Chapter 50 - Side : Ervas Teach His Father How To Make Oil!
-----
As Ervas enjoyed some slightly crispier burgers with carrot and sweet potatoes pure, he inspected his status after evolving and having changed jobs.
"Over six hundred Mana and over four hundred Magic… isn't this kind of abnormal at my stage? And I haven't even reached the stat jump at Rank 5…" he thought.
The crispy and slightly burned burger was still delicious and tender inside, the meat juices filled his mouth, which already had well-developed and sharp as knife teeth. The sweet and soft pure went wonderfully with the crispy meat, Ervas could not stop eating. Occasionally, he would drink a bit of carrot juice.
"T-This is delicious… Big Demon Rats and Blade Horned Rabbits meat is really something out of this world… Even if burned, its… too good… and this pure, what is it that it makes it so good?" wondered Jason.
"It must be the fat I took out of the Giant Big Rats, I burned it over a pan until it became a greasy liquid, this is often named oil, although it is a very rustic one," said Ervas.
"I think I've heard something about oil before… but it's usually something that we would never get to taste… to think that it can be created simply by burning fat from monsters…" muttered Jason.
"Yep, it's not so hard… but you must be a bit careful. What I did was quite simple, you should be able to do it as well." Said Ervas.
"Oh? How is it?" asked Jason, interested as he degusted the burger.
"I finely chopped the pure fat until it became a past by using a sharp blade horn from blade horned rabbit, then I put a bit of water in the pan and the fat paste, let it cook for some minutes at a high temperature and when it begins to create an oily, yellowish liquid, while the fat begins to get crisp is when it's time to extract it." Said Ervas, nonchalantly.
"A-Ah! That is quite hard though… But I kind of get it… how did we never figure something like this in the village? Well, hunters mostly eat what they hunt, so even the fat is not wasted, no one has sat down with a pile of monsters like you, I guess," said Jason, with a mild smile, amazed by the incredible talent of his son.
"Well, in my previous life (Earth), I grew up with my parents and my grandparents in a rural area, my grandmother taught me how to make pork oil to create a delicious broth for noodles," said Ervas.
"I see, so you do have some talent in farming? And Noodles? What are noodles?" asked Jason.
"They are long strips of dough made out of flour, water, and eggs. It is a different dough than bread though… but the ones that I used to do were made with rice flour… rice noodles" said Ervas.
"Rice…? I think I have heard about rice, there are some extremely far away cultivation villages that seem to have it in their plantations," said Jason.
"I see…"
"I suppose that not only carrots and sweet potatoes, but also things such as rice exist in this world," thought Ervas.
Ervas wondered where did these rice and vegetables even come from… according to the origin of this world, it was originated from two great gods corpses… it is supposed to be an alien world, but it shares many resemblances with Earth.
"I guess there might be even more 'Earth-like' worlds out there. I wonder what the chances for certain things are to be so similar…" thought Ervas.
Jason patted his belly as he finished his entire plate in the spawn of a few minutes.
"Haah~! That was good… It feels nice to eat a nice meal once in a day" said Jason.
"Hm, I think I have the crispy fat saved as well…" said Ervas, grabbing a small pot that he was saving below the table.
Opening the wooden lid, he revealed a great portion of crispy grease.
"I don't think it's healthy to eat this… if we were normal people. Father works eight hours a day and has the body of an Adonis, while I am a demon that converts everything that it eats into energy with its metabolism, so even eating such unhealthy food as this should be fine, it might give me a lot of vitality even," analyzed Ervas.
"Ah, so this is the 'fried grease'? This thing is the leftover of the oil…? It smells… like grilled meat, but… there is another scent… let me try it" said Jason.
Jason glanced at the crispy pieces of white meat, which were chopped grease, served himself a bit more pure and sprinkled the crispy grease above.
Crunch!
"Ahh… T-This is ridiculously crunchy! Just what is this…? And the flavor… so greasy yet so… addicting!" said Jason, eating everything in the spawn of a few seconds.
"You work a lot, so you must also eat a lot of calories, father, eat everything if you want. I will make more tomorrow; I am stockpiling oil to sell whenever we depart from here" said Ervas.
"That's… a wonderful idea! The oil would sell incredibly well… we could make some genuinely nice pennies, perhaps we should be able to travel to the Demon Continent!" said Jason, with high spirits.
Gnome, who was sitting on the table, tried to eat some of the crispy greases, but it lacked a mouth as it was only a spherical, gray-colored rock.
"Pokuu? Poku, poku!" said Gnome.
Spirits were ethereal beings made out of pure Mana of a certain attribute, so eating was not part of their abilities, they were able to talk, but not to consume and digest things aside from Mana.
"Hm, for now, let us enjoy these days of peace. (Though I am continuously training Magic without him realizing)" said Ervas.
Aside from his training in magic, Ervas was close to finishing the book of his mother, which should grant him the ability to summon some kind of creature.
Remembering what he learned as Anastacia, she never knew about the Summon Demons, which were her mother's face in this third life.
"Is there even a 'Summon' Skill? What will even come from such summons? Terrifying eldritch creatures or heroes from different worlds and times…? No, this is not a gacha mobile game, probably eldritch monsters," wondered Ervas, as he ate pure.
After dinner, Ervas went to look for a large leather bag made out of the pelt of Giant Demon Rats, where several almost-dead Giant Demon Rats and Blade Horned Rabbits of Rank 2 were in a state similar to a coma. This was inflicted by Ivy's poison, which could be edited by her to be less lethal and paralyze instead.
"Now, father, time for you to harvest some Experience Points," said Ervas, with a mild smile.
"Sigh… I can't help but think that I am cheating by doing this…" said Jason, grabbing a weapon made out of bones and blade horns, beginning to gently kill the creatures one by one, small amounts of Experience began to engulf his body as he slowly raised through the levels of his 'Apprentice Warrior' Job.
"Ah! I reached max level…!" said Jason, as he killed the last Giant Demon Rat.
"Will you change to Warrior next? It fits your physique" said Ervas.
"I will… although now that I've developed my magic, perhaps a Fire Attribute Mage wouldn't be so bad…" wondered Jason.
"I think so too, if you develop both a physical Job and a magic Job, you will unlock new Jobs such as 'Magic Warrior'. Seeing how capable you are, it would be the best course of action" said Ervas, nodding as if he were a teacher.
"I see! I am so grateful to have you, Ervas, you're like a living encyclopedia!" said Jason.
"I might be," said Ervas.
As father and son discussed their next course of actions, dozens of kilometers away, inside the internal territory of the Aquaria Kingdom, in the closest city to Evergreen, named 'Sapphira', his Duke, Lord Frank Aquaria, one of the Aquaria Kingdom's King youngest grandson that had managed to obtain a territory for himself to handle, received strange reports regarding rumors about a 'Half Demon Boy'.
-----