It took her almost half an hour to skin and trim the four legs.

  They still had the bone inside them. Penelope had tried to debone one of them, and it looked like the start of a hamburger in its place on the shield.

  The good news about how long it took her was that her mana was filled back up. The bad news was that the timer had ticked down, and she hadn’t even started cooking.

  Penelope glanced at her menu.

  Ula’s group was in 2G, and they were almost halfway through with it. They weren’t able to use a single Mana Potion to clear a square like Penelope was, and they were having to split the experience four ways, which slowed how much stronger they were getting. Plus, they didn’t have the luxury of learning from a mistake. It all boiled down to them taking longer to clear each square even though they had more people.

  Penelope turned back to her project. 2F was diagonal and down from where she was, and once they cleared it, there wouldn’t be a buffer between them and her. She wanted to be finished with cooking before they had a chance to come over. Food was a great way to attract people, and she would rather not have to find a way to make small talk while she finished cooking.

  She looked down at the mess that was her handiwork and swallowed. Her hands were dirty, but there wasn’t enough water to spare to wash them. There were advantages to having different elemental affinities, but if she had water, then she wouldn’t be able to cook.

  “Light Ball.” She held the ball of light in her hand, then brought it towards the meat. Nothing happened as she held the spell over the meat.

  “That’s not going to work.” Jeru clicked his tongue and shook his head.

  Penelope looked at the spell stuck to the palm of her hand. She waved her other hand over it. There was no heat coming off the orb, only light.

  “It doesn’t give off heat.” Penelope dropped the spell onto the shield of meat. The mole flesh sizzled as the orb broke and washed over the makeshift platter.

  “There is a thin protective layer that the magic is contained in that prevents it from hurting you.” Jeru shrugged. “Without the system, you’d have to learn how to contain your spells before you started casting them, or you’d hit yourself before you had a chance to throw it.”

  “Huh…” Penelope looked from her hand to the blue Elf. “So were you a teacher before all of this started, or was it something you picked up?”

  “Why do you think I was a teacher?”

  “You can’t help yourself.” Penelope rolled her fingers. “You provide answers to questions I have like you’re in lecture mode.”

  “That’s…” He shook his head and let out a soft chuckle. “That feels like a lifetime ago.”

  “You’ve been in this loop for seventeen hundred years.” Penelope pinched her fingers. “Just a little part of your lifetime.”

  “Actually, that’s not too far off. My dad was over two thousand when he died.”

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  “Two—” She choked. “I didn’t realize Elves lived that long.”

  “They don’t.” Jeru shrugged. “Most only live a few hundred years. A mage might last for seven, eight hundred, but even those are rare.”

  “So your dad is kind of a big deal?”

  The blue Elf shrugged. “He was. Is. Will be.” He sighed. “I guess he is still alive at the moment.”

  “Oh.” Penelope sat down on the floor next to the plate of meat.

  “It’s not storytime.” Jeru shook his head. “We’ll have plenty of time for that some other time.” He nodded at the platter of meat on the metal shield. “Have you figured out how you’re going to cook it?”

  “It’ll take too much mana to keep casting Light Ball.” Penelope picked up the copper dagger. “But I can use my channeling spell.”

  “Try that.” Jeru nodded. “But hold it back. Instead of shooting the beam as far as it’ll go, focus on keeping it only a few feet in front of you.”

  “I can do that?”

  “The system can.” The blue Elf nodded. “It’s another one of those shaping problems that you’d have to work on, but here the system will recognize what you’re trying to do. It shouldn’t take too much effort to make the beam smaller so you don’t just burn a hole in your food.”

  “Okay.” She looked at her hand, then pointed her palm at the shield.

  “Light Beam.” Penelope turned the light coming out of her right hand on the meat. Like a hair dryer or curling iron, when left idle too long, the red meat started turning brown. She used the copper dagger to flip the meat over, then continued browning it.

  “Only one problem.” The blue Elf hovered over the makeshift grill.

  Penelope brought up her menu and looked at her stats. She had already browned one side of all four pieces and hadn’t even used a quarter of her mana. “My mana is fine.”

  “Yes, but where are you going to put it?”

  Penelope shut off the beam, but that didn’t stop the meat from sizzling on the hot metal.

  “UGH!” She put the dagger down. There wasn’t any more metal gear that she’d brought with her, and putting cooked meat on cloth or leather that had been covering a demon turned her stomach. At least with the metal, she could sterilize it.

  Penelope took off towards her other stash pile as fast as she could sprint. She grabbed the breastplate there and ran back with the metal plating.

  Burnt meat was the dominant smell, made worse by the greasy, gamey smell that the mole meat had been giving off. She dropped the breastplate next to the shield and wiped it off with the arm of her robe, then turned the meat over with the dagger.

  The underside of the mole legs was more black than brown, and she had to grab a second dagger to cut the burnt parts free. As soon as she had rolled the meat over, she cut into the least burnt one, but it had only cooked about an inch deep.

  Flaying open the meat was a lot easier with it partially cooked. Once she finished her task of slicing down the middle of each piece to the bone, her mana had recovered. Penelope spent the next while cutting the bones out of each large steak until she had sixteen three-inch-thick, foot-long steaks on the shield. The shield had cooled, so while half of them were burnt on one side, the rest were barely browned.

  “Let’s try this again.” Penelope set the four bones to the side and pointed her palm at the shield. “Light Beam.”

  She heated up the breastplate first, so it would be as close to sterile as she could get it once she was done cooking. With that task completed, she turned her attention to the shield of meat.

  This time, instead of hitting the meat, she focused the beam on the metal, heating it up, then moving a piece of meat onto the hot part while she focused on another section. It didn’t take long until she had heated up the entire thing. At that point, she had stopped casting and was using both daggers to flip the meat to keep it from burning. When she cut into the middle of the steaks and saw that they were brown all the way through, she started flipping them onto the other metal surface.

  Penelope wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her right arm as she put the daggers down. “Whew.”

  “Uh-hum.”

  She looked up and swallowed as she realized that the other group had gathered in front of her.

  “I don’t suppose we could talk you into sharing?” Ula Ramirez smiled wide.

  The three men behind her were all staring down at the woman sitting on the ground. Their faces were a mix of emotions that Penelope couldn’t take in all at once. Her heart sped up as Ula’s smile drew her attention away from the men.

  The tanned grandmother figure’s voice was calming. “You’ve already helped us out, but would you be willing to let us buy some of those off you?”

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