{Edited} The Tiger's Bourbon - Chapter 5 (Patreon)

EDITED - August 7th, 2026

Chapter 5: The Emerald Lagoon.

The starting town, base camp, or whatever you wanted to call it didn't actually have a name. It was rectangular in shape lengthwise and only large enough to hold a few thousand people.

From what Axel could see, it was mainly divided up by inns, markets for gear, and food stalls to one side. The other held a prominent market space with people carrying all kinds of ingredients, monster corpses, and parts, trading, auctioning, or shipping them off on what looked like a train guarded by a bunch of guys in military gear with IGO badges.

'That company really does run the place.' He couldn't help but observe but didn't feel like diving into it at the moment since it didn't seem like anyone was bothered or upset at their presence, so Axel didn't think it was a big deal.

He explored the area a bit, curious to see what was around, and stopped at a few stalls.

“Looking for maps, young man? I got all kinds!”

“Need a beast encyclopedia? Every hunter could use a refresher!”

“Emerald Candy here! Try some premium freshly harvested Emerald Candy!”

"Grilled Snake Frog tongue! Get your grilled Snake Frog tongue!"

Calls were shouted from all corners even at the late time of the day. All kinds of wares and tools were being sold, and Axel was honestly surprised to find even the food stalls had card scanners.

"Of course we use cards, sonny. Don't you know Gourmet IDs double as debit cards?" An older hunter missing an arm and a good deal of teeth explained to him from one stall selling supplies.

He didn't. "I'll take the Emerald Lagoon beast encyclopedia, a few rolls of bandages, and is that an ice pick?"

"Emerald Candy Pick around here. Can't harvest some good ole candy without a pick. That stuff is dug in deep in those waters." 

"One of those, then."

“Right you are! Need it packaged?”

"No, thank you."

Axel quickly paid and walked off into an alleyway before tossing the things into his item box. He still wasn’t sure how magical abilities would be taken, but he did notice when Sam was about to mention something before Luke cut her off. ‘Maybe I’ll ask her later. Or I can go bug Abby. She complained a lot, but she answered all of my questions.’

He nodded at his sound logic and kept walking around, debating on the worth of buying a gun when he walked by a stall for it. ‘They are just sold out in the open here. Americans would love this world.’

Realizing he had zero experience with the things, he just shook his head and stuck to the shadows as he walked off to the edge of the town. Better to stick to the weapons he already had in his skills.

He had asked around, but it didn't seem like there was a specific entrance to the lagoon; you could enter from anywhere.

Out of the gate, the town stretched to the right and left for a few miles, but in a straight line, you could quickly reach the abrupt, massive wall of greenery straight out of the Amazon rainforest. Even standing a hundred feet away in an alleyway, Axel couldn't see more than a few feet past the trees before his sight was blocked. 'Curious.'

When he crossed over, there was almost an immediate change, like feeling your ears pop on an airplane at the changing altitude.

Gone were the sounds and smells of civilization, and in its place were dozens of sounds of rainforest creatures screeching, croaking, and roaring in the distance.

Axel pushed through the thick branches and stepped into an entirely different world that he couldn't help but marvel at. Like something taken from the imagination of the most expressive animators, a world of natural beauty bloomed with the call of wonder and adventure.

The ground was littered with thick interconnecting roots, interspaced in all directions by young mangrove trees, each spewing trickles of water into small pools. Some were as tiny as inch-tall mushrooms and others as large as tall oaks, spewing water in miniature arch’s. Yet, none could match the single monolith only a short distance away.

Standing like a monument to nature was a mangrove tree rising out of glowing emerald waters surrounding it in a pool over a dozen feet wide in a circle.

The tree must have stood at least twenty stories tall if not more. Water jetted out of its branches, dripping down in steady trickles that splashed its sparkling water into the air like a glittering mist. The water collected in constant streams, pouring down in the low roar of a waterfall into the pool.

The air was moist and warm, and the thick branches of the trees above stretched beyond his sight, concealing the sky above in a shield of green like an umbrella, only enhancing the effects of the dim neon green light coming off the waters. Yet, where the edges of the umbrella would have ended were more branches connecting to the next giant mangrove, which was a distance away and had an entirely different pool of water.

Axel felt like a man on an alien planet as the sheer force of raw natural energy flowing through the atmosphere invigorated him something fierce.

His lips twitched into the broadest smile he'd felt in years. 'This is where I was meant to be.'

Earth had been missing something, and here he found it.

The glittering waters called to him like a siren’s song, and the excitable energy of being inside a childhood fantasy from a dream he couldn’t even recall hit him like a hammer.

His eyes fell to his mini-map, which clearly showed the divide he stepped through, his path back, and the compass point aiming North. 'Luke said the trees disrupted magnetic waves, but I guess that doesn't apply to my skill.'

North was the closest path to his goal, so North was where he was going to go.

He followed the compass, passing through the trees in a trance, waving his hands through the falling water with a smile. His eyes strayed to the first pool he came up on, and he debated stopping to experiment. 'I'm too close to the start.'

Even if his instinct was to dive right in, his logical side convinced him to at least move a bit more out of the way so another hunter wouldn’t happen across him easily.

As he walked, he kept his eyes peeled but couldn't help but stray to the sights of the glowing water and the towering mangroves. He felt like an ant beside a water sprinkler made out of wood.

The air grew warmer as he proceeded, the humidity increasing rapidly and causing a thin layer of moisture to stick to his skin. Axel dropped his jacket in his Item Box, not seeing a need to carry it in the current environment.

[Item Box has reached level 2]

The sudden appearance of the blue screen with a soft ding in his ears made his heart skip a beat, and he couldn't help but feel annoyed at the thing. "Really? Now?"

There was no response as the screen faded with a gesture. ‘Right, it’s not responsive out of the shop.’

He shook his head with a sigh, only to freeze as the hair on the back of his neck stuck up. There was no time to think as he instinctively dove forward into a roll just in time to feel a whoosh of air pass by his ears. He came out of the roll, scanning the trees for whatever just attacked him, only for the feeling to return and cause him to dodge rapidly.

He didn’t have time to think, only act.

On the third attempt, he caught sight of the aggressor in the form of a beetle staring him down with a death glare from the forest floor with a body almost a foot wide. If a beetle had large yellowish-white horns gleaming from its sharpened points aimed his way, anyway.

“Whatever this is, I’m sure we can talk it out.”

The beetle actually huffed and pawed the dirt like an angry bull in answer.

"Or we can fight, I guess." Axel's face hardened as he crouched like a tiger to face his foe head-on.

He could almost hear Mortal Kombat music start in the background to commemorate his first life and death battle.

The beetle kicked off the ground like an arrow taken flight, spinning through the air with a twirl that would make an Olympic gymnast proud, moving at speeds Axel couldn’t hope to track.

“But I don’t fight fair.”

The music cut out with a screech as the bug smashed headfirst into a translucent wall inches from Axel’s skin, splattering in a gory mess that slid off the wall with a silent squeak of protest.

[Achievement: Defeat 1 opponent. +1 SP]

‘Nice. Serving Tray seems to be working just fine.' Axel stood back up and flicked the floating tray before him. Its translucent surface flickered in the light and turned a light silver before it snapped out with a thought, shaking off the goo stuck to it.

The surprise attacks got his heart racing, but as soon as he identified his attacker, Axel never genuinely felt in any danger and never panicked to use the tools available to him. He was rather more interested in studying his floating barrier than the results of the abrupt fight.

The tray had a basic, if eye-pleasing, design and was about four feet long and two feet wide in a rectangular shape, which was the reason Axel crouched in the first place. 'I guess this is the basic shape.' He checked his resources and noticed it only cost mana to summon the thing and again to alter it to turn translucent, yet while it was invisible to the bug, it was clear as day to him. 'I see; letting it float in its default state has no mana cost. What happens if I try to grow or shrink it?'

He tried to picture it mentally and watched in interest as it slowly shrunk down to a matchbox and then grew to cover the area of his own body before he let go of the command and took a deep breath as it shrunk back to its default size. ‘Well, that took a lot of focus and a butt load of mana.’

Each change cost close to fifteen points, and it seemed to even cost a point per second when he kept it at the changed size. ‘I can barely focus on breathing if I try to change the shape too much, and the cost to keep it altered is stupid. Keep alterations short, got it.’

He tried to see the distance limitations next. It only seemed to reach up to five feet away at a distance and moved flush against his skin at the closest without pushing against him. ‘No mana change on that one, but it moves slowly.’ It was lowered to the ground and pushed against the bug muck, easily pushing it back without an issue. ‘Seems pretty strong as well.’

He tried picturing it moving faster, and it seemed to work, but the mana expense increased once more.

'The summoning is almost instant, only seemingly delayed by my thought of where to place it.' He dismissed the tray and summoned a new one with a bare thought. 'The only issue is mana cost, but otherwise, I can have an immediate shield or weapon. Kind of expensive, though, at ten points a summon.'

Next, he looked at the edges and saw them as quite blunt. First, he smashed it down into the bug muck, creating a splash of ick before he pulled it back. 'Could be useful in short bursts.' The edge was sharpened under his direction before he smashed it down once more, cutting straight through both the corpse and a few inches into the ground. 'Cheaper than altering the size, resource-wise. Could just leave it sharp and let something smash into it.'

Axel nodded to himself beside the absolutely mutilated remains of his foe, who he definitely didn't feel petty about for almost killing him in a surprise attack. 'Should probably see what you were, anyway.'

He reached into his Item Box and pulled out the Emerald Lagoon Beast Encyclopedia he purchased earlier. ‘Not you, not you, not you, ah, there you are. Daikon Beetle. A mostly harmless insect that becomes extremely aggressive when prey enters the area of its nest. Hunters are advised to look out for trees marked with scratches seemingly painted white. They will swarm anything within fifteen meters.’

'Swarm? There was only one. Wait…' Axel read the previous line twice before looking up. 'Wasn't there a white tree marking right….' There were fifteen Daikon Beetles staring silently at him from the trunk of a tree barely ten feet away, a clear white mark across its bark. 'Oh.'

He looked down at the mess of gunk from his unjustly defeated foe he had been testing things on and back to the unfriendly eyes. “Hn.”

~ 5 minutes later ~

[Dimensional Chef has reached level 1]

[Dimensional Chef has reached level 2]

[Dimensional Chef has reached level 3]

[Achievement: Defeat 10 opponents. +1 SP]

“They were not happy.” A bug-guts-covered Axel grumbled as he tried to wash his face in the water. “Bah, it got in my mouth. Gross.”

The Daikon Beetles were relentless, but thankfully not very smart as they kept running headfirst into Axel's barriers. 'Seems there’s an extra mana cost for force applied on it. Not much with the beetles, but it adds up. Doesn't change the fact that I can only use one Serving Tray at a time. If I get swarmed from different directions, I'm screwed.' He smacked the side of his head to get some gunk out of his ear. 'A good tool, but an expensive one if I want to do anything but block one direction, so not an ultimate defense.'

[Serving Tray has reached level 2]

[Serving Tray has reached level 3]

‘At least not yet.’

He looked down at his reflection and blinked at the odd smirk on his face. ‘I’m enjoying this, aren’t I?’ He shook his head with a chuckle and lifted his right hand toward the water. ‘Screw it, this was weird since my shop kidnapped me. Better just embrace it and check out my other skills before I run into my next fight.’

With a gesture of his will, a basketball-sized ball of water rose from the water, floating over to him under his direction. 'It's no cost to summon it. Is it because there was already water here?'

He held out his left hand and activated Water Generation, summoning a ball of water from his skin similar to the one floating over his other hand. 'Hm, cost a point to summon that. Should I just carry water in my Item Box?'

[Water Generation has reached level 2]

[Water Manipulation has reached level 2]

‘Maybe I should.’

Looking down at himself, he gestured for the water balls to approach and deform around his chest. They flowed over his skin, soaking up the bug gunk as they scrubbed around the area they touched. 'Good cleaners, sadly, not much for armor.'

He attempted to make it stick to his skin, but it only flowed around without staying in place. ‘So much for that idea.’

The water absorbed all the gunk before it flowed away from him, retaining its twin basketball shapes in a default state without his input. A flick of his wrist for visual effect had one of them flying away to smash the tree the Daikon Beetles had come from. It didn’t dig in, only managing to scrape off a bit of bark. ‘Not much damage. Maybe it will increase as it levels up.’

He shrugged and checked his mana as he played with the other ball. ‘Seems to cost a point a minute to keep it around. Only costs more to manipulate the shape and speed of its movement. How about a blade?’

His will went to work as the ball deformed into a crescent that launched forward into the tree, digging a foot into the wood. ‘Cool. Took one or two points for that, but cool.’

Shaking his wet hands, Axel considered his future. 'I could even be a firefighter now.' The mental image of him charging at burning buildings, snuffing out flames, and being a human water jet made him snort in humor.

'Alright, that's most of my combat-applicable skills out of the way. What else? Oh, right.'

He reached into his Item Box and pulled out a cast iron frying pan and kitchen knife he had packed away on his way out; not his personal knife but one of the spares in the kitchen. The second he held them, he could feel an almost electrifying feeling travel through his limbs.

'Frying Pan Proficiency boosts my base Strength and Endurance, while Kitchen Knife Proficiency boosts my base Strength and Dexterity. Do those two Strength boosts stack or multiply?' Axel moved over to a tree and swiped at it with his knife at full power, finding the knife stuck into the hardwood a solid half foot in. 'For an old, somewhat thin kitchen knife with a good edge, that's pretty good.'

He put the frying pan down and tried again, finding the blade dug precisely half the distance as before. 'Guess the boosts stack then.'

Holding the two of them outside of a kitchen felt a bit awkward, but it wasn't like he needed his hands for anything else while he walked around. 'Probably can't use them easily in the water.' A knife was one thing, but a frying pan wasn't ideal in water. 'Maybe my strength boost will offset it. I'll try it in a bit.'

Axel wanted to measure what else holding them did, but he quickly found that the boosts didn't exactly make a world of difference. He could move faster with the strength boost, but he wasn't up to using it well without stumbling. 'That will take a bit to get used to.'

The dexterity boost made his swings with either weapon smoother than when he wasn't holding the knife, and his arms didn't feel as tired while holding the frying pan, thanks to the endurance boost. 'I can work with this.' He looked down at the items and grunted. 'Might want to find someone to make me a holster then so I can keep the boosts active. Wait, this is a culinary world. I'm sure they have them. Nathan was using a six-foot-long solid steel spatula.'

[Kitchen Knife Proficiency has reached level 3]

[Frying Pan Proficiency has reached level 3]

'Skills reached level 3 with simple uses. And I noticed fighting increased my class level as well. I guess since it's low, the easy kills were enough. Probably won't last long.'

Putting away the kitchen tools, he opened his status.

[User: Axel Marq.

[Class: Dimension Chef lvl 3]

[Class Perks]

[Shop Points: 2]

[Active Skills: 5/5

-          [Water Generation lvl 2]

-          [Water Manipulation lvl 3]

-          [Item Box lvl 2]

-          [Return To Base lvl 1]

-          [Serving Tray lvl 3]

Passive Skills: 5/5

-          [Cooking lvl 2]

-          [Kitchen Knife Proficiency lvl 3]

-          [Frying Pan Proficiency lvl 3]

-          [Aquatic Butchering lvl 1]

-          [Explorer’s Map lvl 2]

Mana: 57/130]

‘Not bad. Easy beginner achievements. All skill percentages increase by .5% a level, including my resistances from Water Generation. Item Box goes up by 20 pounds a level. Mana goes up by 10 points a class level. And Explorer’s Map seems to stretch a bit farther around me. All pretty easy to understand.’

He looked at his last two skills still at level 1 and scratched his head. ‘Butchering fish seems pretty simple; I’ll get to it. The other, I can’t really test.’

Everything was new, so Axel was still getting used it.

Closing the screen, Axel crossed his arms and looked around to ponder. 'What now? Head straight for the area with the fruit? Explore the water? Train my skills? Hm? What's that?'

A reflection caught his eye as he turned to the gunk pile from the smashed bugs and saw something whitish. ‘Oh right, the daikon’s.’

Pulling out his book, he double-checked to make sure they were edible. 'Rich in flavor, can be eaten raw or cooked. They each sell for 5K yen a piece, damn.' Uncaringly stepping into the mess, Axel crouched down to try and find all the intact horns. 'Food is food, and I don't waste food I touch. Besides, I'm curious.'

From the sixteen beetles with thirty-two horns, Axel was only able to recover around a dozen. 'Dumb things smash headfirst into the barrier; I'm surprised this many survived.'

He washed them off in the water and studied them. Seeing a thick four-inch-long daikon that could have been picked right out of the ground. 'Seems pretty average when you don't think of the source.'

Pulling out his kitchen knife, he peeled one in a flash and cut it into slices before trying it. “Mn?!”

Axel’s eyes widened in shock at what felt like a liter of the freshest spring water straight from an iceberg flowing down his throat. The more he chewed, the more it gushed with flavor and freshness.

Before he knew it, he consumed the whole thing in a trance and took a deep breath. ‘Holy shit. It’s like going from being in a dehydrated heat stroke straight to fully hydrated in a few bites. How did something that small contain that much water?’

He couldn't help but marvel at the rest of them. 'I need to collect more of these.' The remaining ones went into his item box as he mentally tacked on another target. Never mind avoiding the marked trees; all he had to do was approach them, let them kill themselves, and pick up the pieces.

A smile crossed his lips as he thought of the slaughter…..hunt…..the hunt to come. ‘But first, recover mana.’ He plopped down and pulled out the book. ‘Might as well see what to expect in the water before I dive in.’

0000

Stripping to his briefs, Axel dove into the glowing emerald water, feeling its cool touch wrap around him as he submerged in a world of wonder.

And if he thought the world above was magical, the one under it was downright mythical.

Water clear enough to see the walls on all sides sparkled around him in dazzling displays as it reflected the light coming off hundreds of thin, multicolored veins of mineral deposits. The light was so bright that he could even make out the bottom of the pool, around thirty or so meters down, where the mineral deposits were collected in the crossing lines.

Bright colored coral grew along the pool’s bed like an artist’s finest interpretation of oceanic spirit.

Mangrove roots grew down through the pool's center, spreading in elegant patterns. They filled the deep pool with an entire ecosystem, with various schools of multicolored fish moving through its branches in dances to a tune only they could hear.

He had to squint when gazing at it all, but soon, his eyes began to adjust to take in the other occupants of the pool. Critters crawled along the coral bed in the dozens, from lobsters to crabs and all kinds he had never seen before. There were even far larger varieties that looked like they could feed a dozen men with only a single one. 'I want to try them all.'

Breaching the surface, Axel took a deep breath and inverted his body, controlling his movements to cause the least amount of disturbance he could manage, quickly going down a dozen meters before he stopped and grabbed onto a tree root. 'I can save energy by pulling myself along.'

He pushed and pulled, moving between the various root systems with the widest smile he had felt yet.

Down below, there was nothing else that mattered. For almost half his life, the better part of a decade, his rare chances to spend free diving were the happiest moments he had felt outside of a kitchen. When it was just him, a tiny dot, in a big wide world so full of simple life.

The weight of existence fell, all his mental walls fell, his stress evaporated like it wasn’t even there, and he could just float and blend into the waters like a child returning to the womb.

And now, exploring these magical waters, Axel was smiling like the cat that caught the canary, exploring with childhood excitement and not a care in the world till his lack of air forced him above.

He broke the waterline with a gasp of air and laughed his heart out. “Fuck yeah!” He took a deep breath, kicked off a root, and rocketed back in with zero hesitation like a shark that had just learned how to breathe.

The water was his natural domain, and he was born anew in its depths, with his water resistance helping lower the force he had to apply to move.

Coming up on a school of fish he recognized as Striped Salmon from his quick study, a fish with a Capture Level 1, Axel couldn’t help but study them. He moved along with them and laughed internally at how they showed no fear, moving around him like he was one of their own.

They spun. They danced. They moved in patterns. And with Axel in the center of their formation, they embraced the nature of water to their heart's content.

[Achievement: Gourmet World Technique - Life Erasure – learned. +1SP]

It was instinctual to him, something he had done countless times before over the years that he simply reacted differently in a new world.

When he needed air, he came up to refuel and moved to play with the Boneless Mackerel Pike. His apparent technique allowed him to approach the skittish fish without them being afraid, hiding any trace of aggression by letting go of all of who he was and blending into the water.

On a third trip, he went down to poke at crustaceans like the Beer Lobster and Spring Onion Crabs, seeing them snap at him harmlessly while he floated a foot away with a random stick in hand.

He felt like a child again, finding every little thing noteworthy and full of secrets to uncover.

It was on his fourth trip that he came up on a mineral vein and dug out a small piece of rock with the ice pick he bought at the starting area.

It took a few swings with him being underwater, but with a bit of a boost from water manipulation, he managed to get a thumb-sized rock that looked like a transparent, green-colored gemstone. 'So, you go for ten thousand yen, huh?' He shook off some loose dirt and swam to the surface, pushing himself back onto the shore to take a better look.

"Aren't you a pretty little thing." Axel held it up to eye level and enjoyed how it gleamed like a natural emerald, reflecting light through countless layers. 'If I ignore the slightly larger size and rough exterior, it's almost like a Jolly Rancher.’

He sniffed it, and only experience with ingredients let him pick up the faint, sweet scent. 'Almost scentless, really.'

An experimental lick didn't amount to much either, only a faint flavor, and biting it hurt his teeth, so he shrugged and did as any good five-year-old does: put it in his mouth.

There was no flavor right away, yet the moment it mixed with his saliva, the hard rock began to melt, and an explosion of sweet flavor hit his taste buds with all the force of a wrecking ball.

An overpowering sweetness mixed with dozens of fruit flavors overwhelmed him in a fierce wave of sugary goodness, like biting into a rainbow.

'First, it was strawberry. Then watermelon. Now it's apple.' He rolled the candy around and felt the flavor change with every turn of the stone. 'Raspberry, blueberry, grape, lemon, cherry, it just doesn’t stop.’

Flavor kept him in a trance that could have lasted anywhere from ten seconds to a minute before the candy fully dissolved, leaving Axel sitting there with a complicated expression. ‘I feel like I just tasted a childhood I never had. Why is that?’

Pushing aside the odd thought, he noticed a blinking dot in his system and called up his screen before his eyes widened slightly. ‘Wait, what?’

[Mana +10]

 He quickly pulled up his status and looked at his mana.

[Mana 90/130]

'It recovered 10 points of mana? If I were to combine my natural regen with the candy…' Axel's gaze fell on the light coming from the pool with a new glint. 'Sure, it's worth a lot of money, but if I can recover mana with it, is it worth selling?' Just like with his discovery of the Daikon Beetle's horns, he felt another goal was added to his list. 'I'm gonna milk this trip for all it's worth. But first, it's time I try some of that seafood.'

Stretching out his limbs with a satisfying pop, he dove back into the water with a fire in his belly and a lot of sugar to burn off, only this time, his entrance didn’t go as unnoticed as before.

Axel barely got a couple meters down before something hard slammed into his stomach with bludgeoning force.

He didn’t even get a chance to react before he was launched back up and out of the water with a grunt of agony, landing harshly on the ground as he slid to a stop and coughed out what felt like a lung.

‘Uuhhhhh. That didn't feel good.' He puked out his stomach's contents and had the forethought to summon his barrier just in time before something smacked straight into it with a loud thud, pushing him back ass over kettle another dozen feet yet not doing him any further harm. 'Fuck, too close.'

Looking up through watery eyes, Axel beheld his assailant over fifty feet away atop a thick tree root that reached into the pool.

A pudgy bulbous toad-like head atop a thick blue snake-like body nearly two meters long, with bulging yellow eyes and an open drooling mouth.

“Didn’t expect to meet Madame Umbridge out here.” He pushed himself up with an arctic gaze. “I’m gonna fillet you for that.”

“Ribbit.”

Chapter end.