“Getting through that inside is....”
“Impossible, you idiot.”
An immense amount of lightning.
Each individual bolt didn’t look weak in the slightest.
“The moment it touches you—straight to electric roast....”
I am a chef, sure.
I’m confident when I’m the one doing the cooking.
Becoming the dish myself is absolutely out of the question.
An island writhing with a colossal volume of lightning.
I tilted my head up for a glance at the sky.
“Blazing clear.”
The weather wasn’t an issue at all.
Skies so clear it was hard to believe it had snowed just a few days ago.
To begin with—
When Jung Sua scouted through a spirit, there hadn’t been any lightning like that on the island.
Which means—
“Sergeant Shin. This....”
“It’s the monster inside.”
A monster that was holed up in the power plant.
That thing had obviously pulled some trick.
But—
“With lightning hammering down like that....”
“Even figuring out what the monster is will be hard.”
It would’ve been nice if Jung Sua’s spirit could confirm it.
But the spirit was currently afraid of the monster inside.
No matter how you try to devise a countermeasure—
You can only do that after you learn the enemy’s identity.
In that case....
I gave the island a rough once-over for size.
“Let’s see. Three hours should be enough?”
“Sir?”
I addressed the squad.
“Three hours?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. You all pull back for now. Come pick me up again in about three hours.”
“Pick you up...?”
“Which means—”
To identify the enemy—
Well....
There was nothing for it but to run it myself.
“I’ll be back!”
“S-Sergeant Shin!”
I sprang to my feet,
bit into one of the combat rations I’d brought.
[With the effect of Absolute Palate—]
[You temporarily acquire the trait ‘Environmental Assimilation’.]
The instant I confirmed the trait had applied,
I went—splash!
I threw myself into the river.
“He’s going off alone again!”
“Grab the sergeant!”
The soldiers panicked as they watched me dive.
They scrambled to get a fix on where I’d gone, but—
“D—dammit.”
“I can’t see him anywhere.”
Thanks to the trait, my figure wasn’t visible.
Leaving the flustered soldiers behind,
I swam toward the island and shouted.
“Three hours! Don’t forget! If you’re late, you skip lunch later!”
“.......”
****
The plan was simple.
Use the trait [Environmental Assimilation].
Slip in alone, hidden,
and identify the enemy.
I’d done similar stunts a few times already,
so I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal, but—
“Hell!”
A few seconds after I hit the river,
I regretted it like crazy inside.
“Freezing to death...!”
A winter river was cold beyond imagination.
With an Awakened’s stamina I wouldn’t die, but it still hurt plenty.
Of course,
I had prep for exactly this kind of situation.
I pulled another combat ration from my pocket and bit down.
[War Chef’s Spicy Pie of Warm Feelings Jerky]
A heat so spicy my face flushed.
I felt warmth flood through my whole body.
[You temporarily acquire the trait ‘Lowest-Grade Cold Resistance’.]
[Applied Cooking Effects: 2]
At the same time,
system text filled my vision, confirming the trait had applied.
“Hoo... that’s better.”
I looked back.
I could see the soldiers’ boat, the men flustered yet falling back per my order.
I drifted on the surface for a few minutes.
By the time the boat was no longer in sight,
the lightning wrapping the island had also eased.
“As expected.”
Since the monster inside had noticed our approach and thrown up a lightning screen,
once the soldiers retreated, it had clearly dropped its guard again.
“Easy... easy....”
I moved as carefully as possible so I wouldn’t get spotted, easing my body up onto the island.
****
Once on the island,
I saw an enormous field of solar panels laid out.
“They did say it was the largest in Gangwon.”
Sure enough.
Just as Jung Sua had said: panels perfectly preserved without a single destroyed section.
If we could secure them intact, they’d produce a steady, considerable amount of power.
“The problem is taking care of the monster inside.”
Otherwise we wouldn’t even be able to approach.
My specialty is to identify what I’m up against, then target its weakness through cooking.
I have to know the enemy to prepare a way to face it.
It was a bit risky,
but I’d decided to infiltrate even if it meant eating that risk.
“If I get caught, straight to electric roast....”
I passed through the zone where the solar panels were installed
and carefully made my way toward the power plant building on one side of the island.
And at the same time,
a question kept surfacing in my head.
“That earlier lightning curtain... felt too strong.”
In the past I would’ve just said, “So it’s strong,” and left it at that,
but not long ago,
after experiencing a [Gate], I learned one of this world’s rules.
“Monsters that are too strong get sealed for a set duration.”
Only a few, as far as I know, fall outside that rule.
Bosses faced inside dungeons.
Or sentinels occupying military bases.
“That thing is neither.”
This place was neither a base nor a dungeon.
“Did the system consider the power plant part of humanity’s strength and try to suppress it?”
Civilization’s bedrock is energy.
And power plants are what handle that energy.
It was a plausible guess,
but another case popped up in my mind
that also sat outside that rule.
“Originally... it wasn’t that strong.”
There was a similar case.
In fact, one very close by.
A being still dwelling in my shadow,
one that eats five daily meals of my Griddle Fry as its staple.
[Vein that Devours Steel]
Kkamang.
By our unit’s standards now, Kkamang ranks quite strong.
It grows stronger the more metal it eats.
“How high the ceiling of that strength goes—even I haven’t experienced it yet....”
Yes, I’d built a friendly relationship through the power of cooking,
but if it grew too strong, it could become a threat to our unit.
That’s why I’d been limiting its feed.
Five meals a day—that was the line.
No matter how cutely it begged, I’d never given it more than that.
“Given that power, Kkamang should normally be sealed, too.”
However—
Not long after we first came down to the surface, our unit encountered Kkamang.
The reason it hadn’t been sealed?
I only had one guess.
“In its base state without eating metal, it isn’t that strong.”
A monster that grows power by ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) eating metal.
Conversely, before it bulked up like that, Kkamang was about on par with neighborhood cats.
So weak
that of course it wouldn’t be sealed.
“And from that state, it grew by eating metal....”
If you grow from a weak state,
you probably won’t get sealed belatedly.
That kind of guess.
Thinking along those lines,
I reached the power plant deeper on the island.
“That’s the plant.”
And—
the moment I saw inside, I was certain.
“This one’s the same case as Kkamang.”
[Ingredient Appraisal (Enhanced)]
[Salmo-neus, the Lightning-Eater]
Inside the plant,
a colossal serpent-like form was coiled.
“Big... and strong.”
A giant serpent filling the entire interior of the building.
The mana I felt from within it was powerful enough to raise gooseflesh.
“No—calling it a serpent might be a bit off.”
Strictly speaking,
its shape only resembled a snake.
[Chef’s Eye]
[You have acquired the Advanced Culinary Secret — ‘Insight into Butchering Salmo-neus’.]
[Salmo-neus is a lifeform composed of electric energy...]
[Its staple is also energy, and it tends to prefer places where energy accumulates in quantity. Once it has claimed a territory it is reluctant to leave it, but its basic temperament is violent, and it is hostile to those who trespass its domain....]
A perfectly transparent, yellow-tinged body.
The background of the interior was visible right through it.
That thing—
“Its whole body is lightning.”
If it were a monster we could handle to some degree,
I’d planned to resolve it with just myself and the two in my shadow, “Ariella” and “Kkamang,” but—
“That’ll be tough.”
I wasn’t confident we could take on a monster whose entire body was made of lightning.
****
“So a Vein—meaning, the same kind of case as Kkamang.”
Back at the unit,
I shared what I’d learned with the squad.
“Huh? But—”
“If it’s really the same kind of case as Kkamang, isn’t that no problem?”
A few soldiers piped up like it wasn’t a big deal.
“We just solve it like we did with Kkamang, right?”
“Yeah. Like when Sergeant Shin threw a debuff dish back then....”
True.
At first contact,
Kkamang had been so strong we couldn’t even see a path to clearing it.
What brought Kkamang down was—
“My cooking.”
The first time in my life I cooked “griddle” as an ingredient.
After eating my dish, it sank into a deep defeatism, couldn’t even put up a proper fight, and we captured it.
As the soldiers said—
if I could cook ingredients the enemy would like and throw them the same way,
we might subdue it easier than expected, but....
“Even so.”
There was one fatal problem with using that method.
“You can’t... cook lightning, dumbass.”
“Ah.”
What it eats isn’t meat or griddle,
but electricity.
I’ve raised my cooking skill a fair bit,
and I’m proud of it,
but—
“No matter how good I am, I can’t cook electricity.”
To cook something, it has to be a substance you can somehow seize.
For things like electricity or lightning, I can’t even begin to grasp how to cook them.
“It eats electricity—energy, in other words. No matter what dish I make and toss, to it that’s no different than a rock.”
Its reason for settling in the plant was obvious.
That place accumulates solar output,
then converts it into electricity.
Even if the plant itself wasn’t running,
the panels would keep accumulating power.
It had eaten that and bulked up like this.
“Then how....”
“Hard to say. There are some monster meats that grant electrical resistance, so we could use those to gain resistance... but.”
“The question is whether that would be enough.”
Just as Sergeant Lee Minjae said—
[Salmo-neus, the Lightning-Eater] already looked like it had swallowed a great deal of electricity.
A monstrous bulk.
The mana packed inside it was beyond imagining.
“Of course, our unit won’t lose.”
Our unit had also achieved tremendous growth to date.
If we committed to a full purge, I didn’t feel like we’d lose.
The problem was—
Even if we cleared it, the odds of heavy casualties were high.
“Then we should give this up.”
Corporal Seo Suhyeok spoke decisively.
“Even if we gain resistance, there’ll be limits. If Sergeant Shin Youngjun is talking about it like that, it means it’s truly a monstrous foe. I think giving up for now is the right call.”
“Give up?”
“You said it’s a territorial animal, right? If it doesn’t leave its territory, that means it won’t harm us. Then there’s no reason to rush a purge, is there?”
Hmm....
“True. Not wrong.”
A monster that only guards its domain.
For our unit, electricity is nice to have, but not strictly necessary.
“What about the city Awakened?”
But the one to object was Sergeant Lee Minjae.
“For the city Awakened, that electricity is essential.”
“They’re all Awakened anyway. I don’t see why we have to care that much about people who aren’t even our guildmates.”
No matter how hard we worked,
it would be difficult to save the city’s many Awakened from the oncoming cold snap.
Even if we somehow pulled it off, it would drain our unit’s resources badly.
“Awakened at that level don’t have such strong resistances. They’ll suffer greatly from the cold. And securing electricity will help us too.”
“If securing that electricity weren’t dangerous in itself, that’d be a fair point.”
Sergeant Lee Minjae and Corporal Seo Suhyeok started a back-and-forth.
Both were fairly logical types,
so both arguments felt reasonable in their own way.
The bigger problem—
In the end, the one who had to decide between the two was—
“Sergeant Shin Youngjun.”
“Youngjun.”
“.......”
—me.
I sighed inwardly
and outwardly spoke as if nothing weighed on me.
“We lean toward securing the electricity.”
“Hrm.”
At that,
Corporal Seo Suhyeok asked, puzzled.
“Why is that?”
“Because the reward the survivors promised for securing it is substantial.”
“A reward.”
“On top of that, once we secure it, the electricity from there belongs to us. We’ll be able to wield greater influence over other Awakened. I don’t want to miss this opportunity.”
Corporal Seo Suhyeok is cool-headed and calculating.
However—
“If Sergeant says the gains on that side are greater, I understand.”
he tends to obey orders he can accept on rational grounds.
“The reason it escalated into a spat with Minjae was because his logic was about saving the city Awakened.”
He pushes back against that sort of logic—
but present a clear profit, and he’ll comply without a fuss.
Besides, there were a few reasons I didn’t say to Suhyeok.
First, of course, that we should keep as much of “humanity” alive as possible.
That electricity from the plant will greatly help keep the humans in this area alive.
And second—
“Because the foundation of civilization is energy.”
Civilization had collapsed.
But the machines of that civilization hadn’t all vanished.
There are plenty of machines that could run again anytime—if they were supplied with energy.
Civilization is shattered now.
I’d hardly ever thought we could restore it,
but if we succeed in securing that electricity—
“We can take one step toward restoring broken civilization.”
Humanity’s fallen civilization was by no means weak.
If we bring it back, it will greatly aid our survival.
“That said, it’s true this clear will be difficult.”
I stood up and said,
“So I’ll try only what I can try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll give up—no helping it.”
“What you can try?”
“What do you have in mind?”
They asked, puzzled.
“There’s something.”
Ignoring their curious stares,
I headed to a facility in one corner of Vimana.
[Dining Hall Lv.4]
The dining hall.
I’d invested Points whenever I had time and raised its level.
It had now reached Level 4.
“What can you try, you ask?”
My class is Chef.
Ask me what I can do, and there’s only one answer.
“Obviously—cook.”
I sat down there
and took out one item I’d kept stored in my shadow.
[Top-Grade Ingredient]
[Essence of the Chef of Dasmur]
An item I’d obtained not long ago
as a dungeon-clear reward.
