The instant I felt the trait activate—
—the hand that had been swinging
accelerated in a blink.
??!
The monster that lunged to smother me,
and me, who swung a knife toward it—
our two bodies crossed.
The monster landed on the ground behind my back.
Maybe it decided its attack had failed.
It twisted its body to strike me again, but—
right as it turned—
sliiiiice......
from its waist,
an immense amount of blood poured out—
thud......
The thing—
without even realizing it was dying—
collapsed to the ground.
The blood that had flowed through its veins spilled across the floor,
and slowly seeped into my shadow.
“......huff!”
Only after seeing that
could I confirm my guess had hit.
[Field Cookery]
A trait that applies proficiency and speed correction to cooking acts on the battlefield.
In other words,
a trait utterly useless anywhere that isn’t a battlefield.
To most [Chefs], it’s all but trash.
‘I’m a field cook.’
I am a chef,
but I am also a soldier.
For me, a battlefield
is no different from another kitchen—one I’ll end up using even more often than the real kitchen.
[Cooking is complete!]
And—
when I’m on the battlefield, every combat act I take toward the enemy
is nothing but one step in the cooking process to process that enemy.
[War Chef’s Quickly Slapped-Together Raw Grisvelk]
“Crisp and cold—this’ll hit the spot.”
I looked at the small piece of meat in my hand.
A chunk of its flesh I’d taken in those brief cuts just now.
Maybe thanks to the extreme cold, the moment I trimmed it, thin ice clung to it.
‘Ordinarily, a dish at this level wouldn’t have much effect.’
The more devotion that goes into a dish, the greater its effect.
No matter how devoted the knife-work, a single bite of raw meat will never yield a great effect.
But—
[Due to the effect of Trait — Field Cookery, the dish’s effect increases.]
luckily, even that effect rises a little by the trait’s power.
I couldn’t bring the many combat rations I’d prepared back at the unit.
For supplying cuisine on-site, this was as good as a best-in-slot trait.
[Trait — Wildness activates.]
[You can sense nearby presences a bit better.]
As the dish’s trait applied,
the presences around me became starkly clear.
And what I felt was—
simple.
“This won’t be easy.”
To the point you’d wonder if it was even possible—
a density of monsters packed tight.
The fight I’d just had with that monster—
monsters who sensed the aftertaste of that fight
were converging on me.
****
‘What do I do? Hold here for now?’
I did think that—
but the deliberation was short.
‘Staying long in one place doesn’t benefit me either.’
crack!
Decision made, I immediately threw my body
toward that dark forest buried in snow.
‘Good thing I’ve got vampiric traits.’
A broad forest that must once have been ordinary.
But so much snow covered those trees
that under them, not a speck of light reached—pure blackness.
Only the red glow of my eyes, tinged by the vampire, showed presence in the deep dark.
Had I not been about ~49% vampire, I wouldn’t have seen an inch ahead.
I shouldered through that darkness and advanced.
Meanwhile,
thinking of the presences I felt around me, I muttered,
“There are... monstrously many monsters.”
The absurd number of monster presences
I felt around me.
Seeing that,
one uneasy thought surfaced.
‘Maybe... Gangwon was actually a region where fewer monsters appeared.’
In Gangwon, our unit flew and crawled like kings,
but maybe—
‘Gyeonggi Province is the real hell.’
Other regions faced even greater trials,
and compared to those monsters,
even our guild that thought it had grown strong might actually be nothing special.
That uneasy guess.
This enormous blizzard and cold.
And, near here, this unbelievable density of monsters.
‘If this phenomenon is happening across all of Gyeonggi Province—’
then my ominous hunch could be called reality.
And—
to verify that,
“I have to go to a city.”
If it’s like the survivors in Gangwon,
survivors will inevitably gather near cities where supplies pool.
To check whether humans are alive, I had to head for a city.
I firmed my resolve as I chewed down every last piece of remaining monster meat,
BOOM!!
kicking off the snow-drowned forest,
and drove myself farther forward.
‘I glanced at the map for the lay of the land.’
I’d aimed for the wall closest to Chuncheon.
The nearest city was—
‘Gapyeong County straight ahead if I keep going this way.’
At least until I got there,
I could get a rough read on Gyeonggi’s situation.
The problem was—
that road would be anything but easy.
scrr.......
ratatatatatat......
The moment I moved,
I felt the monsters that had clustered near me
begin to move as well.
‘Movements openly marking me as the target.’
They didn’t even bother to hide their presence—
they were blatantly cinching a net around me.
It wasn’t hard to guess why.
“I’m the weakest prey—that’s what they think.”
No matter how many penalties I’m under,
if I were in my proper condition,
those monsters wouldn’t be looking down on me like this.
But not now.
‘I’m still not fully healed.’
By experience,
unlike monsters that usually move in some numbers,
I was not only injured,
I also looked to them like I was wandering alone with no allies.
From the viewpoint of monsters that retained their feral nature,
I was prime prey.
A broad forest.
A savage blizzard knifed through the gaps between trees and slapped my face.
I blocked as much of it as I could and tore forward at full tilt.
And a beat later—
sure enough, just as I thought—
crack!
“You got here fast, huh!?”
I hadn’t run far
when I saw a pack of monsters charging me.
[Grisvelk]
The same wolf-like look as before.
‘Are they the same pack as that one from earlier?’
Unless those monsters ruled this whole area,
the shapes I glimpsed in the surrounding dark were quite varied.
Even so,
the one lunging to maul me was the same species as the one I’d put down just before—
‘Which means... these ones have family bonds, like that [Pack Mother].’
Hostility filled the eyes of the ones rushing me.
Unlike other monsters that converged to hunt,
these were clearly coming
to avenge a kin.
But—
slash—!
[Advanced Short-Blade Mastery]
The kitchen knives in both my hands buried into the torso of the one charging head-on—
[Assistant Chef]
shick-shick-shick-shick-shick!
the poison-coated blades flying through the air behind me, trailing my movement, five apiece,
speared into the bodies of the two coming at me from the flanks.
The blades didn’t just stick; they punched through flesh and out the other side.
Between them, torrents of blood poured.
[You gain Experience.]
A monster I’d already killed once.
Even if I can’t stack dish-buffs right now,
something I’ve ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) already faced, I could finish with the power of [Field Cookery].
The problem was—
‘Wolves... hunt very cleverly.’
I felt it the moment I cut down the ones coming head-on.
The fact that they were first to charge me
meant they belonged to the same pack as the monster I’d killed—
and that they likely had the intellect to feel anger at a comrade’s death.
For monsters like that
to rush in without a thought, head-on...?
‘No way.’
This wasn’t
a lucky break where I’d eliminated the enemy.
‘It’s rather... a crisis!’
As I swung the knife-laden hands to trim the monster’s flesh—
at that exact same timing,
from the direction I was running, a massive shape that had hidden itself along a branch
dropped with brutal force straight at my head.
Three monsters appeared head-on.
Ten [Assistant Chef] blades were buried in two of them,
and the two kitchen knives in my hands as well
had stabbed in and were still stuck inside.
In the meantime, a very short opening had formed.
A monster pounced to bite my skull, aiming for that split-second gap!
‘So long as they can kill me, they’ll sacrifice a few more, huh?’
A strategy willing to accept even greater loss for vengeance.
It was so vicious I could only be appalled.
‘Yanking the knives free and swinging... would be too slow.’
Right now I didn’t even have the armor that had always guarded me so stoutly.
A plan meticulous enough to raise goosebumps.
A sharpness uncharacteristic of mere beasts.
They must have thought
they’d succeeded in cornering their prey.
But I—
didn’t bother to yank out the knives buried in the monster.
“Too bad, but......”
I let go of the two kitchen knives without hesitation—
thwack!
“You misread the prey’s full kit.”
—and thrust out my hands
to seize the monster’s throat.
-grrk!?
As if it hadn’t imagined it could be grabbed like this,
the monster’s eyes flashed with alarm.
‘You think the guy who cleared that wall dies in a dump like this?’
No chance.
......Well.
It’s obvious, but—
ordinarily, no matter how high your stats are,
a monster that times its lunge to my opening perfectly—
someone not even in a combat class grabbing such a thing?
Not a chance.
The reason this was possible—
was a single thing.
[Field Cookery]
Because even the act of grabbing a monster bare-handed,
right now, was being judged a cooking act.
Of course,
with no knife in hand, [Processing] couldn’t happen,
so the reason this act was judged cooking was something else.
“Elemental Cuisine.”
[Elemental Cuisine]
Back then—
when I saw the memories of the [Chef of Dasmur]—
he fought alongside his god in his final battle.
And in that fight...
the [Chef of Dasmur], though a pure chef unlike me,
swept the field with tremendous exploits.
Right.
More than worthy of emulation—
‘and perfect to imitate.’
That kind of performance.
[Trait — ‘Elemental Cuisine’ activates.]
[You can process an ingredient and convert it into a specific element.]
From the hand that had managed to seize it,
I felt mana drawn out of my body.
—grrk......!
Sensing my mana attempting to interfere with it,
the monster resisted my act and tried to push that mana out—
‘Pathetic.’
I’m only non-combat by class.
As a chef, I’m as confident in my ability as anyone.
crackle......zzzt......
The neck I was gripping—
turned into an element that was very familiar to me.
[Cooking is complete!]
[Grisvelk ‘Lightning’]
[An elemental dish made by using the monster Grisvelk, which hunts in family units, as the ingredient.]
It became [Lightning].
I’d cooked it myself before,
and I’d seen it most often nearby—
‘Sergeant Lee Minjae’s lightning.’
thud.
As the monster’s neck turned to lightning and settled into my hand,
the wolf’s head and body parted, the neck gone, and thumped to the floor.
The cut surface was unbelievably smooth,
and through it—
FWOOSH......!
an immense amount of blood began to gush like a waterfall.
The blood flowing from the fallen monsters soaked the white snow and pooled,
then, as if it had a will of its own,
it began to run toward my shadow.
‘With this, it’s over...’
—or so I thought for a moment.
Then, a sensation brushed my mind.
‘No way.’
No way it would end like this.
Following that strange intuition—
‘Below!’
I hurled the [Lightning] dish in my hand
straight at the ground under my feet.
—yipe!!!
While other monsters were attacking,
one had dug into the earth with tremendous speed and settled under my legs.
Its scream rang out.
“Huff... huff!”
A tightly coordinated assault by five monsters.
I thought I was dead—
but I survived it somehow.
‘So this is... combat via [Elemental Cuisine].’
Unlike ordinary cooking,
[Elemental Cuisine] is a technique of very high difficulty for me.
The reason I could even use that elemental cuisine in combat
was thanks to [Field Cookery].
‘“On the battlefield, proficiency for cooking acts rises”—that line...’
Because proficiency rose, I could handle Elemental Cuisine more naturally.
And because the hand I swung to use that Elemental Cuisine was for that purpose,
the act of grabbing the monster’s neck could be judged a [cooking act].
“Kh—huff....”
I barely pulled through,
but pushing myself too hard in a short burst with an injured body left my breath ragged.
Forcing my breath to steady somehow,
I focused on the presences around me.
‘There are many monsters, but they’ve started to be wary of me.’
There were still plenty crowding around,
but once the prey that looked wounded and weak took down another pack,
the monsters that had been converging began to watch instead of leaping in rashly.
‘A relief for the moment, but—’
this situation
won’t last long.
‘If I have a few more fights like that... with my current stamina, I won’t hold.’
They were only wary of me for now.
If they wanted, they could just bleed out my stamina and then take their time hunting.
Time was on their side.
“Ha ha—damn it.”
Being treated as a one-meal snack for beasts gathered in the dark—
in my pathetic situation,
a bit of self-loathing welled up.
‘If it were Gwangil here instead of me?’
Injuries or whatever—
he wouldn’t even have to suffer like I am. Two or three punches would have been plenty.
The monsters drawn by that strength would have fled in reverse.
No—no need to even go all the way to Gwangil.
If it were our unit’s squad-leader-grade soldiers,
without any help from gear,
even in worse shape than me,
they’d have brushed aside monsters at this level with ease.
What would have been child’s play for them—
for me,
only after throwing every tool I had and going through hell
could I barely scrape an imitation.
“Yeah. Shin Youngjun, you bastard... don’t kid yourself.”
Only now, stripped of the enhancement effect of [Absolute Palate],
do I feel it properly.
‘My specialty is not combat.’
My job is chef.
That’s a production class, not a combat class.
“Counting the first one, and not counting the one that got lightning. That’s five total!”
And, of course—
“Still not enough!?”
Combat—
—this blood...
—ahh, I can finally live...
—is the work
that combat classes
are supposed to do.
