Chapter 7

Maverick's POV---

Qiao Ai quickly sunk into a cultivation trance, and I knew she wouldn't wake up for a while when I felt the Vitality around me slowly gravitate towards her. Staying here right now will be useless, no matter how much I want to. If I'm quick enough, I might be back in time to be the first thing she sees when she wakes up. I love the way her eyes sparkle when she sees me, and crinkle when she smiles. But this isn't the time, I need to get going. I shift back to four legs, and run out of the cave. I was careful to make sure there were no traces left here, but just in case I rub up against the entrance of the cave, leaving my scent as a marker.

"This way, nobody will dare get close."

I tell myself that as the strongest beast on this mountain, nobody will dare get close to her. That doesn't completely stop the worry though. I wonder if the only way to stop it is to stay near her at all times. That doesn't sound too bad. I leap onto a nearby tree, and jump away from the cave that holds the female who has managed to totally captivate me in such a short amount of time.

---

My first successful round of capturing vitality, adding it to my own, and cycling it through my core took around 10 minutes, and I only got a tiny amount of vitality from it. It was maybe a 1% increase to what was already in my body. It was a bit of a rocky start, but as I kept going, doing the same process over and over again, I managed to cut down the time taken to do a full rotation by 8 minutes. I only stopped when my body felt full, as if I'd stuffed myself with a full course meal, and I figured that was my cue to finish up. When I opened myself back out of my meditative state, the first thing I noticed was the smell of smoked meat. Then I noticed where the smell was coming from. Maverick was sitting in front of me, leaned back with his eyes closed, probably doing some cultivation of his own. In front of him was a piece of freshly smoked venison, and it smelled divine.

"Has the meat finished smoking? Can I have that piece in front of you?" My voice seemed to echo in the otherwise silent cave, and it stirred Maverick. When his eyes opened they immediately flickered over to meet mine, and I smiled when his eyes made it to my face. "I guess I was like this for a while? Thank you for being around when I woke up. Hate to be so rude straight away, but can I have that meat?" As soon as the word meat leaves my lips my stomach growls rather loudly, and Mavie's face lit up at the sound. "I brought it here for you to eat it, go ahead."

The meat is in my hands in a split second. It seems my cultivation really increased my physical abilities, because I moved far faster then I thought possible with my body.

The meat tastes even better then it smells somehow, and I can't hold back my moan of delight as I devour it. That one slab was certainly not small, but even after finishing it I haven't had enough. I turn to Maverick and pout, giving him my very best puppy eyes and whining. "Can I have a second piece, please? Mavie, I'm still hungry. Maviiiiiie"

"You're an omnivore, you can't eat only meat. Here, have there instead." He hands me a handful of purple and red berries, and my cute pouty face grimaces. This isn't the food I want right now. But, I am still hungry so I take the berries from Mavericks hand and slowly eat them. They're good.

"Can I assume the meat has finished smoking? Seeing as you already have some here with you." Once I've filled my stomach enough to think of other questions, I ask him this. He bobs his head, "The meat itself has finished, but the cave is stilled pretty filled with smoke and I'm not done making a place to store the meat yet." That seems like something I can actually help with, so I gesture for him to continue. "I've got a right sized hollow stone, but I don't know how to seal it on the top, or how to make sure that the meat isn't constantly touching the stone."

This struck me as interesting. If the technology for smoking food exists, then shouldn't knowledge of food storage also exist? How did Mavie learn to smoke food anyways? I ask him these questions, and he brightens up as he answers. "I'm pretty sure I'm the only onw who knows how to cook meat like that, and I only figured it out by chance recently. While I was looking for a new cave to mark as mine, I made a fire to cook some meat outside. I had hung the meat on a low tree branch above the fire to make sure no scavengers ate it while I was away from the fire, but when I came back, I realised I'd hung the meat too far above the fire to properly roast. I decided to eat it raw anyways because I was hungry, but I noticed the meat kind of tasted different and was really good. It was so good I left some for the next day hoping it wouldn't go off, and it was totally fine the next day! So I started messing around with smoking meat more often. It ended up staying good for around 7 nights when it was left in smoke, and still tasted good. Isn't that cool?"

Wow. A coincidental discovery of food preservation? It seems I've managed to hug the thigh of an impressive genius. "It really is. But you didn't store it?" Mavie scratches his cheek and his tail behind him waves abashedly. "I wrapped it in large leaves, but I was travelling so I didn't have anything to put it in." Leaves, couldn't he line the stone storage container in leaves?

I suggest this to him, and he goes "ah", wondering how he himself didn't think about something so basic. "Speaking of leaves, couldn't you just carve some wood to fit on top of the jar? If you slope the stone rim down diagonally, and carve the wood to fit onto that diagonal, it should just stay there as a lid. Or you could make the stone rim small and narrow, and make the wooden lid slightly smaller with a brim to fit over the jar. Like this." I use my nails to sketch out what jar lids look like, and Maverick looks at the designs, humming in agreement. "I don't quite get it, could you make these if I bring you some wood and the meat container?" I definitely could, in fact it would probably be pretty easy and fun.

"Can we go back to the cave first? I would prefer to do it there then here." Maverick nods again, and the two of us stand up and walk slowly towards the hidden entrance to our little cave. Slowly, because my legs are numb after sitting in one position for so long.

When we get outside, I finally notice that it's dark out. I can see perfectly fine, thanks to my lovely new fox eyes, and for some reason, being out here right now feels natural. Actually, aren't both foxes and snow leopards nocturnal? Maverick lowers down to my ears to whisper to me, because even in human form I only just reach his armpits. "Let's go get some wood before we head back. There's a newly fallen tree nearby we can take from."

Sounds good, we both shift into our animal forms, and quietly run east for a few minutes. On a down hill slope, we find a sturdy tree, probably similar to pine or fir trees? Either way, It seems to have been knocked over by some sort of fight, and the wood is still healthy and strong. Maverick uses his sharp claws to dig out a large chunk of wood, and holds it in his jaw before running back to me.

By the time we reached the cave, wood and all, the smell of smoke was only lingering. I expect it'll stick around for a while, but at least it isn't overpowering or making me stuffy. It would be ideal to do the smoking in a well ventilated shed, but I'm not sure how I'd go about making one, or if the beasts of this world build houses at all. Once inside, Mavie showed me a large, rectangular stone basin filled with assorted smoked meat. It seems easy enough to make a lid for with the chunk of wood i have here, but the process might be a bit tedious.

While I was grabbing the wood and eyeballing some guesstimations for dimensions, Maverick was carefully removing the meat from the container to line it with the large leaves we gabbed on our way back. His arms were both filled with cooked but now cooled and slightly messy smoked meat, and as I was wondering how on earth he was going to get the leaves in, something truly supernatural happened.

Water materialized right in front of my eyes, and created a small whirling vortex in the container, cleaning it before splashing out and travelling on its own to the doorway, where it soaked into the earth. "Qiao Ai, could you put the leaves in there for me? My hands are full."

"What the fuck just happened?!"