D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2252: Chapter 2252 Cooking, and Explosions

--- Kat ---

Kat was humming to herself. She’d chatted a bit longer with Hedera to get all the details and share her own experience. Once that was done Kat instead moved inside and found Tanisha and Furen playing cards with hair still rather wet. It was clear they’d just gotten out of the bath, so Kat just waved at them as she went into the kitchen. Lily was settled onto a stool and then the cooking began.

With Kat away for a few days, her stockpile of meals had a large bit taken out of it. More then she’d thought would’ve been eaten... but then again Kat also remembered what happened with the pancakes so perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising. So Kat got to work making dinner as well as more things to have stored away. This meant she was using essentially the entire kitchen all at once. Keeping track of everything was actually surprisingly fun when you could speed up your mind and move faster then most people could see.

Kat was working on two noodle dishes, one a pesto dish for those wanting a vegetarian option... so just Furen really, maybe Hedera... for everyone else, there was a big helping of spaghetti and meatballs. Like... a lot of both. Kat was making the noodles for it in a giant professional sized pot, which was probably for making soup stock or something normally. It was waist on her if she left it on the floor... and was a lot taller then that on the stovetop. Of course, Kat could fly so it still wasn’t hard to keep a watch on.

On top of all of that Kat had plenty of things to chop. She was making two salads that shared only a handful of ingredients, mostly the lettuce equivalent they had. It wasn’t quite lettuce, the plant looked completely different... but it wasn’t like lettuce tasted of much so taste wise they were similar enough you’d never notice. The rest Kat tried to keep unique and separate. On top of that the pesto needed to be made, and without previous experience with the herbs in the cupboard Kat likely wouldn’t have worked out all the ingredients for that.

The sauce for the spaghetti also needed to be made, but that was currently just simmering away taking up the last of the stovetop space, or at least, the last of what Kat was SURE to be a stovetop. With the kitchen being enchanted instead of mechanical you could hide a lot of things in the most normal looking of places.

Still, Kat was keeping busy, stuff was getting chopped, noodles were getting stirred occasionally, and the whole place was looking a bit more like a crime scene then Kat wanted. Even keeping everything neat there was food everywhere in various states of completeness. Some parts looked barely dealt with at all. Which was probably true.

Kat started to hum to herself somewhere along her cooking journey as she started to pack some of the salads away for later, clearing more space to work with. Kat debated what to do with the extra space... and decided on fresh bread. There was the ingredients for it, and she was pretty sure she knew which enchanted box would make it properly. It wouldn’t be ready in time for dinner but that was never the plan anyway.

Kat had just started to mix the dough together when she heard an explosion coming from the backyard, waking Lily as well. Kat had already thrown what she was holding onto the bench and was sprinting outside expecting to find Hedera under attack. Instead she found a lot of wood chips EVERYWHERE and Hedera glaring angrily at a lightly charred spot on the ground, but based on the fact she wasn’t dodging or looking for cover, meant this was... somewhat intentional, or at least expected.

"Umm... Hedera is everything alright?" Kat also realised she might have dropped her calming aura in her fright. Carefully extending it back towards Appoline on the couch she hoped the elf didn’t wake up, at least not before getting some more rest.

Lily had noted that nothing was a problem and was now managing the food while Kat was away. This mostly involved making sure nothing was moved for now because letting it sit for some time would be fine. It wasn’t a hard job, but Lily was taking it seriously.

"Yeah... or well... sorry for the noise," grumbled Hedera as Tanisha poked her head out onto the backyard. Hedera noticed this, "Everything’s fine! It was just me making a mistake!" Tanisha nodded and backed away inside once again.

"So... what happened? If you want to tell me?" asked Kat.

Hedera shrugged, "Probably what you expect. I carved the runes wrong, they started to glow and build up power, and eventually exploded. Threw it away from me and booked it so I wouldn’t be hurt as much... but I defaulted to throwing it where I’d thrown all my other scraps so now there are wood chips EVERYWHERE." Hedera sighed. "It’s fine, I’ll get to fixing it up..."

Kat winced, tempted to offer her help but she WAS still cooking after all, and it would probably be better to make sure there was fresh food for everyone, Hedera included. [I can help her. Shouldn’t be too hard to work out some sort of shadow construct to help with it. I’m awake now so I might as well make myself useful. It’s good control practice.]

*You don’t have to volunteer on my behalf...*

[It’s not just that. Now that I’m awake I’d have either watched you cook or practiced my magic. This counts as practicing my magic. HMmm... I wonder if wood chips are close enough to paper actually? I know that some paper is made with wood pulp... maybe there’s a spell to turn it into paper? Surely that would gather it. Might check my notes for that.]

Kat could hear the excitement in her girlfriend’s mental voice so Kat was willing to let it be. "Lily apparently wants to help. She has a spell she wants to test or something," Kat said before heading back inside and returning to the kitchen.

She swapped places with Lily and got back to trying to prep the dough. It... might need a bit more water? She didn’t leave it that long, but at the same time, it might have needed that before she went sprinting out of the house. Kat sighed and added just a spritz and then started to knead it all back together again.

Meanwhile Lily was sitting outside and looking through her notes to see if there was a spell for this, or rather, if she knew what it was. The answer seemed to be no... which was annoying because it really seemed like the sort of thing that would be useful at the moment, and just a fun spell to have in general. Plus, there was no stakes here if she messed up. After ten minutes of pondering though, she decided that looking for something she didn’t have was just wasting time and got to work on the shadow constructs.

Hedera noticed this, and said, "Hey, are you sure you don’t want me to help with this? I can put off my practicing for later,"

Lily shifted her shadows to read ’It’s Fine’ for a few seconds before she went back to trying to get her shadows to work. The easy answer was to make a big scoop but that would collect everything and Lily had no desire to ruin the lawn. Lily glanced at the charred circle. [Correction, I have no desire to damage the lawn further. Appoline might be able to fix it... not sure if we want to bring it up, but it might be fun for her.]

Refocusing on the problem at hand, Lily thought back to Earth and the various things that collected trash and whatnot. Vacuum cleaners were the first to come to mind... but creating one large enough to get this done in time might take more shadows then she had, and honestly Lily wasn’t certain she could make something like that work. On a smaller scale you could sort of just use mana and imagination to cheat a bit if it was moderately close.

So something else would need to be done. The next idea was one of those sticky slime solutions you played with as a kid, either at home or sometimes in science class. An interesting idea, and one with merit... but also quite difficult to imagine, especially consistently. Luckily, Lily had one more idea that seemed like it would work.

Those weird machines that were essentially giant feather dusters. They collected the trash by spinning and trapping them in the bristles, with a backstop to collect the stuff that gets flung away. That was perfect, and scalable so she could match the size to whatever her mana could easily handle. Plus, having her shadows act as floppy things was much easier then sticky things. After a few attempts, Lily got the shape correct and it all moved properly when she spun it. A bit more mental effort to add the scoop behind it and Lily was off.