[Elemental Cuisine]
Every time I moved my hands,
the current of the brook shifted and surged in response.
As if the ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) flowing water were dancing with a human.
A mysterious, beautiful sight.
But—
‘Ugh... I’m going to die here...’
The protagonist of that sight—me—
honestly felt like dying.
Elemental Cuisine was by no means an easy cuisine.
Unlike the ordinary cooking I usually did,
from the standpoint of a human like me it felt closer to magic than to cooking.
“Still...!”
Even so,
the last time, by cooking Minjae’s lightning,
I had gotten one round of experience under my belt.
“The second time will be a little better...!”
This time’s cuisine—
I was certain it would be better than last time.
BANG!!!
The mana pouring out of my body
bored into the surrounding brook.
The mana that had been present in the water.
I felt that mana resonate with mine and begin to change.
And
I lightly rubbed my hands over it and muttered,
“I’ll add a little sauce.”
The Legion’s kitchen.
A secret recipe held only by its chef.
[The dish is complete!]
And like that,
the cuisine was completed.
“Hah!”
When I exhaled with effort and stepped back,
I saw that a portion of the flowing brook had turned into the [dish] I made.
Following the flow of the stream,
the cuisine tried to drift slowly downstream.
However—
‘At this volume, it’s a little short.’
In the end, that water was what all those contractors would have to drink.
They must have already drawn quite a bit, too.
To make sure every contractor drinks that water, my cuisine needs to flow in the brook for at least several days.
If I had to squat here and keep cooking without stop...
that would mean repeating this for days on end.
If I did it like that, honestly, I might really end up dead.
Fortunately,
there wasn’t no way.
“Five Loaves and Two Fish.”
[Skill - ‘Five Loaves and Two Fish’ activates.]
Five pieces of bread and two fish.
A miracle in myth that fed thousands through them.
That miracle
manifested beneath my hands.
[Please select the amount to duplicate.]
“As far as my mana allows. To the maximum.”
I felt the mana in my body
being sucked out at a rapid pace.
I said it lightly,
but the amount of mana I had now was by no means ordinary.
My raw stats were already high.
On top of that, by consuming [Essence of the Chef of Dasmur] last time,
my already high mana had become immeasurably stronger.
And—
[Martial Art — Food (食) reacts to dish effects.]
[The mana required to activate the skill is optimized.]
The martial art that responds to my cuisine.
It even optimized the mana cost.
Before long—
the ordinary brook,
its volume
FWOOOOSH!
increased sharply.
The mundane stream vanished altogether,
and in its place
my cuisine took over the flow!
‘I didn’t add any special ingredient. There won’t be much in the way of stat boosts or the like.’
Even so,
the effect of the sauce within it was absolute.
[War Chef’s Brook of Deep Will to Live]
No matter what happens,
it makes one prioritize one’s own life first—
the natural emotion every living thing is born with.
‘Will to live.’
That dense emotion
rode the brook and flowed toward the enemy camp.
****
A man shouted with a face twisted in fury.
“You bastard... what did you do to us!”
“What else—cooking.”
Each of these guys had one trait and one skill.
[Offering], which gives you stats by offering up what you hunted.
And [Contract], where you offer up that self you’ve fattened with stats to wish for what you want.
The problem was the latter.
A skill that lets you offer your soul and make a wish to a demon.
From the user’s point of view it’s trash, since the price is your own life,
but from the stance of the one who has to stand against that wish,
it was quite a frightening skill.
‘I figured that in a moment of crisis, they’d definitely make a contract.’
That’s why
I made enough cuisine to flow through that brook for days and sent it downstream.
Demon Contractors or whatever they were,
the ones I saw with my own eyes were exceedingly ordinary humans.
You can’t live without drinking water.
Since I’d seized their water source,
it was only natural that every human here had ended up eating my cuisine.
‘If it had been something like poison, they wouldn’t have gone down this easy.’
It’s a dangerous world.
You never know when the water you normally drink will turn hazardous.
If what had been mixed into that brook was poison,
the moment a problem arose from it, they would have gone on alert immediately.
They would have tried to find a new supply, too.
But
what I made was merely slightly cooked—
an exceedingly ordinary water.
No—
to be more precise,
‘water that tastes a little better than usual?’
There was no room for suspicion.
Moreover, what it carried was will to live.
Unless death is right at your doorstep,
it isn’t an emotion you go out of your way to feel.
They likely didn’t even realize they’d ingested a special sauce.
“...Anyway.”
When I stepped into the room where the contractors were gathered,
I felt an aura much like last time.
“We meet again pretty quickly.”
In the air of the room,
looking down on this place—
a massive presence.
‘A demon.’
Up until a moment ago, a contract must have been underway.
To take the lives of the humans as the price for that contract,
it must have descended here.
‘Last time we met, you treated me like absolute nothing.’
When I first saw it in the mountains,
that thing
regarded me as not even worth paying attention to,
showed not the slightest interest, and disappeared.
But
this time would be a little different.
“Right...”
Unlike last time, when it felt impossibly distant,
this presence felt at least a bit closer.
[...]
When I opened my mouth,
I felt the gaze of the thing there spear down into me.
“How does it feel to have the prey you were smacking your lips over snatched away?”
Presumably—
a transcendent being for whom humans could be regarded as beneath insects.
[Your retained divine power detects the hostility of a transcendent being!]
From that out-of-scale being,
a glare full of rage fell upon me.
‘...Heh. Looks like you’re very angry.’
Even though all I did was receive its gaze,
fear made the flesh of my whole body tremble,
and I felt cold sweat run down my back,
but compared to last time there was one difference.
Just one.
‘Exhilarating.’
To be honest,
it was deeply satisfying.
****
[Your retained divine power detects the hostility of a transcendent being!]
‘Heh heh. What, you get angry too?’
It had every reason to be.
After all,
the humans here were slated to provide it with souls and flesh.
In other words—
‘to that thing, they were prey.’
What’s the most infuriating thing in the world?
A dish you worked hard to cook, right when you’re about to eat it—
having that dish stolen right before your eyes.
The humans it had prepared to eat.
As they tried to offer up their souls,
I stopped them.
[Skill - Contract]
[You proceed with a contract with a demon.]
[By paying the price, you may present a request commensurate with the price.]
It was said the decision to accept or reject this contract always rests with the demon.
You can only call it an unfair contract.
But this skill had
one fatal flaw.
‘There’s nothing that says the demon can’t be the one to present the request.’
In the end,
if the contracting party, ‘because they value their life,’ cannot speak the request they want,
the contract can only fall through.
[A transcendent being continues to display hostility!]
The presence felt in midair seemed to have realized that as well,
sending me a glare steeped in rage.
‘...Hah. It’s fine.’
When I first thought about doing this,
there was no part of me that wasn’t nervous.
Anyone could tell it was some kind of great being.
I was offending the mood of such a thing.
However—
‘Because glaring is all it can do.’
Whether it showed hostility or not,
not a scratch appeared on my body.
That’s only natural.
In the first place,
if it were something that could intervene in other ways,
‘there’d be no reason it would be interfering through some hassle like contracts.’
If it truly were that great a being,
it could simply descend in person and sweep away the obstructing parties.
If that was too much trouble,
it could just send down those powerful minions without limit.
Frankly, we only prevailed over one Spirit of Darkness.
If dozens or hundreds descended, there’d be no answer.
The reason it can’t do that—
I can pretty much guess.
Seohwan’s world.
Think of the strong there, sealed away.
‘The laws of this world... do not easily permit the intervention of out-of-spec beings.’
Whether that’s the will of some existence that let this world be invaded,
or whether it’s the result of the invaded world,
Earth, resisting the invaders, I don’t know.
‘That thing cannot intervene on the ground.’
At least for now.
‘...Hah.’
Even so,
the hostility contained in that downward gaze stung considerably.
It was a being of a stature one might well call a god.
The naked hostility of such a one.
Yet—
perhaps because I was facing it from closer than last time—
[Trait - Ingredient Appraisal activates.]
[Skill - Chef’s Eyes activates.]
my trait and skill activated.
[Demon-kind - Demon]
[A resident of Hell, a dimension counted among the most powerful in the entire universe.]
[Both the concept of evil itself and the living beings derived from it, they are a race with a mighty power to interfere with every dimension in which that concept exists.]
[Beings derived from a specific concept have words and actions that each exert a tremendous influence on life.]
[They cannot lie, nor can they break a contract once concluded.]
[Given their power and nature, they are, for some, an object of faith; indeed they possess that level of stature, and thus are an ingredient of extremely high rarity.]
[Demonic flesh is an ingredient containing potent power, and is the finest ingredient often sought by many connoisseurs—especially other demons.]
[For butchering, first sever the yoke of karma, then peel off the concept stretched across multiple dimensions, after which....]
As I read the lines floating up,
I couldn’t help feeling a bit dumbfounded.
‘So that thing... is also a target I can cook?’
Messages rose before my eyes,
even including how to butcher it.
‘The yoke of karma—what?’
The problem was that it was a butchering method I couldn’t comprehend,
but it made me curious all over again.
That butchering method and recipe,
the information on the target—
they’re knowledge gained through my trait and skill,
yet not only do they trigger on an opponent of clearly higher stature than me,
they let me naturally obtain knowledge I have no way of knowing.
‘Who wrote this knowledge in the first place?’
It was like—
someone had written it in advance and was telling me.
I was baffled that the trait even triggered,
and yet, how should I put it—
thanks to it,
I felt a little more at ease.
‘I just can’t cook it right now.’
That thing, in the end,
was nothing more than an ingredient that someday
would be cooked by my hands—
I could be sure of it.
Therefore,
I chose to step forward with my head held high.
[The gaze of the transcendent being is....]
‘So what.’
Last time, it ignored my gaze,
but this time I ignored its and,
facing the man standing before me—
[Awakened: Choi Wonjun]
[Class: Demon Guide Lv.28]
I walked up to the man who looked to be their leader.
“Hm. How should I put this. Hello.”
“You bastard...”
The man ground his teeth and glared at me.
But
that didn’t frighten me in the slightest.
“Damn it, everyone! You don’t have to contract!”
As I approached,
the man hurriedly shouted to the humans behind him.
“Still, we have to put up resistance! Everyone, take up your weapons...!”
Hm.
Even now, at this point, that refusal to give up deserves acknowledgment.
However—
“Ta... take up weapons...?”
“...And if we do that and get shot, then what.”
“What?”
It’s not as if contractors have no combat ability.
[Trait - Offering]
[By offering the bodies and souls of hunted enemies to a demon, your stats increase.]
They did at least have a growth trait.
The problem was that what they did with that growth was human-bomb themselves.
They would still possess combat ability roughly on the level of ordinary Awakened.
The problem—
‘even then, it’s ordinary Awakened level at best.’
Even if every human here were high-level,
they couldn’t be stronger than our Legion.
And the ones who knew that best were—
‘themselves, having watched our battle.’
If it were before they realized the will to live had been planted in them, maybe—
but right now,
they who feared death more than anyone—
“We... we surrender!”
“Spare our lives, please...!”
this is what they became.
“...You all.”
Watching that,
the man looked as if he sank into a touch of despair.
Watching him,
I thought to myself:
‘To suggest resistance in that moment, huh...’
Just like Borjin, who managed to resist even after eating the cuisine of honesty,
unless his mental strength was extraordinary,
he wouldn’t have been able to propose something that could put his life at risk.
‘No wonder he’s the leader of these people.’
Well,
that’s that, and this is this.
Only now could I finish a matter that had been gnawing at me.
I stepped up to him,
click—
chambered a round in my pistol,
and aimed between his brows.
‘I can’t feed the cuisine of honesty right now.’
Except for me, who receives the effect of [Absolute Palate],
only one cuisine effect can apply.
However,
if the cuisine of [Will to Live] was doing its job,
“If you value your life, answer.”
“Ghh.”
the man
wouldn’t be able to evade my question.
“Why... did you serve demons even at the cost of not valuing your lives.”
Why,
even to the point of throwing away your lives,
did you serve a being that wasn’t human.
You’re going to spit it all out, every last bit.
