Born a Monster

Chapter 20

Proper Nutrition

If you want to learn about nutrition, talk to a cook. For me, that was Theodara’s mother, Kastrolyte.

“Kastrolyte-”

“No! Nothing for you before dinner. Go chop wood or something.”

“Actually, I needed to ask about how food works.”

.....

Theodara, who was chopping roots for her mother, snorted.

“Were you born knowing this?” Kastrolyte asked her. “Okay, then.”

To me, she said, “Tell me what you think you know already.”

“Well, food is measured in meals, each of which provide a certain number of biomass points, which you call nutrition.”

“Maaybe.” She held out two thirds of an onion. “How many meals in this?”

“One.” I said.

Theodara broke out laughing, careful to keep her knife on the cutting board.

Kastrolyte cut a slice off the end of the onion. “Still a full meal?”

“Yes.” I said.

“And the slice?”

“Also one. Hey!” But my System calmly insisted that one minus one was still one.

“That’s the difference between portions, also called servings, and meals. This slice alone counts as a serving. So – How many servings is the rest of the onion?”

“I’ll guess three.”

Theodara sputtered, but kept chopping.

“You guess wrong. Your System should be able to tell you. This is five servings of onion, each of which has a raw nutrition of one fruit. Do you know the different kinds of nutrition?”

“Some of them.” My list was wrong; meat and fish counted as proteins, as did eggs.

“Meat and some fish can also contain fats and oils, which also have nutritional values. Now why do you think that’s important?”

“Because each digests using its own timer?”

“Well, it does, but that’s not where I was going with it. Okay, you’re a cook, what happens if I take this onion, some acorns, and a slice of meat, and boil them in this water?”

“You get a level 2 stew, which has four points of nutrition.”

“Not even close.” Said Theodara. “Just say that you don’t know instead of being stupid.”

Kastrolyte ignored her daughter’s comment. “You know how infusion works?”

I nodded. “You expend points from health, fatigue, sanity, serenity, mana, or another meter to enhance the values of something while you craft it.”

“So how did you get a value of four?”

“One for each food item, and then one from infusion.”

“Close. But as you wash and prepare your raw foods, you can infuse them. That way, your level two stew has two points for each of the ingredients, and can be infused twice, because that’s the lowest nutrition value of an ingredient.”

“So it’s actually eight.”

“No, lizard brain. It’s thirty two. Eight times four servings. You can add more water, but that means each serving of stew has less nutrition.”

“Be kind, Theodara. Her numbers, if not her attitude, are correct. Now, if we add basil, an herb, we can infuse the ingredients again. That makes our total twelve times four, not five, because the seasoning doesn’t add a serving on its own.”

“But that’s-”

“So, part of the reason you’re thinking that you’re not getting enough to eat is that a serving of stew with twelve nutrition is scanning with four?”

“I ... guess so?”

“And your System has been counting multiple servings as a single meal?”

“But – how large is a serving, then?”

“That varies by food type. Open a System list.”

#

I had to lug in wood for two of the chimneys while learning. Also, there were one hundred and two key nutrients, minerals, and vitamins, plus others that Kastrolyte couldn’t remember.

I was stunned. My bowl held four servings of stew; a small cooking pot needed a dozen of each ingredient, holding almost fifty servings of stew.

Each “meal” my stomach could hold was actually a small stack (or a large stack of grass) of identical servings. The amount of biomass I had ingested boggled my mind.

I let my System harvest sprigs of sage while I pondered this. Where was all that hidden biomass going? What was my System doing that consumed that much biomass? It wasn’t going into evolutions, and wasn’t becoming fatty tissue...

I had an idea. Maybe I could pick herbs in a way that infused them?

I failed my first skill check, but that just verified that Infuse Herbs WAS compatible with Harvest Herbs. Provided I had the source energy, I succeeded about one in every three attempts.

I filled my bag, keeping the better herbs to one side.

Initially, Kastrolyte pronounced the sage acceptable.

“Please look again.”

She pulled out another sprig, pronounced it acceptable, and looked shocked when I snatched the bag, fished around, and produced one of the good ones.

“Try that one.” I insisted.

“Ah, even little Thea hasn’t thought of that one. See here, Thea. THIS is why we teach people things they don’t know.”

“Average quality instead of poor or low.”

“And the effect value?”

“It’s... EeeEEeeeEEeee!” She accompanied this with a little wobble-hop, first only her forelegs on the ground, and then the rear, repeating. “Show me how you did this! SHOW ME!”

“Agh! Let go of my ARM! That hurts!”

“Then keep up!” she insisted.

“At least get a bag!” I pleaded.

Her mother threw us one. “Blonde corn thistle, I think there’s a patch in the northern plains.”

There was. I wasn’t a fan of the nettle, bitter like most of its family, but I had to admit it countered some of the worst taste in hog flesh.

Theodara watched me harvest until I successfully infused one.

“Almost, that’s just the physical part of it. You’ve infused food by washing?”

“Don’t ask dumb and obvious questions.”

“It’s the same thing. Think of it as infusing by picking.”

She squinted in concentration, moving slowly. I could almost see the sunlight gathering at her fingertips, the light trapped by her focus.

“I did it!” she exclaimed, “I DID IT!”

She forgot all about me as she raced back to camp, bag clutched to her chest. The picking seemed to take no time at all.

And, that was the last time I harvested anything for the clan for a good while. Theodara was everywhere, picking all manner of things. There was other work for me to do.

#

If I left after breakfast, I could push the wheelbarrow to where the statue of Ethan-Ivan “Baldo” Baldinov was being erected just outside of the new mine northwest of Seacrest in just one day. I would dine on a loaf of nut bread, and return the next day.

Centaur bread, lacking both eggs and yeast, is a flat, listless loaf, usually round like the pans it is cooked in. Whatever, I could live off it.

The mine was in theory for death-stone, but there was enough siltstone in the way that they discounted it if the Clan hauled it away ourselves. Twelve loads, twenty four days, and the clan would have all the stone they needed to mortar together a floor for the longhouse.

There was already talk of a second longhouse; winter had been, except for two instances of coughs that circulated, a mild one. The alternative was the splitting of Clan Cloverhoof into two clans, but that broke down over who got what tools or supplies or foodstuffs.

Talk was serious enough that they almost negotiated for the stone to floor it. Almost.

It was one of my nights away from the clan that my first familiar approached me.

It was a little pool of darkness, with barely the energy to pull itself along the ground. It was smaller than one of my foot-talons; I admit I didn’t see it before it sent me feelings of DESPERATION, HUNGER, and ENERGY.

.....

I knew those feelings; I’d felt that way often enough. I wasn’t able to design a working ritual for Shadow Earth that night, but was surprised when it consumed the leftover Earth mana directly.

Incidentally, never feed a spirit unless you have the time to tend it. As a shadow spirit, he/she/it needed to be kept out of the sun. It turned up its nose at the first carry container I made from bark woven with field grasses, but took to a wooden cylinder I carved out of a bit of tree branch well enough.

In retrospect, it was foolish. It could easily have been the remnant of a dead goblin, or an infiltrator sent by an enemy. It took a few nights, but Shadow was just an element of Nature magic, just as the Sun or Moon or Plants or Animals. Until then, my spirit drank in bits of Dream mana.

It slowly grew into a vaguely serpentine form, or perhaps wormlike. But I am letting this part of the story get ahead of the rest.

There were plains cats, and they were lean from winter. Most, I was able to calm, or at least to redirect to smaller prey. The others could be driven off by simple uses of Fire. I had no illusions about how things would go on the night they were hungry enough to ignore THAT.

#

“I need weapons training.” I told Zinzelle, who was inventorying the armory that day.

“Okay.” She said, “Show me your knife stance.”

“I was hoping for a short spear.”

She snorted. “Warriors have skill levels, sure. But the bigger weapons will just slow you down if you can’t use them properly.”

“I’ve used a spear for fishing. How different can it be to thrust it into a plains cat?”

“Do you even know the three elements of victory?”

“Elements of victory?”

“Close your eyes. Good. Now, element the first. If your enemy can’t see, they can’t fight.”

A hoof exploded into my chest, fracturing ribs. “If your opponent can’t breathe, they can’t fight.”

She grabbed me by my shoulder, picked me up, and hurled me to the ground. “If your enemy can’t stand, they can’t fight.”

I turned my head and coughed, writhing on the ground.

“Now, who’s ready for a spear?” She stood over me, hands on her hips.

[You have been defeated by a vastly superior opponent. 1 Combat XP awarded. After divisor, 1 XP has been awarded.]

“Fatigue.” I said. “If they’ve no energy, they can’t fight.” Somehow, I pulled myself to all fours.

“Naaah.” She said. “There’s all kinds of abilities like Second Wind, Battle Rage, even Siphon of Will. While you’ve got all three of the elements, you’re still in the fight.”

She made no effort to aid me as I stood.

I spat, more blood and phlegm than spittle. “Okay. Three elements.”

She snorted, looking me in the eye. A smile started at the edges of her mouth, working its way inward. “Okaay, maybe there’s a warrior in there after all. Knife stance, show me.”

I showed her, and she giggled. “Oh. Oh, no. No no no. Okay, balance is key to any stance. If you can’t stand-”

“Then I can’t fight.”

“Right. So, left foot – here. And right foot -” she tapped my ankle with her hoof. “Hmmm. There. Now, show me how you advance in battle.”

I did so. She giggled and began to snort.

“That – that needs work. Here, let me show you.” She walked me back and forth, ten paces, three times. “Okay, better. Now remember your balance as you turn that stump into firewood.”

I groaned, but yes, a life of labor and service was my lot. I did try to mind my balance, to find the parts of Lumberjack and warrior-craft that overlapped.

I tried various stances, because the knife-stance wasn’t quite right. Honestly, that stump was rendered and I still had only a vague idea of what axe stance was supposed to look like.

Wait. I had seen it. Baldo, the human hero, must have assumed it. Where EXACTLY had he placed his feet? I couldn’t remember.

Suddenly, the DP cost for the System to take images of what I saw didn’t seem so useless.

Out of habit more than hunger, I pulled a double serving of grass from my inventory, swallowing them almost without chewing. I’d need molars for that.

It seemed there were no useless parts in the System, just parts I hadn’t imagined a use for yet.

“Slave! If you’re done there, get over here and help move stones.”

As I may have mentioned before, there wasn’t any shortage of work.

#