The Protagonist System

22 Scavenger

I stayed inside Tiona, and the Loki Compound, for the rest of the morning. I had pounded the poor girl into her mattress and she loved every second of it. Surprisingly, Aiz had stayed right there beside her the whole time and watched us as we did... well, everything.

I had to show the both of them a few things, like giving a proper blowjob, and made them promise to only do it with someone they cared deeply about. That had earned me an odd look from Tiona and a very curious one from Aiz.

I gave the both of them a long and tender kiss each and told them that even though we just met, I did care a lot about them and I would visit them whenever they had free time. Tiona looked a little conflicted, probably because her people only sought out men for sex and then left.

My explanation of trying to make her pregnant had her relax, which was definitely a part of her people's culture, and Aiz still had that curious look on her face. With her, I promised that if she ever decided she wanted to do more things like what Tiona and I did, besides the blowjobs she had already tried as practice, I would be honored for her to accept me as a partner. That earned me a nod and a small smile.

A knock on the door gained our attention. It opened and Tione stood there wearing a red bikini top and the pavna around her waist. She also had a blush on her face. “It's almost lunchtime, Tiona. You will be... ahem... expected to make an appearance. We need to decide where to go to eat.”

Those words gave me a great idea and I smiled. “Do you have a kitchen and some food here?”

“I think... I would have to check and...” Tione whispered.

“Not a problem.” I said and cast a cleaning spell on myself and the fluids on me disappeared.

Both amazonnesses gasped and Aiz raised her eyebrows at me.

“Right, you two as well.” I said and waved a hand over Tiona and then Aiz to clean them up. I dressed in only a moment and that really surprised them. “Aiz, give Tiona a hand getting dressed while her sister leads me to the kitchen. I'll see if I can take care of the lunch situation for you all as an apology for the disturbance.”

Tione nodded and left the room with me right behind her. When we were far enough away from the open door, she looked back at me. “How did you know how to do all of that?”

I successfully ignored teasing her about her admission of watching us the whole time. “I'd like to say lots of practice, except your sister is the first girl I've been with here.” On this world.

Tione blinked her eyes at me, probably because she knew I hadn't lied.

“The kitchen?” I asked and she nodded several times and led me down the stairs and into a kitchen that would have made a restaurant jealous. “You have all this and you go out to eat?”

“None of us knows how to cook anything more than trail rations. We usually hire a temporary cook for longer expeditions.” Tione said and sat down at the counter.

“Pantry?” I asked and she pointed at a cupboard. I went over and opened it and examined everything inside. I could work with a lot of it and just had to decide if I should settle for sandwiches with a light soup or go all out and make a nice pasta dish. “How many people are meeting here for lunch?”

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“Just the seven executives of the main Familia and Loki herself.” Tione said.

“What about the rest of them?” I asked and decided on the pasta dish. There were fresh tomatoes and some good spices that I could easily make into a nice spaghetti sauce. I would have to thin it with a bit of olive oil and might need to send out for some more meat. Eight people could eat a lot and I couldn't do my enlarge trick here.

I started making the pasta dough and Tione looked fascinated as I worked. Tiona and Aiz came down the stairs and sat on either side of Tione and looked just as enthralled. When I asked for a meat grinder, or if they had such a thing, Tiona went into a side cupboard and handed me an old hand-crank one. It looked like it had never been used.

“Any chance you can send out for more meat? I doubt eight people can be fed by this much.” I said and indicated the one foot wide slice of beef roast.

“It should be enough. One of us is a high elf and one is a prum.” Tione said.

“She means they don't eat meat.” Tiona said with a roll of her eyes.

“Ah, then I should make more salad for them.” I said and quickly ground up the meat in only seconds.

This surprised the three girls and they stared at me as I cleaned the device with the same cleaning spell as I used on them. Maybe they hadn't seen a versatile spell before? I ignored them for now and turned on the oven to heat it up.

I grabbed a dry loaf of bread and sliced it up into very thin pieces, blocked the sight of the girls for a second, and dried the bread out even more. I crumbed the thin pieces up into the bowl of ground meat and mixed it up to almost double the amount of meat, then I rolled them up into meatballs.

“What in the world are you doing?” An authoritative female voice asked.

I turned to see a proud high elf staring at me. “I'm cooking. What does it look like I'm doing?”

The woman opened and closed her mouth without speaking.

I chuckled and grabbed a large pan and looked through the cupboards for small racks. I found a large mesh thing and shrugged. It would do. I just had to bend it to make troughs for the meatballs to stop from rolling away. I continued to ignore the four girls at the counter as I continued to work.

I rolled out the dough and stretched it, and stretched it, and then used a chef's knife to slice it into thin strips. Once I had those, I rolled each one quick as a flash and each strand stretched out to the length of the entire long counter. The shocked looks on the watching faces made me laugh.

I sliced up the strands to the right length and did my drying trick again and set up a large pot on the stove and filled it with water. I turned the stove on and checked the oven. It was hot enough, so I set the large pan of meatballs inside and closed it up.

While I waited for the water to boil, I started on the sauce and the salad. It was pretty easy, since they had similar ingredients, only I had to dice them for the sauce and leave them mostly intact for the salad. The water was boiling now, so I added the spaghetti strings and let them simmer as I tended to the sauce. I added the spices and some olive oil and went back to the salad. It was a large bowl and could be saved for several days. I tossed some oil into that, too.

By the time the meatballs were done, because I had made them small enough to not take as long to cook, the sauce and spaghetti were done as well. It was perfect timing, because the rest of the group arrived, as did Loki. The thickly muscled dwarf easily dragged the large dining table into the center of the room and everyone grabbed chairs for themselves.

I set out eight plates around the large dining room table and then proceeded to dish up the food for everyone, making sure the elf and the halfling had a huge amount of salad. I had barely put the sauce on the spaghetti and meatballs in front of Loki and she had her fork in it and was chewing on a mouthful of pasta. She moaned and her head lolled to the side as she happily savored it.

“I think that means she approves.” The high elf said with a flat voice and the others laughed.

I went back to the counter and did up a plate for myself with a few extra meatballs and quickly ate it. I knew someone would be calling for seconds soon and I had to be ready to serve it. The dwarf was the first to call out and I gave him a generous second helping and he nodded to me, so I added another meatball and slathered the sauce over it all.

Not surprisingly, they all wanted a second helping, even the elf and the halfling. They ate in relative silence, as in they didn't talk and only made sounds to indicate they really liked the food.

“You're... hired. Permanently.” Loki said as she leaned back on her chair, her belly extended slightly, and she rubbed it with a satisfied look on her face. “Living... expenses. Spending... money. Unlimited food budget. Everything.”

I chuckled and held my hands up. “I'm not a hired cook.”

Everyone except Tione, Tiona, and Aiz looked shocked.

“I made the meal as an apology for causing a disruption earlier.” I said and walked over to Tiona. I bent down to kiss her cheek. “Let the Guild know when you get back from the next dungeon trip, all right? I'll find you again.”

Tiona nodded and her sister looked jealous and almost glared at the halfling named Finn.

“Wait... you can't... leave.” Loki said and raised a hand to move, then slumped back. “Someone catch him before he leaves.”

“It's too late for that.” I said and looked right at the other person with white hair on their head.

“What do you mean?” Tiona asked as everyone turned to stare at the werewolf named Bete.

“I tried to join your Familia a week ago and he punched me in the head, called me a weak brat as he shoved me out the door, and told me you would never accept a cheap copycat of him.”

Bete's wolf ears immediately dropped and disappeared into his messy hair.

I looked at Loki and I couldn't tell what her facial expression was, because her eyes almost never opened. “There should be just enough left for you to have it again for supper, Goddess Loki.” I said and walked towards the door. “Before you ask, I already joined another Familia and am no longer available for recruitment.”

There seemed to be a collective angry sound as I shut the door to the main building. I smiled at the brand new door, because Tiona had smashed the last one to pieces, and I left before anyone decided that they could convince me to renounce Hestia to join Loki.

I thought about what to do now and turned to look up at the tower that was built over the dungeon. I knew there were other Familia shops there as well as where students showed off their work. I didn't have a whole lot of money, though. Even their scraps and mistakes might be expensive; but, it didn't hurt to go look and maybe ask a few questions.

*

The guy assigned the punishment detail to watch over the scrap was bored out of his mind. He really shouldn't have brought that wench into the back room of the shop, even if she let him have a go at her for showing her such expensive things. How could he have known that she had fit so many things inside the various holes in her body and got away without being caught?

“Excuse me. This backpack says it has an expansion enchantment on it and it's only 50 Valis.” A male voice asked him.

“Yeah, the idiot made six of them before he remembered that he didn't include the reduce weight part of the enchantment.” The guy said without lifting his head from his desk. “It still holds a lot, only whatever you carry still weighs the same.”

“What about all the junk things around here?” The male voice asked.

“It's junk.” The guy said.

“How much is it?” The voice asked.

The guy sighed, because he hated this job. “There's no prices on anything because it's junk. You can fill up that backpack with as much as you can carry for...” The guy paused and realized he could make some money for himself. “...let's say, 300 valis.”

“Including the backpack?” The voice asked.

“You're buying it, so yeah.” The guy said. “I'll mark down the sale of the backpack at the stated price.”

“You have yourself a deal. I'll be back as soon as I make sure this backpack is what I want.”

The guy chuckled at the wording. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Half an hour later, a clearly struggling dark-grey haired person showed up at the desk, turned to show he was wearing the backpack, and placed 300 valis on the desk. “A tip for... great service.”

The guy laughed and scooped the money up and tucked most of it into his pockets.

“When are you working again?” The person asked.

“I'm stuck here for a month.” The guy said.

The person smiled and nodded. “I should be back... next week.”

The guy nodded back and watched as the person struggled as he walked to the elevator and then he was gone. He counted out 50 valis to add to the register and marked the sale of the defective backpack. His eyes went to the clock and saw that he had another seven hours of sitting there with nothing to do and laid his head back down onto his desk.

*

It took me a long time to carefully walk all the way back to the rundown church without falling. I made my way down to the hidden apartment and sat down on my couch with a groan of pain.

“Ow ow ow.” I groused as I finally slid the straps of the heavy backpack off of my shoulders. I didn't take off my shirt, because I knew there would be huge red lines there that were going to bruise quickly. I rubbed them and wondered if I should have stopped off to buy a healing potion, then I sighed when my shoulders ached.

It would be a waste of money to take something that my own body would heal on its own eventually. There were much better things to buy, like groceries. That thought reminded me of my plan to make a bunch of money by repairing junk to sell and to take Hestia shopping. I had spent 300 valis and it was worth the money, even though I felt a little guilty about the trick I played on the store clerk.

His offer to stuff the backpack and carry it out, had sparked an idea and I couldn't help abusing it. I hadn't just filled the backpack I carried, though. I filled all six defective backpacks and put five of them inside the first one. I did successfully carry it out, too.

Holy hell, I managed to get a lot of stuff. I thought as I sat there and let myself recover. An hour or two would be enough, I was sure.

“BELL! I'm back!” Hestia shouted from the top of the stairs.

I didn't even hear the secret door opening. I thought and smiled at her as she hopped down every step.

*JIGGLE! JIGGLE! JIGGLE!*

I stared at her breasts as they did a very enticing dance for my utter enjoyment. I sprang right up for her and didn't bother trying to hide it. It was a great show.

Hestia came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs and had a huge smile on her face. She also had a large paper bag in her hands. “Guess who earned three times her normal tips today and brought home potato snacks!”

“The receptionist at the guild?” I asked and pretended not to know.

“BEEELLLL!” Hestia loudly whined.

I laughed and opened my arms for her. “Of course it was my favorite Goddess, the beautiful Hestia! Who else could it be?”

Hestia laughed and jumped at me. I easily caught her and settled her onto my lap, careful of my erection. The smile on her face seemed to freeze as she felt me pressing against her thigh.

“Um... Bell... there's... um... I can... feel...” Hestia said, hesitatingly.

“You gave me that when I saw you, my lovely Goddess.” I said and she blushed. “It's all right, Hestia. You don't have to be embarrassed.” I said and kissed her cheek. “I couldn't help but react to someone that's so sexy being so happy.”

Hestia looked at my face and I didn't try to hide anything from showing on my face. “You... do you really... think of me like that?”

I hugged her and nuzzled her earlobe. “You are my personal Goddess, Hestia. The embodiment of everything I ever desired in a woman.” I whispered into her ear. “Fate brought me to you and I would be a fool if I didn't think you were the most desirable woman on the entire planet.”

Hestia let out a little squeak, as if she was out of breath, and went limp in my arms.

I quietly laughed at her reaction to the truth and stood with her in my arms. I laid her down on her bed and took the potato treats from her. I set them on a pan in the oven and made some gravy from the meat drippings from yesterday.

By the time she woke up, it was ready, and we shared a plate of delicious gravy covered potato treats.