Chapter 391 Extra - Ke Mi's New Job
Ever since the Ladies Night that was filled with laughter and karaoke, Zither Mistress Ke Mi had been wondering about all other new kinds of music this particular world had yet to offer her.
She had been playing around with some of the tunes she still remembered from the karaoke with her zither and had been changing them bit by bit each night for days until she finally not only recreated but even improved the entire song in her mind.
The day she played it to the living armour plants, they became so enthralled by the new music that they collectively grew 0.2cm larger in length, width and thickness. It might not sound much but their usual growth with Ke Mi's constant music therapy roughly measured between 0.02cm to 0.03cm a day which on its own was already a big step up compared to their feral brethren in the wilds. Under normal conditions living armour plants took years or even decades to grow that sturdy armour plate defence that could defend against modern day bullets.
It was so record breaking that the werejackals had decided to celebrate this occasion by personally cooking Ke Mi's favourite dishes for dinner. They were usually too lazy to cook and ate most of their food raw even though they possessed some decent cooking skills courtesy of Lynn.
After the young chef had started asking the were-humans to help her grow out some food to experiment, Lynn, in turn, taught them a few simple dishes they would be able to prepare. After all, they were Jin's familiars so there was no harm sharing some of her cooking knowledge with them. (If it were other strangers or even relatives, she would not even bat an eye to their request.)
The monsters never really had the chance to taste the yummy food Lynn provided in her Restaurant Instance, mainly due to the costly ingredients and Lynn's tight control of the flow of ingredients to ensure maximum profit. Additionally, the System already provided all monsters with basic food. After Jin had introduced a bonus system, monsters who worked extra hard could exchange their bonus to get yummier food or improvements to their home instance. Still, those improved food quality provided by the System could never compete with the fantastic taste Lynn had casually cooked up for the monsters.
Ke Mi, unfortunately, missed the chance to taste it when Lynn had taught them the basics of cooking. While it was nothing too complicated, it was sufficient for the were-humans to enjoy a change of pallet, with their own cooked food every now and then instead of the usual raw meat, fruits and vegetables that the System provided. That was also why they preferred planting their own harvest and trade them amongst the monsters for more points, food, or even favours. (When the Digital Pet Cards came out, they also used their food to trade for cards with the monsters or used their harvest as a betting item.)
Although the visiting ninja penguin helped out today by covering most of the heavy cooking, the werecats skillfully assisted with the minor cooking such as ensuring the boiling of the stew, the timing of barbecued meat. Meanwhile, the werejackals helped with the pre-preparation, such as peeling the potatoes, ensuring the rice was washed, cutting of the vegetables etc.
At the same time, Ke Mi was brought into the mansion with the help of the Great White Snake after her day's work and was surprised to see Jin sitting at the side of the massive dining table. Apparently, the were-humans reported to the System about the sudden growth and Jin got wind of it. She never expected her ever busy master would make time to pay her a visit.
"How have you been Ke Mi?" Jin smiled at her, which warmed her old tiny heart as she prostrated right in front of him with grace and courtesy.
"I doing fine. Thanks Master." Ke Mi now spoke Jin's language, albeit a little broken with the aid of Shu's Teaching. Usually, the System would translate the monster's language for Jin and vice versa, but Ke Mi was an exception.
Ke Mi had remained uneducated for many decades. Her only friends had been the Great White Snake and the Wyrm Ants, none of which spoke any language, so that she only communicated with them via her Zither. She always assumed that it was just something that those other humans had and a demi human like her did not. Neither did she know that she even had the capacity and capability to learn speech.
"I heard that you did some remix of your zither music, that enabled the living armour to grow way more than expected?" Jin asked politely and Ke Mi nodded her head vehemently. "When Master away, Yun brings us out, sing!" Ke Mi's smile was awfully cute and Jin was happy that she enjoyed her time with Yun and the other monsters. A slightly hungover Yun had told him in the morning, that they had a Ladies Night, and Jin had made a mental note, to encourage such behaviours more often in the future and allow all his monsters to enjoy some entertainment.
"Food is here!! Ah WOAH, Master! I did not expect you to also be here." Gold looked quite different with an apron, carrying plates of food. (the quantity of food on those big plates were overwhelming!) Jin greeted the Werejackal Leader as he went forward and helped him with the dishes since Gold became a little unsteady the moment he saw Jin waiting in the dining hall.
"Be careful, there! All these are the hard work of everyone in the kitchen." Jin teased Gold, who finally collected himself before he immediately shouted back towards the kitchen.
"HEY GUYS, YOU BETTER BE BE QUICK! MASTER IS HERE!"
There was a unison of howls of agreement, and the kitchen quickly became more bustling than before. In no time, more food was served and the other werejackals, as well as the werecats, came out to greet Jin.
"Master, here sit and join us for dinner…it would be our pleasure. We just hope that the food is to your liking." Gold said with a bow and pointed Jin towards the end of the table where Gold usually sat during dinner time.
"No way, I am the guest, you are the head of this mansion in this home instance. You should sit there no matter what." Jin refused Gold's offer.
"Then at least be our guest of honour today and sit at my right?" Gold counteroffered immediately which Jin had no reason to refuse. With all the food sitting on the table, the ninja penguin came out and paid their respects to their queen's master.
"Master, please do enjoy the food but I apologise in advance if the food is not up to your liking. We were unaware that you would be visiting today. Else, we would have informed Queen Lynn and used top tier quality ingredients for tonight's dinner. If need be, I shall perform hara-kiri to apologise for preparing food that's not pleasing to our Queen's Master." Ninja Penguin Kido said solemnly to which Jin bitterly laughed.
"Hey! What do you mean about not having top tier quality ingredients? Are you implying our farm does NOT produce top tier quality ingredients?!" Yellow got a bit irritated by the way the Ninja Penguin spoke, but Grey whacked his head once to simmer him down.
"Please, I can rest assured that you guys always do your best in cooking no matter the ingredients. Besides, didn't Lynn praise the ingredients here so much that she even regretted that you guys did not have access to a bigger farming instance?" Jin did his best calming both sides as he sat beside Gold. He initially planned to enter the instance for a short while, just to praise Ke Mi and did not expect himself to get involved in the daily lives of his minions. Still, a change in pace once in a while would be a good bonding session as well.
Thankfully, they acted quite naturally, despite their master's presence, especially the werecats who had already begun digging in the food, famished from all the cooking. Though Gold disapproved of their attitude, he allowed the rest to partake in their feast after Jin took the first serving himself. He even asked Kido their ninja penguin chef to join in since there was empty seat among the dining table. That was also when his monsters started to talk with him about a few things.
Some asked about their master's progress, while others took the chance to flaunt the achievements they had against some of the cultivators, especially the Pandawans. Even though Jin had a pile of workload to clear, he decided to stay after dinner to listen to their stories and also offered some advice. Grey reported the status of their homegrown farming and provided ideas on how things could improve given a few additional tools. (He shrewingly hoped to override the bonus system and get his Master's approval so that they could save on the points.)
Jin listened carefully and told Grey that those things seemed valid and he would see to it as soon as possible, especially if it could potentially aid Lynn's growth of home ingredients. However, he was more concerned about one thing — the future.
"The future? You mean expanding this home instance?" Gold asked and Jin shook his head.
"No beyond that. I have big plans for you guys. How does becoming leading agriculture industry in the future when the Dungeon Fortress City is up sound to you? I was unsure if you would like being the minister of agriculture, but at least the boss for the industry, are you up for it?" Jin asked as he was offered some grape juice. (Or maybe it's wine? Jin could not taste the difference. It was intoxicatingly sweet. )
"I can consider it if I will have access to the Farming World's workforce and soil. I cannot trust any other soil than my home world's." Gold said hesitantly and the rest of his vice leaders agreed, though it seems to Jin that he was hinting something else.
"That should be possible, though for some reason I seem to be having trouble accessing the market in the Farming World." Jin was willing to accept his conditions, though first, he would need to figure out how to get access again.
"Should we tell him about the Demon Rat invasion?" Grey whispered politely in Gold's ear.
"No, at least not now. We should not burden Master unnecessarily when he has other stuff to do…although I did inform Bellator Zeru about the topic. He assured me that he might be able to convince Jin to aid us, but it would take some time."
"Oh, is that is why Brown went away earlier this week with Zeru?" Grey questioned in a whisper and Gold nodded his head.
"Is there something I need to know about?" Jin asked as he saw them eyeing him consistently while whispering amongst themselves.
"No no, nothing Boss. You enjoy yourself while we clean up the area. Some of us still need to make the last round check to ensure that all the plants are properly watered and fertilised." Gold got up and thanked his master for coming to visit before he left.
In the meantime, Ke Mi was enjoying the fresh orange juice which Werecat Nyanmi had made for her. Finally, with the were-humans gone, he had a proper one to one alone time, to converse Ke Mi before she returned to her own home instance.
"Say Ke Mi, are you interested in making some more music tracks?" Jin asked as he got nearer to Ke Mi. "I was thinking about exposing you to more music, that way you could experiment with even more genres, maybe even creating a music style of your own?" Jin asked and Ke Mi had a long pause as if she was seriously contemplating.
"Of course, it would not be completely for free. I'll need you to help with our dungeons. Our Pandaflix erm …those moving pictures Shu showed you before, the one that lets people watched themselves or others go through the dungeons." Jin said and Ke Mi vaguely recalled what her master was talking about.
"Yea, so far we're only streaming the pictures and the live feed audio. If you could produce music to accompany their adventures, like how you created the music remix from this morning, it would not just benefit the living armour plants but also help me out a whole lot. I would also love to share your music with a lot of other people." Jin elaborated as he wanted to provide her with a more meaningful task than tending to the Living Armour plants.
He knew how hard and perhaps depressing it could be for a person of her talents to be stuck in here and play their music for the benefit of his plants (though all the inhabitants also enjoyed listening to it, while working) even though they were considered to be very valuable. If she could accept the task, it would bring Pandaflix to the next level, not to mention that it would definitely save him and the System the cost of buying copyrighted music.
"But Ke Mi not know how to pro- pro- Prodew moosick." Ke Mi tried to articulate and it came out all weird. Jin giggled at how adorable Ke Mi was and patted her head gently. For that moment, he had forgotten that she was older than him by more than a century.
"Do not worry about that, Mind following me? I'll show you how it's done." Jin replied and the System prepared a portal for her and the Great White Snake, who had rested underneath her. To her surprise, they were back at her home instance, but she quickly discovered that there was a new second floor to her house.
The Great White Snake with Ke Mi on its back slithered the way up to the second floor. It had a modern look from the inside with various musical equipment waiting to be used, though everything had looked nicely from the outside with the traditional Chinese courtyard as her home instance. (Not to mention, those instruments were top of the line although they were cheaply bought by the System via its market. Jin nevertheless did some bargaining as well.)
While the list of instruments might not be exhaustive and mainstream, Jin however figured that with his current budget, it should be sufficient for Ke Mi to play around. When he becomes richer, he would consider getting more variants.
Jin then took out a unique pair of sleek looking headphones prepared by the System for Ke Mi to wear. Suddenly, her vision seemed to change and she saw copy silhouettes of her holding on to the various music equipment like the guitar, piano etc.
"This is actually one of the music modules which the System had kept aside since it was useless to me. Before today, I had no idea the System even had such functions, but apparently, it can create phantoms of whoever has those headphones to play an instrument." Jin explained as he asked Ke Mi to try it out. He did not bother to explain the advanced stuff because he knew the System would automatically record the songs she produced or teach Ke Mi certain functions when necessary.
With just her mind, she managed to command a silhouette to play some tunes on the guitar. It was the same for the piano. As she began to realise that she had now had access to a plethora of musical instruments at her fingertips, Ke Mi was having a giant smile on her face. She tried to play two instruments simultaneously, and it worked perfectly fine. Meanwhile, Jin watched there with his mouth open.
"Wow…I previously failed to operate two instruments at the same time. She makes it look so simple." Jin thought to himself.
"User is not as experienced in multitasking as a 200 hundred year old Demi Human. System had detected that Ke Mi possessed lightning fast task splitting abilities in the past when she fought against the user. Else she could not have controlled the Great White Snake and the Ant Wyrms movements together with just her Zither."
"Guess, we really underestimated her ability. Damn, then I should not have bought that Y-tunes and Spotific music premium account. Oh well, at least those songs in their database could give her some inspirations." Jin sighed as he could see Ke Mi was sucked into this brand new world of hers.
"Who knows, maybe someday she could produce some significant tracks that will wow the world with her music. I am sure her parents will look proudly over her, from above." Shu, the Sakura Tree Treant said while peering into the 2nd floor from the outside courtyard.
"I would love for that to happen for her too.." Jin was glad she had found her speciality and left her alone to enjoy her brand new toys.