“What business do you three have here?”
“What do you mean, what business?”
As Shin Youngjun revealed himself from within the forest,
the three from Northern Branch answered in confusion, flustered because they had no idea what was going on.
“Well... we heard someone who’s supposed to be in a hospital room is somewhere around here.”
“You sensed it...? Ah. This is a forest. I forgot about you, Jaeho.”
Shin Youngjun made a troubled expression.
“...So you weren’t the three he called as well?”
“Can’t you tell just by looking?”
“...Should I have just insisted nothing’s happening here?”
The ones who had arrived earlier.
Kim Jongdu tilted his head in puzzlement,
and Howard scratched his head like he’d noticed something was off.
“Hm... this wasn’t in the plan. Even if you tell us nothing’s going on and to go back, it’ll be hard for us to accept, right?”
“That’s true.”
Three people showing up out of nowhere.
Shin Youngjun looked at their faces and thought for a moment.
“...Well, does it matter?”
“Huh?”
Soon, he shrugged.
“If it were other people, maybe not, but if it’s you three... we’ve spent enough time together. I think it’ll be fine.”
“What do you mean...?”
“Explaining it is a pain anyway, so follow me. You two as well.”
After saying that,
Shin Youngjun turned around as if it were nothing and walked deeper into the forest.
“...Brother, Sister. What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know what it is, but it sounds like he has something to show us... we should follow.”
In the end.
The others moved after him without understanding a thing.
Walking into the forest, Gang Jaeho thought,
‘At this point, I don’t even feel suspicion anymore.’
When they first met, he had looked like such a suspicious man.
And now.
Even while that man was leading them into a deserted place.
The people walking behind him might have been puzzled,
but not one of them even entertained the slightest suspicion that the young man might harm them.
“...Just in case, Senior.”
While they headed silently toward the depths of the forest,
Howard, like he’d noticed something,
looked at his back and spoke cautiously.
“Are you trying to leave somewhere, Senior?”
“...Huh?”
At that,
the others walking behind tilted their heads.
‘Leave?’
Where could he possibly leave to from here?
They wondered if he’d said something completely out of nowhere....
“Oh.”
The only person who reacted differently to those words
was the person who’d been asked.
“You really are sharp. People kept saying you’re sharp. That’s impressive.”
“...What?”
While everyone was still startled by that answer,
Howard let out a sigh.
“Well, it’s ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) not that hard to notice. Even if you use your injuries as an excuse, still... you have that much influence, yet you shoved every important position onto other people and avoided getting involved in the Association’s work in a way that was weird.”
“Couldn’t it just be that he hates annoying positions?”
“It didn’t feel like that. More like... you looked like someone avoiding involvement in an organization you’d be leaving soon anyway.”
“Guess it showed a lot.”
When Shin Youngjun confirmed Howard’s words,
the others stared at Shin Youngjun with shocked eyes and spoke.
“Le-leaving... is it really true?”
“Well, that’s how it turned out.”
“What are you talking about? Where could you possibly go in Gyeonggi Province besides the Association... ah, do you mean Central Branch or Southern Branch? Those sides have a big gap in combat power, so....”
At that,
Shin Youngjun only gave a quiet snort of a smile.
“Anyway, if you’ve noticed that much, then I don’t need to explain it at length.”
Leaving the Northern Branch trio’s questions behind,
he looked at Kim Jongdu and Howard.
“Jongdu, and Junior. I called you two because I have a proposal.”
“A proposal?”
“Like I said, I’m planning to leave this place. And you two... want to come with me?”
At Shin Youngjun’s words, the two flinched.
“You’re not going to tell us where...?”
“For now, it’s not Gyeonggi Province. But I’ll make one thing clear: I don’t intend to harm you.”
“I-I know you don’t intend to! If you were that kind of person, you wouldn’t have saved me back then....”
Kim Jongdu was one of the three leaders of Eastern Branch.
At the question of whether he had any intention of leaving Gyeonggi Province, Jongdu fell into deep thought.
And soon....
“...I’ll go, even if I don’t know where.”
“Hm? Is it okay to choose that easily?”
“It wasn’t an easy decision. I received a lot of help from the people in the group. If I think about having to part with them... no matter how much you’re my benefactor who saved my life, normally I should refuse. But... I’m an Awakener with some years under my belt. I have a kind of intuition I built up from surviving until now.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, sinking into thought.
Then he made his decision and spoke.
“In Gyeonggi Province, we’ve already set up a lot of Walls. There probably isn’t much left for me to do here. On the other hand.”
“On the other hand?”
“I don’t know where you’re going... but if I follow you, I feel like there’ll be a lot of places my strength can be used. The place where my strength can be used more effectively... is at your side.”
“You’ve got good instincts. It’ll be exactly like that.”
Shin Youngjun smiled and nodded.
Then he looked at Howard.
“Jongdu says that. What about you? Junior.”
“...Jongdu aside, why are you trying to take me? My level is low compared to the other leaders.”
“You felt it too, didn’t you? That cooperation between chefs contains enormous potential.”
Shin Youngjun looked at Howard with serious eyes as he spoke.
“Our cooperation was short. Even so, we were able to see that level of effect. If we cooperate a little deeper... we’ll be able to create far more synergy.”
“...That’s true.”
“I’ll say it for certain. If you follow me, there will never be a case where someone looks down on you because your job is a chef. Rather, many people will respect you and follow you. There will even be those who fear your ability.”
“...”
At those words,
Howard hesitated for a moment....
“A mere chef being treated like that. It sounds like a dream.”
Then he shook his head.
“You said it too, Senior. I’m the chef of Gyeonggi Province.”
“...If it’s the food problem in Gyeonggi Province, I can solve that for you. Besides, you were looked down on a lot by people here, weren’t you? You said you struggled a lot just to get established.”
“That too, but....”
Looking a bit embarrassed, he scratched his head.
“When I first served a dish made from monster meat. There were people who trusted me and ate it even knowing it was monster meat.”
“...”
“Originally, opening a restaurant and getting established takes a brutal amount of work. Then once you get regulars, things gradually stabilize. Up to now, I’ve suffered a bit, and I’ve been looked down on too, but... those people are the regular customers who trust me the most.”
“You.”
“Those people... I think they’ll need me in Gyeonggi Province.”
A clear refusal.
But even though his proposal had been rejected,
Shin Youngjun let out a small snort.
“Well... that’s true.”
He smiled faintly, in a good mood.
“Then do whatever you want. But I did make the offer, got it? Later, don’t regret it and say you should’ve accepted.”
“That won’t happen, so don’t worry. But instead—well, not ‘instead,’ exactly....”
“Hm?”
He refused and it should’ve ended there,
but Howard wasn’t done.
“If you’re leaving, Senior, I have something to say to you too.”
“What is it? What are you getting at?”
“About the job called [Chef], I want you to think a little more, Senior.”
At that serious voice,
Shin Youngjun turned around and asked while looking at Howard’s face.
“What do you mean? Are you saying I’m thinking about chefs lightly?”
“No way. But I think there’s a part you’re missing.”
“...?”
“Me, you know. I didn’t perfectly understand your teachings... but I still put in a lot of effort to understand them.”
He reached into the pocket attached to his chest,
then pulled out a small notebook from there.
“After I wrote your teachings down in this notebook, I kept reading them. I still can’t understand them at all, but if you keep trying to understand, you start accepting things one by one.”
“That’s commendable.”
“But. No matter how much I thought about it, there was a part I just couldn’t understand.”
“...?”
In the past,
Shin Youngjun had longed to encounter another chef besides himself.
The reason was simple.
Unlike other jobs, where people built up their skill through exchanges with similar job groups,
chefs couldn’t do information exchanges with similar job groups.
Because,
through those exchanges, others....
“Why are all buffs from cooking temporary?”
“...Huh?”
They could realize things they never would’ve realized on their own,
and grow step by step.
“What do you mean....”
“Think about it. Not cooking as an Awakener, but the cooking we used to know. Originally, cooking affected long-term health far more than short-term effects.”
With ordinary cooking,
the effects from that cooking tended to show up much later.
“You don’t suddenly become healthy in one day just because you start eating healthy. And it’s rare to collapse the next day just because you ate something bad. The essence of cooking we knew wasn’t temporary change, but long-term change.”
It was common that people who tried a healthy diet long-term would only barely start to feel the effects.
Likewise, even if someone had bad eating habits,
the side effects only showed up after they’d kept those bad habits for a long time.
And those side effects also lasted a very long time.
“But [Cooking] was the opposite. Temporary effects were everything, and then the effects disappear like they were washed away after a short time? I’ve felt it since I first Awakened. Isn’t that a little strange?”
“...”
“In the first place, if you eat monster meat, that meat becomes our blood and flesh. No matter how much you refine it, monster meat that held special power melts into our bodies. Then rather than a temporary buff....”
“It would be more natural for it to affect permanent growth...?”
“Right.”
As Howard’s explanation continued,
Shin Youngjun’s expression twisted strangely.
“This is my guess, Senior. Even after being cooked, the monster meat we’ve eaten until now became our blood and flesh.”
“...”
“In my case, I haven’t taken it long enough for the effect to show properly yet, but....”
Howard placed a hand on his chest.
“Maybe the powers just haven’t fully seeped in yet. Maybe they’ve melted into somewhere inside our bodies.”
“...”
“The potential of chefs... might be opened far wider than what we knew.”
And at that moment.
“Ah....”
Shin Youngjun let out a blank sound.
Then his gaze lifted slightly upward.
And his eyes looked into empty space.
It was a somewhat abrupt action, but
Awakeners could tell what it meant.
‘A system message.’
A system window appearing in the air.
When Awakeners looked at its contents, they made expressions like that.
And soon.
Shin Youngjun murmured in a small voice.
“I obtained a clue to a higher realm....”
Only then could the people gathered here realize it.
Shin Youngjun.
That man whose identity they’d never been able to figure out from the moment he first appeared.
That he—
“Good lord....”
Could even make a face like that, looking genuinely shocked.
