Speed Is King

But as it turned out, her anger quickly turned to fascination over what Jessica was slowly revealing to her friends.

“After I had memorized the… ah Chilly Pancake I found in… ah Grandmother’s ah kitchen, I quickly went back to my room to study it.

It was truly an impressive Pancake! All the other Pancakes in the world is trash compared to it! It was because of this Pancake that I was able to vastly improve all my…” Jessica frowned fiercely as she tried to come out with a suitable word that would adequately represent “Spell Framework”.

“Waffle Cooking Recipe?” Jul’Taras asked in a bright voice.

“YES! THAT’S EXACTLY IT! WAFFLE COOKING RECIPE! Wahahahahaha!” Jessica burst into laughter at Jul’Taras’ wonderful idea and sneaked a quick peek at Aunt Hillary. She was completely confident that she was completely unaware of what they were doing!

Aunt Hillary’s hand twitched lightly as images of her grabbing Jessica’s head and banging it on the nearest wall flitted through her mind.

“Anyway! That Chilly Pancake truly opened up an entirely new world of ah making waffle recipes for me. Using the principles found in that Chilly Pancake, I had upgraded the recipes of ALL my waffles!” Jessica said proudly. “And not only that, in the course of upgrading my waffles, I actually managed to modify the recipe of the Chilly Pancake I found, and create two wholy new Chilly Pancakes!”

“What? The other two Chilli Pancakes were created, not found?” Jul’Taras exclaimed in shock!

Even Aunt Hillary’s jaw dropped open. If what her irritating niece said was true, then she was a God level genius!

“Are you being serious…” Jul’Taras frowned and asked the question that was in everyone’s minds. Yes, including the sneaky El’Taras who had bookmarked Jessica and was constantly checking in on her.

Honorably, of course, if spying could ever be done honorably.

“Yes. I am serious. It was a very difficult task, but I actually did it. In fact, if I didn’t get bored and sneak out to join this Game, I would be working on five other Chilly Pancakes which I had already started work on.” Jessica dropped another bombshell on the group.

“Uncle, I hope you’re getting this. You won’t believe me if I were to tell you otherwise.” Jul’Taras muttered.

When Jessica had revealed that the upgrades she had done on the Spell Frameworks were the result of applying the principles behind the Ascendant Rune, Jul’Taras had sighed in relief.

At least her friend’s genius wasn’t at such a freakish level. True, studying and understanding an Ascendant Rune which had confused the best and brightest minds of the known universe was still stupidly freakish by any standard, but it beats the freak that she had to be if she had merely broken through the formidable shackles of Rune Understanding by her own power!

But now, she had actually revealed that she created two wholly new Ascendant Runes from the principles and applications of one, and even had five more she was working on?

Freak!

Very big freak!

In fact, monster!!

“How…” Jul’Taras sputtered and tried to prioritize which question she wanted to ask first out of the myriad that was exploding into being in her mind.

“How close to finishing are you on those five runes?” Jul’Taras finally asked.

“Chilly Pancakes!” Jessica glared at Jul’Taras fiercely. “You meant Chilly Pancakes, right? Nobody here is talking about runes, much less ascendant runes! Hahaha! Pancakes! We love pancakes, right Jules?”

Jul’Taras sighed and continued to act in the charade even though she knew that the only one who still believed that it was only the three of them who knew Chilly Pancakes = Ascendant Runes was Jessica.

“Yes, I meant Chilly Pancakes of course. How silly of me.” Jul’Taras drawled unenthusiastically.

“Yes, yes. You’re being very silly Jules. Anyway, making new Chilly Pancakes recipes is really difficult, you know! Out of the five, only two are almost ready. The other three are still in outline form. I know what the end result will be like, and I know the ah ingredients. But figuring out the… amount of specific ingredients and… how to combine them… and… a bunch of other things, its really difficult.” Jessica said with a sigh.

“If I had to work on them day and night, I would probably require an entire month to finish them all. Such an impossible task.”

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

That was the mental sounds of Jul’Taras, Monkey King, Aunt Hillary and El’Taras fainting and collapsing in their minds.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

That was the mental sounds of the same four getting up and giving Jessica a huge thrashing!!

In their minds, of course.

With her revelation, Jessica had catapulted herself into Universal Treasure Number One. With nothing in numbers two to like, a million.

No other treasure or person in the universe came close to the value that Jessica represented at that moment!

And nothing, literally, nothing! Must be allowed to even make her feel uncomfortable, much less threaten her or physically harm her!

From that moment on, Jessica’s pleasure, and of course her mood to continue on her research to create more Ascendant Runes, became Universe Priority Number One!

Jul’Taras gulped, and then sighed. She didn’t know what else to say.

Thankfully, Jessica was under no such constraint, and she continued to chatter on.

“So anyway, I was thinking, in order to help Elliot form his own… cake shop? I would need to master around twelve uh… aggressive Chilly Pancakes and twelve uh… supportive Chilly pancakes, with each of the twelve representing one element. So that’s twenty four Chilly Pancakes I need. I will have eight in around two months. And I can probably finish the other sixteen in… eight months? Maybe nine months. That’s eleven months!

Technically, it’s perfect, you know. Once he’s done with the Games, I’ll be done with the Chilly Pancakes. And then we can start figuring out how to create that stream of one hundred thousand chilly pancakes.

But…ugh! How can I stand not watching the rest of the games full time to focus on making Chilly Pancakes? I will be so worried! What if something happens to him? I will be so sad that I’ll die!”

Aaaand with those words, Elliot just became Universal Treasure Number Two.