3 Legendary Cooking Pot

"The story of the Necromancers?"

The adventurer stared dumbly at the girl and repeated the question, lost in thought. Realizing he had little to no idea of what she was talking about, the girl took a step back and began to explain.

"Necromancers are beings that raise the dead. This much is common sense. But what the majority of the populous fails to understand is the fact that Necromancers aren't beings that are gifted with a random Evil God's gift and are, as a result, inherently evil themselves. No, Necromancers cannot be classified as either good or evil. Such thinking is shallow and the truth about the so-called "gift" of the Necromancers is far from what priests of the country's Churches spew. Necromancy is a very scientific field. In fact, you can argue that it is one of the pioneer fields in all of scientific-magic research. It has nothing to do with the superstitious nonsense that Clergymen would have you believe. Necromancy, at it's core, is the re-arranging and repairing of the body's lost neural, nervous, musculatory, and skeletal connections. Of course there exist more complex forms of Necromancy that can even give a corpse's skin a more human tinge by altering its heart and blood vessels and Necromancies that can allow corpses to prevent rotting by re-establishing cellular process through forced mitosis, but I'll avoid talking about those for now. My key point is that Necromancers are far from what the masses label them as; Necromancer too are men born from their mothers and bleed red when they are cut. They are just as human as farmers and fishermen, and they are certainly not monsters. Hey, do you now understand what Necromancers are?"

As the girl kept talking, the adventurer felt himself seep into a trance. The reason for this was not because he understood the profundity of the words uttered by the girl, but because he was very attracted to the girl's face. Besides, even if he wanted to listen to the girl, he was unable to do so due to the sophisticated and lengthy nature of her explanation. Whenever he heard words that he thought were important like "Churches" or "Clergymen", he would nod, pretending that he understood everything that was going on. When he heard words that were very unfamiliar to him like "mitosis" or "cellular processes", he would place his chin atop his palm, acting as if he were analyzing the significance of such words. Every now and then he would also let loose a few "O's" and "Ah's", showing that he was greatly interested in the one-sided conversation.

His acting couldn't escape the girl's eyes though. In her mind, she thought herself as a very patient person for taking her time to explain seemingly simple things to the adventure, yet she found that he had quite a bit of gall for ignoring and taunting her. As a result, her eyebrows twitched and an unhappy expression surfaced on her face. Noticing that the girl didn't look very well, as she wore an unpleasant expression, the adventurer asked concernedly.

"What's the matter? Why did you stop? Are you unwell?"

Hearing this, the girl, who was trying her best to hide her emotions, was finally angered. As a red flush filled her face, the adventurer simply thought that she was blushing because she too was captivated by him; little did he know that he was about to lose his life, as the girl's face was red with blood lust.

"What guts you have to ignore me! Hmph! I take my time to explain what's going to happen to you and give you a reason for why I need you to die, but you just stare off into space, not giving me the slightest bit of face. That's it! I'm going to refine you immediately!"

Fuming, the girl started to unleash her fury on the adventurer. The moment she found him near the creak and discovered that he had a special constitution that might help her in her endless pursuit for knowledge, she was already hell-bent on putting him in her cauldron and creating the perfect undead out of his body. Because he looked young, appeared to be in tatters, and looked very weak, she pitied him and gave him a meal and something to drink. She even thought of explaining why she needed to kill him, so that he would understand that, when she killed him, he would be serving the greater good, so he needn't think about dying a meaningless death.

This brat, however, refused to acknowledge her kindness and didn't bother listening to her; instead, he was staring at her face as if it were a delicious fruit ripe for picking. This infuriated the girl to the extreme, so she no longer tarried and cast a restricting spell on the adventurer.

All of a sudden, a locked chest magically opened and thick ropes with a diameter the size of a man's arms hurtled towards the adventurer. The ropes slithered into the blanket covering the adventurer's body, and bound his arms and legs in knots. He felt a surge of pain as the ropes restricted his muscles, preventing him from even moving a step. Distraught, the adventurer looked at the girl. He looked at her like a husband looking at a wife after finding out that his wife had slept with—not one, not two—but three men behind his back. Also realizing that the adventurer was looking at him as if he were looking at a person who betrayed his heart, the girl simply scoffed and said nothing. She reached her hand towards the blanket and gave it a mighty pull, exposing the adventurer and his little brother to the world.

"W-wait, I'm not ready for this yet."

The adventurer cried out in panic, still not realizing the true severity of the situation. His body was drenched in cold sweat and he looked as if he really was at a loss for what to do next. But judging by the little adventurer's reaction, standing erect and proud, the girl knew that his body was getting excited for other reasons.

Giving him a roundhouse kick in disgust, she rendered him completely immobile. All he could do was squirm under the increasing tightness of the ropes.

"Don't even bother. The ropes are made from Green Oxe hair. Even a cultivator at the later stages of Body Transformation Stage would be in a bind when bound by these. Hehe, forgive my pun, but maybe it'll help you die more relaxed."

Saying this, she gagged the adventurer with a leather cloth and dragged his body across the floor with the ropes.

Mfff. Mmm. Mfmm.

The adventurer tried screaming, but all that came out were suppressed noises, not even audible a couple feet away. His fleshly body was strong though his appearance might hint otherwise, but, even so, the ropes were too much for him to handle. After all, if these ropes could restrain a person who'd already stepped onto the road of cultivation, a late-stager of Body Transformation at that, it was near impossible for the adventurer to escape. He was also ashamed when his little friend stood up straight for the girl to see, and her appalled face made him feel like he just ate a fly, even though he wasn't in the wrong. She explicitly stated that she was going to kill him and refine him in her little pot, but he paid that information no heed. All that was running through his mind was that he was just looked down on by a girl because he was a healthy young man. He felt wronged and injusticed.

Alas, he didn't have much more time to continue on with these thoughts. The girl moved over to a gathering of crates towards a certain corner of the room. She pushed the crates aside in a specific manner, revealing a thin, wooden, box-like thing peaking out of the floor. It was a trapdoor! Fishing out a key from her pocket, she brought it to the door.

Clink.

With the sound of a lock and key making intimate contact, the trapdoor was opened. A ladder leading into a dimly-lit underground room was revealed. Before entering herself, the girl mercilessly shoved down the adventurer first.

The drop was about a dozen feet. On normal days, the adventurer wouldn't be affected too bad by such a drop and he could casually fall from such heights at his whim. Today, however, as he was already fatigued and tied in such an uncomfortable and impractical manner, things were bound to be different. He wasn't able to properly position himself when his face hit the ground, knocking the air out of him.

Grahhh!

As he lay grunting on the ground in a doggy-style position, with his ass bent at a 45 degree angle, legs spread slightly apart, forehead and arms touching the floor in front of him, and his little brother dangling fiercely in the wind, the girl finally descended down the ladder. When she reached the foot of the ladder, the first thing she saw was the adventurer's unsightly slightly pose. Anger once again flowed through her blood and went straight to her right leg, giving it the power to unleash an oppressive kick. And kick she did, attacking the adventurer square in the ass, sending him somersaulting in the nude.

As he rolled like never before, he hit something which was quite cold and hard, instantly giving his head a mountain-like lump. The thing in question was a black pot that didn't look much different from what fishwives used to cook rice. It was a cooking pot, except it was man-sized. A series of pictures then flashed across the adventurer's mind. He thought that the girl would eat him out, but he didn't think that she would eat him like this.

To think she doesn't want me raw; she must like it soggy.

As various inappropriate thoughts plagued his mind, the girl noticed his little brother continuing its never-ending rise.

"Just what in Neremiah's are you thinking about? Do you not realize the situation you're in or are you just plain stupid? Cross your legs and prepare to be refined!"

The adventurer was then put into the cauldron. It was big enough for him to lie in the middle and not touch any of the cauldron's sides. It had a diameter close to 6 feet and it was about 4 feet tall. The girl could easily peer into it and start chanting an incantation. While she was doing so, corpses in the side of the room began to move.

At this stage, they couldn't even be called corpses; they were just bones. There were three of them. They each went to a different corner of the room, rummaged for items, and brought them back to the pot. Dropping green water, leaves of all colours, dead insects, and the innards of animals into the pot, the skeletons made haste with their work. They also managed to build a fire under the pot, causing the temperature in the room to go on a rise. The adventurer might've even praised the skeletons for their spa service, if not for the fact that he was bound and his balls were starting to itch. As he was thinking about how to politely ask the girl to scratch his itching balls for him, the girl's chanting was quickened by a notch and her voice echoed throughout the room. Her hair started to dance in the air and her clothes were slightly uplifted as some strange force began to empower her. This enigmatic force was Qi. This girl, though she appeared young and pure, had already crossed the threshold of Body Transformation and reached a minimum of the Qi Refinement Stage!

She was currently drawing some magical symbols of vibrant colours into the air at a rapid pace. Her movements were quick, agile and accurate. The symbols would make a layman feel the urge to puke, as they were so mind-bogglingly mysterious and complicated. In the peak of her chanting, as the temperature of the green water got high enough that the adventurer's skin began to melt, one of the skeletons transporting leaves tripped on a chunk of charcoal by the cauldron, causing it to crash towards the girl.

The girl was in a profound state of rune-making, so she wasn't able to focus her attention on the tumbling skeleton. Even if she could, she wouldn't be able to divert her attention to dodge it, because if she did try to dodge while casting runes, she would immediately lose concentration and suffer internal injuries from backlash caused by prematurely stopping her work. In such a manner, the girl was in a dilemma, but she herself was unaware of it. As a result, the skeleton successfully bumped into the girl, causing the pair to both fall down. No, the skeleton did not "accidentally" grope her breasts as a result—this isn't that kind of novel—but the skeleton did cause the girl to fall into the cauldron. Of course, the skeleton also fell into the cauldron as well, but the average person would be unable to notice this due to the girl's radiant screams, causing all attention to fall on her and her unlucky plight.

Tripped by my own minion. The Gods are jealous!

And so, the adventurer, the girl, and the skeleton, underwent some amazing quality-bonding time, turning into a weird-coloured soup after the time it took for an incense to burn. A week later, the soup began to condense, forming a humanoid figure.