Born a Monster Chapter 213

213 Servant of the Axe – Gods Are A Headache

Chapter Type: Character Developnt

Not surprising, but I woke with that headache still raging.

[Serious ntal Wound: Brain Damage (rapid healing)]

[Serious ntal Wound: Damaged Pineal (rapid healing)]

What the hell had that curse been doing? Was the damage from the curse, or from its removal?

My empty stomach reminded that breakfast wouldn’t get cooked properly without .

The young won were cutting swordswoman practice to take a spa day while we were flush with coin. Gamilla was catching up on her rumor mill and trade informants. So, all I needed to do was cook for twenty people...

There were over thirty in the common room.

“Are all of these people in the crew, now?”

.....

“Of course not.” The inkeeper’s boy told . “These are paying custors. Most of them want olets.”

I almost bit him. “Who told them I would make them these olets?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, ask mom or dad.”

“Where are they?”

“They went shopping; there were a lot of special requests for ingredients we didn’t have on hand.”

Fine. I slotted the generic Cook title I had for being a level 1 Cook. “Make sure you know who wants what kind of olet. I guess the crew is getting scrambled eggs with whatever ingredients we have the most of.”

Go ahead, try cooking olets when neither you nor your assistant can rember the nas of all the ingredients. Or when the spoiled girl throws her olet at you because she demanded blueberries coated in sugar, not just plain blueberries. (It had twelve nutrition per serving, just like the olet I had to make for her.)

There are reasons why I hadn’t gone into cooking as a profession; I was reminded of most of them that morning. Also, if there was such a thing as Pink Peppermint mana, I had no clue where to tap it.

In any event, two hours later, breakfast was done.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as the boy was laying out slices of at and leaves of lettuce.

“Preparing for lunch rush.” He said.

“I hope your parents are here by then; that’s more than I ever agreed to.”

“What? You can’t just leave here alone!”

“That is exactly the position your parents have put us in. I have mana to gather.”

A word about gathering Sun mana while not happy because of a headache? It’s like catching butterflies; be patient and let it co to you.

Okay, so this was the first ti anything had hurt my pineal gland, which was the core of my Telepath abilities.

Of which I had absolutely none.

The free ability of Telepath was Thought Speech, sothing I’d had unlocked pretty much since birth. How DID that work? I’d never found anything that listed the stuff that had been unlocked for in my System.

Where had those developnt points co from? I an, pregnant mothers never talked about imbuing their child, or activating their Systems... although they DID sing and talk to their children. Was it possible to gain experience while still in the womb (or the egg, in my case)?

I hadn’t DONE anything other than normal regin. So five months or so of regin, but...

I purchased two defensive abilities, Know Myself and Nerves of Steel. I couldn’t rember ever taking Neural damage, but even low-ranked protection was better than none. I didn’t get them imdiately; turns out that your tir doesn’t even start when your Pineal Gland was damaged.

But whatever. I had started down the path of Telepath, most of which was centered around bringing two minds closer together, with options for doing so pretty nasty things. Yeah, I probably didn’t have enough defense.

But rather than focus on my mind, which was needed to generate psi points, I was concentrating on the environnt. The weather started clear, but there were storm clouds rolling in from the south. Each flash of lightning seed to ignite sothing inside the back of my head, so I called it an early day and headed back to the inn.

“We need your help.” The innkeeper’s wife scread to . Odd how my help looked a lot like taking over the cooking while she retreated to the back. To be fair, I’d want to get the grains and groceries inside before the rains hit, too.

“Sir, we’ve a man who wants a slice of ham cooked in buttered flour.”

“Do we have the ham?” I asked. “If so, get a slice, if not then please explain that to the man.”

“Uh, sir... It’s not a man, and I think he wants a large slice.”

It was my first ti seeing a Crocodilios, the reptilian people of the Nurian Empire. He was clad in overlapping bronze plates over mail and gambeson.

It was just a terrible disguise, but I kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t do better.

“I’ll talk to the man. Here, you imbue the butter and flour.”

So, I went to talk to the ‘man’, verifying with a glance of Mystic Vision what I had suspected.

“Sir, I am told we don’t have any ham in stock.”

“Of course, you do.” He replied. “In the northwestern corner of the larder, hidden behind those vile goat sausages. It is quite desiccated, but getting water back into it shouldn’t be a problem for you, will it?”

“Not if the ham is where you say. Please be patient, and I’ll get that for you.”

It was an entire hock of ham, and not quite so bad as I feared. It was easy to get off the bone, even if infusing all the at with River mana emptied my reserves.

The boy was hopeless at infusing, as I myself had been once upon a ti. I wasn’t able to get much nutrition into each serving, but the sheer bulk of the thing made for fifteen servings, for a whopping total of 135 nutrition, which he swallowed with a single gulp.

“Co see at the river.” He said, “We need to talk.”

Ever wonder WHY only the devout beco priests? Because walking through a tropical storm, being literally thrown around by wind and wave just to go down to a river raging over its banks is just not sothing we normal folks think of as reasonable.

He had swapped out forms for a normal crocodile.

He complained.

I asked.

I slapped on my Truthspeaker title.

It was a monster of tal, building-like in scale, massive tal fixtures like sails affixed to either side, forcing itself through the air at rates that made sound waves large enough to do Concussion damage. Just looking at the horrible thing made lose Sanity. I called it an Iron Dragon, but that title didn’t do the thing justice.

It was a massive spirit, beyond the ken of anything I’d deal with on my own.

It pulled four stone tablets from its storage.

They were inscribed in the older Nurian language, the one that the elder pharaohs used. Each of them took up two slots in my System inventory, which ant I had to expand it to the 3×3 and then 3×4, as they couldn’t just go in sideways.

And they were gone, leaving to flail my way back to safety.