Once again a mighty elder dragon was reduced to a pile of meat and a rug by the people of astera at Alex's behest. The bones , claws and horns were given to Zain again since Alex didn't really need them. Honestly speaking at this point Alex was easily the head chefs favorite person as he had single handedly challenged him with the most unique ingredients and portion sizes. Any chef worth a damn would tell you that cooking a massive amount of food like this without having an uneven level of flavor was extremely hard.-
This time was a bit different from when Alex brought the chef the flesh of zorah however as teostras flesh apparently lost it's fire resistance after death meaning it didn't need any special processing to be cooked. What it did need however was to be seriously tenderized as unlike zorah teostra was a very muscular and lean monster from regular exercise. This meant the fibers of the meat were very large and tough while there was very little fat. Thankfully this problem was solved by generous use of blunt force trauma to the meat via Alex himself.-
Beyond that however the chef just decided that such tough meat would be better served in a stew than any other way. Alex always found it hard to believe that the chef seemed to have huge cauldrons specifically for the purpose of making massive servings of stew. The craziest of these however was the one at the side of the canteen that was the size of Alex himself and held what the chef called "the first fleet special". This special stew was of a unique type known as a perpetual stew that was merely added to over the course of years rather than ever being finished off.-
This particular stew was started when the first fleet had originally set up the canteen and had been cooked until today having passed from the original chef of the first fleet to the current one. The best part of perpetual stews though according to the head chef was that the longer the stew cooked and was added to the more nutrients were in it and this one was here for fifty years making it very nutrient dense. Alex had tried some once when he was much smaller and had to admit that it was indeed a very good food to have when hungry.-
The meat from teostra was split into small cubes and thrown into the fresh cauldron with half a barrel of water and a huge amount of rough cut vegetables. The most interesting thing however was when the chef threw in a dozen cut up lemons as well to add a tang to the stew. He made sure to taste the stew once it was hot enough to be safe for consumption to make sure he didn't add too much.-
At this point the chef began to roast a bunch of herbs and spices in a large pan to bring out their flavor before tossing them into the stew in a large cheesecloth bag. The only thing added after that was salt in a rather generous amount before Alex was told to return in a couple hours when the food was done. During this waiting period Alex mostly hung out in the smithy since the second fleet master was trying to create a better set of armor for Alex. The last one had been utterly destroyed by zorah and while it worked to save Alex's life that wasn't good enough for the stubborn smith.-
The man had been working himself to the bone in his free time to try and create an armor for Alex that wouldn't get crushed in a single hit. Unlike a hunters armor that was made knowing that it's wearer would avoid direct conflict Alex's armor needed to be made for the exact opposite situation as direct conflict was Alex's bread and butter. This proved to be quite the challenge as very few materials could last very long against a monsters attack. Thankfully Alex's rather insane defenses meant that the old man didn't need to accomplish an impossible task but simply had to bolster Alex's defenses.
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