The old geezer stared at me with a perplexed looks as he tried his best to understand what I was saying. It wasn’t like anything I said was even that hard to understand. I wanted jerky. As in I was being quite literal when I said I was going to make jerk out of the overgrown grey beasts. Honestly it would have been weird if I wasn’t serious.

“Do you even know how to make jerky?”

“No.”

“And you don’t see that as a problem.”

“Where are you selling the ore, Solum was it? It’s possible someone knows how to make jerky there. Besides even if they don’t know how to, I can sell this thing. It’s hide can withstand my fire pretty well. So, I’m sure a skilled craftsman could make something out of it.”

The old man nodded slowly following along with my train of thought. Even so he didn’t seem convinced. Not that I needed his permission or anything like that.

“The horses can’t pull that and the wagon. Best to leave it here.”

“Fine.”

“Fine? Good that’s settled, we’re still a wa…

“You can go on ahead while I carry one of this rhino lizards to Solum.”

The old man blinked for a moment stunned by my statement. “But then who will protect me and the ore?”

I blinked once.

“I mean Solum isn’t too far off now. Besides if I left you behind. What’s to stop me from selling the ore and not paying you your money?”

The expression on my face was casually. “I’m not worried about that. If you did something like that I’d just hunt you down and kill you.”

The old man looked uneasy as he pulled off a chuckle before bursting into a full on laugh.

“Oh. You had me for a moment I thought you were serious.”

The expression on my face remained the same.

“Tell you want I’m not promising anything but I’ll see if I can whip something up, how about that?”

Without turning away from the old man, I pointed at the other rhino lizard.

“There’s two of them.”

“Jeez. You know those honeycomb bars weren’t cheap. And you threw some of my ore at that hor…rhino lizard. Let’s just call it even, kay.”

My eyes stared at the old man, he looked a little nervous like he could break into a sweat any moment now. The sky was turning red. My guess it took longer than I had originally thought to take care of the lizards. Meaning making camp now wasn’t a half bad idea.

“Whatever.”

The old man fished out a dull knife and some other cooking supplies which I assumed he carried on him to season his food. After some time, the sky went from red to black peppered with a handful of stars.

The geezer had spent hours striping the tough meat of the rhino lizard and drying it. Occasionally asking me to utilizing my flames in the process. It was because of this that I learned that while the hide of a rhino lizard was resistant to flames it wasn’t completely impervious.

This resulted in most of the early jerky being charred, or slight charred while a small amount ended up the right texture. The end result was meat that was tough yet chewy, very chewy, it offered nothing more than a bland flavor which was only made bearable thanks to a seasoning called “Pemcan.”

The resulting flavor was sweat, making it more to Chuu’s liking, although he was having a hard time eating the jerky because of how tough it was.

“Geeeerrr. Imma…just eeeeehhh. Ha. Ha. Chuu will not be defeated. By berry meat.”

Chuu’s large eyes managed to catch the sideways glance I was giving him.

“It’s seasoning.”

“Well, yeah but it is in fact made out of berries.”

“Geezer can you make jam with it, chuu?”

The old man sighed. “Would you stop calling me geezer. Technical. It’s made from two types of the same pemm berries the purplish blue ones and the bluish purple ones…”

The old man’s eyes bulged as a stray fireball flew passed his shoulder exploding in the distance. It wasn’t his fault exactly, more natures if anything even so it was still annoying to think that in this world of Terra there existed something with barely a discernible difference between the two “different types.”

“Anyway. The berries are about the size of grapes you can find them near riverbanks and whatnot. Moist or wet areas are the best. There’s a rare golden pemm berry that can be found in arid environments or a du…I’ll save that for later. Any who. Golden pemm berries can be worth a pretty penny.”

A what?

“Ah, you’re interested. A golden pemm is worth at least a platinum drop or two.”

A berry that was used to make jerky seasoning or jam was worth possibly two platinum drops. Ridiculous. Also, what would something like that taste like? It if it was worth platinum then it most likely had a flavor that would be worthy of a demon lord. Yes. I’ll make a note of that.

“Rrrrraaaaagh!!!”

The old man froze remaining completely still. My eyes went to the various discard pieces of jerky. The smell must have drawn some hungry beasts, that and there was the dead carcass of a rhino lizard not far from our camp. Without making a fuss I got up cracking my neck and knuckles.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to teach so noisy beasts not to interrupt me while I’m eating.”

Chuu continued fighting his jerky while the old man trembled as I entered into the darkness of night.

A few minutes later the old man was started by the booms and cracks of a series of explosion. BOOM!!! BOOM!!! BOOM!!!

Orange and yellow lights illuminated the darkness each flash was accompanied by a boom.

“Mmmhhmm. It’s tough. Old man. Old man. Mmhhh…tell chuu about this…money berry.”

The old man was taken aback by the strange discerning look in Chuu’s large eyes.