Chapter Nine: Resolution via Violence
The guy who had been about to ring the victory gong stopped mid-stroke, looked at the judges, and then did a double take. The gathered crowd of diners did one better. They immediately started shouting and screaming at the judges.
“What are you talking about?!”
“You’ve been paid off, clearly! Traitors!”
“That’s right! Traitors!” As the tension rose, they started to throw things at the judges. The scene started slipping toward what looked like a riot.
The boy was smiling at me though. He looked happy that I’d defeated his hated enemy.
“Hey! Explain this!” Seya shouted, casting a look filled with vitriol at the rotund one and the other judges.
“We conducted a fair evaluation after the removal of your addicting toxin. I’ve had numerous suspicions about your cooking for a while now, Master Seya. You explained it as magical cooking, combined with the power of an accessory you modified yourself, but still—” the noble said and was then cut off.
“I’m not going to feed you anymore! What do you think that means for your strength? The strength that my food has been giving you!” Seya demanded. Just as I’d suspected, he’d been doping the people using means similar to the mirror power-up method. In regard to the fact that some of his test subjects seemed to have been dying . . . he didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. This was a world with drugs that had similar doping effects, but in this case the enhancement he was performing definitely didn’t seem to be healthy.
“You seem to be making one big mistake, Master Seya,” the noble replied. His expression was one of victory, not concern or defeat. “We are not on your side. We are on the side of delicious cooking!” He just came right out with it. I stood there, shaking my head. He was clearly just ignoring everything that had happened between them so far, but he had acted as the ally of delicious cooking, I would give him that much. Even if Seya never cooked for him again, we now had a chance to break down that cooking method for ourselves.
“Liars! How can that disgusting-looking food possibly beat ours?!” Trash III pointed at one of my plates of food. “They used some cunning trickery to get in Master Seya’s way, that’s for sure!” I was amazed that they could still try to push that narrative, after everything they had done. The rules did allow us to bring our own food in, but that was no reason for what they gave us to begin with, rotten food. In fact, even if people did bring in their own dishes, they could probably force them to lose by indicating a genre that didn’t allow the use of those dishes. Those kinds of tricks wouldn’t work on me, of course.
“Regardless of how we got here, it looks like I’m the winner, right?” I said.
“Shut up! A trickster like you could never defeat my cooking! This battle doesn’t count!” Seya retorted.
“If I’d lost, do you think that would have worked if I’d said it?” I asked him. Of course, it wouldn’t, and it wasn’t going to work now.
“I said shut up! My cooking could never be defeated by the likes of you!” he raged.
“You need to go back to the basics and learn cooking all over again,” I said. All he was making was instant dishes. That was it. If you could call that cooking, then you could call yourself a chef just by boiling some water. Then there was the fact he had been mixing that addictive toxin into his food.
“You dare to lecture me? I can’t take any more of this! Everyone! Chase them out of town!” Seya shouted. So this was what things came down to. He didn’t like the way things were going, so he turned to the mob for aid. I barely had the words. The assembled diners were definitely glaring at us, armed with hoes, swords, and various other weapons. It looked like they might attack at any moment.
“The loser gives everything over to the winner, no complaints! Those are the words you have always used against your opponents, Master Seya!” the rotund noble said.
“You can shut up too! Traitor!” Seya fired back. Then the kid jumped up on a table and shouted.
“Everyone! Calm down! It’s a fact that Seya has lost the cooking battle! There’s no reason to be doing all this!” he pleaded.
“We’ve heard enough from a child!” someone shouted.
“Shut up!” another one said more succinctly.
“I won’t!” the kid shouted back. “I’ve been suspicious of Seya’s cooking for a while now! But I’m the only one! You all used to cook for yourselves, didn’t you? So why do you rely on Seya for all your meals now? Isn’t that strange?!” His words seemed to have reached some people in the crowd, because they started to look away from him.
“Learn your place, child!” shouted the MC. “We’re punishing him because he only defeated Master Seya with nasty tricks.”
“Seya is the one using all the tricks! Picking a theme and then giving his opponent all the wrong ingredients. Or just giving his opponent rotten ingredients! Like now! Look how he’s ‘won’ so far! And then, when he loses, look how he acts!” The kid wasn’t giving up yet.
“Silence! Just shut up! Your insults have earned you death!” Trash III threw a knife at the boy. He cried out.
“That’s going too far,” I shouted. And I was ready for this. “Formation One: Glass Shield!” The knife bounced off my shield. Luckily, I deployed it as the knife flew through the air, and it hit my shield before it could hit the boy.
“What’s this?!” Seya looked at me.
“It looks like you’re planning on getting violent with us,” L’Arc said, swinging his scythe. Glass, Raphtalia, Filo, and Tsugumi all followed suit, preparing for battle. Then he beckoned tauntingly to the surrounding crowd. “If you want a fight, we’ll give you a thorough but nonlethal beating. If that’s how you want things to go.”
“Cooking is similar to craftsmanship. If you are going to get violent over the results of a battle to determine who is superior, we’ll respond with violence of our own,” Therese added. The villagers backed off from the waves of violence emanating from everyone involved but then—
“Master Seya’s cooking is the best! We won’t let you take him down!” one of them shouted.
“Huh? They seem a bit more skilled than regular villagers. Kiddo, did you say they’ve been pumped up with drugs?” L’Arc asked me. Backed by Therese’s support magic, L’Arc chopped down the attackers. They screamed and collapsed, but he was holding back sufficiently. No one had been killed, at least from the look of it.
“Just who are you? It can’t be!?” Seya exclaimed.
“Of course, I forgot to make the introductions,” the rotund noble said. “Here we have King L’Arc Berg, accompanied by one of the four holy heroes who protect the world, the Hunting Hero, Kizuna Kazayama, and the rest of her party. Some of the strongest in the world, I assure you.” He sounded pretty gleeful and had obviously been waiting for just the right moment.
“Hah! Like I care about a bunch of so-called heroes!” Seya scoffed, but with some uncertainty.
“That’s right! That’s right, Master Seya!” his cheering section crowed.
“Right! The holy weapons and vassal weapons are no match for my cooking! Check this out!” he shouted. Standing in the kitchen, he unleashed a torrent of powder from his accessory into a bubbling pot of water. Trash III, the other MC, and the girls who worked the restaurant all lifted the large pot and chugged it down together. I was impressed by the capacity of their stomachs, if nothing else.
With various shouts, the women all dropped to the ground, then rose back up with glowing auras crackling around them. Not to mention, rippling muscles now covered their bodies. Their voices had changed to little more than guttural growls.
“Well? This is the power-up effect that only my cooking can provide!” Seya gloated. The girls, all now looking really macho, stood up to protect Seya, ready to crush us into pulp. This was getting pretty crazy. Power-up consommé soup? Was that a thing now?
“Hahaha! I’d planned to allure the leaders with my cooking and create my own nation, but it seems you leave me with little choice! You fools! You’re going to regret having forced me into this corner!” he shouted.
“Seriously, you’re like one of those third-rate bad guys who reveals his plan the moment he’s defeated,” I said.
“What? You’re the bad guys here! Making that disgusting cooking! This is all your fault!” he shouted back. He really couldn’t take responsibility for anything, could he? I was so sick of dealing with these morons who just wouldn’t listen. “The power of my cooking has exceeded even that of the heroes! Girls! Wipe these losers out!”
“Of course! Master Seya!” All the girls were really getting into it too.
“Uwah! This stinks so bad I want to plug up my nose! What’s going on? Ugh!” Filo got a whiff of the soup and grabbed her nose, almost passing out. It definitely was nasty. I wondered why no one else in the town seemed to have a problem, after seeing them getting all pumped-up from drinking it.
“Dammit! I can’t believe these guys,” L’Arc said.
“Neither can I,” Glass sympathized. They both clicked their tongues while pointing their weapons at the women.
“You all looked ready to jump on them before they did any of this,” Kizuna quipped.
“Kizuna, you just stay back please,” Tsugumi said, stepping in front of her.
“Say, sweet Naofumi?” Shildina said, getting my attention.
“We still don’t really understand the whole situation here,” Sadeena continued for her sister, “but there’s something we need to tell you.” They both pointed at Seya. “Takt,” said Sadeena.
“Hidemasa,” said Shildina.
“He feels the same as both of them,” Sadeena confirmed. Shildina nodded. I’d been feeling it a little, but now the sisters made it plain.
“I was thinking pretty much the same thing,” I responded. His attitude and the things he said were loaded with confidence, which lined up pretty closely with what I had experienced with those others. That meant he was another vanguard of the waves.
“There’s something else though. I can see something . . . coming off him,” Sadeena said.
“He’s not like Sadeena, exactly, but his soul is . . . off, somehow,” Shildina said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Sadeena tilted her head, seemingly struggling to find an answer. They had only spent a short time in Seya’s presence, after all, and he was hardly receptive to discussion. The two sisters had been glaring at him pretty intensely since the start, however.
“I’ve not mastered it yet, but I’m starting to be able to tell at a glance,” Sadeena said.
“You can see souls too?” I asked her.
“I’m not sure if that’s what you’d call this. I just feel a kind of tingle,” she said.
“I’m not sure how far I can trust your vague instincts . . .” I said, but it seemed pretty certain that Seya was a vanguard of the waves.
“Die!” someone shouted. Then the townsfolk and the staff of Seya’s restaurant all flew at us from every direction.
“We’ve got this,” Sadeena said.
“Let us suppress them,” Shildina added.
“Okay,” I replied. I quickly grabbed the boy and sent him an invite to my party.
“Huh?” He looked puzzled.
“Just accept it. I can’t protect you otherwise,” I said.
“Okay then,” he said. I confirmed he had joined the party, and then—
“Stardust Mirror!” I threw up a barrier and looked at the attacking townsfolk. They looked like nothing less than demons. They were like slaves, even, chained to the cooking of Seya’s restaurant, right down to the bottom of their hearts.
“What are you doing?!” the rotund noble exclaimed.
“Death to the traitors!” someone on Seya’s restaurant staff roared, attempting to kill the panel of judges with their newly formed muscular arms.
“I won’t allow it! Stardust Blade!” Raphtalia unleashed an attack to protect the judges.
“Gah! Stay out of our way!” the girls screamed. The entire beer garden was quickly turning into a battlefield. The townsfolk, some soldiers who had also showed up, and the massive muscle-freak women were all coming right for us. Rather than hang around and fight them all, I wondered if retreating might be the better option. They weren’t all that strong, but there were plenty of them.
“Everyone! Don’t kill them!” Kizuna shouted, as naive as ever. She wanted us to hold back against enemies who were definitely trying to kill us.
“Of course not!” Glass replied at once.
“Kiddo, Lady Raphtalia, and Lady Filo . . . you understand too, right?” L’Arc checked with us.
“I really don’t want to,” I sniped back, still clinging to the kid. “Hey, what about your sister?” I asked him. He looked over to an alleyway some distance from Seya’s restaurant, from which his sister could be seen looking out. Away from the fighting, but also a bit closer than I would have liked.
Perhaps realizing that we had something else to protect, Seya was also pointing at the sister.
“You monsters! Greedy scum! You’re always gobbling my food, so now put yourselves to work! Get her!” Seya shouted. The monsters circling above Seya’s restaurant quickly obeyed his orders and set their sights on the kid’s sister. I wasn’t about to allow that. Still holding the boy, and keeping the barrier up, I set off.
“Filo! Are you with me? Stop those monsters getting close to the girl!” I shouted.
“Gotcha!” Filo replied. She changed into her monster form and flew up into the sky, attacking the monsters above Seya’s restaurant.
“We’ll help too!” Sadeena shouted, swinging her harpoon to aid Filo while Shildina deployed some magic using her ofuda.
“This is our power!” Seya retorted, still laughing to himself. “The townsfolk won’t accept cunning cowards like you! Die!” I shook my head again. He thought the people completely trusted him and that he could get away with anything as a result. I had no words to reply.
“Now! For the sake of Master Seya, just come over here and join us!” Trash III said. The little sister looked pretty shaken by all this as unwanted advances reached toward her. She gave a scream.
“Formation Two: Glass Shield! Mirror Cage!” I shouted.
“What? It’s stopping our attacks! It’s so hard!” someone responded. I’d managed to protect the girl, somehow. I rushed over and repelled more enemies with my barrier.
“Mirror Bash!” I shouted, using a shield skill that had now been adapted by the mirror. The townsfolk fell back, groaning. It was originally called Shield Bash and could cause a brief moment of unconsciousness. It was not much use against monsters, but it could certainly slow down the greedy townsfolk. The problem was I just wasn’t getting enough hits in to drive them all back!
“Raph-chan! To me! C’mon, Raph!” I shouted.
“Raph!” Raph-chan replied. I summoned her to me and she started using her illusions to confuse the townsfolk. It appeared to be working—
“Hah! You’ll have to do better than that!” Okay, so it wasn’t working on the muscle-bound girls. The cooks were also attacking with knives, and there were too many of both groups to handle them easily.
“Hah—” That was when S’yne appeared, unleashing countless threads that bound up the townsfolk. But even that wasn’t enough, as more people continued to pour in toward us. We were reaching a point that could really be considered open warfare.
“We’re going to get overwhelmed if we try not to kill anyone! Kizuna! L’Arc!” I shouted.
“Kiddo!” L’Arc shouted back. “Dammit . . . Therese! Don’t you have some magic you can use?”
“I thought of using some status effect magic on them, but I’m not sure it would take hold. What’s going on, exactly?” Therese asked. It looked like even heroes had trouble with crowd control. If we could kill them, of course, we could just wipe them all out. But it seemed that magic had a weakened effect against those brainwashed by . . . food.
“I’ll incant some wide-scale suppression magic, so just hold on a moment,” Therese said.
“Me too,” Shildina chimed in, and they both started incanting.
“Naofumi, one thing,” Kizuna said. She chose this moment to approach me.
“What’s up?” I replied.
“I’m not sure if it’s just an aftereffect of being cured from that curse, but since we arrived here in this town, I’ve been sensing a strange presence,” she explained.
“And?” I asked. If she was sensing something, she should have brought it up sooner. At my question—and while Tsugumi was protecting her—Kizuna changed her weapon into the one that had appeared when the curse was broken. It looked a bit like a dressing knife.
“Tsugumi, thank you. I should be okay now,” Kizuna said.
“Kizuna?” I asked. Then she set her waist low and gave a shout. She proceeded to dash at high speed through the crowd of people, then sheathed her dressing knife at her hip.
“Hunting Tool 0: Blood Flower Strike!” she shouted. There was a sound of something popping. Trash III, who was locked in combat with Raphtalia, had something cut out of her.
“All who resist the glorious light of Master Seya must die—” she had been ranting. But when Kizuna slashed her, she spluttered and stopped. “What? What is this? My strength . . . is fading . . .” Others in the crowd also started complaining of the same problem. Those who had been slashed collapsed to the ground, still alive but simply unable to stand.
Seya and his women looked shocked at Kizuna’s ability to defeat his massive number of minions with a single strike.
“Impossible! You can’t have dealt with my powered-up warriors so easily!” Seya scoffed. Then Kizuna pointed her dressing knife at Seya and made a declaration.
“I can cut out the illegitimate power that you’ve been using. As one of the four heroes, the Hunting Hero, I make this declaration. Give up and surrender at once!” she said. Kizuna normally couldn’t attack other people, but it looked like that didn’t apply to this crowd! Maybe the power-up had pushed them into the monster category. Or maybe something special about her weapon was cutting something illegitimate out of them. In any case, it was great news for us.
Then Kizuna turned her hunting tool into a bow and fired off countless arrows. Each time an arrow found a target, another villager collapsed to the ground, and then another, easily taking care of the townsfolk S’yne was restraining. Some of them just grunted or groaned, while others voiced their complaints.
“What’s going on here? My power is fading away!”
“It hurts! Ah, this is so strange . . . We should be able to put up more of a fight than this.”
They weren’t dead, of course, but seemed unable to move now that the effects of the power-up had been stripped away. The kid had been telling the truth.
“Wow! Lady Kizuna, you kicked ass!” L’Arc shouted.
“I’m impressed, Kizuna!” Glass added.
“Like when you saved me, you just removed the malignant power,” Tsugumi said, sounding as impressed as if she had just been saved again.
“Heh, this is all power that you’ve lent me,” Kizuna said humbly. Now things were going well. Seya had thought he could swing things his way with violence, but now, even that tide was turning against him. Seya, however, was discussing something with the remaining powered-up woman. Then with the woman in tow, he charged at Raphtalia with a knife. Behind her was the noble and the other judges. He screamed in rage.
“I won’t hold back,” Raphtalia said, adopting a fighting stance with her katana. She then drew her second weapon from its scabbard and slashed into the woman in a haikuikku state. With a single attack, she caused a blizzard of sakura petals to whirl through the air. It was captivating.
“Sakura: Powder Snow!” Raphtalia shouted, swiftly chopping the bulked-up woman down. Then Seya emerged from hiding behind her and chopped at Raphtalia with his knife. With a grunt, Raphtalia took the knife on her katana. A loud noise rang out.
“Haha! I win!” Seya crowed.
“Unfortunately . . . not!” Raphtalia replied.
“We’ll see about that!” Seya said.
“I’ve seen that face before,” Raphtalia responded.
“Hah!” Kizuna took that moment to fire an arrow between Raphtalia and Seya. Seya acted as though he had avoided it, but Kizuna hadn’t been aiming for him to start with. Then Seya looked around in puzzlement.
“Huh? No, impossible! What’s going on?!” he exclaimed.
“Something wrong? You were expecting to steal her weapon, weren’t you?” I taunted him.
“How do you know about—” Quickly realizing he was saying too much, Seya pressed his hands over his own mouth. It was too late though; he’d given the game away.
Kizuna’s new Hunting Tool 0 had the ability to repel the connections formed by illegitimate power. That had surely been what she just shot through.
“I’m finished incanting. It was a pain to make the adjustments,” Shildina said.
“Me too,” Therese added. Both of them proceeded to activate their magic.
Shildina incanted first.
“I now command you. Ofuda! Respond to my words! Lull these foes into dreamless sleep! Rain of Sleep!”
Next up, it was Therese’s turn.
“Permeating power of gemstones! Respond to my call, and make your power felt. My name is Therese Alexanderite. My companions. Become the power to put these people to sleep! Shining Stones! Slumber Smoke!”
The rain Shildina unleashed and the magical smoke Therese let loose filled our surroundings, causing almost all of the townsfolk to drop to the ground and start sleeping. In the same moment, Filo crashed down from the sky, stamping down on the neck of one of the monsters, and struck a victory pose.
“I win! Master’s cooking will be mine!” she shouted gleefully. She was practically dancing for victory on top of the monster.
“Looks like things have taken a turn,” I said to Seya.
“Damn you! This isn’t over yet! I’m not going to lose to cowards like you! Get them!” he shouted.
“Anything for you, Master Seya!” one of the last macho women yelled and flew toward us.
“Sorry to say, but we can’t lose to you!” Kizuna shouted, then circled around quickly and slashed into a woman. There was the sound of something being cut, and the power-up applied to the macho woman faded away. Her exaggerated muscles followed, and now thin as a rake, she slumped to the ground.
“Anything . . . for Master Seya,” she whispered, still trying to stand back up. She had some guts, I’d give her that.
“Checkmate, ladies,” L’Arc said, placing the blade of his scythe against Seya’s neck.
“Cowards!” Seya said, falling back to that lame insult again.
“What has Master Seya ever done to you?!” one of his women exclaimed.
“What has he done?! He killed my family with his cooking!” the kid in my arms shouted back angrily.
“Whatever are you rambling about?” one of the women asked back.
“Master Seya’s cooking could never kill anyone,” another said.
“Enough with the jokes!” said a third. Even with the doping removed and unable to move, they were so brainwashed that they were still coming at us.
“That’s not especially convincing, coming from you! Look at yourselves, emaciated and unable to move due to the removal of Seya’s illegitimate power,” Kizuna said.
“It means that power-up is definitely the type that shortens your life. Look at the ones you cut, Kizuna,” I said. Their groans could be heard all around us. We hadn’t killed them, but the kickback from the removal of the power-up Seya provided—his doping—was clearly hitting them hard. This was something different from getting your level reset with a dragon hourglass. With the way they were struggling to breathe, even I was getting worried about them. Therese started casting magic on each of them, just as an emergency measure. That’s how bad it was for some of them.
“This is how you burned through the lives of this kid’s family,” I said. As soon as they were confronted with these words, a number of the women from around Seya’s restaurant took a knee, put their hands together, and lowered their heads.
“Seya tricked us! We’ll provide all the testimony you need! Seya is an evil chef who has been using illegitimate ingredients to agitate the people!” one of them said. I almost fell over at this swift change of heart, but I willed myself to stand in place and quietly stare them down.
“Whatever are you talking about?” Kizuna demanded.
“Pathetic,” Glass spat.
“This reminds me of my own worst day,” Tsugumi said, all three of them shaking their heads as they looked at the women. Tsugumi was clearly seeing shades of her own allies here.
“Girls?!” Seya exclaimed, quite rightly surprised by this turn of events. The women turned their frigid gazes to him and spat back insults.
“I’d rather you never talk to me again, you evil chef!” said one.
“The best cooking won, plain and simple, and in the name of justice!” crowed another. I was really starting to flashback to Takt’s execution. Raphtalia looked like she was struggling with it too.
“Do you think there are people like this everywhere?” she asked me.
“Everywhere we go,” I replied.
“Now! All of the assets of the chef of evil shall be transferred to the ultimate chef!” another woman shouted.
“Now!” agreed another.
“Fair enough . . . but you know that all of you are on the hook for this too,” I told them.
“No! We had nothing to do with this!” the same woman pleaded.
“Nothing at all!” said another. The speed at which they had flipped on him reminded me immediately of Bitch.
“I really hate women like you. Let’s resolve this quickly . . . L’Arc, dispose of them,” I said.
“That’s a pretty sick order to give so casually!” L’Arc fired back. He could have at least played along for a little while.
“No! We are your allies, ultimate chef!” they pleaded, dashing toward me. They probably wanted to grab onto me or something, but I wasn’t having any of it. I used Stardust Mirror to bounce them away.
“You scabby vultures!” Tsugumi shouted. She couldn’t take any more of it and whacked at them with a stick she was holding. After some cries and grunts of pain, the women finally fell silent.
“Good, well done, Tsugumi. I’ll treat you to some special food later,” I said. Tsugumi staggered in place, putting her hands on her forehead.
“That’s not why I did that. That’s not why I did it! We must not forgive them! Never forgive!” she rambled.
“Tsugumi?! Get a grip! Naofumi, can you please learn to read the room?” Kizuna said. Tsugumi looked like she was completely closing herself off mentally, even as she continued to mutter to herself. She certainly wasn’t an easy person to handle.
“Screw this!” Seya shouted, attempting to use a Scroll of Return.
“Not with me around!” Raphtalia retorted, quickly smashing him down. No way he was going to escape now.
“I so hate to say it,” I said, laying it on nice and thick, “but you losers have lost. Never underestimate a bunch of heroes.”
“What is your problem?” Seya raged back. “You call yourselves heroes, but then you show up and mess with me! I was just peacefully cooking for everyone!”
“Peacefully? You mean like how you extorted all of the assets from your customers? Like how you took over control of the entire town? Like how you resorted to violence as soon as you were defeated at your own game? You’ve got a pretty crazy definition of ‘peaceful,’ I’ll give you that,” I said. Just those acts I’d mentioned made him plenty guilty. “There’s more too. You said yourself that you were planning to allure the leaders with your cooking and take over! That’s a treasonous plot of the highest order, at least from where I’m sitting. You’ve been stripped of your happiness because of all these brutal acts,” I continued. He was doing whatever the hell he liked and then playing the victim, I’d seen this so much and it made me want to vomit. “All you needed to do was accept the defeat, reflect upon it, and leave with your women.” Fanning the sparks into a full-blown riot had not been the move to make. I hardly knew what to say. It went without saying that his suspicious cooking cult was going to get crushed too. “Your selfish happiness has also served to twist the poor townsfolk beyond recognition.” I looked at the collapsed and moaning crowd. There were a lot of them. Almost too many. “Now then, Seya. After winning this cooking battle and putting down the violent riot you started, we’re going to be taking all of your assets. Thank you.”
“I’m not giving up anything!” he raged.
“Oh really. Rules are rules. You even turned to violence and you still couldn’t win. Give up,” I told him. I proceeded to take the accessory from Seya’s arm. I checked inside it . . .
“Hey, butterball,” I said. The rotund one was looking around, perhaps wondering who I was talking to. You, of course.
“I think he means you,” Raphtalia said, giving him a nudge.
“Me?” the man asked.
“Yeah, you. Sorry to say it, but it doesn’t look like Seya has been using this accessory for his cooking after all,” I said. I tossed it over to the noble.
“What? That can’t be. It must have some kind of verification system so only Master Seya can use it,” the noble replied.
“Nope, nothing like that. I know a bit about accessory making, and there’s no such gimmick to that one. If you still don’t believe me, take it to a Jewel you trust and get it checked out for yourself,” I told him.
“That can’t be . . .” the noble said.
“Haha! My cooking is my own unique power! You won’t be able to copy it so easily!” Seya taunted.
“Interesting. So you have other abilities as well as stealing vassal weapons?” I asked. Just what were these vanguards of the waves, anyway? I thought they were focused just on stealing weapons. Now it sounded like they had other strange powers too. I’d have to ask Itsuki about it later.
I recalled that Miyaji had been able to speak the language of this world prior to obtaining the musical instrument vassal weapon. Maybe that had been some kind of extra ability too. There had to be other vanguards of the waves out there, so we needed to be careful of these additional abilities.
“Kizuna, L’Arc, everyone,” I said. When they all looked over, I proceeded to whisper my plan to them as quietly as possible.
“Not really something I’m keen on doing,” Kizuna said, trying to red-light it already.
“And yet this guy isn’t going to listen to reason. If we simply take him captive, he’s definitely going to cause more trouble later,” I told her.
“Lady Kizuna, the one who stole my scythe was also one of these vanguard people. I think we should listen to kiddo when it comes to this stuff,” L’Arc said. Kizuna still seemed unsure, but Raphtalia and Glass raised no objections. They had quietly accepted what had to happen.
“Right then, Seya. If you follow our conditions, we will be on our way. We also won’t take your assets, so long as you leave town. Leave town, and we’ll let you go. However, I don’t know if you’ll have much luck opening a restaurant in another town,” I told him.
“What?!” The kid and his sister both glared at me, but I signaled with my eyes that it would be okay. Tsugumi spotted the problem and started to gently pat the boy’s head and talk to him softly.
“What, then? What do you want?” Seya asked.
“There’s someone behind all of this, correct? Someone pulling the strings. If you tell us all about that, we’ll let you go. Hey, I have an idea. Write it down on this piece of paper here. I want a record of this.” I said and passed a piece of paper to him. Seya’s expression immediately brightened.
“That’s all you want? Fine, I can—” But the rest of that sentence vanished into an awful grunt. The moment Seya tried to write a single word, his head simply crumpled in on itself. He managed a brief scream, and then his entire melon exploded. I didn’t want to traumatize my allies, so I quickly threw up a cage and blocked out the grisly scene. Then I gave a sigh.
“Just as I expected,” I said. These vanguards of the waves were set up to get shredded, soul and all, if they tried to share any of the information they knew. Erased in order to keep that information secret. Even writing it down wasn’t allowed. That was a pretty strict NDA.
I’d asked Kizuna to watch and see if her hunting tool could stop the meat explosion from taking place, but she hadn’t been able to.
“Not that I didn’t believe what you’ve been telling us, Naofumi, but it’s impossible to doubt it after seeing that,” Glass said.
“Just what are the waves?” Kizuna pondered.
“Don’t ask me,” I replied. There were still far too many mysteries swirling around this “World Eater,” the one seemingly behind the waves.
“So he was a vanguard of the waves, and trying to answer your question caused him to die,” Tsugumi said. She had shielded the boy from Seya’s messy death but watched it herself.
“Looks like it. But some of them seem to be aware that talking out of school, as it were, is going to get them imploded,” I said. Takt had known. Maybe he had been some kind of experiment to see how he would act while possessed of that knowledge.
In any case, now we were fully aware that there were these vanguards of the waves scattered around everywhere.
“Victory is yours,” said the rotund noble.
“We’ll get back to you soon enough,” I said to him. He was going to find out just how nasty authority could be. Betrayal always carried a high price. The man grunted in surprise, likely sensing the rippling waves of anger radiating from me, and proceeded to hide—along with the rest of the judges—behind L’Arc. “Right, what else?” I said. “Kid. This is the end of Seya’s restaurant. You okay with that?” I asked him and his sister.
“I mean, you won, but . . .” He looked, with some understandable concern in his eyes, at the collapsed villagers.
“We’ll give them a proper detox, don’t worry. It will depend on the individual in question, whether they can pull through completely or not. We’re taking out the source though, so they won’t really have a choice but to try,” I told him. Overcoming something like an addiction to tobacco was difficult because it was so easy to get your hands on. Harder drugs might be more difficult to obtain, but once someone got hooked, they had ways of working that out. In this case, however, the source of the problem—Seya—had been removed in spectacular fashion, meaning no one was getting more of that food no matter how hard they tried. The only choices left were to overcome it naturally or give in to the addiction and die.
“I see . . . so I’ve finally avenged everyone who died,” the kid said. He looked at me with a relieved expression on his face. “Thank you, ah . . . Tray Hero?” There was a sound like the very air splitting.
“Don’t say that, kid! That’s not a tray!” Tsugumi quickly said, shielding the boy from me at once.
“That’s right!” L’Arc backed her up. “Kiddo’s weapon here is a mirror that can also become a shield. It’s not a tray! Certainly not!”
“Huh? But hold on . . .” the kid started to reply.
“Listen here, you little brat! If you’re going to keep this up, then I’ll teach you that there’s far more terrifying food in this world than anything Seya could cook up!” I snapped.
“Mr. Naofumi, calm yourself!” Raphtalia grabbed me from behind and stopped me from jumping at the kid. You’ve got to be kidding! My weapon is not a tray! It had already been called a pot lid in the past, and now it had another silly nickname!
“Oh my!” said Sadeena.
“Oh dear!” said Shildina.
“Raph?” said Raph-chan. S’yne was drinking the leftovers of the soup I made, without permission. Seriously, what an unruly bunch. I wished they would sort themselves out.
“Raph, raph!” Even Raph-chan was shaking her head.
After our intervention, the townsfolk were apparently pretty displeased with me for the first few days. With a little time, however—about a week—the symptoms of addiction to Seya’s cooking started to appear, and the people came to see the extent of the damage his toxins had done to their bodies. Then I ended up being dispatched to prepare a mountain of food for them.
I worked with the cooks who Seya had defeated and were forced to work for him. Also, I worked with those who had been imprisoned after managing to resist Seya’s cooking. Together we cooked up a feast for the entire town. There were a whole bunch of ingredients in Seya’s restaurant, after all. The eating enhancement it provided worked wonders as rehabilitation for those who couldn’t even walk, but I was careful to do nothing more than let them move.
As it turned out, Seya had been using his own abilities to do all the cooking himself, and the other cooks had never gotten to do any real cooking. Instead, they had been little more than kitchenhands, working like slaves at managing ingredients, cleaning up trash, and tidying things.
Still, after our actions, the fortunes of the town seemed to have taken a downturn. And at first, some of the townsfolk tried to blame us for that. It wasn’t long before they could imagine what would have happened if Seya had remained in control. However, if all of the original residents died, fresh visitors would have been forced to take their place and experience the same living hell. After eating the food I and the other cooks carefully prepared, the majority of them also came to accept that it was more delicious than the food Seya made.
It wasn’t that long before people of the town were back to normal, cooking for themselves in their own homes. Eating something delicious and wanting to copy it for themselves was definitely a far healthier reaction. Realizing their mistake in just relying on someone else to keep making it for them was definitely progress. The town would eventually go on to become known as the “Cooking Town,” but that’s another story.
“I can’t believe how things turn out sometimes. We went to hire a famous chef to get away from the overpowering meals kiddo makes, and look at the mess we ended up in,” L’Arc lamented, leaning back on his chair in the castle’s dining hall.
“Is that really your place to say, L’Arc?” I asked him. He had been the one who got into things with the restaurant and kicked the whole thing off . . . but, it was largely the enemy’s fault.
“It seems you have quite a lot of unexpected trouble,” Itsuki said, looking on from the sidelines.
“Fehhhhh,” Rishia added. I’d chatted a little with Itsuki about our encounter, and he said that while there were instant transmission-style abilities in his world, there was nothing that could multiply the volume of materials. It might have been similar to a duplication ability, but not quite the same.
“How can we avoid chewing ourselves to death on this killer cooking?” Tsugumi said, even as she finished a suitably sized meal and placed down her chopsticks. Kizuna, Glass, L’Arc, and the others looked at her in puzzlement.
“Hold on? It looks like we’ve found a suitable point to stop eating,” L’Arc said.
“That’s because I’m making sure not to overfeed you,” I responded after placing more food at Filo, S’yne, Sadeena, and Shildina’s table. They always asked for seconds after finishing the first helping.
“What do you mean, kiddo?” L’Arc asked.
“Like Raphtalia said, you just have to get used to my cooking,” I replied.
“I mean, I guess that could be all this is . . .” L’Arc said. He didn’t seem all that convinced.
“Don’t tell me it’s even enhanced our stomachs?! I need to go do some exercise!” Yomogi looked practically terrified as she made this declaration. So I stood in her way and stopped her before she ran out.
“That’s not the case at all, so just calm down. I wanted to avoid doing this, but you keep on getting into such a fuss over it. So I’ve put some controls in place,” I told them.
“Couldn’t you have done this from the start?” Kizuna asked, looking annoyed. “What did you do?”
“No matter how delicious the food is, if you eat the same thing every time, you’ll start to get sick of it. Once you get sick of it, you won’t overeat simply because you won’t want to. I’ve been applying that concept to my food,” I told them. It didn’t matter how great something tasted; if you ate it again and again you would get tired of the taste. I had originally been changing my methods and dishes in order to prevent this, but that allowed me to bring in some control to the process too.
“You definitely could have done that to start with!” Kizuna exclaimed.
“I wanted to enhance you as much as possible, that’s all. I hoped I could scout out someone who could make delicious food,” I replied. I hadn’t expected that to turn into such a mess, of course.
“So . . . I’m glad it turned out how I suggested it would, but I’m still not satisfied with this explanation,” Raphtalia said.
“Raph!” Raph-chan added.
“Our villagers don’t count. Those guys eat so much they’ll starve before they ever get fat. Add the mass-produced filolials into the mix and however much I make still won’t be enough,” I said. There was no point in comparing those with bottomless pits for stomachs to Kizuna and the others here. The focus was completely different. For them, it was purely about nutrition to raise them up, while here we were seeking enhancement and level increases by eating. The very meaning of the act of consumption was totally different. “Please understand that this isn’t the best method, but it’s what we have to work with,” I told them. Sensing my intent, L’Arc and the others nodded without further comment. “Included in the stuff we brought back from Seya’s restaurant, there are some pretty good ingredients. I can make efficient meals for a while using that stuff. We won’t have to worry again just yet.”
“That sounds fine, but . . . are you sure about leaving things like this?” Kizuna said.
“I can’t help but feel it’s a ‘first-to-flinch’ situation. For now, let’s just push the food problem into the future a little,” Raphtalia suggested.
“If the holy weapon and vassal weapon holders can learn to imbue life energy into their cooking, it would make things a bit easier for me,” I said, picking what felt like the perfect moment to bring this issue up again. I at least wanted Kizuna to get this skill sorted. It could be anything she liked, even just sashimi, or just something she could learn and use. There was the potential for some excellent status adjustment on the table, things like a permanent plus three to defense for eating the entire dish, but you couldn’t bring them out without putting the time into the cooking itself. “Still, this has all made you a bit stronger,” I concluded. And so the food-related issues that Kizuna and her allies had been worrying about headed toward a form of resolution.
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