My days had been filled with surprises since I began traveling with Sharon and the others. The biggest one was food. I had never tasted anything so delicious before. Maybe it had been the switch from the simple and vegetable-heavy meals at the abbey to fun and extravagant dishes, or maybe it was because I was eating with my friends now. Either way, I’d never expected food to make me so happy. When I became a Chef, I felt excited...but also a little weird.
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I woke up that morning, washed my face, got dressed, and ate breakfast in the dining room of the inn. Maybe because of the early hour, there weren’t many people there.
While I ate breakfast, I noticed that something felt different. “Why?” I looked around for anything unusual, but there was no one watching me or acting suspiciously or anything. There weren’t any unique dishes being served either. Nothing was amiss—I only noticed the appetizing aroma of the dining hall.
A trick of the mind? My instincts had never failed me before, though. I thought about it and decided to cook to calm myself down. Maybe I’d notice why I felt this way through doing something I enjoyed. Luckily, it was early enough that I had plenty of time until we would head out for the day. Sharon probably wasn’t even up yet. Tarte was training with Kent. She was doing more of that lately. I didn’t know if Sharon had noticed Tarte’s hard work, but I woke up early enough to see it.
After finishing my breakfast and returning my tray, I called out to the inn’s chef. “Can I borrow the kitchen for a while?”
“Hey, Lulu! Take the one at the end!”
“Thank you.”
He happily let me use the cooking station in the corner, which came equipped with a magic tool burner. It was still early enough that he didn’t mind me taking up part of the kitchen. If it had been a little later, the kitchen would have been too busy trying to feed the morning rush of guests.
I stood in front of the burner and took the stockpile of ingredients from my Bag. What should I cook? The first dish that came to mind was a vegetable stir-fry. I’d been taught how to make it by the chef at Sharon’s house, so I was pretty good at it. When I went to chop a head of cabbage on the cutting board, though, I felt like...my hands weren’t my own. It wasn’t that my hands were frozen or in pain. It was the opposite. It was easier to chop the cabbage into more-shapely strips. My hands moved smoothly and quickly, even without effort. Did I get better with the knife without realizing it? I decided that my improved skills and this morning’s strange sensation were somehow connected. But what should I do? I’d never experienced something like this before, so I didn’t know what to do—maybe nothing, but I didn’t like having this strange sensation every time I moved. It wasn’t so bad that it would affect me in combat, but it wasn’t fun either.
“My level hasn’t gone up. I didn’t do anything overnight...” Just in case, I used my Adventure Bracelet to check my stats. Much to my surprise, I had become a Chef. “What?” Until this morning, I had been a Novice. Now I was a Chef. I hadn’t done anything to cause this, or so I thought. I’d just gathered food and cooked dishes frequently. “Sharon said before...” I remembered how she’d told me that our first jobs were based on our actions. My frequent cooking must have made me a Chef. That’s why I felt off all morning. Knowing the cause of it was a relief. “Now that I’m a Chef, I should learn Skills and cook different dishes.”
In the corner of the kitchen, I quietly checked my Skills. What kinds of Skills do Chefs have? Can I attack? It turned out that there were Skills I’d never heard of before: Julienne, Dice, Mince, and more. “The head chef taught me these.”
When we were staying at Sharon’s house, her head chef had taught me a lot of techniques—everything from the basics of how to cut and prep food to how to find fresh vegetables. Seeing my knowledge appear on the screen as Skills made me happy. The Skill screen explained that cutting food with a Skill made it taste better. I need to learn all of these Skills. “But I have to gain levels first...” I realized. I perused the other Skills: Whip Up, Keep Warm, Food Drop...
Food Drop? That one caught my attention. It said that monsters could drop food when we defeated them. It didn’t say what kinds of food the monsters would drop, but if this Skill was going to help me collect new food, there was no way I could go without it. “Undiscovered foods... I’ve dreamed about this!”
That was it. I had to run out of the inn.
“It is my duty to fight monsters and raise my level to see what kinds of food they will drop.”
Sharon had said she was going to the Guild today, so I didn’t have much time. I could probably raise my level alone for thirty minutes, though.
I rushed to the nearby desert and found a Desert Scorpion—a seventy-centimeter-long scorpion that I could easily take out with magic.
“Dark Arrow!” One attack, and the scorpion turned to light. At the same time, a sound in my mind told me that my level had gone up. “First, learn Food Drop...” That was all I had to do to test out the Skill.
“Dark Arrow!” Another scorpion defeated...but there was no food to be found. Of course, I hadn’t expected the very first monster to drop something.
Another Dark Arrow struck a scorpion, but no drop. The third, fourth, and fifth Desert Scorpions all left nothing behind as well.
“Is this Skill really working...?” I was suspicious of my new Chef’s Skill, but I would never find new food if I gave up now.
I quickly defeated thirty-three monsters, but none of them dropped any food. “Hmm,” I grumbled. “I think I’m doing this right.” There shouldn’t be any other requirement for food to drop, like a specific weapon or item. “Food...” I sighed.
If I spent too long out here, the others would worry. I destroyed another scorpion while I was thinking about going back to the inn...and something orange flashed in the corner of my eye.
Is that...food? I ran up to where the scorpion had turned into light and found a small carrot lying there. “That’s not what I was hoping for.” Not at all. I’d been expecting them to drop food I couldn’t find anywhere else, like Phoenix meat or Dragon meat or deep-sea fish fillets. The carrot in my hand looked like a carrot I could just buy anywhere.
“Maybe rarer foods are rarer drops.” If I defeated hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of monsters, there was a chance that one of them would drop a slice of Phoenix meat. Anything was possible with Food Drop...I thought. One sad little carrot was all I had to show for defeating dozens of those monsters. Or do I need to be a better Chef to find better drops? I checked, and there was no way to level up the Food Drop Skill.
“First I need to be the best Chef ever,” I decided and continued gaining more levels.
Before long, I had gone over level 20. “I need cutting Skills like Julienne, but Keep Warm...?” Food stayed warm when I put it in my Bag, so using a Skill wasn’t necessary. If it ever became necessary, I could always learn it then.
“First, Julienne.” I learned the Skill and then took a cutting board, a knife, and a cabbage from my Bag. Taking deep breaths, I tried to concentrate. I’d never been more worried in my life. I curled my left fingers over the cabbage like the head chef had taught me. “Julienne!” My right hand began moving like it belonged to someone else, rhythmically chopping the cabbage at great speed.
“I could already chop that fast, but...” Without the Skill, I couldn’t have moved my hands like this—like a chef who’d trained a hundred years to precisely chop vegetables. Those were my hands now. “Wow,” I breathed. “I want to cut more vegetables.” As soon as I said so, I took out more heads of cabbage and used Julienne on them. In a few seconds, I had a pile of cabbage strips.
“It’s so much fun.” I julienned three, then four, then five heads of cabbage. “The head chef once told me to change the thickness of the cabbage strips depending on the dish. It was too hard for me then...” But maybe now I could do it. I took out the sixth head of cabbage and tried to imagine julienning it thinner than before. “Thinner... Thinner... Julienne!” The cabbage turned into strips in no time, but their thickness seemed similar.
“Hmm?” When I took a closer look, it looked very slightly thinner than before. “Can I make it thinner if I practice with my Skill more?”
Once I’d thought of it, I couldn’t stop myself from trying it. I took out all three hundred heads of cabbage I had stocked up and julienned them all—until I was pretty much buried in cabbage strips.
“Oh...” I took a strip from the last cabbage and held it up. It was so thin that I could see through it. “Wow...” I breathed. I ate the cabbage strip, and it felt as soft as silk as it melted in my mouth. Did I master Julienne? I thought but decided no. “If I can do this with a brand-new Skill, there has to be so much more to learn.” Just imagining what I could do once I truly mastered Julienne made me shake with anticipation. “I’ll work hard to—”
Then, I sensed a scorpion behind me and instinctively used Julienne as I turned—slicing the Desert Scorpion into strips. “I can use it on monsters too...?” Maybe monsters were considered food too. I couldn’t eat them because they turned to light after defeating them, but there was a chance...
“Chef... Full of possibilities.” I had a lot to look forward to in my life as a Chef. “Now, I should try defeating monsters with my Chef Skills— Oh, I’m out of time...” The sun was already high in the sky, when I’d thought it was still early morning. I was going to hold up the party if I didn’t go back to the inn quickly. Even though I wanted to keep gaining levels and using my Chef Skills, I hurried back to the inn.
That was how my adventure as a Chef began.