I come back to the bakery and find all our employees working hard under Stan’s scrutiny. After all these months, many have reached a high level in [Baker] or similar classes. Some of them have even managed some specializations already.

I’ve yet to get the [Baker] class, for some reason. It’s one of the things I try to ignore. Even though it’s cool having cooking skills and whatnot, I don’t care about using magic for cooking or moving things around.

Some tried to breach the matter to me, but they clearly don’t know me enough. I have two ways of dealing with things: ignoring them and fleeing from them. I have chosen the first for this.

“How did the date go?” I look at Lucillus in his tight-fitting uniform designed by Stan. If I didn’t know better, I would say that Stanimal engaged in some very weird kinks in his free time. And sometimes, I’m not even sure that I do know better.

“Decima is a nice lady, but I don’t think we clicked much. It was a nice lunch, though,” I say with a hint of tiredness.

“What’s the matter this time?” the man sighs.

“We didn’t click, man. What do you want me to say? She was cute and all, but it just wasn’t right. You know when you meet someone, and you are spell-struck?”

“Like with a [Charm]?”

I exhale forcefully and notice a glint of glee in the guard’s eyes. Oh, this little rat. He’s annoying me on purpose!

“I’m going to dock your pay,” I tell him.

“You don’t even know how much I am paid,” Lucillus snorts.

“Whatever it is, consider it docked,” I say while rubbing my eyes. “Anyway, I’m going to catch some sleep. See you later.”

I’ve relinquished my room at Agostina’s condo. I was never there, and Stan had me sign some property acts for the places around here too. Which ones, I’m not sure.

While walking towards the stairs, I hear Lucillus’s voice.

“Stan said that Claudius and some [Architect] are coming over later! He wants you to attend!”

Here we go. More work.

“Yeah,” I wave a hand without turning.

I still have to catch some sleep before I go back to the Cantrips.

I’m at the last 69 Cantrips.

Hehe.

I can’t help it, I swear.

Jokes aside, the last three sets of Cantrips proved to be much more difficult than I had imagined. I went at a slow pace for a while, and now I have a little more than seventy days left to solve these. The set of 23 right before this one included some truly mind-boggling exercises that had tens, if not hundreds, of moving pieces. I think I fainted multiple times from Mana exhaustion last week. And I cracked the last one only yesterday.

But alas, the worst had yet to come. Now, the Cantrips have become the worst thing you could ever think of. No, not French people. The second worst thing you could think of.

Philosophical questions.

See, let me explain this to you while talking about a specific category of people.

It’s all about ‘energy.’

When you get along with someone, you might hear: “Bruh, I love your energy.”

And that’s fine. You could have a massive thug saying that, and it would still sound normal.

Now, there’s a second breed of people that I absolutely loathe. When I first thought about Elves, that’s the kind of people I was expecting them to be.

These are the ones that have no real connection with you but still say something like: “Hey, dude, your energy is so positive; I think you have an incredible aura about you. I hope that some of those vibes will rub off on me.”

First of all, a proclivity for verbosity is almost always bad. Second, I don’t like people forcing things. Take Russian literature and its verbosity. They can write hundreds of pages that almost look like fluff, but it’s all about the reader's subjective experience. Russian writers took the psychological introspection to a whole different level, making it clear that there’s no right or wrong way to write a book; you can either write something well or not.

Instead, some people believe that a certain set of behaviors, even though inauthentic, can still be considered good in their own right. Such are the people who talk about energy, being positive all the time, good vibes, and all that stuff every single day. It’s not a bad thing per se; in the same way, it’s not a good thing per se; there are just good moments and bad moments.

Long story short, these ‘questions Cantrips’ are trippy. And I’m not hippie enough to figure out the answer to the first question in an hour or so. Sadly, though, either I do that, or I’m going to get zapped to death.

…

After a nice nap, I go downstairs to see what’s happening in the kitchen. For all I want to complete the Cantrips, I also promised Stan I would keep an eye on the employees. The difference between a world with classes and one without is that I don’t take anything for granted inside the bakery.

Plus, Stanimal finally got our cocoa production to the levels we need for our special project.

“Yo, Quintus, Tiberius, my star employees,” I wink at the two ex-homeless men and fellow army veterans. One of them has a wooden leg, Tiberius; the other, Quintus, only has one eye. It’s a cool crew; I’m not going to lie. Tiberius screams at night, and Quintus had a scoff with some adventurers, but other than that, they are perfectly normal.

“Chef,” they look up from their tables and speak.

They have a kind of air about them, like people who don’t know how to do anything else in life but bake. They stare so hard at their pastries that sometimes I feel like one of those parents who want their children to go out and play.

But they are both two times my age, so…

“You should go out and play sometimes,” I tell them with a smile.

They look up with a mix of annoyance and reverence.

I’m not really comfortable with that kind of gaze. Stan made a point of having everyone not just respect me but actively thank me for what I did for them. He says it’s about gratitude and having the right environment in the workplace; in Stanimal’s opinion, employees should have a modicum of respect and reverence for their employer.

I hope they will drop the act in the future. Especially these two. They became religiously attached to baking and took to it like ducks to a pond filled with breadcrumbs.

“So, show me what you have been working on,” I tell them.