Chapter 1458 (1/2)
“You… cooked all of this…?” Randidly asked as he looked down at the three-meter long table in front of him. There basically wasn’t space on it that wasn’t filled with pleasantly steaming food.
Lyra shrugged, the sharp smile that she was wearing since the beginning of their meeting not having moved an inch as she brought him directly into the dining room. “Of course. For especially the early part of the System, I didn’t have much to do. When people didn’t want a Class, Village Spirits are pretty passive. There was some information I could obtain through the Nexus… but I couldn’t do that all the time. Everyone needs a hobby.”
Lyra pointed at the table. “So I practiced cooking, but I don’t have much focus. I just made whatever I felt like eating that night. So please, dig on in. And if you have an opinion, don’t try and spare my feelings; tell me what you really think.”
Randidly nodded and then surveyed the table. As per their agreement, he had come to her house for dinner after her loss to Hank Howard in the duos tournament. She had built a small cottage on the outskirts of Donnyton, so Randidly had used the Philosopher’s Key to return to his old stomping grounds for the meal. She had opened the door and welcomed him in with a smile. And the fact that she had made it from the arena in the Orchard to Donnyton and still had the time to prepare a meal meant that she had likely relied upon her Village Spirit abilities.
I suppose anything I could learn from her about the Nexus Ways I can learn from Octavius as well… Randidly chewed on his lip, then glanced around.
The house wasn’t sparsely decorated, but Randidly suspected that someone like Tatiana would find the building to be lacking personality. Everything here was clean and orderly, which was nice. But the details were almost too perfect. The furniture was at perfect right angles to each other. The table was perfectly in the center of the room. The abstract painting on the wall was monochrome and vague.
This placed seemed like an example home, not a building where someone lived.
“What, does the great Randidly Ghosthound suddenly have opinions about interior design?” Lyra asked as she noticed the direction of Randidly’s gaze. Then she put her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m starving. If you won’t start, I will.”
His mouth twisting slightly, Randidly looked again down at the table in front of him. Immediately to his right was an appetizing looking plate of pork fried rice. Beyond that was some blueberry scones and clotted cream. To his left were grilled lamb kabobs with onions and peppers. Below that was a small plate filled with spicy kimchi. And these dishes only constituted about a third of the total food on the table.
Asparagus, mashed potatoes, shrimp scampi, lasagna, a plate filled with goat cheese, fried fish, a beef stew, macaroni and cheese, collard greens…
Eclectic doesn’t even begin to cover it. Randidly thought. He took the plate Lyra offered him and started with a kabob. Even if he was slightly bewildered at Lyra’s silence insistence that he eat after providing no justification for the sudden meal invitation, Randidly was willing to play along for now. He lifted the kabob to his lips and took a bite. It seemed like she had drizzled some light teriyaki sauce across the kabobs, but it was mostly the natural flavors of the meat and vegetables that he tasted. He chewed rather carefully, enjoying the texture.
After a kabob, Randidly tried a few scoops of fried rice. When he went back for a third type of dish, Lyra stopped him with a level look. Randidly lightly scratched his cheek, feeling even more confused than he had been before. “It’s… pretty good.”
“Right? But only pretty good.” Lyra nodded emphatically, apparently quite pleased with Randidly’s assessment. She moved with increased vigor and a cheery smile on her face with her own plate, heading directly for the macaroni and cheese. “So, tonight’s theme is going to be honestly. Perfect.”
“...I guess so.” Randidly watched her eat for several seconds. Then he started to feel slightly awkward. So he shifted and helped himself to some beef stew, fried fish, and mashed potatoes. At first, he tried small bites of each, so he could sample the flavors. Then he chaotically mixed them all together and began to shovel the food into his mouth. If nothing else, he wasn’t going to pass up this chance to fill himself up on food.
A night of honesty, huh. Randidly thought as he chewed. If I hadn’t answered that way, would it not be…?
But he had been completely honest about the dishes he had tried. The food was pretty good… but also it could be said that it was only pretty good. Compared to the hash that Randidly had for lunch, this food in front of him was nothing to speak of. He forgot the flavor as soon as he swallowed. There was no defect that his tongue could detect, but also…
When his plate was clear, Randidly set down his fork with a frown on his face. He finally realized what the taste must mean. “...you don’t have a Cooking Skill.”
“Correct,” Lyra answered around a mouthful of mac and cheese. Randidly pursed his lips and didn’t ask any more. He continued to consume the fine food until almost the entire table was left with empty plates that sat with just as stark emptiness as bare bones. Once he understood what he was tasting, more things began to make sense. The food seemed empty to him because he had been used to high-Level Cooking Skills adding something extra to the food.
More than that, the hash he had for lunch had a nascent, quiet image as part of its appeal. It was a warmth and hominess that lingered on the tongue and passively alleviated small amounts of stress in the diner. Honestly, Randidly had returned to Helio’s shop less for the food itself and more for that valuable image. Aside from Yggdrasil, Randidly hadn’t encountered any other images that addressed the accumulating mental damage that inevitably resulted from fighting with images.
But this food was perfectly ordinary. It was fine fare that would have been possible for a woman with quite a bit of spare time before the System.
After doing a swarm of locusts proud, Randidly set his plate down on the table. He put both his hands on its wooden edge and leaned forward as he studied Lyra. “So, I assume you wanted to teach me something with the food?”
“You know me too well,” Lyra’s smile was slightly bitter, as though she had bit into a cherry and discovered that it was a crabapple. Yet instead of answering at first, she reached up and toyed with the shoulder strap of her spiraling, navy blue dress. The skin of her arms looked almost unhealthily pale as she fidgeted.
Randidly’s confusion continued to grow. Then Lyra sighed and shook her head. “Maybe it’s fair to say I thought I could teach you something with this… but I invited you here for two things. One is a reminder and the other just a disclosure. A reminder, I’ll say, that is just as much for me as it is for you.
“I’ve just… always been fascinated by what humans can accomplish without the System. Even before the System arrived, I thought about it a lot. Now, fighting against Hank… and cooking… It has helped me feel the broad capability of humans. Images… you might think of it as the natural evolution of our power underneath the System… but I think that’s not the case.” Lyra wrapped her arms around her shoulders. The fabric of her dress flared just a little as it came up around her shoulders and she tugged at it. “That’s just a clever sleight of hand from the Nexus. Are they really the source of images? Images like Hank’s… it is positively sublime. A Skill might mimic the effect, but think about energy efficiency.”
Something that disguised itself as excitement but might be closer to mania came over Lyra’s features. The corner of her eyes crinkled and she licked her lips. As she talked, the pace of her words quickened. “The System provides inefficient mechanisms in the form of Skills that can transform energy into effect. Then they provide a low level flow of energy and teach the kidnapped worlds how to use that energy. Or rather demand that we learn. But images… perhaps the System provides the shape that we mimic to grow, but aren’t images all our own?”
Randidly gave Lyra a long look. His emerald eyes slowly dimmed as he considered her words.
Lyra continued to speak. “Then the System provides trials. Trials that are increasingly difficult to pass, to the point that its shoddily made mechanisms no longer cut it. You are required to contribute high-efficiency images that take emotion and energy to manifest in order to produce greater and greater effects. And the moment you cease being able to surpass yourself, the flow of energy is cut off. A world’s only option then is to send its people to be the grunts of the Nexus in order to cast an even wider net in the next Cohort. That is the System.”
Lyra’s violet eyes met Randidly’s emerald ones. She bit her lip. Randidly blinked very deliberately. He didn’t disagree with what Lyra was saying, although he hadn’t considered it. But to Randidly, it was a largely semantic decision whether images were the natural evolution of Skills or not. “So, your point?”