Chapter 296: Bring Mave For Dinner

Mave and her husband weren’t the only ones invited over for dinner, as they soon realized.

Their neighbours were highly social people, and they had invited the occupants of six other units on the floor to dinner, with two of them being newcomers, and the rest all old friends.

That was a welcome change for the new arrivals, both because there was plentiful food, but also because people actually had time to socialize and make friends without worrying who would be alive tomorrow.

Their group had barely made it through the fourth trial.

They had done alright in the third, but the weather wiped out their food storage and their fields, then levelled their greenhouse, so the last few weeks were basically a countdown to starvation as they desperately foraged for anything that they could find to try to get their lives back on track.

It hadn’t worked, but the system took pity on them, and here they were.

The "Tuber Soup" that had been mentioned was actually what they would have called a bacon and potato stew. It was rich and hearty, with big chunks of meat and tubers, served with fresh baked bread that was clearly their point of pride.

Not just anyone could bake a good fluffy loaf of sourdough.

"Cooking for two is not easy, but when we get the notion, we usually invite a bunch of people over, so we can serve up everything at once.

The bread is the flour from the Rat King Dungeon, the level one instance, it’s just flour. But the rest of the ingredients are high energy magical plants and monsters from the new world. If you haven’t tried them yet, you might be surprised how fast it sates the appetite.

But don’t worry, you can always take it to go, and just bring back my bowls later."

The new arrivals laughed, knowing that there would be nothing left in front of them. Even if it hurt to eat by the end, they were so hungry that they would not stop until they were certain that they had done their very best to make up for lost time.

Then, the flavour hit their tongues, and all they could do was stare at the bowls.

"Good, right? She’s a magician in the kitchen. Well, outside of it too, as she’s a mage. But the soup is incredible. The only one who can compete works in the dining hall at the Academy, and she’s got a Cooking skill that lets her make spices with mana.

Now that’s a skill. She can just season everything exactly as she wants it with no compromise."

The city of Marimgar was sounding more like a fairytale by the minute.

"You mentioned a dungeon. What is that, and is it in the city?"

The host nodded. "There are four in total, for level one, three, seven and ten. They’re all different, but one of them provides pork and one of them has a warehouse basement in it that generates random items we can take back.

Most of them are bulk flour and other dry goods like rice. But that’s one of the things that we need the most, to keep so many people fed.

The underground city for those without classes has it worse. Before they arrived here, they were eating nothing but algae based nutrient paste that’s apparently worse than the nutrient bars. And even though we’re generating a lot of food now, the algae is still a primary food source.

They just adapted it into other ingredients, so that they didn’t have to suffer through the nutrient paste anymore.

It’s a bit biased, but the heroes need high energy foods, and those foods are actually harmful to regular people if you eat them at full strength. They water down the soup like this four to one, and then it’s considered a very filling meal, and they still have to leave the bacon out.

They can use the bacon fat, in lower quantities, but a mouthful of pure bacon from a monster will do nasty things to their digestion."

"We will keep that in mind. Or do they all live separately?"

"No, they come up to work and shop, it’s just that their apartment blocks are built in a bunker. They came with the Kalkan Fleets, in a bunch of survival Arks that they got from the first trial. So, the Ark Commanders are the district leaders for the underground, and they sort out travel passes, so that the upper city doesn’t get swarmed with three quarters of a million people all wanting to go shopping after work."

The new arrivals nodded. That made sense. When things ran short in their old home, they alternated skipping meals, so that everyone got meals on the same intervals, and there was always someone freshly fed to defend the base.

Looking at the difference was jarring.

The meal went mostly quiet, with only a few more questions asked as the temptation of good food silenced all other concerns, and then the new arrivals were ready to pass out.

Sure, it was barely dawn, but it had been a very long night.

"Don’t worry about the schedule, the city operates all day and night. Just get up when you get up, and go talk to the Coordinator or your group leader about finding work that suits you.

There is a quest for four hours a day, and it’s considered bad luck to pass up a quest that easy."

"Got it. We will pull our weight."

Mave and her husband returned to their apartment, and to the shower, where they paused with trepidation. Marimgar had everything, right? Did that mean clean hot water?

Yes!

A bit of mana, and the water from the shower was perfectly hot the instant that the tap was opened. But better, it was on a full five minute timer.

The city wasn’t currently under water rationing, but the timers had been installed at the start, and nobody ever thought to change them. The five minute shower was simply how things were done now.