Luid's Cooking Class (3)
Bubble, bubble.
The mouthwatering aroma filled the open air.
"What is that smell?"
"Food?"
"...I've never smelled anything like it."
The scent was so potent that passing students stopped in their tracks just to breathe it in. Like bees drawn to something sweet, people gathered one by one.
"Huh...? It actually looks pretty delicious once it's made."
"Doesn't it, though."
The placebo effect at work!
The members of Luid's Cooking Class, who knew exactly what ingredients had gone into the pot, hadn't found it particularly appetizing at first — but with everyone around them drooling, it suddenly began to look absolutely divine.
Just as planned.
All of it, naturally, was Luid's scheme. And a step further, the ultimate goal was to get people to stop using detox magic altogether.
And now...
Luid raised his dedicated fork and glared at the tteokbokki.
Tteokbokki without fish cakes. It was undeniably a shame. But the flavor would be glorious.
He speared a single rice cake and began blowing on it gently. The students around him copied him one by one.
"Mmph."
Luid carefully bit into the rice cake. His mouth was too small, so he only got half of it in. Chewing slowly, he savored it with the mindset of a sommelier tasting a wine aged fifty-eight thousand years.
"...!"
His eyes went wide. Hershey watched him and shot the tteokbokki an uneasy look.
Of course it wouldn't taste good.
He'd put an interrogation torture herb in as an ingredient — if it somehow tasted delicious, that would be far more disturbing. She was just about to ask if he was all right when Luid, who had been staring blankly at the tteokbokki——
Chomp chomp!
started shoveling it in!
It's good.
Luid realized, viscerally, the terror of a familiar flavor. Truly an intense taste! Naturally it fell short of the authentic version from his homeland, but it was more than excellent by this world's standards.
He'd deliberately gone light on the chili flakes, and that had been the right call. The result skewed sweet and savory — delicious enough even for a body unaccustomed to spice. Compared to the bland food of this world, though, it was overwhelmingly stimulating.
After working his way through the pot for a while, Luid noticed the students staring at him, wide-eyed and unblinking.
"Tastes good."
Their faces were full of suspicion. Luid narrowed his eyes, as if displeased.
"Eat it first. Then judge."
At those words, one of them reluctantly picked up a rice cake, squeezed their eyes shut, and put it in their mouth.
"...!"
An exclamation mark practically floated above the student's head.
"Wh-what is this intense flavor?"
"I've never tasted anything like this..."
"It's good, isn't it?"
They turned to each other, eyes round as saucers. It was far more delicious than they'd imagined — a complex, indescribable medley of flavors. The nobles, whose idea of the finest delicacy topped out at unicorn meat, simply couldn't recover from the riot of taste blooming across their tongues.
Before long, everyone was inhaling tteokbokki without a single word.
Luid watched them with a satisfied smile.
"Um, excuse me."
One of the onlookers stepped forward.
"Could I... try just one bite?"
It was Isabella, the library's student librarian. Luid remembered her — the one who'd walked out of his lecture the moment she had her credits. His answer was already decided.
"No."
Granted, walking out with her credits was exactly what he'd intended her to do, but shouldn't there still be a difference between those who attended and those who didn't? At the very least, he had no intention of letting the people who stayed come out short-changed.
Isabella trudged off with a sullen look on her face.
Sleepy.
Five rice cakes in, a comfortable fullness had settled in. Luid began dozing off right where he sat, head bobbing.
"Hey, Luid."
It was Damon, wearing a scarf he must have produced from somewhere and eating in an impeccably aristocratic manner.
"Mm?"
Luid regarded him through bleary eyes.
"I noticed just now that you refused to let other commoners join the table. Does that include us as well?"
"...Huh?"
Too drowsy to process the question, Luid let out a long, lazy yawn.
"I mean to ask whether this dish of ours ought not be shared with others as well. For my part, I find this hellish temptation of a cuisine quite agreeable."
"Do what you want—"
Thud.
"Ah, he's asleep."
Hershey stared in exasperation, her hand still outstretched. Luid had curled up on his side and was sleeping soundly, breath soft and even.
Truly, Luid lived exactly as he pleased.
Luid's cooking class disguised as a magic lecture ended in resounding success.
Not only were the course evaluations excellent, but the undeniable star of the show was the tteokbokki. Luid had cooked and eaten it outdoors, in the courtyard behind the main building — the spot with the highest foot traffic in the entire Academy.
Rumor, of course, spread on wings, and soon a peculiar phenomenon took hold.
"I'm the heir to my family, so I don't need a recommendation letter — I had zero interest in the credits. I only took it because I wanted to get close to Prince Luid... and who knew it would turn out to be the best decision I've made all year."
Sebring, who had attended Luid's lecture, was surrounded by a crowd of students desperate to know what it had been like.
"I heard it tastes like a demon's temptation. Is it true?"
"A dish called Hell's Temptation? How could anyone not be curious?"
As it happened, the official name tteokbokki was far less widespread than Hell's Temptation — a nickname Damon had coined entirely on his own.
Sebring raised his index finger with the utmost gravity.
"Listen well. If the price of eating that dish were a one-way ticket to Hell... I would fall into Hell with a smile on my face."
"It's... it's that good?"
"I've found a new reason to live, that's all. Thank the heavens I wrote the recipe down."
"Th-there's a recipe?"
"Of course. This was a lecture, after all."
The students crowding around Sebring exchanged glances. Finally, one of them thrust a hand into the air.
"Fifty gold!"
"When, exactly, are these blasted detox mages going to disappear?"
In the imperial audience chamber, the nobles hung their heads and said nothing.
"Was it not already an established fact that detox magic serves no real purpose on ordinary food?"
The Empire had a peculiar profession known as the detox mage. Because nobles habitually dined with detox magic cast over every meal, they paid handsome sums to hire mages they could trust to keep the spell running.
But honestly — trust in detox magic? It was a mere 1st Tier spell. Yet the nobles refused to trust a 1st Tier mage's skill and insisted on hiring nothing less than 4th Tier or above.
High-value personnel — trained 4th Tier mages — were being pointlessly squandered on nonsense, day after day. It was maddening enough, but worse, some mages had taken to calling themselves specialists in the field of detox magic and raking in fortunes.
And lately, even commoners, eager to mimic their betters, had begun casting detox magic over their meals in growing numbers. Demand for detox mages never dried up.
The inevitable result: talent flooded into the detox mage trade while the Magic Knight Corps, which actually needed mages, suffered chronic staffing shortages. Some mages even regarded a posting in the Magic Knight Corps as nothing more than a stepping-stone on the way to a detox mage career.
Lucius had been agonizing over this issue for some time, and solving it was anything but easy.
"It, it is a long-standing custom, Your Majesty... changing it will require considerable time, I fear."
Nothing was more daunting than an enemy with no substance. No matter how much magical evidence one marshaled to prove that detox magic on food was impractical, it couldn't put so much as a hairline crack in a tradition centuries in the making.
"Tell me, Baron Tron. Never mind the Empire at large — what of the detox mage in your own household? Does that, too, require considerable time?"
"Ahem. Ahem."
Tron lowered his head, his face stricken. There was no excuse to be had.
"Is every noble in this Empire a blockhead?"
Lucius's fury reached all the way to the crown of his head.
"B-but, Your Majesty. Is it not too soon to judge detox magic as useless? As the First Emperor's own maxim states: 'If one partakes of meat, one's health must inevitably suffer. All the meat of the world eaten without detox magic is harmful meat.' I beg you, reconsider the suppression of the detox mages."
"Reconsider! Reconsider, I say!"
The Empire's political forces fell into two great camps: the pro-imperial faction, devoted to the First Emperor's ideology, and the noble faction, devoted to practical gain. As fierce objections came pouring out of the pro-imperial camp — his own home ground, no less — Emperor Lucius felt his head throb at the prospect of wading through yet another long, tedious debate from the very beginning.
Clutching his forehead, the Emperor waved a hand.
"Enough. Move on to the next agenda item."
"...The, the next item is the regular report from the Imperial Academy."
The Emperor's expression brightened at once. The Academy was the Empire's future, and news of the future was always a delight to hear.
I shall have to change things slowly. Very, very slowly.
Even so, he resolved inwardly that the detox mages must be rooted out somehow, one way or another. Lucius absolutely despised seeing such staggering amounts of manpower and money squandered on things that served no purpose.
"It says here that Luid Christopher Windsor has held his first lesson, and that the response has been exceptionally enthusiastic."
Lucius nodded along to the news of Luid, feeling an inexplicable swell of pride on his behalf.
"What was the lesson? Did he present a new paradigm to the field of magical scholarship this time as well?"
"...Well, the lesson content was, ah, somewhat unusual."
Gulp. Michael, the chief aide, spoke carefully while gauging the Emperor's mood.
"It was, as I understand it... a cooking practicum."
"...Cooking?"
"Yes. He is attempting something new by combining magic and cuisine, and... the rule, apparently, is that no detox magic may be used."
"What did you say?"
Lucius's eyes went round.
"Is this truly so?"
One thing he knew for certain: the Duchess of Windsor, who treasured Luid's health above all things, would never in a thousand years permit her son to eat food without detox magic. Which could only mean...
He read my intentions and acted on his own initiative.
The Emperor's eyes welled with emotion.
Everyone under the sun is scheming to take a bite out of me, yet he never fails to be of use.
Where else in the world would one find such a clever nephew? A warm, fond smile spread across the Emperor's face.
"A favorable reception means it succeeded, then."
"Yes... it would seem so. I hear the recipe taught that day is already trading at a very steep price."
"Oh? I see. You've naturally procured a copy, then?"
"Barely, Your Majesty. One copy, with great difficulty."
The aide respectfully presented a paper to the Emperor.
"Tteokbokki? An unfamiliar name."
"It is also known as Hell's Temptation, Your Majesty. They say it tastes as though demons themselves are beckoning to you."
"Ah — so that is why the Tears of Pianens were taken. How intriguing. I must try this at once. Will the rest of you care to taste it as well?"
My nephew has handed me a lever — best to use it straightaway. Rather than banning detox magic outright, give the nobles a reason to stop using it of their own accord. Now that is an elegant solution.
The nobles bowed their heads as though overwhelmed by the imperial grace.
The Emperor spoke with a thoroughly satisfied expression.
"Have the royal kitchen prepare a dish exactly like this one. You have thirty minutes."
"Th-that is... well..."
Michael broke out in a cold sweat.
"What is it?"
"I— I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. The stock of 'Tears of Pianens' — the most essential ingredient in the recipe — has run out."
"...What?"
The Emperor's face twisted in disbelief. How could it possibly have run out? He knew perfectly well that it had fallen out of fashion with modern torture trends and gone largely unused. It should have been rotting in a corner of the Imperial Treasury.
"...Prince Damon was the one who..."
Michael bit his lip.
The Emperor blinked, momentarily failing to grasp the situation. Then his face flushed scarlet.
Struggling with all his might to smother the roar boiling up from his very core, he spoke.
"...Summon Damon."