DakotaKrout

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Sixteen

Nacho ignored a steady stream of intrusive thoughts pressuring him to get back into combat while he sliced up a pound of the goat meat from just shy of fifteen feet away—remaining in the relative safety of the wagon’s shadow. A satisfying *cha-ching* rang through his head as twenty-two credits came pouring in. The Goat Cheeses were level eleven, which seemed pretty low, given the fact that they had ninety-three Health Points. “These aren’t cows… why are they so beefy?” 2023-01-10 15:11:37 +0000 UTC View Post

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Fifteen

Welcome to Active Combat! No Store access and no Regens!

At least a dozen of the goats and birds were actively attacking the caravan, which by itself meant that the fighters had their work cut out for them. Brie armored up in an instant, then Combat Dashed right past Nacho into a Goat Cheese—proving yet again that combat skills were more effective at traversing terrain than merely running quickly. Her hammer sent about five pounds of gooey feta cheese splashing off the bones ...

Artorian 13!

Hi all!

Check your email! If you’re at the $5 tier or above, you’ve got an ebook waiting for you - AA13: Antelucan!

If you’re at the $15+ tier, the audiobook is there too!

If you'd like to help this succeed, I'd love your reviews on Amazon and/or Audible when it releases on January 11th!

Happy reading/listening!

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Fourteen

Bright and early the next morning, Nacho, Reuben, and Brie were tromping down the Bove Road—the new name for their burgeoning superhighway. The cook had been opposed to the title at first, because of how many lives had already been lost to that monster, but he eventually came around as increasing numbers of guild members explained that they wanted a reminder of their first big win in this world.

Taye was with them, still decked out in his old armor and wielding his old bow—for now. ...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Thirteen

The night before they left for the UnderFun, Nacho collected his prize for hitting Tier one. He’d managed to extract a total of six hundred additional credits from processing the Cow Poke, and he was going to be raking in a ton more by selling his food that night. That was level fifteen meat, which meant he could sell access to the feast for ninety credits a pop for three servings. The fee matched the Store’s price for Common Tier one food, but thanks to his choice of ingredients...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Twelve

Kronos gave Nacho a happy little salute, which was disconcertingly out of place when a god-like entity was the one performing the action. The Patron was a tall man who looked kind of like a beloved fictional chaos theory mathematician traumatized by dinosaurs, but with fuzzy sideburns. As before, he wore a white toga and golden sandals. His wild hair billowed out from beneath a New York Yankees baseball cap, turned around so the bill faced behind him.

Nacho wasn’t sure what to say to ...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Eleven

Days later, Nacho was hard at work deep frying taco shells when the door to his kitchen was thrown open. The sudden interruption caused a knife to blink into his hand, spun around, and whipped at the intruder in an instant. He palmed another and dropped into a fighting stance before finally taking in the consequences of his actions.

Reuben glanced down at the knife sticking out of his gut as the smell of rotting cheese filled the room. He calmly pulled it out and tossed it back without ...

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CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Ten

Nacho patted the rough hide armor of one of the big guys that pulled the wagons of their caravan. He chuckled as the man looked at him oddly, then started laughing outright after the increasingly confused worker accepted an apple that Nacho had been saving for this exact moment. Matt Martinez tossed the reins to shake the Guild Leader off and keep the wagon steady. From the expression on his frowning face, whatever he had to say, it probably wasn’t going to be good.

The cook instantly...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Nine

Building the first forty living spaces had caused an uproar, as everyone demanded one for themselves. Nacho lobbed that negotiation off on Mayor Dan and walked away, informing him that the only people that could earn one needed to work for the guild by clearing out the altered Costco. “I need to talk to Matt; do you know where he is?”

Mayor Dan, looking harried, informed the Guild Leader, “I enlisted Matt Martinez to help plan some farming in the soil to the south. He’s pretty b...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Eight

After breakfast, the trio left the guild hall through the door from Nacho’s kitchen and went straight down the south side of town. They passed another collection of tents on their walk to the southern edge of the limestone cliffs, where they stopped to peer over and wince at the hundred foot drop to the trees below. It was a bit of a trek, but it was time to delve deeper into the Dark Buggy Darkness.

Nacho put his hands on his hips and swayed side to side to loosen up, preparing for t...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Seven

Nacho made sure his oven was at temperature, nodding as he felt the radiating heat. With a practiced motion, he slid three skillets in to get the first round of biscuits going. He then poured everyone coffee or tea, trying not to note the fact that it cost two credits a mug for the Epic stuff. The cook made a conscious effort to throw off the unease of spending money on such frivolous items: it should be a justified expense. He hoped that the comfort it could provide would help to of...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Six

Nacho and his friends retreated to the Barracks in high spirits, where they enjoyed an excellent lunch of basic potstickers, complete with sweet sauce. The cook was so excited that he bought a pan specific to making dumplings, which once more made him question why everything required a specific method of cooking. An additional issue cropped up, as he had not realized how difficult working with three pans in the fireplace was going to be. Mainly because it was hard to get the heat to ...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Five

The cook had no idea how he hadn’t noticed until it was pointed out, but the Costco just kept going past the boundary where the normal cinderblock walls should’ve ended. Another series of shelves lurked in the semidarkness, full of various objects any knight might use on a quest for the Holy Grail. They walked to the first rack, which extended up to a ceiling that lacked wires, lights, or industrial supports; just simple rough-hewn stone.

The minute they left the Costco proper, the ...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Four

Nacho didn’t know if Brie had done any damage to the rat or not. It was obviously a peak Tier one monster, leaving them little opportunity to actually cause it any harm. If it was close to level nineteen, they were going to find out exactly how fast they were able to run away.

The cook hoped, for all their sakes, that the newly-upgraded Berserker working in tandem with the others would result in breaking through the greasy rat’s defenses without getting caught by Sam’s club. It di...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Three

The next morning, Nacho and his friends didn’t need breakfast—but the people that were used to three squares a day started complaining almost as soon as they were preparing to start out. Unfortunately for them, the cook wasn’t about to bend on the requirements.

“You eat when you need to eat. Eating whenever we want is completely unsustainable. You need to get used to this world faster, and using the annoying restrictions to benefit ourselves will help.” Even though he had chas...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Two

Nacho sat with Brie, Reuben, Taye, and Kristie on simple wooden benches they pulled close to the fire. Abby had helped shape the benches by hacking them out of the many trees that Bove had thrown to the ground around his lair. Out of everyone on Armor Mountain, Abby, Old Bill, and Young Bill had the most practical crafting skills. As a point in fact, before the Juxtaposition, Abby had spent ten years in the Kansas City area buying houses, fixing them up, and then selling them. She had actuall...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ One

Eli ‘Nacho’ Naches stood blinking, trying to figure out how to process the fact that he was standing in a Costco, deep under the crust of what he’d thought was another world. He held a bag of nacho cheese Doritos in his hand and was so tired from their travel to the Bove’s Lair that he had just daydreamed the first time he had met Crave… from the Guild Master’s point of view.

Back in the Probability Vision, Crave had made some joke about eating pork while they could and had ...

CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Prologue

“Say that again?” Richard Crave wasn’t sure he’d heard the Shadow Killer’s real name correctly. “I thought you said your name was-”

“Nacho,” the too-young kid told him with a wry grin. The Shadow Killer clearly wasn’t a kid, but Crave felt just so much older than him. This Nacho character was in his early twenties and had just graduated from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, so Crave could be forgiven for considering him to be young. He hadn...

Today starts book 2 in Cooking With Disaster: Sewer Skewers!

As an end of year treat, I'm going to put out a chapter every weekday until the end of the year, and likely through January depending on how far ahead I am on edits!

You. All. Rock! 

CWD: GA ~ Epilogue

Killing the Bove didn’t give them many credits—only forty—but the System did give Brie a ten credit bonus for killing something above her Tier, which felt more like a kick in the teeth than a reward after how hard it had been to take out the monster.

Weirdly enough, they’d gone back inside the cave to find more of the skull vines blocking their way—the deadly strands had at least quadrupled. Nacho wasn’t sure what was going on, but it was definitely suspicious. “I...

CWD: GA ~ Forty-Five

Crave wiggled his magic sleeping feather at Nacho. “Actually, I like my steak medium-rare.”

“We’re going to kill them, right?” Rizzo gripped two black short swords. He had probably found them in the deeper levels of the Chaos Coop. “Then we’ll go after the dungeon down there. Feels like a big one!”

“Good luck getting by the Skullgainvillea.” Nacho swung his backpack around.

Red Suzy Blacke leaned into her bow. “If you pull out anything I don’t like, y...

CWD: GA ~ Forty-Four

Nacho hauled his pack, full of mostly food and water, while Brie and Reuben hid theirs in the tangle of trees. The cook carried the bow in his left hand and the lantern in his right, allowing them to see a little of the mammoth cave. The smooth stone floor angled downward, but the whole place didn’t get any smaller. In fact, it got larger—the Patrons probably wanted to accommodate the size of their wicked beast and accordingly gave it a lot of extra space.

“What’s the plan again...

CWD: GA ~ Forty-Three

Nacho was itching to leave as soon as possible. It was still afternoon, and ideally, they’d be able to kill the Bove before nightfall. Most of the settlers had already rifled through their ruined tents in an attempt to salvage their gear, and many would be moving into the guildhall now that they were members and felt comfortable doing so.

Brie had scared the Bove, and Nacho loved how it had retreated post haste. Even so, the fight had only just started. He made his way to Reu...

CWD: GA ~ Forty-Two

The Dinner Party left through the main doors and emerged into the bright sunshine. A frosty wind was sweeping in from the north, letting the world know that it would start snowing any day now… and their first winter wasn’t going to be fun. At least they had the guildhall. Private dwellings and other buildings would come later, which meant they needed to keep firewood in mind. Nacho shook his head ruefully. “There is always something to be done.”

Old Bill liked to chop w...

CWD: GA ~ Forty-One

A week later, Nacho collapsed onto a bench at one of the long tables. He sat hunched over, absolutely assaulting the soup he’d made from some Rock Tarragon Ptarmigan; which a hunting party had found in a field. They weren’t nearly as big as the chicken-bats, but each one was still a good-sized bird monster. Three parts comprised this particular monster—rock, tar, and tarragon, the spice.

They had rock-like feathers, they spit tar, and they both smelled and tasted faintly of tarrag...

CWD: GA ~ Forty

One hundred and eighty-six were people living on Armor Mountain, which was a good number for a community. All of them were between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five, so The Dinner Party fit right into the younger age bracket. The entire place had fairly naturally separated out by age, so Nacho’s people found a little place to set up on the southern side of the encampment with the other early-twenties crowd. They spent twenty total credits on two cheap tents, then got back to planning with ...

CWD: GA ~ Thirty-Nine

Kala didn’t yet have her Death Knight armor, her helmet, or the big black sword, but it was her all right—she had a nose so sharp he could cut his finger on it, and dark hair with a slash of gray down the middle. She’d been some kind of boxer or martial artist before the Juxtaposition, or so the rumors had said. Nacho could believe them, because she looked like she had come out of her crib throwing punches.

The guard didn’t lower the ladder, but she did go and get Mayor Dan, and...

CWD: GA ~ Thirty-Eight

Nacho knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t wake himself up. A man in sunglasses stood in the middle of the game trail, dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a leather jacket. He wore a long, sheathed katana strapped to his side, and even if Nacho hadn’t already known who it was, the sunglasses were a dead giveaway to what he was. The cook gulped and prayed that the man wouldn’t have that particular sword in this version of the Juxtaposition: it was pure evil.

“A...