Making stew was hard. Chopping vegetables one-handed was hard, washing meat grime off my hand was hard, and fetching the water from the pump outside was hard. The only easy part was waiting for the damn thing to start bubbling.
It sucked. Domesticity sucked in this world. Though it sucked a lot more with only one hand and a total lack of muscle memory. Thank fuck there were toilets, though admittedly, considering the seemingly general lack of plumbing, it didn’t make so much sense.
Regardless, I ate my stew, only spilling a few spoonfuls on the robes I had gotten from Frida. Off to a great start.
I couldn’t just flutter around indoors for the next week. I was going to lose my mind.
I could digest all the stew…
No, that would be such a waste of food. Oh, but it might level me up, it might get Candy grown up.
I had five shillings to my name, and only if I used the money that was left for emergencies. I could… probably get more food with that? How much did food cost?
Shit. Sleeping on the floor of that inn was a few pence, so had the meals each, but I couldn’t remember numbers exactly. So if each shilling was 10 pence, then that meant I had 50 pence to work with. Surely if it had probably been around a shilling in total for a stay in the inn and the excessive amount of food I had eaten, 50 pence could turn that into a week of groceries. Maybe?
But it would be such a waste of food. And then I would need to get groceries, something which I had no idea how it worked in this world, plus I had one less arm to carry things with.
I sighed, eyeing the pot of stew. I was going to feel really stupid if this didn’t jump-start anything.
I stood and walked over to it. It was still bubbling. Right… it was literally boiling right now. Never mind.
“Candy? You can digest anything organic, right?” I asked.
“Hmm, I think so,” she replied, uncertain.
“So… if we went out to the fields and digested a bunch of grass, that would help?” I suggested.
“Probably not,” she sighed wistfully. “I mean, it is good to eat stuff, but it’s the mana that lets me grow.”
“Okay,” I hummed. “What’s high in mana?”
“Oooooo, people! Pamela, we are in a city! So many people!” she explained triumphantly.
“Candy,” I admonished with a groan.
“Oh, right… I forgot. People good, people good, people… what is it?”
“Good,” I sighed.
“Good. People good. I don’t know why that’s so hard,” she grumbled.
“I don’t know either,” I muttered, shaking my head in disbelief. “Do you have any skills that would be useful? Something to make money? Or grow faster?”
“We have all the same stuff now,” Candy mentally shrugged.
“Wait, the only skill you had was [Digest]? What about the whole… slime thing? Nothing else?” I frowned.
“Do you have skills for being a human?” Candy retorted.
And… actually, that was a good point. Still, given how alien slimes were, I expected more than simply [Digest].
This wasn’t a puzzle that could be solved with the skills we had.
I thought back to the mountains of trashy Isekai I had read on Earth. None of it was particularly useful to my current situation. I had from right now until the beginning of fall to figure out how to make a fortune if I wanted to attend the Academy.
Economics wasn't my strong suit, and math was absolutely not my strong suit. It was made infinitely more complicated due to the fact that this world was semi-medieval and worked on a feudal system. Not that I particularly enjoyed living in late-stage capitalism, but it was a horror I well understood. Or partially understood.
Regardless, here I was at an information disadvantage. I knew Agocester was a mining town, on top of all the farming I had seen, and clearly had had a degree of commercial stuff and a produce market. So there was an economy here. But you couldn’t simply think your way out of poverty.
Honestly… the best option in a world like this was probably to marry up. Or at least get really friendly with Lord Grosswin. That was also not exactly feasible. Fuck!
The medieval period wasn’t exactly known for its class mobility. And I was a woman, and while I wasn’t entirely sure of the way things worked here, I doubted it did me any favours. Though Frida and Martrix were both seasoned mercenaries, so… gender was at least not as much of a hindrance militarily as on earth.
Given a very literal power system, it made more sense for that to play a role anyway. Much easier to establish class divides between people literally beneath than to attempt to force submission in half of a population that could very easily be superior to you with a few skill points.
Another thing to do if I ever made it into the academy, figure out how this place actually worked and not just my vague approximations based on Earth. I wasn’t sure I had ever had so many headaches.
I turned my attention back to the stew. I couldn’t figure this out with my current toolbox, so I had to think outside the box. I just hoped the stew got me out of the box. I was losing my mind here.
I fetched the water pitcher and dumped it into the stew, cooling it down substantially. It almost physically hurt to do so. I would have to go buy groceries and figure out what I was going to eat for the week. I should have just not bothered making it in the first place and used [Digest] on the ingredients raw.
So so stupid. I tested the temperature. A chunky lukewarm. Yum…
I stuck my hand up to my forearm into the stew and used [Digest]. And I waited, and kept waiting, and kept digesting. I was going to be here for a while. A piece of something brushed my arm, and I grimaced. This was so unpleasant. I should have just gone to the market to buy ingredients to then digest. Oh fuck me. That would have been so much smarter.
I laughed at myself. In my defence, I had no idea what I was doing.
Telling the passage of time was even harder in a world without widely available clocks. The fact that I was just standing here with my hand in the stew pot didn’t remotely help the time go by. But very slowly, the stew was digested. The liquid was absorbed first, then I had to take a handful of mushy vegetables and break them down, repeat.
It was so stupid. So silly. But I was into it now, and I only had myself to blame.
By the time I got to the bottom, I felt… weird. I pressed my hand against the squishy vegetables as I continued to digest and absorb them. I definitely felt weird. And not a good weird. I expected I might feel full, but really, I just felt kinda ill.
Given the law of conservation, no fucking kidding. All of the stew had to go somewhere, and since I was absorbing it, it all went into me. Could you die from too many vegetables?
You certainly could die from hyponatremia, and I had taken in a ridiculous amount of liquid.
“Hey uh… Candy?” I asked, sitting down on the bench as my head swam slightly. “Any idea what's going on?
“What?” she asked. “You are eating stew?”
“I feel weird.”
“Oh… you are really full of mana,” she added, as if it was obvious. “I don’t think that's so good for humans.”
“Mana poisoning?”
“I guess? Hold on, I was busy, I will absorb it.”
“Busy doing what?” I frowned, squeezing my eyes shut to try to avoid the vertigo.
“I have… hobbies and stuff. I’m cool,” Candy defended.
“You literally live inside my body. What could you possibly be up to?” I sighed.
“I was spreading out,” she explained. “I don’t need to keep my slime all clumpy in here. And I get more information if I’m everywhere.”
“What?” I snapped. “Like fucking mould?”
“No! It will just make digesting easier if I am already everywhere,” she defended. “Then I don’t keep having to push organs and stuff out of the way.”
Despite feeling increasingly worse for a multitude of reasons, I was actually starting to feel better. Whatever Candy was doing helped, even if I now had Candy slime permeating my body. I felt like I was wearing wet socks, but those wet socks were my entire skin suit. I shuddered.
You have levelled up and gained five stat points to allocate.
“Yay! Yummy!” Candy cheered.
Thank fuck. At least it hadn’t been a total failure.