Chapter 27: Bigfoot's Lair

I’ve been on the northern continent for about a week now. Calter was a gold mine and let me finish my important shopping almost immediately, but I also visited some of the other countries on my map.

Albert is a middling country on the ocean, and Calter is a richer inland country with lots of fertile farm land. Oisha is west of Albert and the same sort of small coastal country. Further west, just above the cursed lands, is a religious city-state with a bunch of people in robes. I didn’t like the vibe there, but it was worth the stop.

The church and adventurers’ guild in town work together to train people to fight monsters in case the cursed land or its creatures become a threat again. There’s an elite group of adventurers in the church who have survived spending a week on the monster continent. I really wanted to talk to them, but they’re treated like saints, so I couldn’t get close.

They did have a map of the northwest part of the continent, and there are two countries up there that don’t get along with anyone except the holy city. The Kingdoms of Kaisel and Oteria. They’re supposed to be devout followers of the Human Divinity church, and they’re worried about another holy war, so they stay inside their walls for the most part. Kaisel makes olive oil, but they trade it in the holy city, so I didn’t have to make the trip to stock up.

I picked up some other spices to try as well. Jen is going to have a field day when I get back. I’d really like to zip down to the monster continent and play around, but I told myself I’d wait for summer break. Oh well, I heard there could be monsters in the hills above Albert, so I’ll check those out before I go.

I take off from the holy city and cross the skies of Oisha and Albert to reach the hilly region in the north. There are patches of forest, but it really looks like a wasteland. The ground is mostly black, and there must be some geothermal activity in the area because there are little geysers of hot air and water.

There’s a standout series of hills in what I think is the center of the wasteland, so I place my house there. I walk into the kitchen and prepare some dough. I’ve been working on pizza sauces every day since I found tomatoes, and I settled on a nice garlic variation. I’ll let the dough rise while I run around looking for monsters.

I head out and descend from the hill I settled on and let magic flow out of me to scan the immediate area. It’s as dead as it looked from above.

I start hopping between hills and following the same procedure: send my magic out, be disappointed, move to the next hill.

There isn’t any sign of life on the surface, but I sense a cave entrance in the next hill. I fly there and look at the entrance, it’s large, maybe five meters tall, and just as wide. The ground leading into the cave has a worn path; something definitely lives here. I walk further from the cave searching for footprints in any soft ground. 20 meters to the right of the cave, there’s a massive humanoid footprint – which can only mean one thing..

BIGFOOT! This fantasy world has bigfoot! There was an entire society of fanatics in the pacific northwest of my old world that was hunting these guys down. I hope one of them reincarnates here, they’d have a blast.

In the spirit of a proper bigfoot encounter, I reel my magic in and create a light orb just in front of me. I enter the cave as the brave ostracized bigfoot hunters would, my heart full of joy and curiosity. I’m smiling like an idiot for someone who’s about to be ambushed in a cave.

The cave is much deeper than I expected. It slopes down at a 20-degree angle, and 50 meters in, I don’t see the end of it or signs of life. The path bends to the left, and I keep following it down. I’ve lost track of how far in I am; it feels like I’m descending into a labyrinth.

There’s a ton of latent energy in the air. It looks like I’m walking through a heavy fog. Any magic I cast using that energy would be a lot stronger than normal, and it gets denser the deeper I go.

I see a light up ahead, maybe a cave exit, to another, lower hill? Could this whole cave just be a shortcut between the hills? That would be a bummer.

As I get closer, I see the light flickering. It can’t be from the sun - it has to be fire. I quicken my pace and arrive at the cave exit. It’s actually an entrance to a colossal set of underground ruins. An indoor football stadium could fit in here, and the energy in the air is immense.

The entrance sits at the left side of the ruins. There are stone walls all the way around with writings carved into them, and through the center of the room is a line of spell stones emitting flames. Are there people here? How do these get recharged?

Sleeping on the stone floor near the flames are a pack of bigfoots. They really just look like gorillas, but they have a lot more magic coming off of them than any animals I’ve come across before. I put out my light orb and put up my light refraction. I don’t want to disturb them for the moment.

I use magic footholds to silently walk the perimeter of the large ruins and examine the writings, but I can’t read a word of them. I’ve switched gears from bigfoot hunter to magical archeologist, so I send out magic to help with my search. There’s a thin stone wall in the far left corner of the ruins, and unsurprisingly, the spell stones in the center of the room absorb my incoming magic.

There’s a flow of magic coming from beneath the spell stones, keeping them activated to create fire.

I move to the back left corner of the ruins and press into the thinner segment of the wall. It functions as a turning door. I make a condensed magic barrier that envelopes myself and the door to block the noise of stone grinding against stone before I push through it.

There’s a stairwell leading lower, and the energy in the air is thick enough to bite into. The bottom of the stairs opens up to a sort of lab that stands out from the stone architecture above. It’s small and shaped like a circle, but the room has two levels. The upper ring of the room has some metal bookshelves, chairs, and desks. The inner ring has a pedestal holding a green gem that’s misshapen and the size of my head.

Magic is flowing out from the top of it and into an apparatus that moves the flow of magic into the ruins above. It functions like the giant spell stone in my house that I run all the magical appliances with, but there’s one main difference. This one is pulling in the latent energy in the air before converting it to the type of magic people and spell stones use.

I push some of my magic towards it to try to understand the material, but before it can make contact, it’s caught in the flow of magic and sucked upward.

The stone redirects my magic before it makes contact?

I’ve spent a lot of time scanning mountains, looking to see what materials absorb and deflect my magic. I’m basically a hoarder of metals and gems, but if something was slightly redirecting my magic, I could’ve missed it.

I’m grinning from ear to ear at the discovery. I’m in such a good mood, I won’t even kill the bigfoots.

I turn from the pedestal and look at the metal bookcases around the room. I sift through several books and notice they’re printed. Advanced tech in an ancient ruin? I like this, but I can’t read whatever language this is. I store the books and handwritten journals that are in good condition before sending more of my magic into the room and structure around it.

No thin walls, no doors, no path ahead. Ah, well, this was still a lot of fun, time to make pizza.

***
It’s hard to make the perfect pizza. The bottom must be crispy, but not too crispy. The top must be cheesy, but not too cheesy. And the sauce needs to be flavorful, but it can’t overpower the other flavors. In my old-world, people would import water from certain areas to make their dough; they swore by the mineral content or something. So, I expect a lot of trial and error.

I never made much pizza dough from scratch in my last life, but I watched pizza shop guys toss their dough like flying saucers with awe. Those doughs were stretchy, but firm. When Jen told me to increase the egg content of my breads, they got fluffier and lighter, but pizza dough should be a little tougher. I adjusted the recipe and reduced the egg to that end. Time to see how it looks.

The dough has risen substantially, and it feels heavier than the bread dough I’ve been making. I cut the dough into fourths before starting to roll them out. I’ll be cooking and tasting them one at a time to perfect the process. With four thin circles of dough in front of me, I retrieve the garlicy pizza sauce I’ve been working on for the past week.

I drop a dollop in the center of my first experiment and spread it out, making circular motions with the back of a wooden spoon. It’s easy to use too much sauce, so long as there’s a saucy flavor in each bite, there’s more than enough.

I spread the sauce into a thin, almost splotchy layer, leaving a small crust area on the outside. This world has a white cheese that reminds me of mozzarella - it’s not quite the same, but I’m not a cheese snob.

I cut the white cheese block into thin threads before lightly covering the top of the sauce. Cheesing the pizza is a trap, because cheese is incredible, but it follows the same logic as the sauce. I’m trying to create consistent bites of flavor, including crispy dough, flavorful sauce, and melted cheese – without any one of these dominating the bite.

The pizza oven has been heating up since I started on the dough, so I’m sure it’s ready. I made one of those baker sticks used to place breads in big ovens, it’s just big enough for the pizza to fit on the circular end.

I slide the first pizza into the roaring oven, then step back and fight the urge to start tossing the remaining dough in the air like saucers. At the first sight of smoke from the hottest edge of the pizza, I turn it 90 degrees and continue doing so until I see golden crust all the way around.

I pull the pizza from the oven and place it on the bar top in the kitchen. I don’t have a pizza cutter, but I have a bunch of swords – those will work.

With the pizza sliced, I examine my handiwork. The bottom is firm, the crust on the outside has a solid crisp, and the cheese has melted into a thin layer at the top. It looks like a pizza.

I lift a slice to my mouth, and my hands tremble in anticipation.

Crunch

It’s good, it’s really good. The flavors swirl in my mouth, and the slice doesn’t droop or have its cheese slide off while I’m holding it. Congratulations, fantasy world, you have pizza.

My only complaint is that the dough isn’t quite right. It’s hard-bready and requires a little more chewing than I want from a slice of pizza. I need to talk to Jen.

I turn to look at the remaining dough I have rolled out in the kitchen.

Meh, you guys are the problem. I’ll toss them into bigfoot’s lair, then go to bed.