"BAD DOG. NO, -"

A door locks, and an another door unlocks.

Oh dear...

Shortly after, Blai recieves a call on his phone:

Hello, this is Toriel!
I'm going back now, but a dog-related complication have presented itself.

So, and I am really sorry, but the short way back is locked now, and I'll have to take a detour for a little while... Are you doing fine?

"Yes, ma'am, I'm quite all right. I'm planning to cast Create Food soon, and it will make more than I can eat myself, what do you most like to eat? Or your neighbors and friends?"

I quite like cinnamon-and-butterscotch pie. And snail pie.

I don't really have neighbors closely nearby.

It's good to hear that everything's good. See you soon.

And now, the next room.

And the next room.

And the next room.

[...]

And the next room. And-

wait, who removed the ladder? There was specifically a sign saying "do not remove the ladder!"

Could be anyone.

Blai does not know exactly what goes into those kinds of pie but he will do his best and produce a couple examples of each along with things that he'll eat. The casting takes ten minutes and then he has a big meal and resumes chess-and-prestidigitation-practice.

Okay, this is definitely getting annoying. How long can I get delayed by arbitrary coincidences?

Exactly as long as it takes the main character to get tired of waiting and proceed to the solo adventuring section?

What, like a year?

This is Blai Artigas we're talking about.

Woah woah woah I didn't mean it like that!

Okay, fine, sure, whatever. Toriel can get back to Blai in a couple hours.

"I'm back! This took way longer than it should have for absolutely no good reason, I do apologize about that."

"I am going to take one of these if you wouldn't mind."

(It's not as good as her cooking, but her cooking also isn't conjured by magic wholesale literally out of thin air. It's also conjured human food, somehow, water and matter and all, and she's quite unused to that.)

"Alright, let's get going home, young man. You'll able to resume your strange activity there with much more convenience."

He dismisses the chess set, pulls his coat out of his bag to bundle up the food in and does that, and gets up to follow her.