[You have experienced the methods of a chef who strides far, far ahead.]
[You gain a massive amount of experience.]
[Your level increases.]
It was behavior so bizarre I couldn’t begin to understand it.
But the System judged it a cuisine that “just by watching it,” raised my level.
“I shouldn’t have written off those kiai as ridiculous.”
Another world where cuisine had evolved in its own way.
And a chef counted among the best of that world.
A chef who poured everything he had into the finest ingredient.
Thinking it over,
I felt foolish for assuming it would be nothing special.
However laughable such actions looked to me,
I should have assumed there was something hidden there.
“If there’s one consolation...”
I hadn’t imagined it would be something so extraordinary,
and I nearly skimmed past a precious scene—
but unlike me, who almost let it slip by—
[You have witnessed the ultimate of elemental cuisine.]
[If you later acquire an elemental cuisine trait,]
[the effects of the elemental cuisine trait increase by 50%.]
The System
did not miss that chance.
“No matter what, though—does one cook so hard they end up bedridden like this.”
“I—I’m sorry. Thinking I won’t be able to serve delicious dishes from now on... I just wanted, for the last, to make His Holiness the very best single course I could, and I...”
It must have been a dish into which he poured everything.
After finishing it,
this chef lay sick in bed for days.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
The one who came to see him when he opened his eyes
was that “monster” I first saw after I possessed the chef.
I didn’t realize it at first,
but thinking about it now... that person must hold quite a high station even by this world’s standards.
He could decide the Pontiff’s diet, after all.
“What do you mean, there’s nothing to be sorry for...?”
“Because thanks to you, His Holiness’s health has greatly improved.”
“I—is that true!”
“I wouldn’t lie about something like this.”
At the words of the “high one,”
the chef lit up with joy.
It meant he cared that much about the Pontiff’s health.
To me, he had been nothing but a monster.
But in this world, it seemed his renown was considerable.
“...Ordinarily, he would have lasted not even a month before his span ended and he passed away. Do you know what I heard from the priests today?”
“What did they say?”
“They said His Holiness’s lifespan has been extended by five years. Thanks to your cuisine.”
Even as he said it himself,
the “monster” looked at the chef with a face that said he could hardly believe it.
“Holy...”
I could hardly believe it either.
I had no idea what exactly he’d done—
to me, it wasn’t a cuisine I understood in the least—
but one fact was certain.
“Your cuisine truly defies imagination...”
“Ha ha... You flatter me. The ingredient was superb, that’s all.”
One fact and no more.
“He saved a life at death’s door—with cuisine?”
Not someone sick with an illness,
but a life about to end because its span had run out?
“That’s absurd...”
I had, in my own way, used cuisine to treat those who were unconscious.
Of all in the unit, I rate cuisine’s potential the highest.
And yet
even I had never imagined extending lifespan through cuisine.
A miracle beyond comparison with the simple treatments I had performed.
The chef I was residing in—
“He’s walking a road far ahead of mine—so far I can’t even compare...!”
Good grief.
Thinking on it, no wonder the Pontiff’s palate was so exacting.
“He was eating dishes made by someone like this every single day!”
How could his standards not soar?
It was the moment I understood why none of my dishes had any effect on him.
“In that case... I have to watch with maximum focus.”
A chef who had reached heights I could hardly imagine.
For someone like this, it would be right to say life and cuisine had become one.
Every motion of the hand, every step.
Each trivial action might carry meaning beyond my ken—
insight as a chef.
Unlike just now, when I let myself relax and “experience” things roughly,
I focused every bit of my mind so as not to miss a single trivial action of his.
****
Contrary to my resolve,
after that, the chef returned to his ordinary routine.
Having recovered, he went back to the Temple and cooked.
“...Even looking again, I still don’t know what I’m seeing.”
He would perform some grand cuisine I couldn’t understand even with full focus,
then go home.
A life of repetition.
On occasion, the most unusual thing that happened
was meeting friends of other races and chatting.
“Say, did you hear that?”
“Who knows. I heard the Warrior Legion of the Okeaar Sea was annihilated.”
“...I’d heard it might not be a minor disturbance, but that mighty sea...?”
The change began
not long after that,
as I was talking with friends of other races—
when whispers of ominous rumors started coming in.
“The Okeaar Sea fell to a monster invasion, and after it the Egemaar Sea fell as well.”
“From what the refugees say, even the great champions of each race are struggling—enemies of that caliber.”
“The races of each sea alone aren’t enough.”
“The Guardians of the Dasmurians may deploy.”
From what I gathered,
the sea where the chef resided seemed to be the capital of this world.
In that case, one question:
“If it were our world, the strongest place would be invaded first.”
Seohwan’s and Miho’s worlds were like that.
So were we.
Those invasions begin by subduing the military might of the invaded world.
Which made it a little odd that this place was still quiet.
“Isn’t this place going to get dangerous soon, too?”
“As if. This is under the god’s protection. No matter how powerful the monsters, they won’t dare covet this place.”
Apparently,
that “divine protection” was shielding this sea.
Even so, though this was the safest place,
that didn’t mean there were no ripples.
“Deployment!”
“...So the Guardians of the Dasmurians are actually deploying.”
Dasmurians—
the race to which the Pontiff and the chef I possessed belonged.
They seemed to be regarded as the strongest race in this world.
And among them, the band composed only of the strongest warriors were the Guardians.
They led the capital’s warriors out to war.
“...It’s quiet here now.”
“Indeed.”
Before long,
the young of many other races all headed to the front,
and save for a scant few warriors guarding the Temple,
only children and elders remained within the Temple.
“...”
Watching that scene, feeling strangely pensive,
time passed again.
[I don’t think you’ll see me for the next few days.]
“Your Excellency, the Sacred Beast?”
The impossibly gigantic turtle that guarded the Temple—
the “Sacred Beast”—raised its body.
[The enemy’s invasion has reached the waters just offshore. The time has come for me to act.]
“What...! It’s bad enough that Your Excellency must move?”
I don’t know well what it means for the Sacred Beast to deploy,
but “I” was struck with tremendous shock at the news.
[What of it. ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) Embarrassing as it is, I’ve idled away a great deal of time doing nothing.]
“...You were charged with guarding the Temple.”
[In the capital, which is supremely safe under the god’s direct protection, where not a single petty incident occurs. That’s what we call idling.]
The Sacred Beast joked,
but there was a thread of tension in its tone.
[It’s time I paid for the meals I’ve eaten all this while.]
“...I pray we meet again.”
[And you as well. May you be unharmed until the day we meet again.]
After that exchange,
perhaps because a being called the Sacred Beast personally took the field,
for years,
the stream of ominous news coming to the capital dwindled sharply.
****
Then, on a day when it seemed that peace would continue—
suddenly.
“The moon... is gone?”
The moon that had warmly embraced Dasmur vanished,
and the world fell into darkness.
“What on earth is happening!”
The Guardians fighting at the front fled to the capital, one and all, with mortal wounds,
and warriors and refugees alike repeated only testimony beyond understanding.
“The Sacred Beast was hunted by a gigantic serpent... and a devil with a crimson spear struck down the moon.”
Not long after that,
what filled the chef’s sight
was the capital’s sea—
and before it, filling the horizon...
a horde of monsters.
“Devils...? And that—was that a dragon?”
Right before Seohwan’s and Miho’s worlds fell,
Miho said she witnessed beings like that.
“What the chef went ahead of me in wasn’t only cuisine.”
He experienced ruin,
ahead of me as well.
Beings so mighty that calling them gods would not be amiss.
And the hordes of monsters that followed them.
But—
amid those ranks, I saw something strange.
“The Guardians are there...”
Giants nearly ten meters tall,
scaled, with seaweed-like whiskers.
Dasmurians.
The Guardians who had deployed to quell the unrest.
And
a colossal being swimming beside them in a grotesque posture.
At the sight, the chef wept blood.
“Even Your Excellency, the Sacred Beast...”
The chef’s wish that they might meet again
came true in a slightly twisted way.
At last,
the final war unfolded.
[Divinity descends.]
The master of this world—
a being one and the same with the world itself... a god.
[Master of the Endless Sea — Dasmur]
He descended onto the battlefield,
and his faithful took up arms against the invading monsters.
“I,” together with the warriors who had remained in the capital, joined the war.
In that war,
“I” raged with a ferocity unthinkable for a chef.
“So elemental cuisine... can be used like this, too.”
I marveled at the sight of myself cutting down foes,
but even with the god’s blessing granting immense power, in the end—
—Groooar...!
Unable to overcome the tide of fallen kinsmen pressing in,
“I” fell into the sea.
“Damn it...!”
Even as he fell, he did not stop fighting—
“You vermin...!”
Crunch.
The Sacred Beast’s teeth, bereft of reason,
snapped the chef’s body in two.
“My” upper torso was sucked into the Sacred Beast’s maw.
“—————!!!”
This chef, “I”—
since I was experiencing his memories as they were,
I felt, vividly, the sensation of my body being torn in half.
“Ggh...”
Utterly, brutally real.
Agonizing sensation.
Yet—
maybe because these were the memories of “me,” not me,
even while my body was torn in two, my reason remained intact.
Because my reason was intact,
the pain struck even more viscerally... and then—
“What is... that?”
Even with half my body swallowed by the Sacred Beast,
“My” eyes stayed wide,
fixed straight ahead.
What I saw there—
“a body long dead... in decay.”
Guts full of maggots inside the Sacred Beast.
Vermin swarming to eat the corpse.
The Sacred Beast was, unmistakably, dead.
“A dead Sacred Beast is moving.”
A contradiction embodied.
And such a being—
I already knew.
“A zombie...”
From my mouth,
by my own will, words came out—that very instant—
[Skill — Absolute Palate activates.]
[You permanently gain the traits, stats, and experiences of the Dasmurian chef.]
[You acquire the trait — ‘Elemental Cuisine.’]
[Your Strength, Agility, Mana, and Luck increase permanently by 10.]
[You have acquired the mana of the Dasmurians.]
[The related effects of the highest-grade ingredient you consumed in the past, ‘Saint’s Remains, Merman’s Meat,’ are accelerated.]
[You experience the memories of the Dasmurian chef.]
“Hah... hah...”
The brief “experience” ended,
and I could feel I had returned to reality.
Messages from the status window, filling my view, telling me what I had gained.
Vitality filling my body.
Even the stats that had just increased alone told me how drastically I’d been strengthened.
On top of that—
“Elemental cuisine...”
The very technique the Dasmurian chef wielded.
“An incredible reward. But—”
I could say with certainty.
Of the various effects gained through this dish, the greatest reward, above all, was—
“These memories.”
