All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 313: The Sweet Life

After Beatrice got her birthday breakfast, I left her alone to eat and went about several of the plans I had made for the day. As I was leaving, I took an extra second to check over the apartment with my System Diagnostics skill.

Over the years, I'd pulled in a lot of experience from my followers and their levels. It allowed me to reach level 93 and earn a new skill option. But despite how awesome I'd expected it to be, I was surprised that none of the skills really stood out. I'd picked System Diagnostic for lack of better choices, but now I was very glad I had chosen it. The whole building turned up fine, so I moved on.

Originally, I thought it was just to help improve my own maintenance, making sure there was nothing wrong with myself. At best, I'd hoped that it would let me update my own programming. But it turns out it was so much more. The skill let me choose anything that I could conceptualize as a system and run a diagnostic, letting me understand instantly how everything worked and how it was connected and identify any sorts of problems with it.

After I had acquired that skill, I spent months going around upgrading every plumbing and electrical system that I had managed to install. I couldn't believe how much more efficient it made things. I learned so much more about where I could improve, but at the same time, it kind of put an end to any developments I was making in the space. Now, it was all up to the people to move past my level of understanding. So, I had to take on new hobbies and duties.

Shipbuilding had been fun for a while. The idea was to prevent people from getting wet, especially while they traveled across dangerous areas that were too deep for them to walk across. Simple signage hadn't worked, and I had given up after a week of trying to warn people not to go near the water. So, instead, I figured I could focus on ensuring they'd be safe when they did go out there.

Giant barges the size of mansions had been easier to construct than I had feared. Sometimes, I even made them out of metal. And when I introduced electricity to many of the cities, I also thought of adding it to the ships. Now, our ships were a marvel of the world, according to some people. I just thought it was nice that they stopped sinking as much. Whenever sea monsters attacked the wooden-bottomed ones, they tended to break lots of planks. Steel was a little bit more well-protected from giant tentacle monsters, especially when I gave them a nice coating of sealant.

But more recently, I'd shifted focus. For the past year or so, I'd been focusing more on cooking. It was simple in concept but surprisingly difficult in execution. Your favorite 𝒏ovels at novelbin(.)com

Sure, I had made good use of Convergence of the Faithful and the cooking skills that came with it to produce something edible. Still, I never had the imaginative flair that someone like Casey, Tony's older sister, managed.

I also still hadn't overcome the lack of taste receptors, which was a bit of an issue for testing, especially at the start. I probably shouldn't have subjected Beatrice to those early experiments.

But what I lacked in flavor, I made up for in presentation. Hence, where I was heading now. I needed to work on the cake that we had been planning for the past several days. It had taken a decent amount of convincing to get Casey to accept me as her assistant. She had some nonsense idea that I should be in charge of the baking, which was factually a bad idea. Whenever I had tried to do stuff like this before, it always turned out okay at best. But whenever she baked something, it was fantastic. It was something special.

There were more of these oddities that I had noticed over the years, skills that I could get pretty good at but not great. In cases like that, there was always something wrong, something missing, something not quite perfect about my approach. But that was okay. Because I could work together with my humans.

Cassie had been designing flavor profiles and finalizing the plan while I was working on the cake's composition, making sure that it was as light, fluffy, and moist as possible while not disrupting her taste. And together, we designed what I think was the perfect cake. Of course, I couldn't exactly taste it the same way people could, but based on our blind taste tests and controlled A/B testing trials, we had both the best-tasting frosting and cake that we could manage. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her and her intuitive leaps. But I like to think that my empirical testing helped.

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So, while we were baking this cake that was going to be quite extravagant, I was letting her handle most of the actual cooking of the recipes we had concocted together. But I would be doing the frosting and decorations after she had made it, of course.

I found Casey hard at work in the kitchen with several of her staff, already taking control of the palace kitchen that she ran on a daily basis. There were many other sub-kitchens scattered around that were prepping for the feasting, but this was where the real magic was happening today.

Most of the cake had been baked and assembled already. I had been helping around here until I noticed Beatrice stirring to wake, and I left to go cook her breakfast. But in my brief absence, they had carefully placed the 18th layer on top. I got to work quickly, applying a perfectly even layer of frosting below before I started on the intricate frills and hyper-realistic flowers that we had designed. I also helped them put the final couple of layers of cake on top so that they wouldn't disturb the structure. Being able to fly was extremely useful when building cakes.

By the time we finished sculpting the chocolate dragon, it was almost time to set the cake out for display and start the games. I added a final touch of illusionary flame to finish it off. It was a little bit of cheating I'd done with the decoration. I used my sensory disruption to make anyone looking at it feel like the flames were flickering out of the dragon's mouth and against the castle decorations as the frosted moss burned away. Still, most of the decorations were actually careful applications of icing.

Even the rainbow reflections on the dragon's chocolate scales resulted from clever etching that reflected holographic rainbow light when viewed from different angles. Just the animated scene repeating over and over again was magic.

Carefully, we transported the cake through the halls and set it up in the massive courtyard. We set it atop the pedestal designed for it so that everyone could appreciate our masterpiece while the games went on. I sprayed protective sealant over it all and locked it in place. I'd have to remove it before anyone cut into it, but this should keep it completely fresh. Thankfully, I'd long since learned how to reverse the material's extraordinarily tough curing. It took a lot of time, but it was doable.

During the festivities, Beatrice remained in her seat, looking slightly miffed. I didn't understand why she was so opposed to celebrating her birthday. Still, I wasn't about to let her rob everyone of a chance to party either. The Nighty Knights were thoroughly on board with this because one of the things on the agenda was to formally send them off on their first mission as a part of the government. It wasn't anything super special, but they had been waiting for it for a very long time.

I was going to go along as an escort, and Beatrice was going to stay behind. She was not exactly happy about that, and neither were the Nighty Knights, but I think it was a compromise that we could all be satisfied with. And my presence eased their parents' worry a little bit. But first, they had to show off.

In order to promote the competition within his ranks, Felix had decided that only the top ten participants of the competitions would be allowed into the first mission. And so competition amongst the nearly 60 Nighty Knights was fierce.

They hadn't been allowed to increase their number. Somehow, a few people here and there had snuck in after their founding during the several battles of the initial stabilization of the Spotless Theocracy. I still found that name hilarious. But after Beatrice and Arthur had found out that they were recruiting, they put a stop to it. The Nighty Knights would be able to officially recruit soon. Still, they had age limits and certain thresholds about levels and time training for anyone who wanted to join. Especially before anyone was allowed to do anything dangerous.

The kids grumbled about it and argued, but eventually, they accepted the fact that they would have to take younger people on as squires and pages before they were allowed to become proper knights. The argument that it was tradition had swayed them enough that they were willing to go about it. Besides, we didn't really have much for them to fight. There were some monsters, but they had been fighting those for a while, and we had no border troubles or anything. If any demon showed up, Beatrice and I and some of our elites, like Tony or Susan, would be the ones to take care of it.

The first game was announced. All across the city, bells tolled to indicate the beginning of the festivities. Obviously, not everyone was able to attend the main ceremony in the palace courtyard. This was reserved for our inner circle of important people. But in every other major square throughout the city, a similar event was going down. Not every event would be like this, but at the end of the day, the victors from each event's competitions would come together to compete one more time for a grand prize.

Most prizes would be handed out locally. But at the end of the day, tournaments were about knowing who exactly was the very best in the city, so of course, we needed grand finals. I was particularly excited about the sweeping races. I took personal pride in those. It was a little bit rough to set up the courses, but watching everyone clean up and see who could do it fastest and most completely would be quite fun.

Hovering near the edge of the course, my bristles vibrated with excitement. Beatrice clapped her hands to signal the start of the competition, and the combatants were off their brooms. They dashed forward with quick, practiced strokes as they cleared off their sections of all dust and debris.

I let out a loud whistling cheer as the action began.