Chapter 17: The Idea!

Nikola had just the idea in mind for his new skill. Considering that both Jack and Dimitri were devouring the food so, as if they had not eaten in centuries, Nikola even knew that the idea might have merit.

"Do you think you can make me a restaurant by the cabin?" Nikola asked when Dimitri finally stopped eating. This was his third helping. The brunette didn't even know where the man was putting all the food away.

"Restaurant? You wish to cook for the monsters in the area?" Dimitri looked at Jack, who was helping himself to his fifth helping. "I don't think this is a good idea."

"Why?" Nikola was not ready to give up. After all, the system had told him that if he got a restaurant, he could fleece the guests for all the mana they were worth.

And he needed mana. He had about five projects he had read in the walkthrough which he wanted to start with.

A working druid staff being chief among them.

"Well, for one, the monsters are going to try to eat you," Dimitri said, as he eyed the fruit salad. "Do you think… that I can eat this as well?"

Nikola nodded, handed him his bowl with the cut up apples and pears, and then relaxed in his chair.

Cooked Selkie meat was the best. Even Better than Kobe beef. And that was saying something.

"What if they don't want to eat me?" Nikola asked, as he took a bowl with cut up fruit as well. "My mana can give them access to foods they haven't eaten in an age. If I were them, I would not want for the chef to die."

Jack snorted. Nikola looked at him next.

"Why? Jack, do you have the desire to kill me after the meal?" Nikola teased, his eyes twinkling.

"No, not really. But ghosts can't eat. They will gather here because of the mana. And then, believe me, you won't be having a good time."

That was ominous, Nikola had to admit. But he didn't want to deal with ghosts.

He wanted to deal with living, breathing, non-humans.

He voiced those thoughts, only to get a snort from Dimitri next.

"I will make you the restaurant. I know a building crew which can set it up next to the jasmine for negative time," which to Nikola sounded dreamy.

He did love sitting and doing nothing by the walls with the jasmine. It calmed him, somewhat.

"But I am telling you, we will soon need to move," Dimitri finished the last apple slice from his bowl and leaned back in his chair. "Ah, that hits the spot."

Nikola smiled.

"Glad you liked it," he stood up. Now that even Jack was finished eating, he was certain that it was a safe time to do the dishes.

"You know, you should still train. If you want to farm the Selkie," Jack told him, as Nikola picked his empty plate.

"Oh? Just how many are there in the lake, do you know?" He asked. Soon, he was washing the dishes and humming himself.

He had missed this. This normalcy. This piece of home, of old habits, which he had lost when he had turned into a druid.

"They come from other places for your rituals," Dimitri was the one to answer. Nikola heard as Jack hummed.

"Yes, so you won't run out of meat. But there is still the problem with the fact that your garden is small. There is no way that you will be able to feed all the diners with just the produce there."

Nikola knew that. He knew that he would need to buy the fruit and vegetables.

And, since he knew that, he was ready to fork over his 10,000 dollars he had gotten from the hospital to get himself steady shipments of food.

But the question was, how were the shipments going to make it up the deer trail?

"There might be one problem," Nikola had to admit because try as he might, he simply couldn't imagine a truck driving up the steep trail.

"How do I get the food?"

Dimitri smiled then.

"You are a druid, and you ask something like that?" The vampire teased.

"To be honest, he isn't a good druid," Jack nodded his agreement.

"And I liked you both better when you were at each other's throats," Nikola said to the two. "Do you suggest that I grow my food? Start my own field?"

Dimitri nodded. Jack hummed once more.

"But there is no place big enough to… wait a sec!"

The study! It was made into a pocket dimension! He could create a pocket dimension for the fields!

Nikola finished washing the dishes and then rushed to his study. The door on the wall was still there. He opened it and began to search for runes.

He found something that looked like the Chinese character for water, shui, but he was certain that it was not really that.

He copied the runes from the door, went to the wall, and then began to carve them on it.

Thinking all the while how he needed a field. A field big enough for a whole vegetable and fruit garden!

A door appeared. Nikola opened the door.

A tentacle dragged him inside the pocket dimension.

****

Dimitri was beginning to worry. Nikola had been gone for the past hour. He had not even said what got him so excited.

"Do you think he's done something stupid?" The ghoul, Jack, asked.

"His magic tends to backfire. It is not like he is doing it on purpose," Dimitri said, his tone heavy.

"He is in the shed," Jack told him, as he stood. The man took a spear on the way out. "You coming?"

Dimitri decided that it was better to have backup. In case Nikola's magic had backfired to the point, he had summoned another eldritch horror, or something along those lines.

There was a door in his shed that hadn't been there before. And a hole in the roof which he remembered was the result of a storm a couple of years ago.

And next to that door, he didn't remember seeing before, was a portal with tentacles coming out of it.

"Holy shit," Jack voiced his thoughts next to him. "Do you think this is what I think it is?"

"I hope not," Dimitri said.

He loved Nikola. He really did.

But this was Cthulhu, darn it!