Chapter 246 - Conversation II (1/2)
Frost Spiders were, after all, rather fiercesome foes for the average human here. They were nearly level thirty and their flesh-melting toxin was renowned for how quickly it could turn a fully grown human into a mushy goop.
But compared to Old Thane and the beastwomen, it was nothing.
”Think of them like crabs, lads,” said Old Thane encouragingly. He put a spider leg in his broad hand and waved it around in positively repulsive display that made it quite clear that him being blind could be a blessing sometimes. ”See?”
”I don't think that's helping, old man,” said Li, though he personally did not care much. ;Many of the hindering emotions of revulsion had long since left him, especially when it came to death or the unpleasant. ”How about we cook it and see how it is first?”
”Food, yay!” shouted Tia, obviously having no reservations of what her food was or looked like.
Prepping the food did not take too long, for Old Thane was very much used to dealing with Frost Spiders. As monsters, the creatures either inhabited cursed forests or the glacial ice forests of the north where trees grew made not of bark, but of glowing ice and white moss.
There, the spiders were larger and stronger than the frost spiders here, covered in white fur and having gleaming red eyes, but in the end, they cooked the same in a pot. It was rather simple. The old man carved out flesh from the spider's abdomen and put it in a pot over the fire and used that along with some water and herbs Li grew with his divine powers as a soup base where he boiled the legs.
The rest of the spider, he tossed out, for it was not edible, packed as it was with poison that could not easily be neutralized. ;
The end result was something that did resemble crab, and it smelled like it too, if a little bit more savory. At the least, it was far more appealing than before, and the two brothers were a little more confident in sitting around the circle that now formed around the bubbling pot, eager to eat.
Li took a spider leg and cracked it, pulling out soft, steamed white meat and handing it to Tia.
”Thanks, papa,” she said as she quickly devoured it, carapace included, her sharp teeth emitting somewhat disturbing crunching sounds as she chewed her way through it all.
”Here,” said Li as he held out another leg to the brothers. ”Don't eat the carapace like her, though, because your teeth will shatter like glass.”
”Thank you, seer,” said Mason as he took the leg and shared it with his brother.
”Good riddance,” said Mercer as he chewed on a chunk of fleshy white. ”Damned creatures make my spine shiver.”
”They did not belong here, yes,” said Li. ”But they still have right to be and to live. Remember that if you two decide to become adventurers of merit. Monsters are as part of this world as you are. Take care to not let your emotions cloud your judgement of their necessity, no matter how horrid or ugly they seem.”
”An agreeable sentiment,” said the Serpi as she laid back sprawled in the coils of her lengthy white tail, scribbling away at a clay tablet. ”Monster, man, fiend, angel, god, demon – all holdeth their roots in thine world. All are part of its balance.”
”Is that a tenet of your god?” said Mason.
”Goddess,” corrected the Serpi.
”And what be it that tablet?” asked Mercer.
The Serpi raised a thin black brow. She paused for a second, looking at the two brothers, and finding genuine curiosity on their faces instead of bias, she relented, showing them the tablet. Atop the surface of clay was a remarkably realistic sketch of the current scene in front of her. ”I record. It is my duty, after all.”
”That is an exceptional rendering!” remarked Mercer. ”Not even the finest artists I've known can match it.”
”Agreed, brother,” said Mason as they scooched closer to inspect the tablet. ”Though I suppose we've not seen much but the street artists hawking their daily wares.” ;
”All my sisters are capable of this much, for it cannot be that a scholar of the sands lacks talent in the art of the stylus,” said the Serpi.