Chapter 118 - 116: A Picky Foodie?

Hayden Hanson followed Sev Steele inside. He dumped everything from his Tactical Backpack into her kitchen, taking only a few carrots with him.

Sev felt a bit guilty. "Hanson, how can you give me all of this?"

"My cooking is terrible anyway, so I might as well leave it here. Don’t worry, I’m not losing out. I’ll be coming over for free meals all the time," Hayden laughed.

"Alright then. Once I cook it, I’ll have the kids bring some over to you," Sev said.

She knew she was taking advantage of his generosity, but she mentally recorded every favor. She would pay him back whenever she had the chance.

Hayden, on the other hand, felt that today’s harvest of carrots and fat grubs was entirely thanks to Sev. If she had been more selfish, she could have easily marked the location and returned alone to dig them up. Even if she had to rent a Tactical Backpack, she would only have to hand over twenty percent of the haul, which was far better than splitting it evenly with him.

Without even stopping to rest, Sev immediately went to Rick Kaye to borrow a needle-shaped detector to test the fat grubs for toxicity. Sure enough, the results showed they were non-toxic.

Hayden had already tested the radiation levels, confirming they were entirely low-level.

Although they were First Tier mutant bugs, the Energy contained within their Larval Stage was relatively mild. Coupled with the low radiation, they wouldn’t harm ordinary people as long as the intake was controlled.

Sev immediately called Rusty over to help add firewood and tend to the stove. She started rendering the fat.

First, she soaked the fat grubs in saltwater for half an hour to let them spit out the dirt from their bodies. After scooping them out, she diced them into one-centimeter cubes and tossed them into the pot to simmer.

Soon, the entire house was filled with the rich aroma of rendering fat. Rick Kaye, who had been resting in bed, couldn’t lie still any longer. He hopped into the kitchen on his crutches.

"What is that? It smells amazing," he asked, his eyes gleaming.

Sev didn’t hide anything from him and explained how they had dug up the fat grubs today to render oil.

Rick listened with envy. "How is your luck so good? I’ve traveled all over the world to hunt and caught countless types of bugs, but I’ve never seen such a delicious-looking fat grub."

"Your luck isn’t bad either. You get to eat it just by lying in bed," Sev teased.

"Yeah, that makes sense. I consider this God’s compensation for my injuries." Rick nodded seriously, making Sev burst into laughter.

She wondered what happened to the image of the ruthless, high-and-mighty Judge. She hadn’t expected him to be so down-to-earth, joking around with an ordinary person like her.

Sev rendered the fat late into the night, yielding over twenty pounds of oil and more than fifty pounds of cracklings.

Fortunately, she had brought back several alloy buckets from scavenging with Hayden last time; otherwise, she wouldn’t have had anywhere to store it all.

Sev divided out a third of the oil and cracklings to give to Hayden and kept the rest. This way, Hayden wouldn’t feel guilty about coming over for meals in the future.

Ultimately, she didn’t want to take advantage of others. In a friendship, it couldn’t always be one person making all the sacrifices; over time, that would ruin the relationship.

Late that night.

The children were fast asleep, and so was Rick Kaye. Sev picked up a fat grub she had deliberately set aside and walked over to a corner of the woodshed.

She had never forgotten how she was nearly sucked dry by that broken wooden box last time. She knew there was something bizarre about it, but she hadn’t dared to touch it again.

Now that she had acquired so many fat grubs today, she decided to run an experiment.

She tossed the fat grub into the broken wooden box and stood aside, waiting quietly.

One minute, two minutes, three minutes passed... There was no reaction whatsoever.

She wondered if this thing was a picky eater, or if it only absorbed the life force of living humans.

The mere thought sent shivers down her spine!

If this thing was evil, she should burn it to ashes immediately. Once it was nothing but dust, it wouldn’t be able to cause any more trouble!

She brought over a small bowl of fragrant, still-warm cracklings and glared fiercely at the broken wooden box.

"I’m warning you. If you still don’t eat, I will chop you into firewood and burn you!" she threatened.

With that, she dumped all the cracklings from the small bowl into the box.

A second later, a magical scene unfolded. The cracklings shrank at a visible rate, their golden-yellow hue rapidly fading until all that remained was a small pile of ashes, exactly like the remnants of burnt firewood.

If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, Sev wouldn’t have believed it!

Could it be that this thing was just a glutton?

She hurried back to the kitchen, grabbed a piece of the shredded potato pancake she had baked that morning, along with a raw potato, and threw them both into the wooden box.

Very quickly, the potato pancake shrank and turned into a small pile of ashes, but the raw potato remained completely untouched, lying quietly at the bottom of the box.

Trembling slightly, Sev kicked the wooden box over, fished out the raw potato and the fat grub, and brought them back to the kitchen.

After washing up and getting into bed, she couldn’t fall asleep for a long time.

She realized she had unlocked a glutton with Invisibility hiding in a broken box—and a picky one at that!

Unfortunately, she was also on this glutton’s menu.

Thank goodness it couldn’t leave the wooden box, or it probably would have come out and sucked her dry long ago.

It was terrifying to think about!

In the middle of the night, Sev finally drifted off to sleep.

In her dreams, she was tightly bound by vines extending from the broken box, unable to break free no matter how hard she struggled.

"Mom, did you have a nightmare?" Rose’s sweet, milky voice sounded by her ear. Sev’s eyes snapped open to find the sun already shining through the window onto her bed.

Glancing at her watch, she saw it was already past eleven o’clock. This was the first time she had slept so late since crossing over into this world.

"We wanted to wait for you to wake up so we could eat together, but Mr. Quinn forced a piece of shredded potato pancake onto each of us.

"It smelled so good that we couldn’t resist and ate it.

"Oh, and Mr. Quinn also snuck some of the cracklings you made! He wanted us to eat them with him, but none of us did."

The little girl quietly tattled in her ear while simultaneously admitting her own faults.

Rick Kaye’s hearing was naturally far superior to an ordinary person’s. The whispers Rose thought were a secret were heard loud and clear by him.

He grumbled inwardly about the ungrateful little brat daring to secretly tattle behind her master’s back.

"It’s okay that you ate it. We have plenty of food at home now. You don’t have to wait for me in the future. If you’re hungry, just take something from the cupboard yourself," Sev said with a smile, rubbing the girl’s head.

"Mom, can you stay like this forever and never turn back into the old you?" Rose asked, her eyes full of pleading.

"AHEM! I wasn’t a good mother before because our family was too poor and we had too little food. From now on, I will never let you go hungry again," Sev coughed awkwardly.

"Oh, right! I forgot to tell you that Mr. Quinn taught me a trick.

"He said if I frequently stay close to plants, communicate with them, and give them a little bit of green light, they will give me a little bit of Energy from the sun.

"The plants will grow more and more lush, and I will become more and more powerful! This is called... um, a win-win!

"He told me not to tell anyone, but I’m sure it’s okay to secretly tell you, Mom," Rose continued, sharing her little secret.

Sev felt greatly comforted. Out of the four villainous cubs, she had at least completely captured Rose’s heart.

As for the other three, as long as she didn’t make any major mistakes, even if they weren’t as close to her, they probably wouldn’t resort to matricide, right?