TBE Chapter 94

TBE Chapter 94

Ezekiel spent the rest of the day cooking. He cooked different dishes that he found on the internet and then stored them in huge storage bowls. He also didn’t stop steaming rice and even cooked rice different ways, like fried rice and onigiri style rice.

At around 2 in the afternoon, the three boys barged into the kitchen yelling that they were hungry, so Ezekiel served them the bento boxes remaining in his 4th tab space. There were still a lot of them, and they would probably last for a few more days.

After lunch, the three boys ran around everywhere in the forest and the lake. Their pretend guardian did carry his crossbow so he would have a weapon in case there was a need to protect themselves from any attacker and use it to hunt some nearby game animals. Yuki Onna also followed them, so Ezekiel’s familiar could protect them, and several butcher knives that were awakened by the Tiny Servant spell also followed them.

Ezekiel didn’t stop cooking, and the only rest he had was when the three stoves were occupied and he was waiting for the dishes to be cooked.

By the end of the day, he managed to store fifteen huge bowls of different dishes and fifteen huge bowls of steamed rice. With the amount of food all of them eat every day, they would need to stay for a few more days in their current location so they could cook enough food to last for months. He reckoned that a bowl of dish could last the four of them for four meals together with rice. But of course, Ezekiel would alternate the food that they were going to eat at each meal with different dishes.

The next day he planned to cook more various dishes, but he also planned to bake some bread. He was a bit apprehensive about doing that since he didn’t have experience baking bread and wondered if it was worth it to manually bake bread or just buy it wholesale from his system store. Upon reflection, he decided it would be easier to buy the bread and continue cooking the meat and fowl dishes. He also had to search the internet for recipes for cooking fish, and to be honest, he had no experience in cooking them since he mainly cooked pork, beef, and chicken, but he thought that if he just followed the recipe, he would be fine.

It's a little sad that the boys couldn’t swim in the lake, but Ezekiel didn’t want to tragically discover that there were child-eating monsters in the lake. If it were just a small stream like the place where they stayed before, wherein every inch of the stream was visible, then they could swim, but Ezekiel was a little intimidated by the size of the lake and couldn’t help but imagine the different kinds of monsters living in it.

When the sun began to hide itself in the west, the three boys entered the kitchen, which was still busy with all three stoves in use. Simon was carrying some game animals that they managed to kill while they played in the forest. There were a couple of pheasants and one deer. He stored them immediately in his 4th tab space and planned to ask Simon to butcher it the next day.

Ezekiel then asked the boys to take a bath, and by the time they were done, all the remaining dishes that he was cooking were done, so he stored them in his 4th tab space. He then told the boys to wait for them at the now cleaned dining table to start their classes, since he wanted to take a shower first.

The three boys were a little lethargic during Ezekiel’s lecture, and he didn’t fault them too much since they spent a tremendous amount of energy in the forest for the whole day.

After the lessons, they ate dinner and then the boys went directly to the second floor to wait for Ezekiel to be done with his chores, which consisted of cleaning the dishes using a spell and casting all the defensive spells that would protect them during the night. After that, he joined his brothers in bed and continued reading them the adventures of Luffy and his gang, but after a few minutes, Robert, Luke, and Simon were asleep.

The next day, after breakfast, Robert, Luke, and Simon ran into the lake to fish with Yuki and the butcher knives following them. Ezekiel started cooking again.

Since breakfast was early that day, at around six in the morning, the boys returned clamoring that they were hungry at around 9. Simon had a bucket containing around 5 medium-sized fish, and together with the fish that they caught yesterday, there was now a total of 10 fish in Ezekiel’s 4th tab space.

Ezekiel served one bento box each, and he told them that one was enough for them. They could eat their fill during lunch. The boys ate hurriedly and then left to explore the forest.

He cooked faster that morning since he was used to it, and by the time lunch arrived, he managed to cook around ten huge bowls of dishes containing deer, pheasant, and boar meat. Ezekiel was proud of the dishes that he had made since he followed the recipes that he had found on the internet exactly, complete with all of the ingredients and spices required for those recipes.

Since he decided to just purchase bread, he also spent time cooking more steamed rice and thought that he was probably no different from someone who grew up in Asia, subsisting on rice at every meal, which he blamed his neighbors for but then again, he fully believed their saying “rice is life”.

Besides, they do still eat a lot of their meals with bread as the main source of carbohydrates, it was just the majority of their meals consist of rice. Ezekiel didn’t bother himself to worry that the rice wasn’t available in this part of the planet. His brothers and Simon probably assumed that rice was some sort of wizardly food.

Ezekiel was also mindful that they would only eat rice if they were alone, which was most of the time ever since they started their journey. During the little time that his brothers were playing with the children of the villagers, he also didn’t bother to hide the presence of rice in front of the children since everyone knew that children were fanciful and would often tell tales.

After storing most of the food that he had cooked in the morning, the boys returned from their adventures outside, clamoring that they were hungry, and Ezekiel was a little amused that Simon let himself go and started behaving like one of his brothers, which, to be honest, he didn’t mind.

He would only lecture Simon to behave like their adult guardian if they were near any outsider. He wanted Simon to be comfortable around their family, so that they would earn his loyalty.

Ezekiel retrieved the food that he had stored in bento boxes, and they ate a generous helping of lunch. After that, the boys ran off to the forest again. After cleaning the dishes, which only took him a  few seconds, Ezekiel continued cooking.

When the sun set, Ezekiel cleaned up the kitchen. He was impressed with himself for managing to cook a total of 25 bowls of different dishes, consisting of all the meat that Simon had hunted and 20 bowls of steamed rice. It was a huge challenge for Ezekiel to find enough recipes on the internet so they could have different varieties of dishes. Because of that, Ezekiel also spent a whopping 10 silver coins worth of ingredients and spices to add to the protein and to purchase huge bowls where he could store the food that he cooked. He also needed to purchase several cans of butane fuel to power up the stoves.

Looking at his 4th tab space, Ezekiel almost couldn’t believe that 40 bowls of different dishes and 35 bowls of steamed rice were stored there. He did spend a full 12 hours cooking yesterday and another 12 hours of nonstop cooking that day.

The next day, Ezekiel planned to rest partially by just creating food that did not need too much cooking. He planned to create different sandwiches, burgers, and desserts, and he also thought of creating pitchers of fruit juices and other types of delicious beverages.

Since the sun had set, the boys returned from their adventures ravenous, so instead of asking them to bathe first, they ate dinner first, and Ezekiel was amazed at the quantity of food that everyone devoured. He didn’t care that the rate the bento boxes of food dwindled so fast because the most important thing to him was to make sure that his brothers were full. That was the main reason why he was concerned about gold.

After dinner, he then asked the three boys to bathe while Ezekiel cleaned the kitchen. Then he prepared the lessons that he would teach the boys than night. When the boys returned from the washroom, Ezekiel told Simon to feed Prince Donkey and for his brothers to play a bit while he bathed, then they would start the lesson.

Ezekiel bathed and cleaned everyone’s clothing using his Prestidigitation spell, then went to the dining room to start their grammar lesson for both the local language and English. After that, they all rested that night without even requesting a bedtime story.