Chương 18: 18 Stone Soup

I worked for several hours to get everyone indoors, putting them in whatever bed was empty. I thought about using my mental rejuvenation, but realized that there might be adverse side effects in a manner similar to the nausea Robin had suffered. Nobody's body would appreciate such a shift on top of massive strain, unless they had an incredible constitution like mine. I did heal the burns of the guy who dropped his torch on himself, though.

I spent the night taking a look at the village's status. My spatial sense was a major help for this, allowing me to view everything around me for thirty feet at the same time when I concentrated hard on using it. As awesome as this sounds, I wouldn't recommend anyone without superhuman intelligence and processing power to incorporate spatial sense into their own powerset. Even without concentrating, the inflow of information regarding the spatial structure, connections, and the matter contained within would literally drive a normal human insane.

I thought about using the time to also add streamlined information gathering, processing, and reporting functions that would be easy for me to interface with to System. System already did that internally, using my spatial sense for analysis, and even reported to me if I asked something of it. However, I was leery of adding too many functions to System that I would automatically lean on instead of processing the information myself. Maybe if I feel the need for it later.

The village was in pretty good shape, all things considered. I noticed twelve recent grave markers made with hastily carved wood. The lack of bodies had me assume that they were eaten by the demons. Looking through their cellars, I saw that they had enough food stored away to last for two months. Their walls were a little cracked from the pounding the demons gave them, but amazingly, none were broken. Sadly, however, if they had had any farms outside the walls, then they had been completely demolished with the combination of the demons and my sucking spell.

It occurred to me that the passed out populace would be hungry when they woke up, so I went and found a bunch of firewood and an enormous cauldron (at least fifty gallons) in one of the houses, and then pulled water from the well using the bucket and some telekinesis. Smiling to myself, I added a nice looking smooth stone from the ground to the water, and then went looking for the rest of the ingredients. I found salt and pepper, and then tossed them into the bag of holding. Raiding what appeared to be the mayor's house, based on the fact it was the only one with two floors, I found vegetable like things. Tossing them into my shoulder bag of holding, I thought about what to do for meat. I decided to add rather than take away in this case - they had just been under siege, after all.

I reduced the pull of gravity and leapt high into the air. I turned my head and looked for any animals disturbing the space the forest occupied. There! I altered my personal spatial alignment so that gravity pulled me towards what I quickly saw was a large deerish creature. Then I saw a spray of viscera and blood as I failed to stop myself in time. Oops.

"System, please tell me you have a cleansing spell in that collection. While I'm requesting spells, do you have any auto butcher spells? I just realized that I have no idea now to prepare animal parts for cooking."

"But the world's laws of magic don't currently accomodate spell automation... Oh. You asked for the automated versions so that I could show you how they worked. Sorry, Father, the package sent by the rival System didn't include the laws that automate the spells, only the spells themselves. You did only ask for magic, not any supporting infrastructure, so we got cheated in that regard." System sounded both annoyed and impressed with its counterpart.

I cursed. I didn't even know enough to include underlying automation laws when I asked for the magic formulas and scripts then. I couldn't even complain about it, as the automated spells would work if the world supported it.

"Fine then. System, please give me a compatible matter identifying and separation spell." I would have to use my smarts to finesse this problem to death.

An identification spell in a manual system is a lot less detailed than one in an automated one, as rather than connecting you to a stored record connected to the item's self, it connects you with the actual innate self/form of matter. The advantage of doing it manually, however, was being able to identify even parts of an object without any size limitations. Automated identification also tends to only work on noteworthy objects. Anyways, since I already had some practice with form identification using my spatial sense, though it was more of an indirect sense through the way space encapsulated it, it wasn't difficult to acclimate myself and interpret what I was told through the spell.

Cleaning myself was simple. Identifying what was me and what wasn't, I simply had to remove all foreign matter from my body. That wasn't smart, I mused as my clothes exploded off of me. Getting System to spawn a brand new copy of my pants, dress shirt, jacket, underwear, and socks and shoes, I quickly got dressed again. On the bright side, I now had clean clothes!

The butchering of the largest bits of the animal that I could find went more smoothly. I simply separated the skin, blood, and dirt, as well as any bacteria and parasites from the muscle and bone while suspending the parts in midair with some spatial manipulation. Upon realizing I had nowhere to put the wanted or unwanted parts, I just left the offal, and dropped the meat into the Bag of Holding.

Then I jumped up into the air and slid back to the village using directed gravity. I think I'll call this move the gravity slide.

The pot of water was boiling away by the time I got back. I took out the veggies to slice and add to the pot, and realized that I had no knife. I ran back to a house to grab a clean one, and then tossed them up in the air, accelerated, and carefully cut them up. By alternating between downward and up ward chops, I was able to make the veggies merely spin through the air in pieces instead of just accelerating downwards and splashing water everywhere. I threw in the salt and pepper, and then chopped the meat into the soup.

I then realized that I wanted barley or rice in the soup to make it more nourishing, so I went and found a sack of grain that looked like it would do. I cleaned it with magic, and tossed the grain in the cauldron.

"What do we need now?" I muttered. Then I remembered that the soup should be covered so that it wouldn't boil away, and that I would need something to stir it. I picked up a wooden shield and pitchfork that was lying on the ground, and removed their outer layer of wood and cleaned them with matter separation magic. I used flesh manipulation magic to mold the end of the pitchfork into a paddle, mixed my stew, and then covered it with the shield.

I was feeling tired by this point, so I went, found an empty bed, cleaned it, and took a nap. Making stone soup can really take it out of you.