Chapter 24: You... You Shall Be Our Outpost's Chef!
Mosquito, one of the new members, was really good at woodworking.
For a long time now, Old White and Ample Time had used a steel bar as a ruler and tried to make wooden planks, but they hadn’t been successful.
As soon as he arrived, Mosquito was able to easily produce a pile of them using only a saw. Those planks even had interlocking ridges that locked together to form a hollow boxy brick mold.
In a short while, a good number of brick molds were made.
"You can't use logs like this. Look at it… It even has mushrooms growing on top!" Mosquito grumbled as he wiped off his sweat. Putting the saw aside, he looked at Ample Time and Old White and asked, "Is this enough?"
"Enough! That’s enough! Thanks brother, you've been a great help!" Old White patted Mosquito on the shoulder with a beaming expression on his brow.
Mosquito smiled shyly. "You're welcome! Just tell me what you need."
Old White grinned and patted him on the shoulder. "Okay! I’ll remember what you said! I’ll come to you for help in the future!”
"..."
With molds, making mud bricks was much easier.
Old White and Ample Time put a little water in the yellow mud they had collected from the river, kneaded it into a viscous mixture, and poured it into the mold. Then they laid them on the ground, put some charcoal between the gaps, and smeared the surface of the mud brick with ash. Old White had learned to do this by watching survival videos.
When the first layer of bricks had almost dried, they changed their orientation and continued to stack the second layer, then another, until the stack was taller than them. When they were done, Old White carefully ignited the carbon in the stack, allowing the fire to burn from the middle to gradually engulf the entire structure.
"Will it work this time?" Looking at the smoking pile of mud, Ample Time wiped the sweat from his forehead with his muddy arms. He looked as if he had crawled out of a cesspit.
Old White looked no better than him. His face had more soot though, like he had just crawled out of a coal kiln.
"Who knows? We can only wait and see." It was the first time that he made something like this. When he was a child, he had only watched the adults do it.
They could only wait until the next day to see if it was a success.
Old White muttered, "Let's go, we just need to let it burn for now. Let's go check the cement kiln. I feel like we’re really close to a finished product. Let’s try to get a bucket out before going offline!”
On the other side, with the help of Mosquito, Gale and Night Ten finally completed their improvements to their ninth generation fishing trap. They replaced the original cylindrical structure with a cage-like one, replaced the weak wooden bars with strong steel bars, and reinforced the main structure of the trap. No matter the kind of fish, it wouldn’t be able to leave after getting in! The three of them went to the lake together, planning to try again.
All of them seemed excited.
Meanwhile, Chu Guang was still trying to figure out how to smoke meat. He still made much progress.
"Administrator, what are you doing?"
Hearing a voice to the side, Chu Guang stood up in front of the meat rack. He patted the soot on his hands and looked in the direction of the voice, only to see Tomato Eggs looking curiously at the meat rack he had made.
If he remembered correctly, the person was a chef who graduated from New Oriental! Chu Guang's eyes lit up.
"I'm learning how to smoke meat. You came at just the right time. From now on, you’ll be the chef of Shelter 404!" Chu Guang didn't give the player a chance to speak. He put on a serious expression as he continued, "The situation we are facing now is quite severe. In addition to the construction of the outposts on the surface, we need to store enough food for the hundred compatriots who will arrive before Winter. I need your help!"
Scrambled Egg looked dumbfounded. He didn’t mind being a chef. In real life, he was also a chef. Before coming online, he had had to fry two dishes before handing his frying ladle to his colleague. He hadn’t expected to have to do the same job in game. Was it really a class option?
He took a long time before speaking, "What can I do for you?"
"Good question." Chu Guang looked at the meat rack to the side. "I tried smoking some meat, but the result was unsatisfactory. I need you to solve the problem of preserving food. I’ve read up on you. The organization said that you had relevant experience handling food. Is that true?”
Scrambled Egg was stunned. "I probably know a little bit, but games are games after all… I mean… I'm not sure if my experience will be applicable here."
Thinking that he was in the game world, Scrambled Egg changed what he wanted to say, but it seemed that the NPC didn't care. The program was probably set to ignore any reality-related elements automatically if they had nothing to do with the game.
"It's okay, I need professional advice," Chu Guang looked at the meat rack beside him, "Help me figure out what went wrong with the meat rack I made."
Looking at the wooden shelf in front of him, Scrambled Egg fell silent. It wasn’t so much a question of what went wrong… It would be better to say that the whole thing was a mess.
"This... First of all, the meat needs to be processed in a closed environment. Your roasting method is going to be useless if the outside of the meat is scorched. What spices have you sprinkled the meat with?"
"A special kind of tobacco leaf."
"Tobacco leaf?!"
"Mhm." Chu Guang nodded, looking at Scrambled Egg who was in disbelief. "This is an inland area, and salt is very expensive. The local survivors use this kind of tobacco that’s rich in aromatics and tar instead of salt. It is crushed and applied to the surface of the food."
Scrambled Egg was stunned. The game even had mechanics like that?!
Some aromatic compounds could indeed be used as food preservatives, but it was the first time he had heard that they were edible. Maybe it wasn’t lethal if they didn't overdo it?
His instinct told him that this technique would be like fighting poison with poison.
"You can smoke meat without salt, but the flavor won’t be very good. I don't understand the method you’ve described, but smoking food this way isn’t suitable when considering how clean it is…" Scrambled Egg explained as nicely as he could because he heard about the NPC favorability setting in the game. From what he knew, they could only trigger hidden missions when their favorability was high. In real life, he would have just rolled his eyes and left.
"No need for salt?!" Chu Guang was stunned.
"Yeah. Microbes need water to survive. Smoked meat is essentially causing all the water in the meat to evaporate in order to make it as dry as possible. It would be better to use salt as it would last longer and taste better, but you can still make it work without salt. Of course, if the fat content is high, dehydration will be more difficult.. It still depends on the meat," Scrambled Egg paused, glancing at the meat rack next to him a little awkwardly, and whispered, "But no matter what method you’re using, you haven't even sealed them… This definitely won’t work."
If food could be preserved without consuming the weird tobacco leaf, it would be a happy day for the shelter, but Chu Guang still had some doubts. Even if the survivors of Baker Street were ignorant, they’ve still been able to survive in this wasteland until now. They wouldn’t have made a mistake with an important survival skill like that. So what went wrong?
Chu Guang didn’t want to think about it for now. He didn’t have much time, and if he, as an NPC, needed to solve everything by himself, what use were the players?
"Very well, this arduous and glorious task will be left to you!" he said, patting the innocent newbie’s shoulder vigorously.
Chu Guang solemnly handed over the job of preserving meat to Tomato Eggs and told him some basic safety information before happily leaving.
This is great! I solved another problem!
Now that the food issue was on its way to being solved, should he try to recruit more players to increase their productivity?
With just these few fellows, the wall of the nursing home may not be fixed until the end of the month.
Just as Chu Guang was thinking about this, an excited cheer suddenly came from close by.
"Fuck yeah!!"
"Yes! It's finally done!"
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