"That I will have to see to believe. Chef, could you give us a bit of space to work? I know you are busy with the preparations for the victory feast, but even one oven and counter would be enough for us to see if Sect Master Cain can actually do what he says.
We all know that he can fight, but learning an advanced trade skill in an instant is a technique that even I have never heard of." Elder Dragon Tooth requested.
"I saw that coming. There is already a counter for you to work at." The chef agreed.
"The way I use the skill isn't quite what you might expect. Though, since you have seen both me and my disciples fight, it might not be much of a shock to you." Cain explained, then made a Puppet Clone of the chef when they reached their station.
He frowned for a second, and with a flip of his hand, the Puppet changed forms, becoming Misha in a sundress and apron, smiling happily at him.
"There, much better. What will we be making first?" Cain asked.
"It hurts the brain less if you try not to think about what you have seen him do," Penny informed the Shadowed Blade Sect Elders, including the chef, who had just seen the clone of herself transform into an entirely new person, who looked a lot like a traditional farm wife.
"Alright, so you use the skill by copying the one who has it, and then you learn it from them. That is unique but not unheard of. We have a few training aids that create images or magical golems to demonstrate things for us." Elder Dragon Tooth noted, writing it down in a notepad she brought out of her storage ring.
"Can chef be a path to Divinity? I see great potential in this skill." Luna asked.
"I don't think so. It might be possible, but I have never heard of someone taking this skill that high, much less being able to base their own advancement around a single skill like that." The chef replied sadly.
"That's too bad. I would much rather cook and eat all day than do other stuff." Luna told her.
The Chef patted her head. "I totally understand little one. I was the same way, and once I reached Immortality, I gave up on the constant search for power and focused on life skills to make my life a bit more comfortable every day. I don't think that your Sect Master will let you slide like that, though, your Sect is much smaller, and there aren't tens of thousands of other candidates with more potential than you who might accomplish what you gave up on."
Luna sighed. "To make it worse, he's not just my Sect Master. He's also my Dad. He never lets me slide."
The rest of the Disciples gave her an incredulous look at that. Cain let Luna get away with anything she wanted, as long as it wasn't too dangerous. Even Penny was more strict with her than he was.
The Puppet had started on a dish while they were talking, assembling potatoes, ground meat, and some vegetables from the supplied ingredients and beginning to chop everything up for her dish.
It wasn't actually Misha. Cain had only made it look like her, so he wondered what had come into the puppet's mind to cause it to take initiative. They were intelligent beings and autonomous, but usually, they would wait for directions before beginning dinner.
Perhaps it was because of the increase in his own power level since the Puppets mimicked his level? That might be it, giving them more initiative. Hopefully, it didn't harm their personality.
Everyone watched as she used the advanced techniques of the Head Chef and combined the vegetables into a thick gravy while the potatoes cooked. She mashed them with a swirl of energy and began to dish the meal onto small plates. While the meat was cooked in the oven, surrounded by a swirl of energy.
She pulled the dish from the oven with a bit of wind magic and set it on the counter to slice.
Meatloaf and mashed potatoes were served exactly the way that the cafe in the Transfer Village made it.
"Thank you. Now that is a truly nostalgic dish. No matter how many times I have it, I never get sick of meatloaf and mashed potatoes." Cain congratulated her, giving the puppet a side-armed hug that made her blush and hide her face in embarrassment.
The Shadowed Blade Elders began to laugh, looking at the Chef, who was giving the puppet a confused look.
"It's you, exactly you, but without the time to get used to the attention. I remember the first day you were in the kitchen, and the old Kitchen Elder gave you a hug after you made a mistake. You did exactly the same thing." Elder Dragon Tooth reminded her, making the Head Chef blush a little at the memory.
"How intriguing. You made it look and act like me, then changed the appearance while keeping the personality intact. These puppets of yours could be very useful training tools." The Head Chef informed Cain.
"They are a combination of quite a few different skills combined. Young Luna is learning the basics of the technique, but she is on a different path, so she needs an actual puppet as the base and can't just change the appearance the way I can. Instead, she chose to focus on combat skills and grow her own personal combat abilities as a Princess of War." Cain explained.
"Wait until the next battle. I think I have the technique down now. I will be able to share the benefit of my greatness with the whole Sect." Luna told them proudly.
Most of the crowd took it as a joke, but the other Disciples knew about the System and the skills Luna was expecting to get. With all the levels that they gained from this last battle and the quest completions, she should have enough points to finish the entire Class Skill tree in one go.
It was a totally broken life mechanic, just catapulting them through decades of training in an instant by choosing the Skill from their Skill Trees, but none of them would choose to go back to the traditional way now that they had sampled life with a Class.
Luna was quiet for a few moments as she picked every skill in the tree, finally reaching the last option and getting the Crown that had been her entire reason for picking this class in the first place. She barely managed to avoid putting it on the instant that she obtained the skill, but now that she had it, she was much happier.
[Crown of The War Princess] Grants the Princess and her Allies (10x Level) percent added damage.
Even her dad couldn't do something that cool. Or maybe he could, now that she could. That was totally cheating. But she had her crown, and that was all that mattered.
The kitchen was organized chaos, with assistants running in every direction as they prepared to turn out a victory feast suitable for the Sect and their anticipated guests. The Shadowed Blade intimidated a lot of Sects, so the numbers would be limited, but they were expecting a large number of Immortals to come here to slake their curiosity, both about the Shadowed Blade Sect's rumored cooking skills and the Sect Master with the damaged core who could solo an entire Sect on his own.
That wasn't something that you saw every day, and it certainly wasn't something that would encourage you to insult him in the future, so every Sect who was on good enough terms with the Shadowed Blade would send at least one representative to the dinner.
A sharp whack drew everyone's attention back to the kitchen, where the Head Chef had hit someone with a wooden switch, sending them scurrying away and laughing. Cain's puppet was blushing furiously while the Head Chef guarded her like a mother hen, and the Elders realized what the problem was.
The Disciples had learned that the puppet had fun reactions to being teased, but the Head Chef recognized them as her own youthful reactions, so she was guarding the Puppet to prevent the Kitchen Duty disciples from acting out.
"Should I send her away? Or I can make some more who are harder to intimidate." Cain asked the Head Chef.
"We have plenty of staff, but what would you replace her with that our Disciples couldn't intimidate?" She asked, intrigued.
"I was thinking of Succubi. You can't intimidate them, and flirting with them never ends the way that you expect it to." Cain suggested.
"VETO." Elder Dragon Tooth called out.
"We have had an incident with a Succubus loose in the Sect before, and I'm not dealing with that again." She clarified.
"Oh, what a week that was. Hundreds of exhausted and half-dead Disciples, all staunchly refusing to admit how they got in that condition like we couldn't recognize the signs of a demon attack. Finding the portal that had opened to the demon realm took forever, and it took even longer to find that damnable Succubus. They have an uncanny way of convincing people to hide them." The Elder from guard duty agreed.
"The only Succubus I know married a Vampire. They're such a cute couple." Luna told them innocently, forgetting for a moment that she wasn't supposed to mention things about the other world that involved nonhumans.
"A Vampire and a Succubus? Now that's a perfect pairing. They can feed off each other, and neither one will get tired, so they can sate themselves until they're bored." Elder Ling agreed, shocking the others around her.
"Thanks for that thought. I will be trying to scrub it from my memory for days." Elder Chen muttered.
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