[Elemental Cuisine]
[You can process ingredients and convert them into a specific element.]
[You can process a specific element and cook it into something even more delicious.]
Just as the name says.
A power to process certain ingredients into elements,
or to process an element and cook it into something delicious.
I activated the trait, then—
"Hhhrrrrrp!!!"
—shoved my hands into the massive storm cloud Minjae had made.
The man who boasts the unit’s strongest firepower:
Lee Minjae.
Because his specialty is wide-area attacks, he levels easily even among combat classes,
so his level is second-highest in the unit—right after me.
A storm cloud he’d created at full power.
Sticking my hands into that should have been a suicide move... but—
[This is a friendly mana entity.]
[Trait — ‘Elemental Cuisine’ activates.]
As long as the owner of that mana doesn’t reject me,
with this new trait in hand,
even that savage lightning is nothing but an ingredient to me.
"Got you!"
The moment my hands plunged into the cloud,
I felt something seize in my grip.
A slightly rough, hot texture.
This would be the lightning Minjae made.
Elemental cuisine doesn’t end at just grabbing hold.
[Elemental Cuisine] is a branch of [Mana Cuisine].
[Mana Cuisine] heightens the taste of mana itself.
"So I... inject my mana into it."
This is cooking, one way or another—
it includes the process of processing it into something tasty.
"Hrrrp...!"
The “me” in the memory had cooked while making a bizarre sound.
Doing it myself,
I understood viscerally why he had to.
"This isn’t a normal task...!"
Lightning that exists intact.
By forcing my mana into it,
I’m transforming it into “higher-grade,” “more delicious” lightning.
"Is this even cooking...!"
A cuisine from a world entirely different.
It ran on a track utterly different from the cooking I’d done so far.
I thought I’d built up my chops as a chef over a long time,
but when it came to [Elemental Cuisine],
none of the know-how I’d amassed applied.
Wrestling with the captured lightning,
ramming my mana into it by force—
"S-Sergeant Shin...."
"...He’s fine even with his hands in that storm cloud."
I don’t know what the onlookers thought,
but it was by no means easy.
"So that’s why it exists separately from [Advanced Culinary Mastery]."
Another world to begin with.
Another race’s culinary art.
If not for experiencing the “me” in those memories, I wouldn’t even manage this much.
Thinking I could handle it perfectly from the start—
that would be arrogance.
But—
"It doesn’t have to be perfect...!"
[Skill — Chef’s Special Sauce]
The most broken aspect of this skill
isn’t the ceiling when you produce the perfect dish.
"No matter how bad the dish tastes, its effect never drops to zero!"
After tightening up the mana inside as much as possible,
I just—
drizzle on a touch of the special secret sauce.
That’s it.
—Ding.
The dish is complete.
[War Chef’s Slightly Incomplete Lightning of Deep Powerlessness]
Before I could even say so—
"You... what did you just...?"
"Hm?"
"How did you—when you’re not even a mage—"
Minjae’s expression shifted hard.
Staring at me, face full of shock.
"Did you interfere with my magic...!?"
He’d cast the spell.
As the spell’s owner, Minjae could sense the change.
But—
"What do you mean, what did I do."
Even if you ask me that—
my job is chef.
What I did, of course, was—
"Cook."
"...Hah."
I answered without shame.
Minjae stared at me, mouth hanging as if at a loss.
"Anyway. The dish is ready."
"...I still question whether what you just did counts as cooking."
"I’ll leave it to you to feed the customer."
"...Hoo."
At my words, Minjae let ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ out a small sigh,
then, as if setting it down,
gave a small smile.
"That part... leave it to me."
The dish was ready.
But—
the one who needed to eat it was way off on the island.
I didn’t have the ability to deliver it to the customer.
So—
it’s fine to leave the serving to someone else.
—Bzzzzzz...
The lightning condensed inside the storm cloud
seemed to gather into Sergeant Lee Minjae’s hand,
then changed into the form of a massive spear.
"Hrrrp...!"
Minjae’s waist wound up hard as he gripped the spear.
The most old-school, javelin-throw stance.
And—
FWOOOOOOOM!
With force enough to rock the boat beneath us,
the lightning spear flew toward the power plant at the island’s center.
"With a curtain like that, it’ll incinerate any ordinary attack."
Minjae’s lightning spear, too,
at a glance looked like an ordinary attack meant to kill the enemy.
But for the thing curled up in there—
[Salmo-neus, the Lightning-Eater]
—Minjae’s lightning would look like a deliciously served meal!
—BZZZZT
The island’s barrier did not block Minjae’s spear.
As is,
it flew toward the plant at the island’s heart.
"..."
"What exactly is happening?"
There was no immediate change.
But—
after a few minutes like that—
—Bzzzt...
—Bzzt.
"H-huh?"
"The curtain...."
The lightning shroud that had tolerated nothing drawing near the island—
that shroud—
—...pop.
vanished.
"...Youngjun."
Watching that,
Minjae—who’d just unleashed a massive spell—
murmured to me.
"I hit level 30."
"...Oh."
A notice heralding mission success:
experience gained.
What it meant was simple.
Heh.
"Looks like it enjoyed the meal."
****
"This thing... was the one making that lightning?"
"Yeah. It looks a bit different from when I saw it myself, but—"
With the curtain gone,
we immediately went ashore and headed for the power plant where the monster had holed up.
A snake so huge and imposing it filled the plant.
That same creature, now—
"Is it alive?"
"Mm, probably?"
—was nowhere near the grandeur I’d seen,
just rolling around the plant’s hall.
—Shaaa...
Shrunken to a fraction of its former size,
it curled up, steeped in deep powerlessness.
"Seen like this, it looks like an electric eel."
"It’s kind of cute, actually."
"So this must be how it looked before it bulked up."
Kkamang had been similar.
When we first met, it was insanely strong—
but once it lost its power, it turned into something like a kitten.
The difference here is, this one’s a reptile.
Anyway—
"For a first go at elemental cuisine... was it tastier than I expected?"
Honestly, it was a dish I wasn’t confident about,
so I’d figured it would do little more than knock it down a peg.
I didn’t think it would be suppressed this perfectly.
"No—more accurate to say the dish itself wasn’t that exceptional."
A first-time dish.
No matter how great a chef I am,
producing a perfect dish with a brand-new method is hard.
Even so, this much effect came out because—
[You have witnessed the esoteric of Elemental Cuisine!]
[The effects of Elemental Cuisine increase by 50%.]
The memories of the Dasmurian chef.
Thanks to witnessing the esoteric he unfolded in those memories.
"Then..."
"What will you do?"
As we watched it,
the soldiers looked to me and asked.
What I’d do?
"Why ask the obvious."
With the eel-like thing flopping on the floor in front of us, they asked.
Leaving them behind, I stepped up to [Salmo-neus] and—
"Kill it."
"...Huh?"
—brought my blade to bear over it.
"S-Sergeant Shin?"
"You’re not going to capture it alive?"
"Ah~ I get what you’re saying."
I could understand what they were getting at.
"Sure. If we could capture it like Kkamang and turn it to our side, it’d help."
"Then why..."
"This one’s not like Kkamang."
Unlike Kkamang, which had a definite physical body—
[As a lifeform composed of electric energy, Salmo-neus...]
—this one is a lifeform made of pure energy.
You can’t confine it somewhere like we did with Kkamang.
On top of that—
[Its basic temperament is violent, and it is hostile to those who trespass upon its domain...]
—unlike Kkamang, whose description noted a generally mild nature,
this one’s base temperament is violent.
Even Ariella, now my vassal among the [Nobles of the Night], had said it:
"You might befriend a monster with a gentle temperament, but subduing a violent monster with cuisine alone is close to impossible."
Not that that’s the only reason.
What matters most is—
"My cooking probably isn’t enough to make it submit."
"Ah..."
In Kkamang’s case, with the griddle fry,
at least some of the cooking knowledge I knew could be applied.
But the lightning this thing eats uses “elemental cuisine.”
In this cuisine, I’ve only just taken my first step.
Like telling someone who’s cooked nothing but Korean home food their whole life to suddenly make Vietnamese.
Subduing another being through that is impossible.
"Even if you try to make it perfectly friendly through cooking, you need the skill to match."
You might say, then just raise your skill—
but before I can, this thing is overwhelmingly likely to escape and cause a disaster.
"It’s a shame, but putting it down is right."
I raised my knife—
and right as I was about to cleave the body of a creature made of electricity—
"Wait."
"Hm...?"
—someone grabbed my arm.
I turned back, and there stood—
"Minjae?"
"Hold up a second."
Sergeant Lee Minjae.
"Hold up? For what..."
"There’s something I want to check."
Minjae stopped me,
then carefully approached [Salmo-neus].
He circled it,
observing it continuously.
I wondered what on earth he was doing—
and a moment later—
"...Ha-ha!"
"Jesus—"
Minjae, as if certain of something,
let out an excited laugh and spoke.
"Youngjun."
"Hm?"
"Thanks."
"...?"
Sergeant Lee Minjae, face alight with joy,
thanked me.
Thanks?
...For what?
"When the warrior-class Awakened got martial arts, I could only sit here envying them. Honestly, I was a little salty."
"Ah."
"I even whined to you about it a bit..."
It’s true.
The new power our unit acquired this time—
[Martial Arts]—only applies to the warrior track.
Mages and archers couldn’t help but feel a bit left out.
"So I gripe that I’m jealous and you line up something like this? You’re a good kid."
"...?"
I watched, still not catching his drift,
as Minjae set his hand on [Salmo-neus] and said:
"I told you, right? After I threw lightning at it earlier, I hit level 30."
"I heard that, but..."
"As you’ve experienced, a lot changes once you pass level 30."
That’s true.
I, too, was able to advance as a “War Chef.”
"Changes, huh."
Curious what change he meant,
I looked closely at his face.
[Ingredient Appraisal (Enhanced)]
[Awakened: Lee Minjae]
[Class: Mage of Waves Lv.30]
Once he passed level 30,
the class Minjae gained was “Mage of Waves.”
And what caught my eye below that
was a particular trait.
[Traits]
[High-Grade Electric Affinity]
[Mana Circuit — Thunder]
[Rapid Incantation]
...
...
[Lowest-Grade Electric Dominion] (New!)
"...Huh?"
"You noticed."
The name of the new trait Minjae had acquired:
Lowest-Grade Electric Dominion.
And...
the monster lying at our feet:
[Salmo-neus, the Lightning-Eater]
—a lifeform composed of electricity.
