Good Mood

Cinder returned soon after the chaos from the village's cooks calmed down to find Bruno sitting on his stool with a tired expression. He guessed that the cooks had been by.

"How'd it go?" He asked, full of anticipation. Since Bruno was clearly tired, he wasn't too direct with it, but Cinder couldn't help himself. However, contrary to Cinder's hopes, Bruno sighed heavily.

"Those damn idiots wanted to start a bidding war. Every time. It isn't even worth it! And they're cooks, not hawkers, why are they so damn loud?" He complained with a sour face while reaching for a pouch hanging by the counter. He tossed it to Cinder, who dropped the bag of mangled boar meat he had just pulled out of his backpack to catch it.

"This is…?" He began asking despite feeling and hearing the Tokens rustle around within. His face broke into a wide smile.

"Sixty Tokens. I won't pay for that boar. I'm too tired."

"Fine by me!" Cinder said with a smile.

His tools and equipment had cost fifteen Tokens. He had quadrupled that amount with one tiny deer. It was a threefold return on his investment.

'That's how it works, right?'

Regardless of how much it was in relation to how much he had invested, it was a lot of Tokens. It was more than he had ever earned before, and he had done it all without the aid of a Traveler, which meant each and every single Token in that bag of his kept the Naturalist bonus.

With each Token being about half a dollar, he was looking at thirty dollars. If he rounded up the hours it took to hunt and drag that deer back to Bruno, he was looking at fifteen dollars an hour for that work. It was hard work, but it was very well paid. It was much better than the construction site's eight dollars.

"We're eating good tonight!" Cinder cheered. His mom needed to eat well now that she was injured. A single potato wouldn't be enough.

He knew he shouldn't splurge and waste everything he had earned in one go like that, especially now with his mom's hospital bills added to the pile of monthly payments they had. But there was no way he was holding back. At least three potatoes tonight. Each.

"Speaking of eating good…" Bruno suddenly said, interrupting Cinder's odd celebration of rubbing the bag of Tokens against his face.

"Do you have time for dinner? It would be a shame if you didn't get to taste your own deer, don't you think?" Bruno suggested.

Cinder looked straight at Bruno. That's right. If he had earned sixty Tokens, Bruno would have also earned sixty Tokens. Bruno was the only butcher in the shop, and it didn't seem like he was having trouble with his money, but it would still be a day to celebrate.

It wasn't strange that he was suddenly in such a good mood.

Hesitantly, since he didn't want to waste time, but knew it would be rude to decline, Cinder accepted.

"I'll help prepare in any way I can." He wasn't sure what it would be like eating in the game, but even if it wasn't as greatly replicated as the rest of his senses, he might still experience the taste of meat for the first time in a long while. He also wondered if his character in the game was sensitive to hunger.

He was so used to suppressing it that he wouldn't notice if he felt it in the game. He also wondered if eating well would help grow his character. It wasn't impossible. Other things affected his character like wounds and stuff. He felt exhausted and had even had the urge to nap several times. If he could sleep and stuff in the game to become more energetic, it made sense he could eat to grow stronger.

"Just take a seat. Maybe wash your hands. I don't want you interfering in the kitchen."

Bruno grabbed a nice chunk of meat from the cold room before guiding Cinder upstairs to where he had a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and bathroom for his personal use.

Cinder looked around curiously. It wasn't much bigger than the apartment he shared with his mom, but it was much nicer.

Bruno sighed before pointing at the tap, silently telling Cinder to do something about his filthy hands before he fired up a pan and a pot on the gas burner stove.

Cinder was surprised.

Things were surprisingly advanced. It was to the point where it didn't fit in the otherwise medieval-looking village.

"Amazing, huh? You won't find gadgets like these anywhere else in the village. I used a couple of connections to bring them down from higher up," Bruno boasted. Everyone in the village who knew about his fancy equipment was jealous, especially the cooks. They had only stopped begging Bruno for help to get one or two to their kitchens once he told them how much they cost.

But Tom and Wilkes had tried to grab it once or twice.

"Yeah…So, stuff like this is common higher up?" Cinder asked, curious about the Mountain and the world of Sisyphus Online.

"Depends on how high up and where, but after a certain point, advanced magical engineering tools like these are common. To the ones who live there, they're just simple to make and install, so it's not a hassle. We don't even have any mages here, much less magical engineers. It's the same with everything.

"Things are more challenging higher up. That leads to more skilled individuals. Those lead to a higher standard of living. Usually."

Bruno finished peeling the potatoes and dumped them in the pot before throwing a dab of fat in the pan and dropping two slabs of meat into it.

Cinder only paid half a cent's attention to the explanation after the meat hit the pan. The smell and the sizzling sound that filled the kitchen took over what remained after his brain. He didn't even wipe the drool running down his chin.