Karin hesitated before serving dinner.
It was silly.
She'd only been working at the 'Doe Kitchen' for a week, and just because THEY do odd things it didn't mean SHE should put up with that at home. Right? Right.
Still, she stood over the meal and didn't move to the table just yet.
It was just a mental thing. People hoped it would work, so they did a better job, or something.
This was silly. Pointless even.
Her hand shook. "Please Lord, bless this meal to empower and heal my family." And she drew the cross in the air.
Nothing changed, because of course it wouldn't. No light effects, no angelic chorus… Not that she should expect something like that, it never happened at work either.
But… But the food seemed just a bit more fresh. Smelled slightly more delicious.
And no one had to know how silly she was being. This was… Just a habit, right? Just a hold over from working for that new place next to the church, nothing important.
Though… Unlike her prayers while cooking there, in that place… Here, when preparing food for her children and husband?
Maybe she was a bit more sincere in her wishes.
A tad more hopeful, a fragment of desperation.
It would probably change nothing, not much in her life ever did anything but get worse after all… But... But just in case it COULD change something…
She moved again. "Please Lord, bless this meal to empower and heal my family."
Just in case. No one had to know.
~~~Pocket System~~~
Elsewhere, another man whispered over what passed as 'soup', for the dish to be cleansed, for his daughter to get better.
In another home, a meal was suddenly slightly healthier and almost no one noticed.
Yet one more house served something purified, and another something people were hoping would heal others.
And while most people missed these small changes, some watched with wide eyes as prayers were answered and dreams came true. As hurt ones without medical help managed to pull through at a critical point and low quality ingredients no longer caused crippling stomach pains.
A few others asked, and even fewer responded… After all, the Doe family never asked them to keep the Doe Kitchen's methods secretive. And it didn't cost anything to try it out once or twice, and for those with little to nothing… Well, raw hope like this was the most precious of dreams for them.
Whispers began. Words spread.
Church service near a certain home had a drastic boost of worshipers that week.
Then another oddity... a man known for years of being a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone…
One famed for being a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner…
One still feared by many despite those rumors of having changed, a man with few friends and fewer followers...
Ebenezer Scrooge himself shocked the entire congregation of the slums when he openly decided to invest in Doe's Kitchen. In the Doe Home itself as well, no less.
Those many whispers swirled into open gossip, and the story of a place to get a good meal yet pay what you could seem to be more real than fiction now. The 'failure restaurant', as many better off people called it between laughter and scoffs, grew in popularity and fame.
As the number of customers grew… The ones attempting to discover their secrets swelled as well. They sent in their people, they asked the right questions, a few even showed up in person to taste such supposedly delicious meals served for practically nothing.
And these attempts met no resistance. Stories of faith and well wishes somehow allowing such poor quality food to taste divine, of Faith and Prayer allowing measly dishes to be elevated… Such tales were ignored, then considered, then studied… Eventually tested.
When the same ingredients prepared for the same dishes proved to not match when half was blessed, skepticism burned away and passion ignited in London.
The multitude began to hound after the Doe family.
Some with stories of saved loved ones, others with darker intentions, a few just out of curiosity or to determine if other such skills could be found with these very rich strangers from some way off land.
No matter the motivation however, the zeal was met with failure.
No one could find them. They seemed to vanish into the night.
So the powerful and the wealthy began to investigate the blood of society: The money itself. Where did it come from, where did it go?
A branch of clues led to the local church, which now owned rights over far too much property and such than it had expected.
Another secretive path of information led to several banking firms… Angry and sharp edged people who were grinding against each other for dominance, but all of whom were eager to turn from the ongoing struggle to consume any fools who attempted to intrude in their fierce fight. A balance of ruthless individuals all attempting to dominate their fragment of control over the Doe properties and people.
The final whisper led them to the largest investor, and the one fool who attempted to press upon Ebenezer Scrooge the importance of following the will of the larger group had quite an experience that day.
The idiot refused to talk about what was said or what had happened, but those in the dark knew danger when they felt it caress their neck with a metaphorical blade. They backed away.
Wherever the Doe Family had hid, whomever they secretly represented, the actions they had taken continued to grow in consequence and spread in influence as those with near nothing whispered prayers in the dark.
Bless my little girl.
Protect my baby boy.
Guide my hopeless father.
Bless the Doe Kitchen, and the family that hired me when I had nothing.
Bless the Doe Home, and the woman who let me stay when all doors were closed.
Bless those two strangers, who gave when they had plenty yet left when praise was to be repaid.
…In the end, it was probably a good thing that Jessica had insisted John move them both to the next world when she realized the extent to which almost everything here was dangerously radioactive with spiritual energy.
Not to mention she might have freaked out a little bit when John informed her that the pair of them would ALREADY require some decontamination time in the Pocket before reaching the next stop… So neither of them were here to witness how exponentially concerning the situation was developing.
She'd probably be very concerned at the near cult-like status the Doe family was rapidly cultivating in the Realm they had just left behind.
Not John though, because for him this most recent trip had been nothing but awesome!
Lots of raw power and Spirituality to Pocket, a few new friends, and a chance to study that 'should be dead' kid Tim! The Cratchit family had shown up at the Doe Kitchens several times before John had to move on, and it was fascinating to see how a positive atmosphere allowed the little boy's organs to mostly operate correctly and stuff.
Still, both he and Jessica were unconscious right now and being slowly decontaminated and reinforced by the System to hopefully run fewer risks in similar environments later on their travels. Which was good because they had sustained some significant temporal damage while visiting the Muppet reality, and that needed to be delt with.
As mentioned before, time and space were flexible there where Spiritual energy flooded existence… And unlike the locals, Jessica and John were outsiders.
So they didn't properly 'flow' with everyone else. Tiny moments that stretched too long or compressed too tightly caused temporal cracks and fractures in their personal timelines, which wasn't a huge deal but was certainly a concern to watch out for in the future.
Plus, there was a couple of days in the middle where time actually skipped around a little bit, like a record jumping when the needle scratched out of the correct groove, and THAT was not good for existing at ALL.
Thus the two were slumbering away and recovering as the System attempted to analyze all the damage types and measure degrees of severity while designing processes and procedures to prevent such concerns in the future.
But with John and Jessica in something like a healing coma and the Pocket System in full recovery mode, no one was actually directing the ongoing traveling procedure to the next Realm.
That… That might be an issue.
~~~Pocket System~~~
[[System connection reestablished.]]
[[Deploying HOST.]]
~~~Pocket System~~~
John wobbled and held his head. "Eugh… I feel sick."
[[Decontamination successful for HOST, still ongoing for Jessica Doe.]]
Eww, go away, thinking words hurt right now.
John slumped to the ground, enjoying the soft grass as best he could.
Decontamination SUCKED. Like getting out of a pool after paddling around in a full outfit, you feel FINE when your clothing is weightless but as you stand up and the water drains out your shirt starts to grip your body and the wet clothing wraps tightly and… .Eugh.
John wheezed and rolled back and forth slightly. "That. Was. Terrible."
[[Selected decontamination procedure reduced the chance of organ failure by 0.032%, and increased the…]]
He winced at the unheard volume. "Can we somehow have Jessica skip this part? Like, the feeling like crap part?"
[[...Biological recovery can take place within Pocket Storage if restriction #2183b is lowered from category 10 to category 9.]]
Shit, wasn't that the one about minimum storage time for dimensional contamination or something? Whatever. "Do that then, please. If my sister has to go through this she might actually ground me or something."
[[Confirmed.]]
Right now, John should probably be doing things. Finding out where he was, getting resources, blah blah blah.
Instead, he was going to lay here on the ground and rock around for a while until things felt better. "Stupid enviromental contamination. Stupid Faith based Conceptual ritual enhancement procedures complicating the entire mess. Dang it."
No, he wouldn't be sick.
He had this. Just… Lay down a little and then he would be good to go.
The boy was fast asleep before the first pig found him, but it would not be the last.
~~~Pocket System~~~
Steve blinked as he stared down the hill. "What the hell?"
It was a small MOUNTAIN of pigs. Half snoring, a few quietly oinking, dozens of them. Just… All piled up on the hill's gentle slope.
Which was odd, fair enough… But not the strangest thing he had found exploring this new world. The infinite block-verse always seemed to uncover something new on every adventure.
No, what was shocking was the sheer number of drops surrounding the quietly oinking mountain.
String, arrows, gunpowder… How many mobs had DIED in this area? And why did the pigs decide such a place should be their new cuddle puddle home!?
Sure, most monsters avoided or ignored other animals or creatures. Maybe a few consumed various types, but… Even with their low intelligence, it was unusual for this many remains to be left behind even if one ignored the pigs.
And it was HARD to ignore the pigs.
Sure, most of them were quietly oinking… But a dozen quiet oinks? Two dozen? It added up!
He glanced at the time… Nightfall was far off, so these drops had to have been from LAST night, and must have had so many that they had resisted despawning up till now. That implied heavily that an ARMY of angry monsters had swarmed this pig pile…And then died somehow.
Without freaking out the piggies.
What. The. Hell?
What was the proper response to this?
Steve certainly wasn't going to just walk over there like a moron, for one.
Sure, he had the revivification bed established to respawn if he died, but he wasn't young anymore and walking straight into lava or a crowd of angry
zombies was left in his past. Most of his more recent deaths was due to accidents and
surprise incidents, and he was PROUD to cut down the numerous listings of those idiotic mutilations from his diary logs.
So actually walking himself towards the (apparently) deadly pig pile was off the table.
Still. "HELLO! AM I TALKING TO THE PIG COLLECTIVE?"
It had to be some sort of hive mind creature, right? After all, these pigs didn't seem related to the
Zombified Piglin or whatever, only their behaviors were off. No clothing or strange postures or whatever either.
The pile of pigs… Did nothing, really. Just sort of sat there 'oinking'.
Right. This feels like a tomorrow problem."
For now, let's mine out a wide moat surrounding the pig pile and add some water sources to the far side… If lots of random monsters are going to swarm this place, Steve might as well have them all fall in the stream and be useful by dying in one place.
He'd either move some lava in to melt the gathered crowd of monsters automatically or set up a drowning trap or something… He had enough Iron to make a
hopper or two right? Just gather all the drops in a
chest and let the free stuff stock up until he had time to deal with this mess later.
The pile of pigs quietly oinked.
Much later. At some point in the future when he was better equipped and more positive that this wasn't some sort of secret boss fight just waiting to happen. He just wasn't willing to mess with the 'Pig Swarm Lord' or 'Harmful Ham Hive' or whatever today.
Right now, he needed to mark this spot on the map as 'Potential Pig Problem' and keep marking out his new territory. The new base wouldn't build itself, after all!
