Over the campfire, an improvised stove. Under the moonlight still on about their tales to the stars. The night creatures gave their melody, the wind blew their soothing horn. MF had prepared her wide cast iron skillet pan with a piece of purified meat from the calamity, showered by a butter base. She sprawled couples of herbs she foraged in the forest.
Foel sat with a drool slowly escaping unnoticed. The smell tickled her tongue, her perseverance was slowly sinking every moment she waited with anticipation to gnaw at that mouth-watering treasure.
Not only the herbs she foraged, MF also harvested two specific mushrooms. One of them was a yellow mutated fungus the size of her palm that will melt when in touch with heat. People called them the cheese mushroom because of how it tasted like cheese.
On a cleaned trunk of wood, she sliced and mashed the other kind of mushrooms. It was actually just a portobello mushroom but over the years of evolution, it evolved to grow a bigger stalk and cap before dying.
She carved the upper part of the steak for the cheese mushroom to rest while still based in butter. The mushrooms went in perfectly, melting like a lake, shaping like a crest. The steak was then immediately moved to a slab of wood, resting so that the meat would sponge the juice. She took the iron pan out and grabbed another one she bought in the Citadel from her pocket space pouch. The waste of the carved piece was put on the new skillet pan together with the chopped earth mushrooms. After the sauteing, the content then was poured on top of the steak, ready to be served.
"Who is the wife again?" Foel asked, holding a fork and a knife in hands respectively.
"Good question."
Foel feasted on the meal her wi—husband cooked for her. "You could just open your own restaurant, yet here you're serving me." She pointed her fork before cutting a piece to bite.
"I thought Usurpers would rarely eat after reaching the Golden Orb phase." MF crouched, spectating the child-like attitude shown by Foel.
"We wouldn't, but for a good food, letting in impurities might be a great way to feed the stress of our mind." Foel took her time chewing the food she gnawed before continuing. "Then again, I detect no impurities from this, what kind of sorcery is this?"
"What you all deem as impurities are just the waste that will go through your guts and then drop into the ground as excrement. Those what you called pills and heavenly banquet that raises your mana are just a lump of metaphysical energy manifested into physical forms, hence, no impurities." MF smirked, holding her cheeks with both palms as she bent down. "I made the whole food to be fully digestible with no waste, no need to worry about it."
"And no mana was used, huh. So you can also tamper with non living beings. How you did it was still a mystery, there was no record of such practice of this kind of complex manipulation without the use of magic circuits." Foel chomped on another bite. "And I thought you were a physical cultivator until I became one and sensed no soul energy from you."
After a physical cultivator had reached the Symbols Pill Condensation stage, they could sense the subconscious force emitted from the pill's array like from their soul on others. Mana cultivator doesn't have the means to detect this energy because it was the circuit of consciousness itself, an 'intent' if so to speak.
'People have been wrong all this time, physical cultivation should be called soul cultivation instead.' MF thought, still pondering the mystery of this path to greatness.
"It was the same as what I did to you. I could grant power to people, yet not myself." MF smirked, gesturing both of her palms open.
"That was a lie, right?"
MF's attempt at foiling Foel had failed. Instead of being wary and distraught, she put on a big smile. "Seems like I couldn't trick you anymore."
"One of the Laws I inherit allows me to see the lies. Bad timing for you, my dear." Foel collected the mushroom scrap with her fork before dipping it into the cheese. "You use your consciousness to meticulously change something, I can't comprehend it but that is the gist of what I can come up with." She then chomped on that cheesy goodness.
Foel's cultivation law of Fiery Fire Of Molten Heart—when someone lies, they will surround themselves with a dark mist that can't be seen by normal people, even a cultivator. This law allowed Foel's heart to pave its way into the truth within the darkness. MF might need to word her sentence better after this.
"As expected of my cute wife." MF hurled a playful sigh. "If you really want to open the page, then I couldn't limit what you need to know anymore."
"It doesn't matter if you didn't trust me." Foel took another slurpy bite. "Blame yourself for making me master the first phase of those laws. I'm actually more carefree than you think."
"You actually aren't, it was the food that made you heed for me." MF chuckled.
"Indeed, even the food in the academy I rolled in back then would be trash compared to this." The tanomobi licked the cheese on the fork before piercing it onto the juicy meat again. "If you didn't resist back then and I found out that your ability can be branched into cooking, you would already be my slave."
"Sadly, I'm not the kind of person who would like to be dominated."
"A hassle indeed."
After Foel finished with her meal, MF cleaned everything, leaving no section for her wife to help. MF also wanted to answer her partner's question before isolating herself for another body modification.
"You're actually close to decrypting my power. Well, it's actually not a power." MF showcased both of the fire on her palm, the results of the flammable liquid secreted by the glands on her palms. "I could alter the code of life of anything organic with a long strain of my abnormal consciousness. This fire is a bionic product of petrol that was produced from my sweat glands."
At this progression, MF doesn't care if her secret was founded. She still felt the warmth of Foel's encouraging hug back then.
"So that fire was created." Foel, with her poker face, pointing her forefinger to the campfire. "Was your sweat?"
"Yup."
"That made me feel weird."
"I can take the traits of living beings and then change mine using the information I got after analyzing them. These glands are from a Kaleya, the very reason why I was filled with 'void' the first time we met back then."
"Can you become a Tanomobi?"
"Of course." The hyaenidae smiled wryly. "In fact, I'm going to start another modification now."