Chapter 15 - Cooking

After just a little bit of searching, Avalin and the Imp managed to find a small river with clear enough water to clean clothes with, and Avalin then swiftly pulled the cloak off of the Imp's body."Now then, let's hope we can get this out easily enough…" Avalin muttered quietly, while the Imp just stood there confused. Why was she trying to get the blood off of the cloak? It smelled delicious, and who didn't want to smell delicious? And then, the Imp noticed that, if he didn't know something, could just ask at this point! He was a big brain Imp, after all."Why clean?" The Imp asked curiously, and Avalin turned to him surprised as she was rubbing over the cloth with her palm, still shaking out of fear as well as due to the cold water she was washing the cloak with. "Ah, hmm… Do you think this smells good?" Avalin asked, so the Imp immediately nodded his head without a moment of hesitation, although Avalin just seemed even more surprised at that. "Oh, erm… Other monsters think so as well, so if you have bloody clothes, monsters might smell you and come because they want to eat you."With a frown, the Imp crossed his arms in front of his book and grasped it tightly. "Not eat Imp." He said angrily, and Avalin nodded her head with a smile. "Mhm, exactly. We don't want that, now do we?" She asked, so the Imp quickly shook his head in response.And for the next little while, the Imp just stood there, watching Avalin as she was washing the blood off of the Imp's cloak, before putting it over her arm and bringing it and the Imp back to Thomas and James, who already made a small fire. Conveniently, they did so next to a few large rocks, which were the perfect surface to place the cloak down on to have it dry through the fire.But once more, the Imp was confused at why she did so, and simply asked again. "Why dry?" He asked, so Avalin scratched her cheek with a wry smile and began to explain it the best she could. "If you wear wet clothes, you can get sick, and that's really not good. You'll cough and feel sluggish, and just, in general, be super weak compared to usual."With a frown, the Imp shook his head and stared at the wet cloak with an angry frown. "Imp not weak. Imp strong." He said annoyedly, so Avalin slowly placed her hand on the top of the Imp's head and began rubbing it again, although the Imp thought that was a pretty weird thing to do. Even then, he just let it be and accepted this fate, because it seemed to make Avalin happy."Alright then… Let's just hurry and get this done." Thomas suggested while rolling his eyes, and then placed a fleshy version of the bird that the Imp killed before over the fire, but the Imp titled his head to the side at this action. Wouldn't fire just break the bird?"Why Fire?" The Imp asked and pointed at the fleshy bird before Avalin smiled at the Imp. "Ah, erm… It seems to be different for monsters, but people like us can't really eat raw meat or else we'll get sick, so we need to cook it like this first until it's a different color all the way through." Avalin explained, and the Imp frowned and looked into his bag at the bunch of meat that he had in it, before grabbing a handful of it and dropping it into the fire, causing some small bits of the fire to fly around in James' direction."Argh! What the hell are you doing, you damn-" James yelled out angrily, but the Imp just looked at him with a frown before turning to Avalin. "Wrong?" He asked, so Avalin quickly nodded. "Yeah, pretty wrong, actually… Here, just try this out." Avalin suggested and grabbed one of the thinner sticks that couldn't really be used for the fire all that well, before grabbing some of the meat from the Imp's bag and binding it around the stick, before giving it to the Imp."Here, try it now. And don't throw it in, just hold it above the fire." Avalin said, and the Imp frowned in response but tried to take the meat-stick, doing what he was just told to do."Now, you just need to wait a little longer. That should give him the Cooking Skill, right?" Avalin asked as she turned toward the other two, so Thomas just shrugged, "Maybe, I guess." He replied, and the Imp just looked at the meat at the end of the stick while it slowly changed its color to become much, much darker than before.And around when it was pretty dark and brown, Avalin slowly pulled his hand with the stick back, "Alright, that should be enough. Just wait a little bit now until it cooled off some, and then you can-" The young woman tried to explain, but before she could even finish, the Imp stuffed the meat into his mouth, distracted by a notification that instantly became more.[Beginner Cooking Skill Learned][-9 Health]"Bwah?" The Imp exclaimed with the hot meat in his mouth but still continued chewing it nonetheless. Others seemed to be able to eat it like that, and the Imp didn't want anyone to think that he was weaker than them in any way! So, even if the meat was a lot tougher than raw meat, he had to fight through it, and when it finally cooled off in his mouth a bit, he swallowed it down and once more started slightly burning his throat, but it wasn't nearly as bad as with his tongue just now, so there was nothing to worry about."Are you alright?" Avalin asked when the Imp finally settled down a little, and he just nodded his head in response. "Yesh…" He replied, even if he couldn't really feel his tongue, but nonetheless but another piece of meat around the end of the stick. The Imp wasn't a wuss, so he would continue eating this meat as long as these people did so!At the very least, that's what he was thinking before, but when the meat became brown again and wanted to stuff it in his mouth, Avalin took the meat from him and held it away a bit. "Not this time! Just wait until it cooled off a little!" She exclaimed while Thomas and James started cutting the bird apart into pieces that could be properly eaten by them and Avalin, and the Imp just crossed his arms with a pout on his face, while Avalin sighed and gave the Imp another stick and bound more meat around it, handing it to the Imp again."Here, just make some more. When this is done, you can eat the one you made before, alright?" Avalin told him, so the Imp slowly nodded his head and began to hold the meat above the fire again.And a few minutes later, when it was finally finished, the Imp looked over at Avalin again. "Alright… Here, try it now." She suggested and gave the other meat to the Imp while taking the new one from him, and confused the Imp took another bite off the meat, expecting it to be just as hot as the other meat was before.But to his surprise… It wasn't! It was still warm, but it wasn't hot enough to hurt him anymore! And on top of that, something else came to the Imp's surprise… This burned meat tasted really, really, really good! Far better than the raw meat that he has been eating up until now!So immediately, the Imp stuffed his face with the burned meat and quickly put new meat onto this stick, holding it over the fire again. And when this meat was done, the Imp ate the bit of meat that had been cooling off a little bit, and then placed the next bit of meat over the fire. And he didn't actually eat all of it all at once but stuffed some of the cooked meat into his bag to keep for later."Haah… Yeah, that bag can never be used ever again, can it..?" Avalin muttered with a wry smile, while the Imp just looked at her with his head tilted to the side.In total, the Imp, Avalin, and the other two sat there for a total of one hour, slowly finishing to eat and just recovering a bit of their stamina, and most importantly, they did this to cool their nerves down after what they saw at the last town they were at.Well, with the exception of the Imp, of course. He just happily continued cooking his meat until he didn't have any raw meat left anymore, and then slowly began to eat what he placed into his bag on top of the shiny stuff he grabbed from the pile of sticks before.But once that hour was over, Avalin quickly grabbed the cloak, which had finished drying at this point, and placed it back onto the Imp, who just looked down at it with a frown. It smelled a little weird, but it was probably fine now.So, after Thomas and James destroyed the pretty fire that they made before, the four of them continued walking, and although they weren't in just as much of a hurry as before after leaving the last town, they still seemed to be walking faster than usual, and most importantly, they seemed far more on edge and reacted pretty aggressively to the slightest sound they didn't know the source of.And when they encountered a few monsters, Thomas actually stumbled up for the first time ever and got injured! One of the monsters managed to bite his arm, but it sadly didn't seem to be a serious injury, so the Imp had to continue dealing with that annoying person.But after the useless Thomas got injured, the group had to stop for a little while, while Avalin bound some white cloth around Thomas' leg to seemingly stop the bleeding. Quickly afterward, though, they continued on moving again until it became bright again.Such bright light was actually a little annoying to the Imp, but at the very least, his cloak blocked a little bit of it, so he really didn't need to worry.But instead, what the Imp did have to worry about was the fact that there suddenly seemed to be more people around again, in the same blocks of wood that the Imp saw in front and on top of the bridges, but this time around, there was something else that seemed a lot more interesting, especially the closer that the group got to it.It seemed like a giant block of stone, and all of the people that the Imp could see were approaching a large hole in one side of the block of stone. It seemed a bit weird at first, but from Avalin's reaction, the Imp figured that it was a good place.