Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou Zero - Volume 2 - Chapter SS2

Girl Power!

This happened around two weeks after Miledi and the others started living on the Melusine Pirate Crew’s ship island. By that point in time, the three Liberators had become good friends with the pirates.

Oscar stood within one of the ships’ kitchens, an apron tied around his waist. He’d been feeling a little peckish, so he’d gone down to make himself a small snack. As he was about to start cooking, Meiru and Miledi walked in with pale-faced Chris and Naiz behind them.

“What’re you guys all doing here?”

“O-kun, I’ll be borrowing this side of the kitchen. This is a fight I can’t afford to lose.”

“Huh?”

“Oh my, Miledi-chan. Do you truly believe yourself capable of besting your older sister?”

“What’s going on here?”

Miledi and Meiru exchanged glances, sparks flying from their eyes. Miledi was grinning fiercely, while Meiru wore her usual gentle smile. Chris walked over to Oscar and quickly whispered what was going on.

Apparently, Miledi and Meiru had been chatting and the topic of girl power had come up. One thing had led to another, and the two had started arguing about who had more girl power.

“I-I get it now. Though, I can’t tell if they get along or not... By the way, Chris. I get that you guys got dragged along as judges, but why do you all look so scared?”

“You’ll see soon enough...”

Oscar cocked his head in confusion, but he quickly realized why Chris and his men looked so grave.

“Let us begin with a cookie-baking contest!” Meiru proclaimed as she pulled a sack of flour out of the cupboard... and dumped its contents onto the countertop. She then threw a brick of butter into the flour, added some eggs, and poured handfuls of sugar over the entire mess. And after all that, she started stirring the concoction.

“Meru-nee, I’m pretty sure that’s not how you cook...”

“Whatever do you mean? I admit this is a bit difficult to mix, but I see nothing wrong with my cooking.”

Rather, she wasn’t really mixing it at all. 

“It’s this accursed butter’s fault!” Meiru muttered under her breath as she tried to force the ingredients together. In an attempt to melt the butter, she shot a fireball at her ingredients. And after a while, she realized she didn’t have enough water, and so summoned an entire waterfall to dump into the smoldering flour-butter-sugar mixture. Next, she added raw fish to her cookie batter. 

Why the hell is she putting FISH into her cookies!? The guys all thought simultaneously. Apparently, this was Meiru’s “secret ingredient” for her cookies. Since she was chopping up the fish herself instead of using preserved meat, the batter was getting drenched in blood on top of everything else. The ship’s kitchen was beginning to look like the ninth circle of hell.

“Th-This is so wrong...” Oscar muttered, terrified. It appeared Meiru’s cooking methods aligned more with her real personality than the facade she normally kept up. 

So this is why Chris and the others were so scared... It seemed Meiru’s opponent was just as horrified by her blasphemous baking as everyone else. Miledi watched with a stiff expression as Meiru created her abomination. Meiru’s cookie batter resembled a dying slime as she continued adding a plethora of absolutely unnecessary ingredients, giving it an even more ghastly appearance. 

Is she trying to summon a devil or something? Oscar thought to himself.

On the other hand, Miledi had made a perfectly normal batch of cookie dough, which made Meiru’s attempt at cooking look even more pitiful. Before long, Meiru’s cookies, if they could even be called that, were ready. The dark red biscuits looked like they’d crawled out of the depths of hell.

“Enjoy, my dear judges!” Meiru smiled gently as she said that. Normally, any man would have been overjoyed to receive handmade cookies from such a beautiful woman. However, in this case, everyone was trying to push each other forward. No one wanted to be the one to test those poisonous cookies.

“Hmph, cowards, the lot of you. Fine, I’ll eat them.”

“First mate!”

Chris stepped forward, cold sweat pouring down his forehead. At that moment, he looked positively heroic. First, he sampled one of Miledi’s cookies. While her cookies had come out a little misshapen, they seemed normal otherwise.

“Mmm. Yeah, these are good. A bit too sweet, but I’m sure the kids would love ‘em.”

Normally, this would be around when Miledi would start gloating. But she just gave Chris a quiet “Thank you.” She was too sad over what was about to happen to him to boast. Grinning confidently, Chris picked up one of Meiru’s cookies. Everyone held their breath as they watched him bring it to his mouth.

“Heh... Take care of everyone for me, guys,” Chris said as he slumped to the ground.

“First maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!” the other pirates screamed.

“Oh Chris, you sure love to exaggerate. Surely they couldn’t have been that delicious!”

“Like hell they were delicious! Look at him, Meru-nee! He’s foaming at the mouth! Don’t worry Chris, I’ll heal you! Hang on...! Wait, my healing magic’s not working!?”

In the end, Meiru was forced to use restoration magic to save Chris’ life. She seemed utterly confused as to why Chris had needed healing, and why her men were all cheering for his safe return. As the commotion died down, Oscar walked over and spoke to them.

“I baked some cookies too. Would you guys like to try them?”

“Oh, you too, O-kun? Let’s see how well yours turned out...” Miledi trailed off as she saw what Oscar’s cookies looked like. The other pirates also fell silent as they turned around and beheld his creation. Oscar had cut his cookies in animal shapes. There were cat cookies, bunny cookies, dog cookies, and even mouse cookies. Each and every one of them looked unbelievably cute.

“Oh, I made some fruit sauce to go with them, too. They’ll taste even better if you dip them in it.”

Everyone was stunned. Not only had Oscar made cute-looking cookies, but he’d even made a dipping sauce to vary up the taste a little. In fact, he’d also brewed some black tea that paired perfectly with the cookies. Miledi sucked in a huge breath and held it. A few seconds later she shouted, “So this is what girl power looks like!?”

The onlooking pirates and Naiz nodded simultaneously. Miledi and Meiru’s contest to see who had more girl power continued, but no matter which event they picked, the results didn’t change. For example, during the embroidery contest, Miledi was able to embroider a respectable design. While she was no expert, she’d been taught the basics during her nobility days, and she was no slouch with a needle. On the other hand, Meiru somehow managed to tangle the threads together into one super-thick cord and got the needle stuck into her cloth, eventually creating some Frankenstein monster pattern that didn’t look appealing by any stretch of the imagination. Clearly, Meiru had no skill with needle and thread. Incidentally, the strange monster was supposed to be a kitten, but no one could tell. Probably because it looked like it had tentacles. Right as their match was wrapping up, however, Oscar happened to pass by. He was carrying one of Miledi’s dresses. It was one that had been ripped up pretty bad during one of their previous fights, and Miledi had honestly been debating just tossing it. However, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do so and had thrown it into Oscar’s Treasure Trove instead. As a favor, he’d repaired it for her and had come by to return it.

“Umm... O-kun, is it just me or did you make it look even cuter than it was originally?”

Oscar had added flower patterns to the dress to hide the stitches his repairs had made. In order to keep the overall appearance from becoming unbalanced, he’d also added ribbons to the dress to make the flowers fit. And though the color of the dress was supposed to have faded a little, he’d somehow managed to make it vibrant again.

“Really? I just fixed it up since I was repairing my coat anyway. To be honest, it’s not very high-quality work. If you’d wanted to buy a new one after seeing this, I wouldn’t have minded, but I’m glad you like it.”

Oscar had been raised in an orphanage, so he was used to repairing torn clothing. Plus, he was dexterous by nature, so he’d had no problem learning how to mend clothes in a way that looked cute, or clean even the most stubborn of stains.

“Are you secretly a mother or something!?” Miledi took the dress from Oscar and sucked in a huge breath before screaming those words. Everyone around her nodded. 

Next up was a contest to see whose room was cleaner. Meiru had just shoved all of her things into a corner of her room, so while it was technically clean, it didn’t look very nice. Miledi, on the other hand, had kept her room tidy since she was mooching off of Meiru’s kindness. However, after two weeks of habitation, there were small patches of uncleanliness here and there, like stains or dust piles. Upon seeing Miledi’s room, he’d cleaned it until it was spotless with all the speed of a consummate professional. His orphan upbringing had equipped him with all the skills necessary to manage a household. On top of that, he was naturally skilled with his hands and serious in everything he did, so it made sense that his standards for cooking, cleaning, and sewing were so high.

In the end, the rankings for girl power were as follows:

Meiru: Too crude, no girl power to speak of.

Miledi: average in all fields, and thus average girl power.

Oscar: Possesses so much girl power he may as well be a mom.

“And so, Oscar wins the girl power contest! Out of all of us, he’s the most mom-like!”

The Melusine Pirates cheered Chris’ proclamation.

“I don’t understand,” Oscar, Miledi, and Meiru muttered simultaneously.