[Wondrous Fare] is a Unique, Rare Cooking Skill. It allows the User to make Magical Food with different effects by following a theme. It was first learned/created by Erin Solstice.
This Skill came to be when its creator, Erin, arranged a banquet for the Frost Faeries by using specific ingredients like new cow’s milk, preparing the food in a childish and dreamlike manner, and arranging the dishes with "pure" or "death" themes. After the banquet, Erin would level up and learn the [Wondrous Fare] Skill.[1]
Skill Effects[]
Proper Skill Use[]
First the User starts by preparing a base for the Magical Food. As this Skill has effects that are compared to a high-level [Alchemist] Skills, it allows the User to bypassing and/or skipping some of the natural steps in the creation process, or the need for a particular reagent.
This allows the User to skip on the need to mix up a proper base first, like dissolving ingredients and mixing them together. With this reagents that wouldn't react normally would start interacting when the User stirred them.[2] Even a Sage’s Grass base, which would take an [Alchemist] over Lv. 20[3] a week to dissolve, would dissolve instantly with this Skill.
After the base is done the User picks a theme, like Darkness, as well as emotions and intentions, and ingredients that fit them. Like if the theme is Darkness then the ingredients mast be all dark in color, and the User having dark emotions in them and intentions to prepare the dish in a dark environment.[4]
Then the ingredients are combined thematically according to their intuition, to achieve an effect that fits the theme. In order for this to work the User must really want it, and by doing so they get to know what is needed for the theme recipe to work by instinct.
Also, while the right ingredients mattered for the food to work, a straight recipe didn’t matter, because so long the User achieved their goal—the food worked.
As the dish preparation progresses, the User starts to clearly imagining what the final dish would be like, and what effects it would have and the duration of said effects.
Should something happen that impends the process, like not having the right ingredients, the User can improvise other ingredients while seeing in their head the recipe struggling to adapt for a way to work. If that fails as well than the User can adapt and make a new different dish with the current ingredients. If that works, the image of the dish in their head changes into a new dish and how to make it.
The User can also feel when something goes wrong during the preparation, and if it turns out to be a failure then the image of all possible dishes will be gone from their head.
It should be noted that even if the food turns out to be a failure, the result can still have some of the intended magical effects, albeit with somewhat different effects and duration.[5] The effects of the food can be dispelled like magical enchantments.[6]
Improper Skill Use[]
It is also possible to prepare Magical Food without following the proper steps, like not following a theme. This unfortunately results in the Magical Food being flawed as it has weaker effects, and most of the time tasting terrible. The User also has to constantly experiment to make something that works, with most failures in doing so resulting in the food being harmful or deadly to the consumers.[7]
The flawed Magical Food also has a short expiry date that range from the best ones lasting about a week, to others going bad in a few hours. Still if they are kept under a Preservation Skill or Spell, they don't expire. Should they be consumed after their expiry date, it would cause the consumer to either to throw up (in one case in all different colors), to having strong diarrhea.[8]
Effects currently unknown, but presumably something like the Shadow Powderballs, but with another effect related to dust.
Midnight Bread
Bread
Darkness
True effect not shown but presumably it should hide the consumer from their enemies, even in the brightest sun.[4]
Shards of Relief
Candy
Gratitude, Red
Heals the consumer while they eat.
Breaks curses that they are afflicted with. Effect is determined by how much magic is put in the shards.
It's made using Witchcraft, using a pot filled with contentment.
Salvaged creation, made using the first attempt where the magically charged sugarglass of concentrated contentment exploded in the most magical part of the inn, the Garden of Sanctuary's Sage's Grass field, creating very sharp sugar daggers.
A small amount of an already used healing potion, that was used to save someone, is injected inside the shards.
Next a sweet blood sauce is made to be accompanied with them to be dipped in. The blood sauce is made from a boiled mixture of blood, sweetberries and raspberry paste, and purified water.
Mana Candies
Candy
Magic
Slowly replenishes mana as it's consumed. It is weaker than a mana potion, but does not cause mana burn.
Made using sugarglass, gelatin, Amentus Fruits, blueberries and honey. Water is substituted with a mana potion.
The finished product is buried around Sage's Grass for a few days or a week to be more magically charged.
Bulkup Bisque
Soup
Muscles, Strength
Strengthens the consumer. It is comparable to a [Lesser Strength] skill. It lasts for four hours, then gradually fades over 30 minutes.[11]
The ingredients include strong magical meats like Wyvern tendons and Corusdeer venison, bones, clotted cream, gumtree bark, Weaverspider silk, and beets.[11]
Looks like a charcoal burnt bread as black as midnight. After taking the first few bites, an interior pink dough becomes visible and the black bread is set on fire, like glowing ember, but harmless to the consumer.[13]
The ingredients include; Shadowcalf's dark grey butter and milk, Ashwheat flour, washed iron dust, Stonelizard scales, lemon juice, lots of mint, Wyvern tendons, Corusdeer venison, beets, and all other things that are appetizingly baked within the flour, all chopped up as fine as could be, with their taste mitigated by the dough. Included is a half bottle of rum that was burning with the Pink Flame of Glory.[13]
Once eaten the consumer's eyes burn Glory pink for a moment.[13]
Only the intended consumers may eat it and take in its effect. To anyone else it will tasty unappetizing and receiving non of its effects.[13]
[Mages] are not able to detected anything magical in it.[13]
It's Effects are like a combination of the Bulkup Bisque and Scaleguard Sandwich
Laugh in a painful and uncontrollable sounding way.
The laugher is a combination of mental and physical effect, which can knocks out anyone below Level 30, while painfully hurting the ears and making thinking difficult to those over Lv. 30.
While the laugher isn't eardrum bursting, the sound can still shatter glass and plates and crack reinforced glass near the one laughing.
Effect/Laugher has a duration of about 5 minutes.
It's made using Witchcraft, by having the Concept of evil laugher distilled in it.
Looks like an acid green mixed with a swirl of black and white, rotating together in a spiral like a vortex, which makes you feel vaguely uneasy looked at it. It also has grey smoke drifted from it despite the lack of heat.
It taste terrible, and even blue juice can’t hide the taste nor barely mask the swirling brew.
This version of Cackle Brew is not at its full-power as Erin can still make it even stronger.
It is weaker than a [Barkskin] Spell, even if it would cost less than a [Barkskin] Scroll.[10]
Renamed from; Thickskin Soup to Scale Soup, by Relc.[17]
While not tasty, the soup is sweet and has mushrooms in it.[17] It also has crunchy bits in it.[18]
Erin would figure out how to make it tastes palatable and turning it into a Salad, becoming now a Scale Salad. It still got crunchy bits in it tough.[18]
After learning how to use the Skill a bit more better, Erin would improve the dish into a giant artichoke leaf sandwich called; Scaleguard Sandwich. It is more appealing and maybe a bit more stronger.[19]
Acid-fly Jelly
Jelly
Kills the consumer, but it can be served on a plate without damaging the plate.[20]
Shadow Loaf Shadowbread Loaf
Bread
A bread that literally ate light. It does the exact same thing a light bulb did—except with darkness. The shadows lengthened around it, making it practically obfuscated in a dark room, and even in the light, it would take in the brightness.
The bread has no inherent properties upon consumption. It was just really cool. The inside of the consumer's mouth becomes very dark when they open it.[4]
Even if not eaten, it still has the effect of obscuring its surroundings to some extent from certain beings.[21]
While Erin had attempted to make a Midnight Bread and had everything from the ingredient to the emotions and intentions correctly, it was still a failure because she had prepared it during the day, instead of during the night, with like no moons in the sky, to be totally thematic.[4]
Other then being actually blue, it may be possibly poisonous as previous experiments had not gone well.[23]
Unbreakable Scone
Scone
The consumer developed [Stoneskin], which literally makes the skin as hard as a rock.[24]
A full ‘bite’ of half a scone gives a [Stoneskin] effect for 30 minutes.[24]
In theory, it is a dense, highly calorific piece of bread.[24]
The ingredients include; a huge amount of butter, Sage’s Grass, a teeny bit of cement mix and other hard edibles in it.[24]
Currently not really edible as they are to hard to eat and digest, unless one has a proper Class and Skills specialized for eating, like Snapjaw.[24]
Trivia[]
Erin first used this Skill with alchemical ingredients to create magical dishes in Celum.[25]
Currently Erin does not know for sure if the Faerie Flower Drink she is able to make is due to this Skill or not.[26]
If the Faerie Flower Drink is indeed made with this Skill than it was thought likely that the Minotaur’s Punch drink was partly made thanks to this Skill as well. This would prove to be false in Chapter 8.29 when Ishkr made himself the drink.
