Luoid's Cooking Class (1)
Luoid made a surprised face—he hadn't expected so many people to remain.
Did they think I'd hand out more shop credits if they stayed?
"I'm not giving out any more credits."
Just in case, he added it aloud.
"You're trying to twist things around to drive us out?"
Damon crossed his arms and spoke as if the very idea amused him.
"I don't lie. Walking out now gets you ten points. Staying gets you three, and nothing more after that. I have no intention of giving you anything else later, either."
He said it while staring straight at Damon, but Damon didn't so much as flinch. A few others, however, rose from their seats and bowed their heads.
Deciding that was enough, Luoid nodded and scanned the lecture hall.
Hershey, my sister, Damon... and Sophia's here too. Aren't those two on bad terms?
He let that thought go.
There was one thing that genuinely bothered him.
Why are there so many Swordsmanship Club people still sitting here?
Roughly twenty people remained, and more than ten of them were from the club.
In truth, it was Amelia's doing that they'd come to observe in the first place—but staying was their own choice. They were genuinely interested in Luoid's cooking class.
Knightly life meant frequent camping, after all. Survival skills were exactly the kind of thing worth learning at least once!
Oblivious to all this, Luoid shot Amelia a resentful look. Amelia met his gaze with clear, guileless eyes, then raised her hand.
"Professor. How will the class be conducted?"
"...Like I said earlier, we'll be cooking. But it'll be a little different from ordinary cooking."
Luoid spread his fingers.
A board burst into being in three dimensions.
The students murmured in quiet awe.
The magic board was an artifact classified under 2nd Magic. And yet Luoid had converted a 2nd-Tier spell into a 3rd-Tier one with a casual flick of his hand—turning something two-dimensional into three.
It looked more impressive than any tiered magic they had ever seen.
"We're going to cook in ways that defy everything you know."
The three-dimensional board projected shapes like a hologram: pigs, cattle, various vegetables.
Some were familiar. Others looked utterly alien—things that drew the reaction, Wait, people eat that?
"We'll be using new ingredients—"
Luoid said, glancing rather conspicuously at Amelia.
"—and new recipes. Naturally, the use of detoxification magic is strictly forbidden."
Luoid loved eating.
Wasn't food one of the three great pillars of happiness?
And yet in this world, thanks to those damned detox spells, culinary culture had never advanced.
Commoners seemed marginally better off, but only marginally. Their cuisine stopped at sprinkling a bit of salt over their food.
Doing it all himself was a hassle.
Cooking he could manage somehow, but where was he supposed to source the ingredients?
In short, this class existed to satisfy his own thoroughly selfish appetites.
And for that, eliminating detox magic was essential.
Of course, pushback came immediately.
"No detox magic at all?"
So that's why she came. This villain.
Luoid narrowed his eyes and glared at Amelia's extraordinarily old-guard face.
"Yes."
"Isn't that a bit dangerous, Professor Luoid?"
Amelia smiled sweetly. But Luoid read the emotion hidden behind that smile: Want to die?
...It happened fairly often. Ever since his days at Windsor Castle, Luoid had wanted to eat food that wasn't blanketed in detox magic, and Amelia had steadfastly obstructed him at every turn.
"That's why there's a premise attached. Obviously, ingredients without detox magic are dangerous. The world might even end."
The art of persuasion begins with acknowledgment. But Luoid simply couldn't resist mocking his little sister.
"So you've finally learned to listen. Exactly right. If my little brother catches so much as a cold, someone must answer for it. That humanity accepts this is only natural."
Amelia smiled with pride.
Luoid briefly pondered what on earth to do with that pure-hearted fool.
"Which is why we'll be gathering the ingredients ourselves."
"...?"
"Nobles trust nobles, surely? You wouldn't just scrounge up anything for your little brother to eat, would you?"
Luoid had laid a trap for Amelia.
If she refused here, she'd become a sister who couldn't be trusted by her own brother. If she accepted, she'd become the fool who failed to grasp his meaning in a single stroke.
Naturally, a terminal brother-complex case like Amelia was never going to choose the former.
"...That's true, but—"
"Yes, which is exactly why I told everyone that only nobles should attend. Nobles trust other nobles."
"Ohh..."
The nobles in the hall were convinced in an instant.
Detox magic, in modern terms, was like "heating."
Since the age when humanity first learned through bitter experience that eating raw food meant sickness, they had harnessed fire. In this world, that role had simply been replaced by magic.
As a result, eating something without detox magic here was treated much like gnawing on raw meat with your bare teeth.
Luoid's solution wasn't to argue, "You don't need detox magic!"—it was to provoke with, "What, you don't even trust your fellow nobles?"
"Well, if the one who sourced the ingredient is a noble, then I suppose there's no need to cast detox magic on it."
"That makes sense."
And so the students accepted it without much resistance.
That went well.
"Now then, I'll tell you what ingredients you'll need to bring to the next class."
Luoid floated the ingredients up one by one and explained their characteristics.
The atmosphere had been relaxed at first, but as the list grew longer, the students grew increasingly bewildered.
"Now, hold on a moment."
Hershey raised her hand.
"Yes?"
"...What is a cabbage?"
"It looks like this."
Luoid pointed at the model shaped like a cabbage.
Needless to say, Hershey hadn't been asking about its appearance.
"Where are we even supposed to find one...?"
Luoid answered as if the question were absurd.
"You'll have to figure that out yourselves."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"This is everything obtainable on the market."
The students of Luoid's Cooking Class were in the middle of a meeting.
And Hershey was performing admirably at its center.
"I gathered these using Minerva's power, so you can trust them. Nothing better exists on the market."
"Thank you for your efforts, Hershey."
Amelia beamed at her, and Hershey flushed.
"It was... nothing, really."
"Leave the rest to us. To seek things out and seize them—that is a knight's duty."
"Sis, you're an idiot."
"......"
Luoid, cutting the mood with a single blow.
He was in the corner, a baguette clamped in his mouth.
"I don't believe it's proper for a professor to attend a student meeting," Amelia said with perfect composure.
"Class ended already. Besides, the Swordsmanship Club showing up at the Magic Department's main hall is even less proper."
A truly insufferable little brother who conceded not a single word. The corner of Amelia's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
It would be a problem if you went looking for things without knowing what they were.
Luoid wasn't the kind of bad professor who told students to find things while explaining nothing.
"Ask if there's anything you don't know."
Hershey ventured carefully, glancing at the students still floundering.
"...Luoid. Still, shouldn't a professor maintain some authority?"
"I'm going to do what I want."
Luoid declared boldly.
That essential, excuse-free statement was oddly convincing.
"Like I said earlier, we'll do this freely. Nobody's going to be stressed."
Having said his piece, Luoid clamped the baguette back in his mouth. The thing was so hard it took ten solid minutes of chewing before it became edible.
"Honestly, there's no managing him."
Amelia sighed softly and stroked Luoid's head.
She had been attending the class in the first place so no one would dare slight him—and here he was, acting like he wanted none of it.
"First, we secure the ingredients."
Hershey said brightly.
"What's left is the wheat cakes, the fish cakes, the chili powder, and... fish sauce."
For the record, they had never seen or heard of any of them.
Frankly, it felt like a tall order.
"The others I can wrap my head around, but... fish sauce? I have no idea how we'd even begin to find that."
Luoid had revealed the rough composition and shape of each ingredient. But the fish sauce had been represented as nothing more than black liquid. Not a single clue to go on.
"I'll make that one myself."
Luoid said generously.
If I experiment, something usable is bound to come out.
He had no idea how fish sauce was actually made.
But Luoid trusted his own genius brain.
Lock himself in the workshop, dabble in alchemy—surely something similar would turn up.
"The wheat cakes are made by kneading flour and shaping it, so..."
"Ah, that one I can get my hands on."
Gilbert spoke up.
He was from the Empire's frontier.
"Back in the Galen Territory, wheat flour is our staple food. I've done nothing but sword training, so I couldn't say for certain, but a few people from my territory are in the Imperial Capital now. I'll ask around."
The Empire's lands were, quite literally, vast.
And so culinary culture varied wildly from region to region.
Hershey smiled gently.
"What a relief. That leaves only the fish cakes and the chili powder."
Ingredient procurement, which had seemed utterly hopeless, was coming together nicely.
Luoid's eyes gleamed.
Finally. I get to eat tteokbokki.
And that wasn't all.
From now on, whenever he craved something, he could simply order these people to fetch it. The thought made him deliriously happy.
"Luoid, but what exactly is a fish cake?"
"Same method as the wheat cakes. Except fish is mixed in."
"Then the Swordsmanship Club will catch the fish."
Amelia declared confidently.
"Fishing can be excellent training, after all."
"Captain, are we making it a competition again?"
"We are. This time, we settle it properly."
"Excellent. Let's dry up every fish in the Imperial Capital."
"...I don't think we'll need quite that many."
"There is nothing in this world so bad as having too much, Lady Hershey. Leave the fish cakes to us."
"Then the only thing left is... the chili powder. Making it is the easy part."
Hershey pored over the paper where she'd jotted down guesses about where each ingredient might be sourced.
Most of them were bizarre enough, but this "chili powder" was stranger still—its source was harder to pin down than any of the rest.
"The Tears of Pianens... Luoid. Is this really edible?"
"Yep."
"...Isn't that a torture implement, used only to pry open the mouths of foreign spies? And you're telling us to grind it up and cook with it?"
Luoid made a sullen face.
"What, Hershey—you don't trust me?"
Hershey waved her hands in a fluster.
"N-no, of course not! ...All right. We just need to get it, that's all."
But the Tears of Pianens was an extraordinarily difficult ingredient to obtain.
A legendary toxic herb, spoken of in hushed tones—feed it to anyone, and they would certainly talk. According to rumor, the moment it touched your tongue, you would feel the eternal agony of your throat burning to ash.
Hershey found herself intensely curious where on earth Luoid had picked up this knowledge.
But a woman who pried into too many things lost her charm. Hershey resolved, for now, simply to get her hands on it somehow.
"Hmm, since we're grinding it up, we'll probably need quite a lot."
"Gold coins can be provided in ample amounts."
"N-no, the Tears of Pianens are a restricted substance. To get any, we'd have to petition the imperial family... the imperial family?"
Hershey blinked.
Now that she thought about it, wasn't there a member of the imperial family right here?
Damon. Hershey looked around for him.
But there wasn't so much as a hair of him to be seen.
"Come to think of it... where is Damon?"
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"As expected, my rival spares no effort. But to imagine I couldn't secure even this—what a grave miscalculation."
Damon crossed his arms and eyed the enormous carriage with a haughty expression.
He had just finished ransacking the imperial treasury of every last shred of the Tears of Pianens.
Emperor Lucius was bound to raise hell about it, but that was of no consequence.
"Y-young Master...! What is all this?"
"It is called chili powder. Peasant."
Damon's crimson eyes fixed on the magical apparatus.
"Now then—let us begin—"
VREEEEEEE—!
With the roar of a massive magic engine, the peppers began grinding at high speed. Before long, red powder came showering down.
"Gather it, quickly! This is a blessed ingredient of heaven! A single particle of it is worth more than the lot of your lives combined—!"
"Yes, my lord!"
The imperial servants diligently scooped the powder into sacks. Powder drifted through the air, and they began coughing.
"Ugh, my eyes are burning."
"Kaff—kaff—"
"I'm gonna die, I'm actually gonna die."
Meanwhile, a trace of blood seeped from the corner of Damon's lips.
A cough was building in his chest, and he was fighting it with every fiber of his being.
Coughing would be undignified.
"HAAETCHOO!"
But instinct had proven stronger than the Second Prince.