Quest Report:
Character: Noel (Level 1) (EXP 0) (Money 20)
Quest: Cooking Rations
Report:
After being shown the way to the Guild by the kind guards and obtaining an official form of identification here, I needed to plan out what to do now. While on one hand, I could go straight to continuing my search for Her, on the other I could do quests and try to get accustomed to life as an adventurer first. After mulling over what to do for a while, I decided instead of just standing there doing nothing I should go look at what kind of requests there are first of all. If it's stuff like slaying demons and dragons then it'd probably be better for me to just leave this place.
Going up to the board that was bigger than I thought, I started to scan through all of the things posted there. My eyes instantly zoomed in on the request saying Cooking Rations. Not to brag or anything but cooking is one of the few things I'm proud of, due to the fact the She couldn't cook at all and it was up to me to either cook or starve back then, anyways after looking it over I thought it was easy enough and decided to take it. Walking up to the receptionist at the counter, I asked her about the request.
"Excuse me ma'am~? Um, yeah sorry to bother you again but I have a question for you~."
"Hmm? Ah no don't worry about it, what's your question young man?" She asked with a perfect business smile, she'd probably work well as a receptionist at a fast-food restaurant or something.
"I would like to take the Cooking Rations quest please~!"
"Oh my, are you sure about that? Cooking 50 rations is no easy task."
"Don't worry, I'm quite confident in my cooking skills~."
"I see, well if you say so. As written on the request, the guild will provide the recipe and the ingredients. You may borrow the kitchen if you wish but just a warning, the kitchen is very basic. It might be better for you to negotiate with a restaurant and see if you can borrow their kitchen instead."
"Ah, no I think the guild's kitchen would be sufficient~."
"If you say so," she said hesitantly, she looked at me once more as if to check if I was certain before taking out a piece of paper and scribbling something on it, then handing it over to me, "Down the hallway to my left, take the 4th door on the right and you'll find the kitchen. Give the paper to the man inside and he'll give you the things you need."
"Thank you~," I said before skipping away.
Following the lady's instructions, I walked down the hallway and found the kitchen. Honestly, it was bigger than I expected, about the size of 2 classrooms. I wanted to explore a little but was stopped by a shout.
"Stop right there! This area is for staff only! Who are you?!"
An old man that was around the same height as me, was blocking my path. He had a beard that was so long it was slightly dragging across the ground and his attire consisted of a shirt, a pair of trousers, an apron and a chef hat. Wonder if this was the same guy the lady told me to report to? As I was lost in thought the old man seemed to have gotten irritated and looked liked he'd start yelling again. Which reminds me, I still haven't responded to him yet.
"Oh sorry, I'm a new adventurer that registered recently! I was told to come here by the lady at the counter, also she told me to give you thi-."
Before I could finish my sentence, the old man yanked the paper from my hand scanned through it. After seemingly reaching the end, he ripped the paper to shreds before screaming.
"Renting out MY kitchen again?! Those ungrateful sons of b**ches! AHHHH #$%!!@#%$!!!"
He started yelling curses in English before seeming to run out of things to say and switch to some other language and continued his cursing. After a full 5 minutes of continuous cursing, he finally seemed to have run out of breath and stopped.
"So can I use your kitchen?"
I mean whether he says yes or no probably doesn't matter since I got permission already, it'd just be annoying if he kept on trying to kick me out. If I killed him would I get in trouble? I mean obstructing work should be a crime right? As I was contemplating whether to end the life of the old man before me depending on what he said, he finally looked me in the eye after catching his breath again.
"Look here you f*cker, I'll let you do your silly little quest or whatever since you got permission but if you touch anything you're not supposed to, and I mean ANYTHING, I will skin you alive and cook your sorry ass for today's lunch!"
"Sure thing~."
Quite the kind old man, he only called me f*cker once. After seeming to be satisfied with my response he took me to the storage room with all the ingredients, he grabbed all of the ingredients necessary and threw them in front of me. He then tossed the cookbook at my face, but luckily I'm used to stuff like that and was able to catch it easily.
"Tch, there's the stuff, now go do your job quickly! We aren't paying you to dilly dally brat!" He said before storming out the storage room and plopping down on the stool by the door.
I quickly got to work after the distraction was gone, grabbing all the ingredients I quickly transported all of them to the counter before opening the cookbook. It wasn't hard to find the right recipe for the rations since there didn't seem to be much variety there. The recipe was called Eggless, Butterless, Milkless Cake, guess the creator of the recipe couldn't think of anything fun to name it~?
Honestly, the most annoying thing about this request would probably be getting the precise measurements for the ingredients and getting the temperature of the oven to be correct. I was able to eyeball the ingredients due to my years of experience in the kitchen but the oven was a slight problem. It was an old stone oven where you had to use wood as fuel and manually blow a pipe to adjust the temperature, I've used something like this before but honestly, it was a pain in the ass to adjust. Though luckily, the old man seemed to be irritated by my lack of skill and took over pre-heating the oven.
After boiling together the sugar, water, shortening, salt, raisins, and spices. I added flour and baking soda and mixed it well before pouring them into the pan and shoving them into the oven, now all that's left was to wait.
The old man was once again sitting on the stool with his eyes closed, I would have thought he was asleep if not for the constant sound of his feet tapping. I was looking at the fire, blowing through a pipe to increase the heat when it died down a little or added wood when the fuel seemed low.
After around 45 minutes, the cake should have been done. So I took all of the pans out and waited for them to cool for a minute or 2, after that I took the 20 cakes out of their pans and then sliced them in half. Before I realized it the old man was looking at each cake while I was slicing them, he poked some and sniffed others, sometimes his face scrunched up while other times he nodded. After going through all 40 cake rations, he looked at me and said,
"Honestly your fire control is horrible. Some of them are slightly burnt while others are slightly undercooked. But compared to the other bunch that failed miserably, you at least made the food edible."
The old man took out a piece of paper and scribbled some stuff on it that was similar to the ones the lady wrote but slightly different. He then scrunched up the paper into a ball and threw it at me suddenly. I caught the ball before confusingly looked up at him.
"What? It's proof of your completion, now get out of here asshole or do you want me to personally kick you out?"
"Oh, thanks old man, see ya~"
Finally finishing this annoying quest I was quite happy to leave. But just as I was about to leave through the door, the old man yelled out,
"If you ever want to hone your skills properly then take that quest again and come back! I don't want to see assholes waste precious ingredients."
With those as parting words, I skipped out the hallway and returned to the front to report the completion of my quest.
