Chapter 172 -- Mithril Frying Pan

"Sui, can I ask you to do me a little favour?"

"Whaaat-" Sui-chan looked up at me as I pulled out a frying pan from my Item Box and held it out to her.

"This frying pan, can you make another one for me but a bit bigger, is that OK?" Sui poked at the frying pan with a tentacle before replying.

"Ummmm, I can do this quick-" she replied. Oh, this would be easy? Well, it didn"t have moving parts like the excellent mincer she had made earlier, maybe that would simplify things. I handed some Mithril ore to Sui who swallowed it.

"Let"s see, this goes here, that goes there, ummm..." Sui-chan suddenly extruded a tentacle holding a s.h.i.+ny blue frying pan. "Here, it"s finished-." Oh, that was quick. I took the freshly made Mithril frying pan from her, surprised at how light it felt given its size.

"This feels really good. I"ll try it out right now." I hadn"t put away the Black Magic Cooking Stove after dinner so I lit up one of the burners and put the Mithril frying pan on top and waited a few seconds but... Oh? I turned the burner up to maximum but the Mithril frying pan wasn"t getting hot at all for some reason. I gingerly held my hand over the pan but, nope, still cold even after the burner had been on for a minute and more.

"What"s going on?" I muttered as I Appraised the Mithril frying pan.

[ Mithril Frying Pan ]

A frying pan made from Mithril. Because it is made from Mithril, it does not conduct heat.

... well if it won"t conduct heat then it wasn"t going to work very well as a frying pan, was it? I thought it was going to be really good to cook with since it was so light but sadly I wasn"t going to be able to use it. I gave some thought to what the Appraisal had said, did that mean that anything made from Mithril wouldn"t conduct heat? I had a Mithril knife and short sword made by Sui-chan, oh and the Mithril mincer too. Not conducting heat was a good thing for the mincer, it prevented the meat from being damaged by friction while I ground it up. If I wanted anything else made from Mithril I"d have to give consideration to this particular characteristic of the magic metal, nothing that required heating.

It was such a lovely frying pan, I thought sadly to myself, but totally useless. Could Sui make it into something else? Hmmm, if it didn"t conduct heat then it would be good to keep food hot for a long time, but thinking about it cooked food really needed to be left to cool a little before eating, even for Fer and company. Keeping things cool though, that might be useful.

"Sui, this frying pan doesn"t work." I took it off the Black Magic Cooking Stove, still as cold as when I put it on and handed it back to her. I dug into my Item Box and found the cup I used to drink from as well as one of the deeper bowls Fer and the others usually drank from. "Can you make a cup like this and three bowls like this?"

Sui poked the cup and bowl with her tentacle. ""Easy-" she said, swallowing the frying pan. She wiggled and burbled for a few seconds then extruded a cup and three bowls, glowing faintly blue.

"Yeah, done it!-" Sui bounced happily.

"Thank you, Sui-chan." I said taking the cup and bowls from her. I bought a plastic bottle of iced coffee from the Net Super and poured it into the Mithril cup before taking a sip.

"Oh, it"s still cold even without adding ice." Of course, I"d just poured it into the Mithril cup so I put it aside for a little while, planning to try it later.

"Sui wants to drink some bubbly-bubbly-." Seeing me drinking the iced coffee made Sui thirsty, it seemed. Voices came from behind me too. I thought you guys were already asleep? But no, when there"s stuff to eat (or drink) on hand then they"re awake as can be.

"Nuu, I"ll have something to drink too." Fer announced, settling down watchfully beside Sui.

"Meeee tooooo!" Dora-chan started buzzing around overhead, keen not to miss out on anything.

Yeah yeah, cola for everyone. I bought a big bottle of cola from the Net Super, nice and cold and poured it into the Mithril bowls.

"I got Sui to make these for drinks like cola." I explained as I put the bowls down for everyone. "They"re made of Mithril and that keeps the drinks cold."

"Well, it"s still cold." Fer informed me telepathically as he slurped the cola from his bowl. Once it was empty (but not before, of course) he looked up at me. "Still, Mithril is supposed to be valuable, right? What sort of an idiot makes something trivial like a drinking bowl from Mithril?"

"Hahaha, you"re not wrong big fella." Dora-chan burped politely.

"It keeps the bubbly-bubbly cold and sweet-" Sui-chan said consolingly. Thank you Sui-chan, I knew I could count on you. Just because it"s Mithril it doesn"t have to be a weapon. Now that I know it doesn"t conduct heat I"ll get Sui to make cooking utensils that can use that characteristic.

After drinking the cola, both Fer and Dora-chan went back to the beast stables and lay down to sleep. Sui-chan had crawled into her bag as I tidied up. I finished my iced coffee which was kept really cold by my Mithril cup. It worked really well, it seemed.

I slung Sui"s bag over my shoulder and headed for the inn"s stairs to go back to my room, sighing. Once I got there I"d still have one more thing to do before I could go to sleep myself. If I didn"t pray to that bunch of ungrateful deadbeat G.o.ds and placate them with offerings from the Net Super then the whining and moaning would be unbearable. It had gotten worse ever since I received the tenant store upgrade to Net Super, too. I sighed again, it wasn"t something I could really put off any longer.