Chapter 16 - A Humble Meal To The Beloved One (1/2)
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.”