VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 142: Anyone can cook, but not everyone should

Following her nose, tracking the bacon like a bloodhound, Valerie finally rolled into the kitchen and immediately chuckled at the sight she was presented with. Loud music was blasting from mounted speakers, loud enough to mask Valerie’s arrival, as Percy gyrated and danced his way around the kitchen.

His dance moves were absolutely terrible, looking more like he was being tazed whilst he was being attacked by bees, but the goofy smile on his face was one of someone who couldn’t care less.

Jinu was also present, having been dolled up by the dancing idiot in a tall, white chefs hat and a ’Kiss the Cook’ apron. The mechanical man was ignoring Percy’s spastic dance moves as he focused on the frying pan in front of him.

He was watching it with deep intent as the contents hissed and sizzled, but it was not the bacon that she had smelled. They were making pancakes.

"Alright," Percy shouted over the music, grabbing Jinu’s shoulders from behind and looking over them at the pancake in progress, "Now comes the tricky part, the flip. It’s okay, don’t worry about the other failures.

Just keep it light and breezy. Light and Breezy man, keep the shoulders loose and tension free."

He rubbed Jinu’s shoulders as if he was massaging the stress from his muscles. Neither of which the fully metal man had in his body, but neither did he complain about it. But that was mostly because complaining wasn’t in his programming, nor was pancake making.

So when Jinu nodded stiffly and stepped back, exactly what Valerie had been expecting happened. He tossed the pancake up and her eyes followed the white blur as it shot high into the air, until it splatted against the gorgeous real wood roof, that was already marked with three other failed attempts.

The robot looked up at the pancake in confusion, wondering why it was not coming back down as he continued to make flipping motions with his empty pan.

Percy sighed, taking the pan off of him and began to make another one with the remaining batter he had in a jug nearby.

"Don’t worry buddy, You’ll get it eventually."

"He really won’t, trust me." Valerie shouted over the music, catching Percy’s attention as he turned towards her. "It’ll boggle your mind how he can be so gentle with me, but can’t do something so simple. But really, you’ll eventually learn to stop trying. Especially when he starts to break your plates.

Plus, his taste palate is just terrible. Always over-salting things."

A warm smile bloomed across Percy’s face and Valerie could swear that his face started to glow with how happy he was being, as he quickly turned down to music so it just played lowly in the background.

"Hey Sleeping Beauty, how’re you feeling? You looked pretty wiped after your little demonstration. It was pretty cool though."

"It certainly was." She replied with a laugh, "I’m feeling good though. The sleep helped, but a quick visit to your garden helped even more."

"The Garden?" Percy asked with a frown, pouring out a new pancake and handing it to Jinu for his next attempt.

"I mean a little fresh air is nice, I guess."

"That is true. But what was good about it, was that fresh air was filled with mana." She said excitedly, a goofy smile across her face as she leaned on the kitchen counter. Before Percy could ask any more questions, Valerie immediately began to regale him with her story of how she had discovered the worlds mana, starting from her discovery of the drinks truth, then informing her of her gamer girl bath time, before finally telling him all about the mana filling the garden and completely draining it.

He listened intently and patiently as she told him all about not just what she had discovered, but her theories surrounding those discoveries.

At some point during her miniature lecture, Jinu flipped another pancake into the ceiling, forcing Percy to take over before the entire ceiling was covered in them. He added some blueberries to one batch, and a small dash of chocolate chips to another, before properly flipping them and serving them onto plates, all while listening to Valerie the entire time.

By the time she was done with her explanation, he was setting down the chocolate chip ones down in front of her, along with a portion of bacon and a pair of fried eggs. His own looked the same, with the only difference being the blueberries instead of chocolate chips. There was also a small bowl filled with extra blueberries.

It might have seemed like an incredibly simplistic breakfast. But with all of it being prepared with real ingredients instead of synthetic produce, just this breakfast alone probably cost as much as a month’s rent.

However, Valerie’s stomach quickly took over her thought process as it rumbled loudly, not allowing her to dwell on the exorbitant price of it all as she instead began to wolf it all down.

"So, how long do you think it will take before I can join you on these mediation retreats?" Percy asked, taking much more time with his breakfast than the messy, starved beast in front of him. Using a knife and fork to carve up his pancakes into easy, bite sized pieces.

On the other hand, Valerie’s cheeks bulged like a chipmunk with how much food she had stuffed into them, whilst she kept shovelling more in by the forkful. Syrup coated her lips and mixed with the bacon grease already there.

When she heard the question, she took a few moments to chew and swallow most of what was in her mouth, which was a bit of a struggle and only almost made her choke. But once her mouth was relatively empty, she answered,

"Honestly I’m not too sure. It might be a few more days. Although... How do you feel about taking a sticky bath?"

Percy didn’t speak. Instead he answered with nothing more than a smirk and a suggestive eyebrow, which earned him a blueberry thrown at his head. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

They both laughed and flowed into meaningless conversation and banter, as Valerie slowly tore up one of her bacon strips into small, bite sized pieces only to place them down onto the table beside her.

It was an action that baffled Percy at first, but not nearly as much as when the bacon bits started to disappear into thin air.