Monarch of Solitude: Daily Quest System

Cutting up a huge leaf that Rino had someone foraged from the jungle of doom, Rino cut it into strips while waiting for the pot of water to boil. The slides watched as those nimble bone fingers wove the leaf strips into something like a cocoon before Rino added washed grains of wet rice into the leaf container. Then, he added some meat and nuts before filling it up with even more wet rice grains until it was half full before weaving the leaf cocoon shut.

"What is that?" Kragami finally asked, unsure of this cooking method.

Rino busied his fingers weaving the next leaf cocoon and shrugged. He simply saw this in the recipe book and claimed that it was a novel way of cooking rice so that it wouldn't get stuck onto the bottom of pots when it cooked.

The villagers in Town Zera had plenty of opportunities to experiment with the crops they grew. Soybeans made good soup stock and snacks for rabbits. Wheat was just plain awful when boiled, so everything simply collected it and stored it away. Corn was sweet when boiled and roasted. It added flavour to the soup, and it was a quick favourite. In fact, dried corn kernels became a popular snack. Someone accidentally left the dried kernels on a heated stone, and it exploded into a small corn cloud.

Popcorn with some salt became a new trend, and the trolls offered to farm more corn than they previously did with the increase in demand. Rino found it hard to blame them when the offerings for corn sent to Noir Province decreased significantly. The snack was rather addictive.

After making about ten of these rice leaf containers, Rino tied them together and tossed the bunch of ten into the pot of boiling water.

"Check on them after thirty minutes," he told Kragami and left to look at the noodle production.

Making noodle dough was easy. The recipe needed a few adjustments, but Rino figured that two giant quail eggs made one regular-sized egg, as mentioned in the recipe. The flour that they were using was rice and wheat. The cooks followed Rino's demonstration with his equally measured mixed flour.

First, the flour was piled, and a hole was made in the centre so that the flour pile resembled a volcano and its crater. Then, the eggs were cracked into the centre and sprinkles of salt were added to the mix. Rino added a little water to his mixture, and the ladies followed his lead. After that, things started becoming messy as powder went through Rino's exposed bones as he mixed it into a dough. Eventually, Kragami offered to do the mixing while Rino cleaned his messy hands.

The dough mixtures had slightly different colours according to the blend of flours, and Rino inspected them. They looked good, and the wooden rolling pins were brought out. He gave the ladies a pin each and showed them how to flatten the dough.

"This is going to be a crucial skill when making other things such as pizza, cookies and cakes. The thickness of the dough matters, and for noodles, we're looking at two mm thick. In other words, as thinly as possible."

As it turned out, the ladies did a better job at dough consistency than Kragami with his shaky hands. Even with his beard and eyebrows all neatly tied up and out of his face, the necromancer still needed help seeing how thick the dough should be. Rino told him to check on the dumplings boiling in the pot instead as the ladies took over.

Once the noodle preparations were ready, Rino told them to set it aside for now and measure out the ingredients for the rice pancakes and buns. 

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Rino left the kitchen warzone temporarily to check on the visitor.

"My lord, Rina sent these by courier," a drow bowed and passed the packaged items to Rino, who received them with surprise.

What did Rina send him using the express courier service? Didn't he tell her to use the sky palanquin?

Inside the packages, there were hemp seeds, flax seeds and more honey, just enough to create his trial products.

Thrilled, Rino got back to working on the grindstone to get his seed oil while everyone else worked on something.

It took them hours, but slowly and surely, Rino's dream of making pizza was coming true. Flaxseed oil was a little better than hemp oil, but Rino still used both oils to try making pasta and bread. Naturally, Rino was too lazy to cook pasta strands, so he made the ladies create shell-shaped pasta that they pinched by hand. The rest of the drying process was sped up with magic.

In between making seed oil, Rino pranced to and from the milking station to borrow the cheese tub. The barrel of vinegar was rolled over as Rino prepared his tofu block from the collected soymilk. Tofu went well with soup and corn, so Rino prepared those, as the bread dough to be baked in his oven.

Rino stared at the oven without a break, monitoring the temperature and adjusting it accordingly so that the dough would not burn as he dried pasta dough. The smell of bread was so heavenly that Rino wished he could store this in a bottle to sniff when he was stressed. There was just something about the smell of freshly baked bread that soothed his soul.

"Remove the steamer!"

"Lower the heat!"

"Get the pot! I hear it boiling now!"

His head was hurting from all the orders barked around by the busy cooks. Kragami ran from station to station for hours until the necromancer had to call for a break and tap out. His old body simply wasn't fit enough to keep up with the enthusiastic undead. Without another choice, Rino called for reinforcements in the form of genesis fairies to take over the magic management.

Peeling the potatoes using several knives and the help of his shadow tendrils, Rino monitored the cooks with sharp eyes, offering guidance when they could not understand the recipe and presenting solutions in unusual but effective manners.

The tofu blocks were ready just in time as the bread was baked. The pasta shells were dried, and the soup stock wafted through the air enticingly.

It was finally time to put everything together, and Rino eagerly added his favourite pizza toppings with an extremely generous amount of cheese while everyone boiled and deep-fried things.

Unable to withstand the temptation, Ace decided to grace Rino with his feline presence and left a note on Phil's table that he would be gone for a while. If the god of landscaping needed him to nudge Rino towards the correct direction for their new phase, he could let him know using the communication channels.

Rino just placed the pizza into the oven when he sensed a familiar energy.

"Report! There's an intruder at our borders!" one of Kamiya's henchmen slammed at the stone cottage's door urgently.

Instead of gearing up for battle, Rino calmly told everyone to return to work and placed Kragami in charge.

"Do you need assistance?" his teacher asked, and Rino shook his head.

"It's a long-time friend that we both know. The new citizens in Town Zera won't know who it is but those who have seen the worship statue would know better than to call him an intruder."

With a nod of understanding, Kragami waved at Rino and told him not to keep their esteemed guest waiting for too long. Cats were known for their fickle temper, after all. However, Noir came just in time for the tasting party. Although Kragami did not know how everything here would taste, he was fairly confident that it would be better than king toad stew.

Abandoning his escort, Rino teleported right to where Noir was. The black cat was licking its paws when Rino arrived and the lich almost hyperventilated at the sight of the adorable fluffball.

"Noir! You're here!"

Feigning disinterest, Noir simply tapped at the barrier gently and raised a brow.

"Are you not going to let me in?"

Apologising quickly, Rino added Noir's magic signature to the new mana web array so that the black cat could easily pass through.

"You came just in time," he told the black cat, picking it up and cradling it against his ribcage. "I was just making dinner. It will be ready in a bit. Would you like to have a tour of the new town?"

Seeing no reason to refuse, Ace agreed and pawed at Rino's jaw when the lich tried to sneakily plant a toothful kiss on his head. Kisses were disgusting even with lips. It was simply downright freaky without lips.

Even though Ace watched Rino build his town from above, it looked more impressive in person now that he was here in the small world.

"What's that?" the black cat asked, transfixed by the movements of the wind vanes that turned consistently.

Rino chuckled at the hypnotised gaze. Even if Noir was a powerful magic cat, he still couldn't defy those natural animal instincts calling to him. 

"That's a windmill. It is used to make flour that is used to make pizza."

"Pizza?"

Rino grinned, but it did not show on his skull. "Yes, pizza. One of the most wonderful things in the world. You'd get to try it later. I loaded it with a lot of meat and cheese."

Tempted by food, Ace let Rino cuddle him as the lich gave him a VVIP grand tour of the town.