“There’s no way... I could ever be satisfied with that.”
Clenching his fists in rage,
his whole body shaking, he spoke.
Well, of course there’s no way he could be satisfied.
Right now he was getting treated like this, being ignored.
But this man, Howard Jin—
In the world before Doomsday, he was never the kind of person you could look down on, was he?
Even though he’d entered the world of cooking late in life,
through incredible talent and effort he’d stacked up achievements at a crazy pace,
beating out everyone who’d started cooking before him and earning recognition as a true elite chef.
“But what am I supposed to do about it!?”
As you’d expect from an elite,
he must have had tremendous pride in his Job.
“But this world turned into a world where power is everything!”
In this world where survival had become the absolute priority,
luxuries like pursuing “taste” meant nothing.
It was only natural that the Job of chef was being looked down on.
“Even so, I’ve done everything I could to stake out a position as a chef!”
Maybe it was everything that had piled up from how he’d been treated so far.
Howard burst out in bitterness.
“It’s a shitty world where it’s hard to get even a single ingredient and I have to beg like a dog for my life when an Awakener lower level than me points a weapon at me... but I still worked myself half to death and survived!”
“...”
“Thanks to that, at least in the kitchen I was able to get my authority recognized!”
Back when I first went to Central Branch,
when I said I wanted to stop by the kitchen,
Park Junggu had frowned.
That was probably because—
It was because the kitchen was recognized as the chef’s territory, wasn’t it?
At the thought of invading that chef’s territory,
he’d felt a bit of pressure.
Just like Howard said,
in this world where power was everything,
Howard had somehow managed to get his territory recognized.
The process had definitely not been smooth.
He must have gone through hell.
Maybe that was exactly why
he clung even more to that territory called the kitchen.
“...Yeah, but what if you step in for me, senior.”
The man who’d been venting his frustration suddenly seemed to realize something.
“Unlike at the start of the Expedition, there’s no one now who looks down on you. If they found out you were actually a chef, all their attitudes would change.”
His eyes flashed as he spoke like that.
“I told you. Because of certain circumstances, I can’t reveal my Job.”
“...”
Unfortunately,
I couldn’t meet that expectation.
That would wreck the very foundation of the “backstory” I’ve built here.
If things went wrong, it could threaten my life.
And...
“Even if I could reveal that I’m a chef, it’d be the same.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to get actively involved in that.”
Yeah.
This wasn’t a problem I was supposed to solve.
“...Then what the hell am I supposed to do!”
“Relax, would you.”
At his shout,
I walked over to one of the large tents
on the very edge of the Expedition’s formation.
“Still... I have seen the effort you’ve put in. As your senior, I’ll give you one piece of guidance.”
I pulled open the wide tent flap as I spoke.
“How should you do it, huh... Feels weird to be giving guidance for something like this too, honestly.”
“...?”
“The answer to that question is simple.”
The tent had been pitched to cover a big area,
but inside it was completely empty.
“You prove it.”
I stepped into the tent and sat down on the ground,
then shoved my hand into my own shadow.
[Shadow Veil]
CLACK.
THUNK...
“...This is.”
“I’ll provide you with the tools to prove it.”
Right.
Ever since I’d arrived in Gyeonggi Province,
there’d been one thing that kept pissing me off.
“I’ll give you some support, too.”
Here,
the treatment of the chef Job was absolute garbage.
Just like Howard had exploded in frustration,
I’ve... had my pride pretty badly wounded too, you know.
As a fellow chef,
this was a pretty infuriating situation.
Even so,
it wouldn’t be right for me, a chef from Gangwon Province, to step up and fix it.
Because this is Gyeonggi Province.
Right.
If we were going to fix this problem,
there was only one answer.
“You’re the one who has to raise the chef’s status.”
It was time to show these ignorant Gyeonggi people
what a chef is really worth.
*****
The next day.
“...Hoo!”
When someone let out a breath full of tension,
the people standing beside him snorted with awkward laughter.
“Hey, what’re you so nervous about? Those things weren’t as big a deal as we thought, you know.”
“It’s just... I’m always like this before a fight.”
Before entering the city where the enemy was lurking,
the Expedition had formed up and gathered in one place.
...We did push the morale up as high as we could, but still.
And the man who had been given command authority over this Expedition—
Jo Beomseok looked over the gathered Awakeners’ condition and thought,
There really is a limit.
He’d done his best to keep their morale at its peak,
but even so, the enemy’s numbers were considerable.
The tension running among the soldiers was significant.
Even among those who looked fine on the surface, plenty were probably anxious on the inside.
And.
Honestly, that wasn’t just other people’s problem.
...Same goes for me.
Jo Beomseok as well—
when he thought of the battle that would start soon, fear came first.
Unlike ordinary Expedition Awakeners,
people like Jo Beomseok knew it wasn’t going to be easy at all to fight those things.
If they went at it like this,
they’d probably lose a hundred times out of a hundred.
Youngjun... what on earth are you doing right now.
That was why
he’d been waiting for that “method” Shin Youngjun said he’d prepared...
Just then.
RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE...
“...?”
From far off,
a man approached, pulling something like a large cart.
“Huh, what the? Who’s that guy?”
“...Isn’t that the chef?”
The chef from Central Branch.
It was Howard.
*****
Not only had he worked in Central Branch for quite a long time,
whenever there was a meeting between the groups, it was always held at Central Branch,
and the one in charge of meals every single time was—
that man.
Because that man, Howard, had been in that role,
there weren’t many Awakeners in the Association who didn’t recognize his face.
And.
“Chef, what are you doing here?”
To the people who recognized his face,
a chef like him did not belong here on the verge of battle.
“I don’t know what you came here for, but go back. As soon as we’ve finished forming up we’re planning to charge, so you should be in the rear...”
“Why I came, huh...”
“Hm?”
“What kind of question is that?”
When the Awakener in charge of supervising the soldiers tried to stop him,
Howard answered like he’d been asked something obvious.
“What other reason would a chef have to come pulling a cart?”
“...?”
“Obviously,”
Howard replied with an air of Are you seriously asking me that?
FWIP!
He pulled off the cloth covering the cart.
On top of the cart—no one knew where he’d even gotten it from—
a mountain of food was stacked high.
“Food.”
A glorious spread of dishes revealed itself.
“Food, you say...”
As people stared in confusion at the suddenly appearing food,
So that “method” was...!
an old man watching that sight—
You’re telling me it was just food...!
Jo Beomseok pinched the bridge of his nose in despair.
*****
Just food, he says.
From the start,
among everyone in the Association, Jo Beomseok was the one who rated the potential of cooking the highest.
Looking at the various production-type Awakeners who had only recently started to stand out,
it was certain that chefs too had Jobs with a fair bit of potential.
But.
There’s no way it could possibly be enough to turn this situation around!
From the outset,
if it were, Howard wouldn’t still be stuck as just an ordinary Awakener.
Even if the chef Job really did have some enormous potential,
as far as he knew, Howard was at best somewhere in the high teens to low twenties in level.
There had to be a limit to what an Awakener at that level could do.
Damn it, what on earth is he thinking...
Jo Beomseok was dumbfounded,
but even so—
-...Should we try to stop him somehow?
-No, don’t.
When the other leaders, hesitant about whether to intervene, started to step forward,
he stretched out an arm and stopped them.
Just food.
To him, it was a method that made no sense at all.
And yet—
If it’s that young man, he might have thought of something more.
He figured Shin Youngjun must have had some kind of idea.
Of course—
Not “just food,” there must be something more on top of that...
If it was anything, it would be something other than food.
He’d never imagined that the method itself would be food.
He’d been sure there had to be something beyond the level of plain old food.
Thinking that, Jo Beomseok watched the scene a bit longer with a tense face.
“Food, you say. I mean, I can see it is food, but what is all this, exactly, Howard...!”
When the Awakener who’d gone out to stop him asked with an expression of utter disbelief,
Howard answered with a confident air.
“I am a non-combat Job, but I do hear all the rumors that are worth hearing.”
“...?”
“I heard that this Expedition is ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) a matter of life and death for everyone in Gyeonggi Province.”
Howard spoke in a voice full of mission, like some young, dedicated activist.
“If people are going out on an expedition like that, how could I just sit around and do nothing?”
“You... that’s what you were thinking.”
As people were getting a little moved,
Howard pointed to the food he’d brought.
“You all know that my cooking gives buffs, right?”
“Well, I do know that.”
“Of course it’s not some huge buff... but I thought this battle would be the kind where we have to pour out every last scrap of strength we have. So I rushed to make this because I wanted to fill people’s stomachs before the fight and add whatever little strength I could.”
At those words,
some people were still just bewildered—
but at the same time—
“...Gulp.”
“Holy crap, that looks insanely good...”
some others had their eyes glued to the dishes on the cart.
Since Doomsday,
people all over the country had found it incredibly difficult to have anything like a proper meal.
Especially after the brutal cold set in and restricted their movements,
you could count on one hand the people in Gyeonggi Province who’d experienced a decent meal.
“When I think about it, I almost wonder if I honed my cooking all this time just for this day. I put every bit of know-how I’ve built up into these... the finest dishes I can make.”
“...”
“Please, I’d like the Expedition members to eat this and draw strength from it.”
In the meantime,
Howard had been the chef who consistently provided reasonably edible meals even out of absolute garbage ingredients.
So much so that whenever they had to head to Central Branch for a meeting,
there were people who would forcibly join the dispatch just to get a taste of his cooking.
“...Well, when he says it like that, there’s no need to turn him down, is there?”
And now,
the food on top of the cart wasn’t made from weird ingredients like that.
It was made up of extremely tempting meat dishes.
“Y-yeah. And it’s not like he’s wrong, is he?”
“He did say eating his food gives buffs. Whether it’s a lot or a little, buffs are the more the merrier...”
“...Let’s just eat and go, yeah?”
Food that all but guaranteed deliciousness at a glance.
As a few people started to approach, eager to taste it—
“...Wait!”
a few others suddenly jumped in front of them
and blocked the way to the food.
“...?”
“Everyone, hold off on eating for a moment.”
They weren’t quite at leader level,
but they were elite Awakeners with fairly high positions in their respective branches.
“Howard... I never knew you were someone with such passionate ideas.”
“...Well, I guess you wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t think you had that kind of personality at all, but anyway.”
They glared at Howard with faces full of suspicion and said,
“We’re really grateful for your concern for the Expedition. But... can I ask you just one thing before we eat?”
“Ask away.”
Given Gyeonggi’s state, that was only natural.
Since winter had set in,
it had become hard to obtain proper ingredients in Gyeonggi.
In particular,
the Gyeonggi Association had completely lost any capacity to secure meat.
And yet—
“Where on earth did you get this much meat?”
“More than that... what kind of meat is this?”
Every dish he’d brought them
was meat.
“...Tsk.”
And at the sharp gaze of those Awakeners,
Howard clicked his tongue and said,
“Here I thought I’d almost pulled it off. Guess I failed.”
