He stood across the water as the slimes stopped chasing him and began to rush the other direction! This was the first time Dorian used a skill.

" Adversary!!!" As Dorian yelled his ability out he began to glow crimson, and the slime that had turned away from him came rushing back. The waters edges began to splash in the rapid movements of all the slimes.

Slimes began to bounce out of the water towards Jack and Teyo. Jack stepped forward and slashed at a slime only for his blade to split the slime in two which were then absorbed by another couple slimes in the rear as they bounced forward. " Shit my sword does nothing!"

Sadura then released an arrow at another one. It pierced it through to it's rear sticking in the dirt behind it. It simply bounces forward off the arrow. " Damnit me either!" Quickly everyone turned to Reilly in the back. She stood there timid gripping her staff.