One Last System

"Master!" Mia attempted to protest. "You should train first! I can take care of setting up..."

"Shush," I silenced the girl before pointing my hand at the pillar. "My hands are still healing, and training with my legs is not as effective," I came up with a bogus excuse. "Just train yourself first. Once you are tired, we will swap," I said before grabbing the straight sticks and digging them into the ground.

Sadly, setting a half-open tent wasn\'t anywhere as easy as I imagined it to be. With my mind filled with the images of some Asian people creating elaborate buildings with just mud, water, their hands, and ingenuity, I never considered setting a simple windshield to be a problem...

But soon, I was forced to learn that wasting my sleeping hours on watching men like that craft those mud buildings and doing something simpler myself was an entirely different matter.

Thankfully, roughly an hour after I started, the structure I worked so hard to establish... was finished!

"Master is really working too hard," Mia commented from over my ear.

Immersed in my work, I didn\'t notice her approaching, making me almost jump away when she suddenly spoke out. Yet, as I turned my head towards the girl, I couldn\'t help but notice a certain thing she likely wasn\'t aware of.

From a single look, I could tell how hard she was training while I was busy tinkering with the to-be tent. And it was because she was sweaty all over!

What\'s more, her sweat made her cheap, thin robes slightly see-through, allowing me to glance into the unknown world of the local undergarment for the females.

And believe me or not, from the two erect points on her chest, the women of this world didn\'t seem to wear any!

Obviously, no one would parade comando with just the loose robes we were given. While I managed to stop my eyes from wandering towards that region, I decided to assume that Mia still wore the same set of leather belts over her nether regions that I did.

"Anyway," I said, turning my face away to stop the sight from getting my youthfully horny body from reacting, "it\'s time to get to cooking!" I announced with a big smile on my face.

"Master..." Mia called me out, only to avert her eyes.

"Speak your mind," I said, shaking my head. "I really hoped that by this time, you would learn that I\'m not going to bash you for being honest," I added while making a face of an unreasonably hurt puppy.

"Stop it, master!" Mia laughed out in reaction to my face. Seeing her light that, I couldn\'t help but feel my mood improving a little. "Still, cooking..." she added, once again hesitating. "Master, cooking is good for the mortals, not for the disciples of the great Skyladder sect!" she finally spoke her mind.

"You will change your mind once I\'m done!" I announced with pride, finally moving on to the main task of the day.

"If that\'s what you say..." Mia said, shaking her head for the third time in a row. It was clear that she was distressed over the topic, but she ultimately decided not to pursue it anymore. Rather than that, she turned around and approached the pillar, only to start hitting it again.

In the end, this was the very basic requirement for keeping this place safe from intruders. Only by constantly continuing our training could we keep this place locked and thus secure.

With that said, I pulled out the cauldron. Seeing its thick sides, I lamented over my lack of elegant pot. Yet, as there was nothing that I could do about it, I got to work either way.

Using a small knife that we bought on the market, I cut the tomatoes into the smallest pieces possible before throwing them all into the cauldron. Then, without any respect for my injured hands, I used my knuckles to mash the mixture into a paste.

After adding a bit of vinegar, salt, and the few other spices that we managed to get our hands on, I finally brought out the wood and lit it up underneath the metal container.

Bit by bit, the reddish mixture started to condense. Stirring it up with a random stick I found on our way back, I continued to add various spices, water, and even sugar while the mixture boiled.

Sadly, even after an hour of hard attempts, I couldn\'t bring the taste anywhere close to what I was used to! It tasted like ketchup, but at the same time... it didn\'t.

\'I guess I won\'t be able to replicate that chemical taste from the earth,\' I thought, finally moving on from this impossible task.

I emptied out the cauldron into one of the emptied bails of water. Then, after thoroughly cleaning it with my very own robe and the water that remained, I finally got to the main point of the job.

Making fries.

Compared to making ketchup, this was an easy task. After filling the cauldron with half of all the oil that we bought, I once again set it to boil. While waiting for the oil to reach the necessary temperature, I busied myself with cutting the tomatoes into long, thin chunks.

I had no way of making my fries crinkle-cut, forcing me to go for the simplest, straight fries.

And then, the oil finally started to boil.

\'It\'s time, then,\' I thought, grabbing all the potato pieces I cut before carefully dipping them into the oil. One by one, the potato chunks fell to the bottom of the cauldron while the steaming-hot oil did its magic.

"What\'s that smell?" Mia asked, once again taking me by surprise. From the look on her face, she has long forgotten about her previous remarks about being a disciple of the sect and still doing the cooking.

"Just wait for a few more moments," I said with a bright smile, using a small plank to scoop a bit of the ketchup from the bail where I kept it.

Too curious to go back to training, Mia squatted down by my side, carefully watching how I used another stick to carefully pick up the fries out of the oil.

\'Now, a pinch of salt,\' I thought, sprinkling the white goodness on top of the plate before grabbing the very first fry of this world between my fingers.

\'It\'s hot!\' I instantly had to fight the desire to let the fried piece of potato go. Only Mia\'s curious look and a certain unholy idea in my head kept me from dropping it down.

"Fuuu, fuuu..." I blew at the fry to cool it down a bit before dipping it in the ketchup and turning towards the girl. "Now then, open wide..."

Normally, there would be no way for Mia to react to something like that. But this time, her curiosity got the better of her.

"Aaaa..." acting like a kid, she obediently opened her lips, revealing the two rows of her perfectly white teeth.

I then gently placed the fry on her bottom lip, allowing her to suck it inside her mouth on her own.

For a moment, she only munched. Then, she lowered her head, hiding her face from my sight.... Only to rapidly raise it and look at me with her eyes wide open, "What is this?! It\'s delicious!"