The first time I saw that Trait, I thought:
‘It keeps ingredients in their best possible state.’
To ordinary people.
That would probably just sound like a vaguely decent ability and nothing more.
But.
For me, it was nothing like that.
‘Because to me, everything is basically just an ingredient.’
The only reason I don’t actually do it is because I find it repulsive.
If I wanted, I could turn anything into food.
Even something as “non-ingredient” as stone.
Even things that, physically speaking, you’d normally call impossible to eat, like elements themselves.
......Even my fellow humans.
Even myself.
And.
‘Even my own squad members.’
If I only made up my mind.
I could cook any of them as much as I wanted.
‘Because all of it is basically just ingredients to me.’
The moment that ability fell into my hands.
Every ingredient under my management.
Me and my squad members.
All of us would be “maintained in perfect condition.”
We wouldn’t be affected by things like decay over time.
And even if external factors intervened, the damage to that state would slow down.
‘Which would mean complete immunity to aging and disease...... and very high resistance against enemy attacks, too.’
Depending on who used it.
It could become a broken, beyond-imagination kind of cheat Skill.
The problem was.
‘That Trait doesn’t belong to me.’
Unfortunately.
There is no such thing as a way to steal someone else’s Trait.
‘......No.’
Strictly speaking.
There is one way.
“......Senior?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you suddenly looking at me like that? You’re creeping me out.”
“......Nothing. Just thinking.”
No matter what.
I couldn’t exactly cook and eat this guy.
So what I thought of went in a different direction.
First, I’d teach him how to cook.
Get him to reach a realization similar to mine.
And then.
Have him use that ability to its fullest to survive here, and after that......
‘Recruit him into our Legion.’
Roughly that sort of plan.
In other words.
To do that—
“Here. Try cooking with this.”
“......Hey, Senior, this is.”
The realization I’d gained.
That.
“It’s a griddle plate.”
I needed to help him reach it too.
“Yeah. It’s a griddle.”
“And you’re giving me this because......?”
“I told you, didn’t I? Try cooking with it.”
“......Are you out of your mind?”
Howard looked at me like I was some crazy bastard.
But.
From my perspective, it was just laughable.
“You’re still shackled to the cooking you used to know.”
“.......”
“From now on, you’ll have to change that thinking a bit. Especially when it comes to ingredients.”
I reached out and touched the edge of the griddle plate he hadn’t taken yet.
Then I grabbed that end and activated my Skill.
[Elemental Cuisine]
The gray iron plate turned into liquid.
And poured neatly into the cup I’d brought.
“......The hell is that?”
“I just [cooked] the griddle.”
I set the liquid off to one side.
Then crossed my arms and said:
“You know as well as I do: in this world, getting your hands on the ingredients you used to use isn’t easy. Maybe back at the start of the apocalypse it was still doable, but the longer time passes, the harder it’s going to get.”
“.......”
“Now that the world’s ended up like this, we chefs have to be able to treat everything as an ingredient. Beyond ordinary ingredients—griddle plates, dirt, stone, monster corpses, obviously—and even shit or piss if we have to. And if it came to it......”
At the last part.
Howard’s expression went rigid.
“Even other humans.”
“......So that’s the know-how you reached that realm with, Senior.”
“Yeah.”
“Have you, uh......”
He hesitated a little.
Then asked in a small voice:
“Ever cooked or eaten a human......?”
“.......”
I could roughly guess what he was thinking when he asked.
“I’ve never eaten one.”
“Right. You’ve never eaten one...... you’ve never...... yeah, I get it.”
I couldn’t lie to him here.
I understood why he found it revolting.
But if I was going to pass this realization on, I needed to tell the truth.
“I’m not telling you to cook humans. I just want you to understand that you could.”
“R-Right.”
“If you can just get that through your head, you can become a real [Chef]. You’ll be able to draw out your true power as an Awakener.”
At my words.
Howard nodded stiffly.
Then closed his eyes.
“Everything is an ingredient...... everything......”
Eyes shut.
Murmuring to himself like he was brainwashing himself, trying to somehow accept the realization I was handing him.
If he was like me.
The moment he firmly grasped that realization.
“Griddles, stones, shit and piss, even humans...... ingredients......”
His limits on what counted as an ingredient would vanish as well.
And the utility of his management-type Traits would multiply without end......
“Guhh......!”
“!?”
After repeating it to himself for quite a while.
Howard suddenly started breathing roughly.
“BWAAARGH......!”
He bolted for the kitchen sink—
And started throwing up everything in his stomach.
“Hey, you okay!?”
“Urgh...... guh.”
Eyes a little teary.
After he finished emptying his stomach.
“Hey, Senior......”
“Yeah?”
“I appreciate you sharing such a precious realization with me. But......”
Sweat cold on his forehead, he said:
“I-I just...... can’t.”
“What do you mean, can’t? It’s not even that hard.”
All it took.
Was changing his mindset the way I’d told him.
I honestly couldn’t understand how that was something he couldn’t do.
“Eating metal. That’s not eating. That’s not food.”
“No, I mean, you don’t have to eat it......”
“Fine, let’s say I accept that. But......”
He gagged—
Then forced himself to keep talking.
“Seeing another human as an ingredient.”
He covered his mouth with a trembling hand.
“And you want me to genuinely accept that realization...... that’s impossible.”
“.......”
His words left me speechless.
As I just stood there, stunned—
Maybe because he was worked up from what had just happened.
He kept talking without even realizing it himself.
“If—if there was a person who could do that. I’m certain their mind would already be broken past the point of sanity.”
He didn’t seem to be aiming those words at anyone in particular.
But when I heard them—
‘.......’
I had no answer.
****
“......I’m sorry, after you went out of your way to teach me all that, but I really think it’s impossible for me, Senior.”
“......Is that so.”
“Cooking is ultimately something that goes into people’s mouths. And you’re telling me to treat ingredients I can’t even bring myself to eat as the ingredients for dishes that’ll go into my guests’ mouths. I just can’t. I tried to accept that idea somehow...... but it’s too hard.”
“Mm. Well. That can happen.”
In the end.
My plan to give this guy the same level of culinary realization I had ended in failure.
‘I thought it’d be easy.’
Apparently, reaching that kind of realization.
Was harder than I’d thought.
No—maybe.
It was especially hard because it was this guy.
That thought crossed my mind too.
‘His sense of duty as a chef is rock solid.’
To him, any ingredient that goes into a customer’s mouth has to be maintained in perfect condition.
And he’s the sort of man who believes if he can’t bring himself to eat something, he has no right to recommend it to others either.
‘That’s probably why he got that Trait.’
A Trait that keeps ingredients in perfect condition.
There was a part of that Trait that matched his heart as a chef.
“It can’t be helped. We’ll drop that part, then.”
It was a shame, but it couldn’t be helped.
Even if I couldn’t apply that Trait to other people the way I’d imagined.
There were still definitely ways to make use of his ability.
“Next, let’s try cooking monster meat.”
“Mm, monster meat, huh.”
“At least that much is fine, right? I showed you myself that I eat it, and you ate it too, didn’t you? And nothing bad happened.”
“That’s true.”
“Just think of [Chef]s in games. Who’s the one cooking dishes from monster meat in games? It’s always the [Chef] class, right? Being able to do that is something that should be completely natural for [Chef]s.”
“That...... that does make sense.”
Once I put it like that.
Unlike when I’d told him to see everything as ingredients—
He seemed barely able to accept the idea of working with monster meat.
‘Right. Even if I can’t exploit that Trait the way I wanted...... if he can be the one to cook monster dishes in my place, since I can’t act openly as a chef here, that’s not bad at all.’
Really, even that much was a decent enough result.
Thinking that—
I watched him as he grilled monster meat.
And then.
– DING.
“......?”
The moment the dish was finished.
[You have achieved a Hidden Achievement!]
[Achievement – Teaching]
A status window popped up in front of me.
[You have given proper instruction to a chef whose growth was stalled by a wall and helped them move on to the next stage.]
[This is the first time among humanity’s chefs that anyone has achieved this by awakening someone to true cooking.]
[A reward will be given for the Achievement.]
[Trait – Great Teacher]
[You can now teach chefs below your level far more efficiently.]
[If there is a disciple who has gained realization through your education, you may “degrade” one Trait or Skill among those they possess and use it yourself.]
“......Huh?”
****
And so.
After I stayed at Central Branch.
I spent most of the next few days trading lessons back and forth with Howard.
However.
There were blocks of time when we couldn’t teach each other.
Those were—
“We’ll stop here for today. Time for me to cook, Senior.”
“Ah, it’s that late already?”
Meal times.
I wasn’t the chef here.
I didn’t have to cook.
But Howard had the duty of feeding the people here.
While he cooked, and people ate.
I would sit by the entrance that connected the kitchen and the dining hall—
And watch the people who came to this dining hall.
It wasn’t because I was bored.
Or had nothing else to do.
‘I did set up another method, but...... it’d still be better if I could identify that traitor myself.’
The people who came to eat.
I glanced at them, one by one.
[Ingredient Identification (Enhanced)]
[Ma Seokhyeon]
[Job: Lower Tanner]
I was activating my Trait.
Even though I’d been asked to find the traitor.
Realistically speaking, it was hard for me to actively hunt them down myself right now.
So I thought.
Maybe there’d be someone whose Job was blatantly crime-related.
Or someone whose race was different, like those “vampires.”
Someone like that might show up~ was the idea, but—
‘......Of course it’s not going to be that easy.’
Most people were just ordinary [humans] with ordinary jobs.
Looked like the plan to easily pick the traitor out had failed.
Still, just in case.
I kept watching people.
And then—
Ssshh......
“You.”
A human-shaped shadow fell over my head.
I looked up.
“I heard some from Northern Branch were staying a few more days...... but I didn’t realize that meant Section Leader Seo’s son.”
Standing there.
Was the man currently serving as acting leader of Central Branch.
[Awakener: Ha Yunseong]
[Intermediate Gladiator Lv.21]
Yunseong.
“By the way, what exactly are you doing here?”
“Ah, nothing much. Just watching, I guess......”
“Watching?”
It was something I’d said without thinking.
Yunseong’s expression tightened, like he felt a bit offended.
“I do know your parents, but putting that aside for a moment.”
“......?”
“This is where our precious food supplies are handed out. It’s not some place you can just ‘watch’ for fun.”
“Ah......”
“I don’t know whose permission you got to be here, but if you’ve finished eating, I’d prefer if you left.”
......Oh.
That reaction honestly threw me a bit.
‘Come to think of it, I’ve never really talked to this guy.’
All I’d heard was that he knew my parents.
We hadn’t talked at all since then.
So naturally.
I didn’t really know what kind of personality he had either.
Maybe he was just a bit high-strung.
Guess me sitting around in the dining hall had been bothering him.
I was about to quietly withdraw, but—
“Whose permission, you ask.”
A voice came from deeper inside the kitchen.
“I gave it.”
“......You did?”
The man who’d been busy preparing the next menu.
Howard.
