"More skilled than any master? Really?" Rouge asked, looking up at the Demon that everyone was talking about right now before Kiron proudly nodded. "It is so! M'Lord is the best of the best, he-" But before the Half-Dragon could finish, Eisen interrupted him.
"Kiron, thank you for being so passionate and humbling, but I would prefer it if you would not brag in that way. My highest skill ranks are only at three right now, after all." Eisen told them before Koro, Rouge, and Parc looked at Eisen in surprise.
"Wait, what do you mean? Those weren't the movements of Rank 3 Cooking just now." Koro pointed out before Eisen shrugged. "You can either believe it, or you can't. I have a situation going on which I won't tell you about, so right now, we should just leave it at that." The old man told them before the three young men slowly nodded. They continued asking Eisen some questions about what kind of skills he had, simply because they were interested in what a Demon was. Of course they asked him if he was born like that or if he turned into this at some point as well, but Eisen just let those questions pass by without actually answering.
And at some point, when the questions became harder to answer, the Macaron Meringue had luckily just finished baking, and Eisen swiftly took them out of the oven. And when he did, he quickly unsummoned the oven altogether, since it was not needed anymore. "One of you get the buttercream from the Walk-in, please," Eisen said as he turned toward his three helpers. Parc quickly ran over to the door and stepped into the large fridge, while Eisen began placing the Macarons onto his work surface bottom facing up.
Considering that things tend to cool off quite quickly here, it was apparent that this was to be the case with the Macarons as well. And as soon as Parc returned with the buttercream, they were cooled down enough to be adequately worked with, now all that Eisen needed to do was put a little bit of the buttercream on one of the macaron halves, and then place another half on the other side. Final construction of an individual Macaron didn't take long, of course, but it took a while to finish all of the Macarons Eisen wanted to make. After all, he wanted everyone to be able to eat quite a few of these.
Whenever a few of the Macarons were done, Eisen placed them into an airtight container made of mana crystals, because it was undoubtedly the most easy-to-mold material using transmutation, and had one of the three young men with him bring the mana container to the walk-in to keep everything fresh.
After all of that was done, Eisen gained a good bit more proficiency in his cooking skill, and so did the other three boys that helped. And now that everything here in the kitchen was ready for the most part, Eisen unsummoned all of the Flame of the Earth workstations, beside the one that the large pot with the stew was on, and got rid of his staff again. It seemed like the three boys were quite surprised by this, but it simply boiled down to Eisen being a Demon, so he had to have some unique abilities.
With a satisfied smile, Eisen then nodded and chose to make his way back to the Walk-In to sort everything a little bit more and see how well the foods were freezing in the freezer section, just to make sure that this whole new room was in a functional state. It really wouldn't be good if it were immediately messy and dirty, after all.
Eisen only left that room once to retrieve some of the other herbs that he wanted to put into the stew for some extra flavor, but after that Eisen continued working in the Walk-In for a little longer before the stew finished simmering.
After taking the pot off of the Flame of the Earth stoves, Eisen unsummoned them and told the others to grab the warm bread buns and follow him, earlier he had already mentioned to Noa about when the meal would be ready to be served. The majority of people had already gathered outside in an area where there were a lot of old tables and benches, used for large celebrations in the past. Eisen set everything up at a separate table with the food, bowls, and cutlery, the moment that Eisen removed the lid from the pot, Noa walked up to the old man.
"I see you've done an amazing job." She said with a smile, before trying to stand on the tips of her toes to look into the pot to see the source of the delicious smell that just exploded outward from the pot.
"Thank you, but it's not just me. These three helped out quite a lot." Eisen said with a smile as he turned to Koro, Rouge, and Parc before Noa looked at those three as well. "Then thanks to all of you too." The nun told them before she looked back at Eisen.
"Dien and the girl he was with left a short while ago, they told me to tell you they are sorry they couldn't stay to eat what you made," Noa said, and Eisen quickly nodded. "I see, thank you for letting me know. So, do you want to go ahead and tell everyone to form a line and grab something to eat?" Eisen asked the young nun, who swiftly nodded as a bright smile formed on her lips, and she stood in the center of the area, looking at everyone around her.
"Thank you all for coming out here. Thankfully, a very kind man decided to make dinner for all of us here. There is more than enough for everyone, so please, eat your fill." Noa exclaimed with a bright smile, folding her hands together in front of her heart, before the many different people gathered here, the majority of which being children from the orphanage, looked over at the giant man with rock skin, underneath which flames began to shine outward.
Some of the children seemed somewhat startled by him, but soon enough their hunger overtook those emotions, and some of them began to walk toward him before they got in range for the smell, at which point they came stampeding toward Eisen. The first to get something to eat was a young boy, so hungry that you could see his ribs through the thin cloth shirt he was wearing, using a ladle Eisen quickly placed some of the stew into a bowl, handing it to the boy together with a piece of bread.
"Here you go, kid. I hope you enjoy it." Eisen told him with a smile before the boy opened his eyes wide and nodded his head, staring down at the hot stew hungrily as he began walking back to where he was sitting.
The young boy wasn't the only one staring at his food; all the others waiting in line were also doing so. But from the first moment that the boy put the first piece of meat into his mouth and formed an expression of pure bliss, everyone that was still seated due to being nervous or unsure of who this Demon was stood up and quickly made their way to the end of the line.
So now, one after another, all of the people, children and adults alike, ate their fill with the stew that Eisen prepared, talking amongst each other and creating a nice, calm mood. Even the head priest of this church came and enjoyed some of the stew.
The way that churches here worked were quite interesting as well. Usually, there weren't many different churches for each god in a town, but just one main-church where all of the gods could be worshiped and prayed to equally. Of course, there were still some smaller churches scattered throughout a large town like this, but none of them were set out toward any specific god.
The only area which was explicitly defined was something like a 'Guardian Deity', which in this case was Krogh, the god of Magic, and so the statue in the main hall of the church that was the largest and most prominent was that of Krogh as well, while the head Priest was also a devout believer of Krogh.
That was something that Eisen only recently learned after he talked to some of the nuns while they were all eating together, and the old man listened quite curiously. He wasn't the type of person to believe in gods, but considering that their existence was proven here, it made sense to him in the end.
Once everyone had eaten their fill of the stew, and they were satisfied, Eisen had Koro, Parc and Rouge bring the pudding and macarons out. Confused, everyone looked at the new things that were brought out just now, because they had thought that Dinner was already over, but apparently, there was something else as well.
Curious, everyone came up to the table again one after another, and Eisen handed out a few bowls of pudding as well as some differently colored Macarons to anyone that seemed interested. As Eisen had expected, the majority of the people that took some of them were the kids, that immediately stuffed their mouths with the sweet treats.
And this all just made Eisen more than happy. He saw these young kids that seemed to be so gloomy just before talking to each other with bright smiles and laughter began to emanate throughout the area. And even after they ate, they continued to play with each other, and even Caria and Melissa chose to join in.
Some of the kids pestered Sky as well because they thought that he was a kid like them, and he ended up being dragged along in the end against his will. He tried to scare them off by summoning some things from his books, but that ended up working against him, and the kids were even more excited to have Sky around.
With a laugh, Eisen looked at all of them having fun while he began to clean up everything, bringing the leftovers back inside to the Walk-In and placing the bowls away to be cleaned later before the three young men that were helping him cook today walked up to him.
"Erm, Sir Demon, can we ask you a question?" Rouge, the shortest of them all asked, while Koro and Parc stood by his side, and Eisen quickly nodded. "Of course. And don't call me 'Sir Demon', please. Go ahead and call me 'Eisen.' With no 'Sirs' or 'Misters' either." The old man told them before the three of them looked at each other again for a second and nodded at each other, as if to confirm that they wanted to do this.
"Then, Eisen. The three of us are 15 now, so we're allowed to be someone's apprentices. Koro is a bit older than us, so he already became that lazy chef's apprentice a few months ago, but…" Rouge said, looking at the incredibly averagely built boy behind him, who then continued to talk.
"Well, let's just say today is the first day I have cooked for anyone. That guy really always just did all the work himself, and made me clean up after him. I wasn't even allowed to do prep-work. But well, what the chef made wasn't anything great, to begin with, he would just throw some random ingredients together to make some weird soups, and that's it. So I was thinking about doing something else anyway. Rouge, Parc and I usually stayed together a lot of the time, so we all started working on different skills together." He pointed out, and now Parc talked, with a quick nod.
"Mhm. I'm just good at the rough stuff, Rouge is the best at the fine, details kinda work, and Koro is a pretty good all-rounder." The tall boy explained as Eisen slowly crossed his arms and looked down onto the group of three.
"Ah, I see. That's a good balance though. If you're going to work together, you should become a great team." Eisen told them before the three nodded nearly at the same time before Rouge spoke up again.
"Exactly, that's what we wanted to ask you about, Eisen… will you take us as your apprentices?"