Eisen's cooking skill was only a few levels away from ranking up, and the old man just finished making a huge amount of bacon-lettuce-tomato, or BLT, sandwiches, just because he had the ingredients for it on hand.
But otherwise, Eisen wasn't entirely sure what he should try to make with all of these things. He was thinking about making pasta in preparation for the giant country, so that it would be easier to actually prepare it, but the old man would need a huge amount of eggs, or a couple of actually huge eggs, in order to be able to make pasta the way he was used to.
And after a while, when Eisen stood up and basically chose to just screw it and make vegan pasta, he came up with another idea. Sure, dishes that he could prepare in large masses actually made it pretty easy to level the cooking skill up, but it also helped to make dishes with a lot of different ingredients, and Esien didn't think that vegan pasta counted toward that.
Instead, he remembered a recipe using dough that he could make without eggs that he actually liked to make every once in a while anyway. And it was also a pretty easy way to gain the slight proficiency boost you got by combining multiple different ingredients together instead of just using one or two ingredients as a base.
Eisen was going to make some dumplings. The dough for those only needed flour, some salt, and warm water. It wasn't complicated, meaning that it was the perfect dough to make a shitton of. And then, you could basically fill it with everything and anything you wanted!
The old man still had a lot of different types of meat leftover. Besides the meat that he was still saving for other dishes, he should be able to just mince all of it up and turn the meat into different types of fillings for the dumplings. And of course, they also had a large amount of onions, cabbages, garlic, and even ginger after that giant-farming endeavor. Caria could get them a large amount of mushrooms, they also had a bunch of carrots to use... They also had perfect access to seafood, considering that they were literally on the sea at the moment.
That meant that Eisen would be able to make a large amount of different dumplings! They were a type of food that was easily stored and frozen, and of course also something that you could pretty easily eat and just snack on, even.
And so, the old man got started. Of course he once more got help from his two apprentices, who were currently getting all of the ingredients ready so that Eisen could get started really working with them. But for now, Eisen was just preparing the dough first. Once more, in his more than twenty meter tall giant form.
After the giant old man properly prepared all the dough, he made Rouge and Parc actually cut the dough up into the pieces of the right size and flatten them into thin dough-disks, placing them all to the side after they were done.
While they were doing that, Eisen was working on the fillings. What Eisen did first was start mincing the different types of meat. Some large pieces of mock-dragon meat from the dragon island that was leftover, then some regular boar meat, even meat from the human-sized bug-monster Ankheg. It was pretty good, and Eisen had pretty pleasant memories with it. It was the first dish that he ate after starting to play the 'game', after all. Or well, the first dish that he remembered eating. Technically he had a lot of meals before that over here, after all.
Either way, besides the different types of meat, Eisen also chopped up some cabbage, onions, garlic and ginger, and combined them with some other things he made a while ago but didn't use that often yet, soy sauce and sesame oil. This mix would act as a bit of a 'base' that he would mix with all of the other chopped up and minced ingredients to prepare different fillings.
Other than that, Eisen also started to chop up mushrooms nad carrots, as well as the meat of a large shrimp-like monster and a giant salmon, to mix with that base and create those fillings.
Of course, this all took a really, really long time, considering just the amount of dough he made. After the fillings were done, Eisen got started and took some of the discs of dough that Parc and Rouge prepared for Eisen and started filling them with the fillings.
He placed the dough onto his palm, spooned a little ball of the fillings onto the center. Then, to close it up, Eisen spread a little bit of water on the edge to make the dough a bit more sticky, and then folded the dough over the filling once, to practically make a half-circle.
But Eisen didn't press the dough together yet, instead he pleated the edges to seal them up properly. For now, the old man placed the nearly-finished dumplings into a fridge he made with his new element to keep them fresh for now while he started making the others. And so, this basically turned into something like a conveyor-belt.
Parc was cutting pieces of the right size off the huge mass of dough, Rouge turned them into the discs, and Eisen filled and pleated the dumplings. One after another, Eisen placed them into the fridge made with his element, and this continued for another good while until all the dough disappeared.
They were nearly at the next island they would be taking care of, so Eisen should hurry it up. He quickly picked out some of the dumplings so that everyone could have a good, filling lunch, and placed them into a large pan that he once more made with his element. The best thing about all this was that he could now actually make things like actual proper metallic pans and pots with his element instead of having to carry all those with him everywhere or trying to trick around with his element when it was mostly rock.
And so, the old man placed all of the dumplings meant for lunch into the large pan and first fried them a little bit, before he added some water into the pan and closing the whole thing up to steam the dumplings through.
While that was happening, Eisen placed the leftover dumplings into an actual freezer that he quickly made. Basically, it was just a large metal box he had laying around, and then he enchanted a gem with his new element and tried to create translucent, sub-zero flames that would spread out through that whole box.
It wasn't really that complex, so Eisen was able to finish everything before the dumplings were done frying. The old man removed the pan's lid and then quickly got the dumplings onto some plates for everyone, all the whilst seeing them and the frozen dumplings as finished.
[You created 10 Ground-Dragon Dumplings]
[You created 100 Frozen Ground-Dragon Dumplings]
[You created 10 Pork Dumplings]
[You created 100 Frozen Pork Dumplings]
[You created 10 Vegetable Dumplings]
[You created 100 Frozen Vegetable Dumplings]
[You created 10 Shrimp Dumplings]
[You created 100 Frozen Shrimp Dumplings]
...
...
...
The storm of notifications for the probably one dozen different types of dumplings appeared in front of Eisen and disappeared nearly just as quickly when he made them to. Instead, Eisen just wanted to focus on the other notifications that appeared with them.
[Cooking has reached level 100 in Rank 3, upgrading to Rank 4]
"Finally." The old man muttered with a smile on his face. One skill less that he needed to rank up now. He could probably get the drawing skill to rank up as well once he properly transferred all of his blueprints he had saved using the Carfter's Mind skill onto actual paper. But that was something he would have to do some other time.
Either way, for his draconic gifts, the skill that was currently closest to ranking up was the truth-seeing eye skill. And directly after that was actually the material-growth skill, since Eisen had been constantly gaining a little bit of proficiency here and there. That was because the seeds he planted where the giant ironbark tree stood before were one after another reaching maturity.
Eisen left behind a couple of golems to actually pull them out of the ground when that happened, but the old man really wasn't entirely sure how well that was working out. He only gave the golems minimal instructions and rather simple bodies to fulfill only those instructions as well. Sure, they were ego-golems, so they had actual memory and Eisen was able to give them a bit of knowledge, but that also enabled them to have personalities. They might just be lazing around right now.
Either way, that didn't actually matter too much right now. Eisen had everything that he needed to properly rank all of his skills up soon so that he could finish his level-up quest and reach level 300. And then, he would fly over the whole ocean as quickly as he could to yell at some idiotic players.
"How fun..." The old man sighed annoyedly as he started cleaning everything up after cooking, and Sigurd appeared in front of him soon after, "We reached the island. Want to head off immediately?" The core guardian asked, and Eisen quickly nodded his head in response.
"Mhm, let's. We should hurry up, but that shouldn't be an issue with Askr." The old man pointed out, "We'll be able to reach the place the town core is at easily, and we'll have Brody defeat the island boss. I have the two core guardians ready that we'll need for the next two islands, so it's just a matter of making proper use of the time we have." Eisen pointed out, and then stepped through the gate that Sigurd created for him. Everyone was split into two teams that were either staying inside of the dungeon that was placed into Askr's chest to fight with them and take the island over, or that were staying on the ship to protect it from any monsters that might come attack.
And so, after everyone ate their dumpling-lunch, Eisen made sure to help Askr safely leave the ship. Some of Brody's beasts as well as Melissa's bees were already flying around the island to see if they could quickly find the town, while Eisen made Askr run forward. Eisen himself was just watching everything going on through Askr's eyes while he kept working on his skills a little more. Right now, he was once more trying to split up potions into their ingredients to make proper use of the time that the others were outside fighting the 'comfort monsters' on this island.