Greg was in the middle of drawing up plans for Thomas's fence posts when the smell hit him. It also didn't smell good. The smell was so bad that it made his nose wrinkle, and his brain started to think of all the ways a building could catch fire.

He looked up from his workbench and saw smoke coming from Lylia's cooking area. For a moment, his mind couldn't figure out what he was seeing.

Lylia didn't cook food that burned. Lylia might have been the best cook in the whole area.

Lylia's restaurant had a three-week-long waiting list because her food was so good it could heal small wounds. But there she was, standing over a pot that was smoking like it had a personal grudge against clean air.

"Lylia?" Greg said, putting down his pencil. "Is everything all right over there?"

Lylia turned to look at him, and Greg couldn't quite figure out what was going on with her face. Maybe anger? Or was it planning? "Oh no," she said, and her voice was a little too dramatic.

"I burned the soup. That's so bad! How completely terrible of me!"

Marina, who had been lying back in her chair and watching Greg work, sat up straighter. "You burned the soup? You could cook a five-course meal while fighting off bandits, Lylia."

"How did you set the soup on fire?"

"I was distracted," Lylia said, waving her hand in a vague way. "Thinking about how to manage inventory and supply chains and if we need more potatoes."

"And all my thoughts, which are very important!"

"Uh huh," Marina said, squinting her eyes. "And did those important thoughts somehow make you forget that you had a pot on the stove?"

Lylia said, "It happens to the best of us."

Greg was now very suspicious. He had seen Lylia handle three different dishes at once, take orders from customers, and stop Felix from stealing desserts.

The woman could do more than one thing at a time like it was an Olympic sport. There was no way she could have just burned something by accident.

"Anyway," Lylia said, turning to Greg with a look of exaggerated despair, "this has made me realize something."

"I need something that will stop this from happening again. Something that can keep an eye on the quality of food and let me know if something goes wrong."

Greg said in a flat voice, "You want a spoon that tells you when food is burning."

"That's right!" Lylia's face lit up. "A spoon that can tell when food is bad and let the cook know before it's too late. It would be very helpful for the restaurant."

"But don't make another Mira, okay?"

Marina was doing everything she could to keep from laughing. "Lylia, are you really asking Greg to make you a magical complaint spoon because you pretended to burn soup?"

"I didn't pretend," Lylia said, but she didn't sound very sure. "And it's not a spoon for complaints. It's a spoon for making sure quality!"

Marina said, "That's the same thing."

Greg looked at both women and understood what was going on. Lylia was trying to get him to start making his usual silly things again.

She'd noticed how mechanical he'd been since he got back from the dungeon and how he was just going through the motions without his usual creative spark.

This was her way of trying to jog his memory about how much fun he used to have at work. In a strange, controlling way, it was sweet.

"Okay," Greg said as he rolled up his sleeves. "I'll make you a spoon for quality control. But if it turns out strange, that's your fault."

Lylia said, "Everything you make comes out strange, and that's the whole point."

Greg went to his forge and began to gather supplies. A plain wooden handle, some silver for the spoon part, and a few magic crystals to make sure it works. He wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing; he was just letting his hands move on their own while his mind drifted.

He thought about the commissions that were waiting for him, like the cooking pots, fence posts, and merchant wagon. These were items that ordinary people required to lead typical lives. These items are useful and won't accidentally cause chaos, gain consciousness, or evaluate food on a scale of one to ten.

"What... the... fuck...?"

Greg blinked and then looked down at the spoon he was making. It had started out simple enough, but at some point his hands had added more magic work.

Runes for talking, analyzing, and personality. It appears that his subconscious had decided that if he was going to make a quality assurance spoon, it would be the most opinionated quality assurance spoon ever made.

Greg said, "Oh no."

"Yes," Marina said from behind him. She must have come over to watch without him knowing. "Greg, is that spoon shining?"

Greg lied and said, "It's fine."

"It's definitely shining. And are those runes for speech?"

"Maybe."

"Greg, what did you do?"

The spoon in his hands started to hum with energy before he could answer. The silver surface moved like liquid mercury, and the magic crystals in the handle lit up.

Greg had the same feeling he always had when his creation reached that point where it stopped being a normal thing and started to become a problem. The system alert showed up in gold letters.

[CRAFTING COMPLETE!]

[Item Made: THE CRITIC'S SPOON]

[Quality Rank: SSS]

[Special Properties: brutally honest food reviews, verbal commentary, a rating system (1-10 scale), and an accent that is unbearably posh British]

[WARNING: YOUR FEELINGS WILL BE HURT EASILY BY THAT THING]

Greg said "Oh no" again, this time with more emotion.

The bowl of the spoon suddenly turned, and for a brief, terrifying moment, Greg could have sworn it looked like a small mouth. Then it talked, and the way it sounded was just as snobby as the warning said it would be.

"Good heavens," the spoon said in the most snobby British accent Greg had ever heard. "Is this what a forge looks like these days?"

"I thought the working conditions would be better for one of my refinements."

Everyone in the workshop stopped moving. Bork let go of the hammer he had been holding.

Felix made a sound that could have been a laugh or a scream. Seraphine dropped her book.

Elwen held her sketchbook to her chest like a shield. Mira and Donetta even stopped putting things in order, which had never happened before.

"Did that spoon just say something?" Marina asked in a soft voice.

"Yes," Greg said.

"With a weird accent?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know, don't ask me."

The Critic's Spoon seemed to know what was going on around it. "Oh my. Oh no. This is a big letdown."

"I thought I was going to a famous cooking academy, but instead I'm in what looks like a workshop that has questionable hygiene standards.

"Hey!" Lylia said, "I'm offended! My kitchen is clean enough!"

The spoon said, "Clean is a generous word."

"I would say it's okay. Not really. That burnt soup is the real tragedy."

"What the bloody fuck were you thinking?!"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.