TBE Chapter 87

TBE Chapter 87

Simon killed two boars and one deer. Ezekiel asked if the man specifically chose larger animals and he answered that it was so.

“Can you hunt some fowls next time? I also had some recipes that call for bird meat,” Ezekiel requested while examining the animals Simon brought, and the man nodded.

Ezekiel stored the animals first to be butchered later that night since he intended for them to leave after lunch. The greatest advantage of his inventory, which he kept calling the 4th tab space since it’s the 4th tab in his system browser, was the time-stopping feature, which was basically making sure that the food remained as fresh as the time he stored it.

He then asked Simon to bathe, and when Simon returned from the washroom, they all ate a lot of food for lunch then they hurriedly cleaned everything and started their journey for that day.

While they were traveling, Robert and Luke just kept on playing, while Ezekiel started creating an extensive list of recipes based on the animal meat that Simon had hunted. The good thing about having a system store was that he could buy all the spices and ingredients that he would need to make sure that the food that he would cook was delicious. That was also the advantage of living as a bachelor who loved to eat for three decades. Ezekiel was an experienced home cook because he wanted to eat delicious things, but he didn’t have enough money to buy cooked food from restaurants all the time, so he needed to learn how to cook to eat good food.

Not only that, but having access to the internet, Ezekiel was thankful that he could have any recipes that he could search. This time, he didn’t plan to separate the food into bento boxes and would just serve them from large bowls where he would store them. They would use plates to eat and just get the food from the bowls that they would place on the table, just like a regular family.

Ezekiel would have to purchase a lot of bowls, though, for the amount of food that he was planning to cook, but then again, he suddenly thought, why not create a bowl using wood? He would create a single, perfect large wooden bowl with a lid and then once he mastered creating it, he would just create more copies using the Fabricate spell. The idea made him happy.

The good thing about putting the food in a bowl and them just getting it from those bowls, if there’s any left, Ezekiel could just store it back into his 4th tab space, and it would still be fresh the next time they wanted to eat it.

One good example of the new process that he was thinking about was cooking a huge bowl of spaghetti with the sauce and cheese already mixed into the bowl and when they wanted to eat it, they would just take the spaghetti from the bowl and if there’s any that was left, he would just store it. Because of that, Ezekiel decided that it was going to be that way once all the food bento was gone. After creating the list of recipes that he chose to cook the next time they stopped for a few days for him just to cook, Ezekiel joined his brothers in their play, but after a while, he asked them to take a nap for an hour or two, and the boys obediently followed his instruction.

He then joined Simon at the front seat and then gave the man some more instructions on how he should behave so he could pretend as their adult guardian once they reached a populated area like a village or a city. He was making sure that the instruction that he was giving Simon was detailed but simple and easy to understand. He also acted out several pretend conversations with Simon so the man would know how to answer.

It would probably take a lot more time before Simon could truly pretend to be their guardian.

Soon, Ezekiel asked Simon to find them a place they could stay for the night, and as usual, their guardian just found a clear enough space inside the forest beside the road.

The moment the Galder’s Towers were conjured by Ezekiel, Robert and Luke ran upstairs to play. He and Simon remained on the first floor, which was their kitchen slash dining room slash workroom, to butcher the animals that Simon had caught early that morning.

After the butchering was done, he asked Simon to bathe while he stored the meat and cleaned everything using the Prestidigitation spell. That night, Ezekiel didn’t buy anything that would motivate the boys to study since he promised them that it would be a pizza and soda night.

“Tonight is pizza and soda night! But only if you three are truly motivated to learn. If I feel like you’re not energetic enough, then pizza night is scrapped, okay?” Ezekiel announced when Simon returned from the washroom together with Robert and Luke, who were playing on the second floor.

The three boys nodded, and when the lesson started, Ezekiel almost laughed out loud at how enthusiastic the three boys were. After the lesson was over, Ezekiel spent a silver coin to purchase several pizzas and three liters of soda.

The three boys gaped at the pizza when Ezekiel opened the boxes. He could understand their reaction since the pizzas looked really good, and even Robert and Luke, who had eaten them before, looked at the pizzas as if it was the first time they had seen them.

The four of them enjoyed eating the different pizzas that Ezekiel purchased from the System Store. While they were eating, it was funny how silent they all were. They were all busy devouring the delicious pizza and drinking the soda. While they were eating, Ezekiel thought about the recipe that he was planning to cook. Some of them called for bread as the main dish, and he thought that buying bread all the time would be costly, so he thought about buying a bread maker.

The good thing about the modern bread making machine was, you just put in your ingredients  on the machine then voila, after a couple of hours, you have bread. The main concern was, it was going to be a huge investment because Ezekiel would have to purchase the bread-making machines and a generator and fuel to power them, but then again, sooner or later, he would have to purchase a generator if he wanted to enjoy modern machines.

He then thought of learning how to bake bread manually using the tutorials that he could view over the internet and decided that he would do so while he was cooking since there was downtime while waiting for some of the food to cook. He would also start teaching Simon and the kids to cook so they would learn how to. Besides, in Ezekiel’s opinion, cooking was a very fun thing. He would ask Robert and Luke, though, if they wanted to learn and not just impose it on them, although having no chores to do seemed like a bad thing for the boys.

The problem with having no chores was that Ezekiel did everything himself for the sake of convenience. He cooked a lot of food that he stored, and that meant that they didn’t have to cook every day. Since cleaning everything using his Prestidigitation spell was convenient, easy, and fast meant that he was the one cleaning everything. He even cleaned the boys’ teeth if they forgot to brush their teeth and was doing the same thing with his. If the boys were not so active playing all the time, they might become fat, nothing-to-do nobles, and he wondered if he should change the way he did things.

The only excuse he could give himself was they were in the middle of a journey but since they truly have no home to go to, just planning to settle somewhere, they’re like those gypsies that travel wherein the road was their home.

Ezekiel also considered that if the boys didn’t learn how to function how regular people travel, they would become ignorant men.

After dinner was over, Ezekiel decided that he would think about it some more and maybe list the things that he would change in a notebook. At the same time, he would also join the boys in doing the chores manually so he would learn as well. Having magic was a privilege granted to him for some reason, and because of that, it was excusable for him to use it to make his life convenient, but remaining ignorant was not going to help him and his brothers in the long run.

In the meantime, instead of asking the boys to continue playing and Simon to join them or do a chore and him working on his wood crafting, Ezekiel decided to have a meeting with his family.

“We need to have a meeting, everyone!” Ezekiel loudly announced and then asked everyone to remain seated at the dining table.

Robert, Luke, and Simon waited for Ezekiel to continue speaking.

“I noticed that all of us are going on our travel day to day without doing anything. We’re not doing any chores, and that means that we’re not learning how regular people do things while they are traveling, and I think it’s a very bad thing because we are becoming ignorant about life itself.”

The boys remained silent while waiting for Ezekiel to continue.