When I decided to desert the unit and head somewhere else,
there were two things I was most anxious about.
One was the anxiety that would arise among the troops because «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» I disappeared.
And the other was...
Honestly, I’d been trying not to worry about it, but—
“The absence of a Chef.”
That, you know.
As the saying goes, all a soldier’s combat performance comes from rice in the belly.
The idea that the [Chef] who can give the soldiers proper meals would be gone—it bothered me.
We’ve stockpiled a considerable amount of combat rations,
but even those rations can’t match dishes I made with everything I had back when my level was low.
Yes, they have the advantage of being edible in the field, but their effects are that much weaker.
“Not like we can just go find another chef somewhere.”
This class called Chef
seems to be pretty rare in this world.
I’ve never once met an Awakened with the same class as me.
“To be honest, that’s always been a shame.”
Other classes cluster with their own and test abilities,
swap know-how—there’s positive exchange.
Me, I only barely sit on the boundary of production work,
but what I make is too different from other production classes,
so even that kind of exchange is impossible.
I had no choice but to discover things alone and grow my ability alone.
A fairly lonely class.
However—
“My Lord... that idea!”
That [Legion’s Droplet]
can copy what it eats and reproduce that target’s abilities.
Even if the fidelity drops—
“It only gets a bit weaker... it’s still an ability to reproduce every trait, isn’t it?”
If so—
worse than a vampire, sure, but still tremendous regeneration.
And
the [Traits] and [Skills] I’ve stacked up through countless achievements, far more than any other soldier.
Even if their effects fall a little,
they’d still be more than sufficiently useful—overwhelmingly so!
“That’s madness!”
“Well, he’s not wrong either.”
A target that satisfies all those conditions
is an excellent subject for duplication.
“And I did just recently fail to copy that rare class, Abnormal Appetite.”
It failed that time,
but if duplicating another rare class is possible,
what reason is there to hesitate?
Letting Vimanar’s words slide right past me,
I looked down at my hands.
There,
[‘Advanced Culinary Secret — Insight into Butchering Primates.’]
“I never thought I’d end up cooking even this.”
The most efficient method
to butcher “me” was presented—plain as day.
****
Combat over!”
“Good work, everyone!”
Lately,
among the Legion’s soldiers, the combat branches tasked with securing territory—
the [Occupation Squad]—had been carrying out a string of very difficult schedules.
The battles to occupy regions within Gangwon Province.
That didn’t end with simply going there and capturing the key points.
To advance safely to that region, they had to clear every hazard along the approach,
a very complex and grueling process.
“Thanks to the strategy coming down from upstairs, every battle’s a win. That’s a relief.”
Back in the 423rd Battalion days, he hadn’t even been that conspicuous. How could someone like that keep producing such tremendous strategies?
It was a little puzzling,
but because of it, the unit’s morale was holding.
“But...”
One of the soldiers assigned to that Occupation Squad—
Private Jang Hongsu, a fire mage—thought:
“I am getting tired.”
The repetition of nonstop combat.
Until just recently, these people lived ordinary lives.
No matter how often you keep winning,
the life-or-death nature of battle is bound to inflict heavy stress.
And it’s not like you can fight leisurely in a world like this.
They had to fight again and again without rest.
On top of that,
when you keep fighting like that—
“Even if we fight this hard...”
the exhausted soldiers
would often find anxious imaginings taking root in their heads.
“Can we really survive?”
Amid rough fighting,
there were soldiers who took heavy wounds—plenty of them.
And though the number wasn’t large, there were deaths from time to time.
Every Legion soldier
was fully aware he could die someday.
“Death is scary, sure.”
But
there was something scarier.
“If I die like that, won’t all this hardship turn out to be meaningless?”
That this grueling time, spent struggling to survive,
might end up meaning nothing at all.
“In the end, we all get wiped out... and I die for nothing, too?”
The fear of that emptiness.
“...Hah.”
“Private Jang Hongsu? Is something wrong?”
“No... it’s nothing.”
Thinking that far,
Private Jang Hongsu shook his head hard and drove the thoughts out.
“Idiot. You know nothing good comes of sinking into negativity, and here you go again.”
Legion soldiers receive continuous mental care;
compared to other survivors, their minds are in very good shape.
But looked at the other way—
for even Legion soldiers to have that much trouble shaking off anxiety,
it meant this world really had turned to hell.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I said I’m fine. Sorry to worry you. Let’s get back fast.”
“...Yes, understood.”
Moving his weary body,
Private Jang Hongsu tried as hard as he could to think positively.
Even if surviving right now seemed difficult,
burying himself in negativity would only bring him closer to death.
So when Private Jang Hongsu returned to the temporary outpost established near the Occupation Squad’s combat zone,
there,
“Huh?”
he ran into an unexpected person.
“Sergeant Shin?”
“Oh. Hongsu, you’re back.”
The very person delivering those tremendous strategies to them,
and the head of the Legion.
“Sergeant Shin, why are you here...?”
His class is Chef,
and within the guild his position is Guild Master.
Where he should be is not the battlefield where the Occupation Squad is fighting,
but the safest place that produces supplies: Primary Stronghold, Vimana.
“And within Vimana he should be in the safest place of all—so why here?”
But to that doubt,
their Legion commander answered like it was nothing.
“Staying in the base, I got all itchy.”
“Sir?”
“And something was nagging me.”
“What was nagging you?”
“Food.”
Food?
“You’re on expedition so much you can barely rotate back; you’ve had nothing but combat rations, right?”
Looking closely after he said it,
it seemed he hadn’t come out just to see the faces of soldiers rotating back for a moment.
With his sleeves rolled up, he looked like he was in the middle of doing something.
“What else does a mess man do? I should at least cook for the soldiers who fought hard.”
“Sergeant Shin...!”
“Everyone. You worked hard.”
Nothing special,
just the lightest, simplest words.
“You’re doing really well. Thank you.”
But at those nothing-special words—
“...Huh?”
Private Jang Hongsu couldn’t understand why,
but—
“It feels like... the anxiety is gone.”
The anxiety he couldn’t shake no matter how he tried a moment ago
felt like it was ebbing away.
“Sit tight. I’ll feed you something tasty for the first time in a while.”
“Sergeant Shin’s cooking...”
He didn’t really understand
why those words alone healed him,
but the mere fact that Sergeant Shin Youngjun was going to cook was something to look forward to.
In this brutal world,
the most enjoyable thing was food.
“Ahem, no harm in checking the menu.”
Feeling moved,
Private Jang Hongsu watched Sergeant Shin Youngjun cook.
At first it was only because he was curious about the menu.
However—
“Hm?”
Private Jang Hongsu, who’d worked with Sergeant Shin since the 423rd Battalion,
noticed one odd thing.
“He seems... to be struggling a little with the cooking.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen that.
Cooking more than a hundred servings alone—
even for an Awakened, that isn’t easy.
But
after Sergeant Shin’s level and stats skyrocketed—
to be precise,
after his cooking skill rose so much
that when he cooked with everything he had,
the soldiers actually had to contend with penalties from excessive effects,
he began to hold back a bit when he cooked.
Even so, the flavor was more than sufficient—overflowing.
And yet now,
as if he’d gone back in time,
Sergeant Shin Youngjun was cooking that hard...
“Sure enough, Sergeant Shin must be having a hard time too.”
He was the head of a massive guild.
The soldiers often went out and met other survivors while operating outside.
And they knew that leaders of survivor groups were far busier people than you’d think.
“Sergeant Shin is head of a force far larger than those survivor groups. As Legion Commander, he must be unimaginably busy.”
On top of that, the only [Chef] Awakened in all of Gangwon Province.
Even the role of Legion Commander wasn’t enough—he was also responsible for cooking.
It was obvious he’d be unimaginably busy, repeating grueling labor day after day.
And still, in the middle of all that, he made time he didn’t have
to show up here to cook for soldiers fighting on the front line.
He must be taking on a brutally packed schedule,
and cooking with a weary body can’t be easy.
“If you’re the head of the strongest power in the district, you could afford to take it easy a little.”
But Sergeant Shin Youngjun not only worked busier than anyone,
he also never forgot to look after other soldiers who ought to have more breathing room than he did.
Watching that,
Jang Hongsu thought:
“Your senior, Sergeant Shin, is trying that hard, and what are you thinking, Hongsu?”
The doubt and anxiety sprouting in his head—
thinking about how he’d been thinking,
it felt so petty he could only let out a laugh.
And
a moment later—
“It’s done!”
The cooking was finished,
and—
“Thank you for the meal!!!”
the Occupation Squad soldiers, who’d been eating nothing but combat rations for a while,
picked up their spoons with joy.
The taste of that food he’d seemed to struggle so much to make—
for some reason, it was similar to the “quick” food Sergeant Shin used to make back in Vimana...
“It’s delicious, really delicious!”
“Combat rations taste good too, but they can’t compare to a proper dish.”
Even so,
a proper meal was far superior in taste to combat rations.
For soldiers who’d left the fortress for a stretch and done nothing but fight,
the anxious feelings in their hearts
gradually faded under the strength of a hearty dish.
And what filled that space was—
“He’s an amazing person.”
admiration for the one who provided that meal.
And
the fact that such an amazing person
was their commander.
“Right. I might die someday. But...”
from that arose
a firm belief:
“Even if I end up dying someday, if I follow that man...”
it won’t be a meaningless death.
Only then did Private Jang Hongsu
understand why his anxiety had faded when he heard his words earlier.
The anxiety he’d been feeling
was ultimately the fear that all of this might turn out to be meaningless.
“I needed certainty.”
Because that amazing man
gave them certainty that they were doing well,
with just that one line,
they gained the confidence that they really were doing well.
After the meal,
soldiers who had seemed filled with stress snapped their eyes wide open and shouted in powerful voices:
“Thank you for the delicious meal!!!”
“Good.”
Their Legion commander answered like it was nothing.
No one among the soldiers gathered here knew:
the food they assumed he’d tossed together and served—
that meal had actually taken everything he had,
and
“My Lord has been doing this kind of work?”
that he was in a state where his whole body wanted to collapse, strength gone, from cooking hundreds of full-power servings—
there was no way they could have noticed.
****
And then,
while Private Jang Hongsu finished eating and sat steeped in emotion—
“Huurk...! Commander.”
“Yeah, man. Don’t cry.”
“Thank you, sir!”
somewhere,
a new recruit who’d joined recently unburdened his worries to their Legion commander,
received a bowl of delicious food,
and wept tears of gratitude.
“I’ll... try harder.”
“Good. I’m rooting for you.”
“Yes!”
Elsewhere,
a soldier whose growth had stalled and who’d been struggling
shook off his hesitation through food and counseling.
“In this battle, Sergeant Shin is fighting with us!”
“Anyone who shows a pathetic face better be ready for corrective drills later!”
“KYIYOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!”
Somewhere else,
soldiers, riding sky-high morale at the news that their Legion commander would join the battle, began butchering monsters.
“Ahh... Commander...”
“As expected of a great man.”
And in yet another place,
seeing him appear to bolster the soldiers’ morale,
cases even arose where their dimming faith grew firm again.
Thus,
in many directions, many Sergeant Shin Youngjuns appeared simultaneously,
thoroughly fulfilling the commander’s role that had been lacking,
and if you looked only at his role as commander apart from cooking,
he was actually performing with overwhelmingly greater impact than before.
“It doesn’t feel like much time has passed, but why does it feel like it took forever?”
“Well, after you realized it was actually possible to cross the Wall, a lot did happen. It makes sense to feel that way.”
One of the countless Sergeant Shin Youngjuns
stood before a colossal black wall blasting out tremendous heat.
Right in front of
the [Wall of Black Heat].
