Taming the Fox
In Korea, there was a cup ramen called Volcano Fried Noodles.
It was famous for its dizzying heat and the subtle richness that lingered underneath, and among Koreans who loved spicy food, it had become wildly popular.
So spicy that people joked it was a Korean language injector, because once you ate it, Korean curses would automatically start flying out of your mouth.
Its heat was so notorious that a foreigner who ate Volcano Fried Noodles once belched fire and said, Do Koreans have no sense of moderation? It was a pretty famous story.
When a ramen that spicy was still selling number one in Korea, there was no need to keep going on and on about how much Koreans loved heat.
Of course, there were plenty of people who hated it too.
And some of those Koreans played Silia Online and ended up grumbling about it.
“Why doesn’t this game have anything spicy?”
“If it was made in Korea, shouldn’t there be spicy food?”
“Seriously. It’s only worth eating if it’s hot enough to keep you trapped in the bathroom the next day.”
“Okay, that’s a bit much.”
There were spicy dishes in the Ardeena Continent, of course, but they still fell short of satisfying Korean tastes.
“Grrr...! I need heat, heat...!”
“Give me capsaicin!”
“Eek!”
Driven mad by a taste that set their nerves on fire, they became obsessed.
As more and more heat-zombies rolled in with wild, glassy eyes, players and NPCs alike recoiled and fled.
Just as the Silia world stood on the brink of collapse under the heat-zombie menace, one of the zombies had a brilliant idea.
“If it doesn’t exist, why not just make it ourselves?”
And so, the project to recreate spicy flavor began.
Trying to reproduce a taste from Earth was nothing new.
Plenty of players who cared about things besides combat had already tried, and there had been plenty of successes and failures.
And while not all of them were, a lot of the foods that failed to be recreated shared one common trait: they were heavily influenced by modern food science.
Some could be reproduced, but only at ridiculous cost; others couldn’t be reproduced at all.
The flavor the heat-zombies pursued belonged to that same category.
Since it was difficult to reproduce the savory heat unique to Volcano Fried Noodles using only natural ingredients, his attempts kept ending in failure.
But after refusing to give up and trying again and again, his efforts finally paid off.
“W-what the hell is this?! It feels like my tongue is burning off!”
“Ah, don’t you know? This is called spicy flavor.”
“Water! Give me water!”
“Idiot. Don’t you know that drinking water after something spicy makes it feel even hotter? Here, drink milk instead!”
“You... you actually did it...!”
The restaurant built through relentless effort: Burning Phoenix.
The only things it sold were two dishes—Phoenix Fried Noodles and Phoenix Fried Rice, what Koreans called Volcano Fried Noodles and Volcano Fried Rice—and milk to soothe blistered mouths.
Even so, Burning Phoenix spread widely, delighting many Koreans, foreigners who loved spicy food, and even NPCs, until it became a huge success.
The food Jerny had brought today was that very Volcano... or rather, Phoenix Fried Rice.
“And right now, it’s my lunch.”
Just looking at the blazing red fried rice made her swallow hard.
Jerny liked the noodles more than the rice, but if she carried the noodles all the way up the mountain where the gravedigger lived, the strands would surely swell into a soggy mess and turn into fried noodle mush.
“...But is this really okay to give him?”
Sniffing the sharp, spicy aroma drifting up from the rice, Jerny’s smug grin finally gave way to reason.
“What if he gets mad that I brought him this junk? What if all the goodwill I’ve built up just flies away...?”
“You dopamine addicts!”
Of course Jerny was curious too.
Would he really be able to eat that fried rice and not react at all?
It was a dish she had prepared out of sheer stubbornness, and yet when it came time to hand it over, she couldn’t move easily and kept hesitating.
“Maybe I should just say I couldn’t bring anything today and—”
“L-Lowering my goodwill won’t be your problem anyway!”
“Ugh!”
Jerny trembled in frustration.
She had forgotten. These were people who lived to tease her.
“Wouldn’t it be fine if I just said I bought it because it’s a trendy food these days? That’s not a lie.”
Still wavering, Jerny finally opened her inventory to put the fried rice back.
“Thinking about it again, this really doesn’t seem right. Maybe I should just not give it to him today—”
Give the Fried Rice
🎁 Reward: 500,000 won
“Fifty thousand?!”
Was he trying to buy me with money?!
But it was too much money to say that with a straight face.
Jerny’s eyes trembled as everyone piled on, delighting in how the quest reward kept climbing.
She wasn’t greedy for the money. She was afraid of what that money meant.
If the mission reward had risen this much, that meant the fire had spread that far.
If she gave up and canceled the mission, the chat would go beyond a mere fire and explode.
“Fine! I’ll do it, okay?! I’ll do it...!”
Forced to pay off the karmic debt of bringing Phoenix Fried Noodles in the first place, Jerny took trembling steps toward the gravedigger.
“T-this... um...”
“...”
“Today, I... brought... food.”
Jerny spoke haltingly in the Granic she had just learned.
The gravedigger silently looked at the food she held out, then at Jerny.
“...”
“...”
“...”
The stare hurt.
She knew perfectly well that a gaze had no physical force, and yet somehow it felt as if someone were poking her over and over with a needle.
Or maybe it wasn’t a needle, but a very old, very battered sword.
Why are you making me eat this? Are you out of your mind?
The gravedigger’s eyes seemed to ask that.
I really should’ve given up on the abyss and everything else...
No matter how frightening the abyss might be, could it be scarier than dying?
As Jerny, being pricked to death by that gaze, was on the verge of becoming a human pincushion, she honestly wished the gravedigger would just refuse to eat it.
Refuse! It’s fine if you refuse it! You can even toss it aside so hard there’s nothing to complain about!
That way she wouldn’t have to worry about public opinion dropping, and she wouldn’t have to worry about being killed by an angry gravedigger either.
One stone, two birds. Kill two birds with one stone. How good would that be?
Just as the pounding in her chest had turned to a violent thud and regret flooded her from head to toe, the gravedigger finally extended an arm hidden beneath his cape.
Tap.
“Eh?”
At that very moment, Jerny’s hope shattered as well.
The fried rice that had looked so appetizing just moments ago transformed in the gravedigger’s hand into something that looked fit for the demons of hell.
Hell, with lava flowing hot and miserable screams echoing through it.
A demon stirring fried rice in a huge pot suddenly raised its head and beckoned to her.
Come on in. First time in hell?
“H-haaah!”
Jerny’s face drained white as she realized that if she didn’t stop him now, the thing going into that pot wouldn’t be rice, but her.
“W-wait—”
But regret was always late.
Chomp, chomp.
While she had briefly lost her wits, the gravedigger had already scooped up a spoonful of the red fried rice and put it in his mouth.
Please, please...
Maybe the gravedigger could handle spicy food just fine.
Maybe he’d actually like it.
...Why had she done something so stupid over a stubborn little grudge, anyway?
Inside Jerny’s head, pointless hope and self-reproach wrestled back and forth in a frenzy.
It was already too late to turn back, so she could only pray with all her heart that the goodwill she’d painstakingly built wouldn’t fly away.
“...Kek.”
“!”
“Co-cough! Cough, cough, cough! H-hah...”
Well, I’m ruined.
Seeing the gravedigger, usually so unbothered, finally give the reaction she’d wanted so badly, Jerny let out a hollow, bitter laugh.
“At least... I hope he dies without too much pain...”
The demon waving at her had somehow become three.
Jerny opened the settings and dragged the pain ratio slider all the way to the left.
“Keck, keck...!”
Whether from shock or something else, the gravedigger’s coughing showed no sign of stopping.
The chat’s condemnations of Jerny grew even louder, fueled by the frantic coughing from that delicate-looking voice.
“You told me to do it! And besides, he might not even be a child?!”
“Ah, right, that’s true...!”
Jerny hurriedly pulled milk from her inventory.
It was something she had bought together with the fried rice at Burning Phoenix.
“Here...”
Whoosh!
Gulp, gulp!
At an astonishing speed she had never seen before, the gravedigger snatched the milk and drank it down.
With every gulp of milk he swallowed, his body—shivering like a poplar leaf—slowly began to calm.
The ragged, frantic breaths spilling from him also gradually eased.
Hiss, haah...
He still didn’t seem entirely free of the heat, but he was definitely better.
Which meant Jerny’s punishment was now right around the corner.
She immediately bowed her head.
“S-sorry!”
“...”
The gravedigger said nothing.
A silence so stifling it felt as though it might crush her lungs.
Was she going to drown in silence like this?
As Jerny, a major criminal, could do nothing but watch the mood carefully, the gravedigger finally opened his mouth.
“It’s not ‘sorry.’ It’s ‘I’m sorry,’ idiot.”
“...Huh?”
But unlike what Jerny had expected, what came out of his mouth wasn’t anger.
She had thought it wouldn’t be strange if he’d immediately drawn his sword and gone on a rampage, shouting that he’d kill her.
The unexpectedly gentle reaction made not only Jerny but the viewers stir with surprise.
But their shock didn’t end there.
“Kana.”
“Yes?”
“My name is Kana.”
The gravedigger said it in a voice that seemed strangely faint.
“It’s a secret, so don’t tell anyone.”
Amid the storm of question marks, one chat message drifted past.
Seeing it, Jerny quietly agreed.
She had no idea how things had turned out like this, but for now, she should be grateful just to be alive...
Kana likes spicy food. Note to self....