It was offering day, and so Chocolatine decided to bake three cakes: one for her god, one for her crush, and one for her brother.

Humming to herself as she dressed, Chocolatine explored her and her brother’s farm looking for the pantry. She kept a lot of demon flesh salted and fresh, and an imp in an iron birdcage. The demon looked at her with his big eyes. “Kill me,” the fiend pleaded. “Send me back to Hell, you crazy wolf.”

“Maybe later,” Chocolatine replied cheerfully, looking inside the cage. “I need eggs.” Savoureuse had given her one of her own, but it wasn’t enough for three cakes.

The imp looked inside the straw that worked as his nest, giving her four black eggs. “Only four?” Chocolatine complained, putting the eggs in a basket. “That’s twice less than last week!”

“I’m hungry,” the imp complained.

“But I give you meat all the time!”

“Demon meat! I would rather starve than eat my kindred!”

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Chocolatine rolled her eyes. Damning souls and working for a lich was fine, but cannibalism wasn’t? What was the logic behind that? “I will give you a homeless inquisitor if I find one, but they are getting rarer. Or a gnoll. Do you imps eat gnolls?”

The imp nodded with energy, Chocolatine making a mental note to ask Jules for leftovers. She put the sugar, baking powder, and some of the strawberries Rolo gave her last week into her basket, then moved to the pens outside her ranch to milk her cow, Raisin, harvesting three bottles. She took a second to oversee the pigs’ pen; unlike that prickly imp, they gladly accepted demon meat, growing fatter and gaining tiny horns. With further animal husbandry, she would create a new breed of demon pigs who could sustain the village.

People thought her odd, but that was because she cared. As a priestess of Isengrim, it was her role to maintain the balance of nature, and a village full of carnivorous monsters presented unique problems she had to solve. One day, she would find a way to make the community sustainable, even if she had to keep importing food from Hell.

The vestal then went to the kitchen to bake, finding blood-splatters everywhere, even the oven. “I forgot to clean?” she asked herself out loud. Bah, she would do it tonight. Nothing better than the smell of sheep blood to get pumped while cooking.

After an hour of steady work, she finished the three strawberry cakes, the most beautiful she had ever made. Each of them, she shaped like a heart; the symbol, not the organ. She tried once, it didn’t take.

Congratulations! For creating delicious cakes with love while using morally dubious ingredients, you gained a new level in [Monster Patissier]!

+30 HP, +1 AGI, +1 SKI, +1 CHA, +1 LCK!

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