Mark stirred in his sleep as he experienced weird dream after weird dream. After the first long dream with the bear, there was just a blur of many different weird dreams. Many had talking bears doing random things.
Some had giant vampire moose on unicycles. Others had both of them fighting against each other, or napping with each other.
None of the dreams had any cohesion. They were all quite normal for a typical dream.
Before the sun hit his face, Mark woke up with a start. He felt refreshed. Abnormally refreshed.
He took in a deep breath as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.
"What a weird night, dreams. . . I never knew they could be so. . . nonsensical? . . . there was the bear and the cake. . . I . . . I forgot?"
Mark learned of the real weirdness of dreams as he found them harder to recall the more he tried to recall them.
His stomach growled loudly as he was talking to himself, so he threw his legs over the edge of his bed to get some food.
His first problem of the day developed as he smashed his head on the top of the doorframe as he tried to exit his room. The biggest problem there was that the lumber for his home was sourced from an elder tree, and apparently, a blacksmith had fused refined iron with it.
'BAM'
Mark was on his back, rubbing his head.
"Damnit, who put that door frame there!"
Mark cursed up a storm as he rubbed his head, looking up at the doorframe which had become his first true enemy.
Once he had gathered his wits, he thought through he absurdity he had just experienced.
"Wait, when did my door frame get so small?"
Mark stood up and looked slightly up at the door frame, which was level with the top of his forehead.
"Well, I'll be damned. That old witch woman actually managed to make a real potion from beast blood! And it made me grow a couple of inches!"
Notably, Mark had grown about 2.4 inches, or about 6 centimeters, bringing his height to a whopping 192cm.
Mark, still rubbing his head, ducked slightly to get through the door and made his way to the kitchen, which had his dry storage.
He started eating monster jerky and kept eating it, as the more he ate, the hungrier he got. Eventually he ate all of his stores of jerky, which should have lasted a couple of weeks.
He stumbled over to his jugs of fresh water and started gulping one down to help with the dryness created from all the salt. Once he got all the jerky into his stomach and was no longer at risk of severely dehydrating himself, he realized that he needed more food as fast as possible.
He only knew of one place that would have enough food for his current appetite. He rushed out of the house, barely getting some clothes on, and brought an Unikuma rug with him.
In his rush to get out of the house, he forgot his current stature and bumped his head again, but ducked as he smashed his head and managed to get out the door.
"Argh! Damnit!"
He rubbed his head with his free hand as he ran down the road toward his destination.
As he ran, he noticed that he was not getting tired at the pace he was used to, so he picked up the speed in his blind hunger rage. He kept going faster and faster, and eventually, he made it to his last resort destination for monster meat.
He started banging on the door, ignoring the fact that the sun had barely started painting the sky with color. Far earlier in the morning than he was used to waking up, and far earlier than any other villager would be up.
Except for the baker. But he was a couple of doors down.
The butcher opened his door, half asleep, with a rude look on his face. Until he noticed the mad glint in Mark's eye, and what looked like froth in the corner of his mouth.
The sight of the giant boy, who seemed to be even more giant this early in the morning, woke up the quiet butcher.
"Grom, I need as much cooked beast meat this pelt will buy, and if you don't have enough, then I need someone to cook me more!"
Mark had fully lost himself to his hunger at this point, and just kept shoving the pelt toward the bald butcher.
The butcher briefly wondered how Mark knew he wanted the damn pelt his father always bragged about, but he took it off of the feral boys' hands before ushering him inside.
He brought Mark to his dining area, a large oak table. With Mark seated, he first retrieved a large slab of cooked and seasoned warg haunch from his dry goods area.
It weighed over 2kg, but as soon as he set it down with a piece of wax paper under it, Mark grabbed it with both hands and began to tear into it.
The butcher briefly watched the boy latch onto it with as big of a bite as his large mouth could manage and then flex his well-defined jaw muscles, resulting in the flesh parting like it was veal.
But it was not veal. It was meat from a monster that iron weapons could hardly pierce.
He shook his head, knowing that the boy was physically a freak like his father before him. More so, actually.
He ran to his water jars and brought one to Mark, seeing that the young man had managed to get through over half the meat before him in that short of time. The butcher put the water on the table where Mark could grab it, and then ran back to the dry storage to get another warg haunch.
After setting it on the table for Mark, he walked to the back of his house where he had a large area for multiple dry storage containers. The one in his kitchen just had the meat he was planning to eat himself in the immediate future.
He pulled a rack of Gullen Boar ribs from one, which he carried over to the table for Mark, noticing that he had already started on the second Warg haunch. Then the butcher went back and grabbed two large backstraps from the same monster pig.
After he set those on the table for Mark, he went out of his front door and walked down a couple of doors to the baker.
He knocked, and was soon greeted by Cecil. The baker.
Cecil looked at the butcher without saying anything, and the butcher just motioned toward his house with his head and grunted. This was apparently understood by the baker, who just followed the butcher, who had already turned around and started walking back toward his own home.
As soon as they entered the house, Cecil noticed Mark, in the dining area to the right, who was in a food-eating trance. Devouring everything in sight like a rabid animal. He looked over to the left into the lounging area, and noticed the prized Unikuma pelt draped over a couch.
Shaking his head, the baker walked back to the back of the house with the butcher to access the giant pits in the backyard for cooking.
While normal people in the village could only eat a little monster meat without getting sick, there were still over two thousand people. There was only one butcher. Therefore, Grom had to be able to cut up a large amount of meat as well as cook a large amount of meat.
While most people would prefer to cook the meat their own way, there were not many ways to store the meat, so the butcher had to be able to cook lots of it.
The baker just got to work and fired up a couple of pits, knowing he would need the surface area. He piled up the wood he knew he would need next to each of the pits.
'Based on the look on that kid's face, this will take quite the effort.'
The baker grunted while he got to work.
The butcher was his brother, so this sort of thing happened from time to time. Just not often was it for one person.
The butcher, meanwhile, had stopped by his dry stores to grab a large plate of monster jerky, which he set on the table for Mark, and removed the bones from the monster pork ribs.
Then, he opened his cool storage and started grabbing an assortment of large pieces of monster meat, which he took to his brother.
They laid the meat out on the large cooking pits and got to work, making sure Mark would not starve.