Extreme Spicy (1)
Extreme Spicy (1)
The answer came back immediately.
She had anticipated Lucas would accept her request eventually.
He was a kind and decent man.
But she hadn't expected him to agree on the spot.
The request had been sudden, and more than that, it was bound to be a difficult one for a chef.
Stop an explorer? With cooking?
Michelle had prepared eighteen separate arguments to persuade him. She filed them all away in the back of her mind.
- I didn't think you'd say yes so quickly.
"Miss Michelle, you're a valued guest of our establishment."
Lucas smiled as he spoke, and the sight brought a swell of relief.
He's a good person.
Their first meeting had been an accident, just as he'd said, but Lucas was unmistakably a good person.
- If you need help, I'll support you in any way I can. As you can see, I have some small talent with magic.
"That won't be necessary."
- Pardon?
"It's not that difficult a task. Though I'm afraid I can't exactly do it for free."
- .......
Michelle's mouth closed.
Was this where human greed showed itself?
She believed Lucas wasn't that sort of man, but she couldn't entirely suppress the unease unfurling in her chest.
Even though she'd steeled herself to grant whatever he asked.
Why am I trembling?
Her hands shivered faintly.
- What price, then.......
"Come visit our establishment more often."
- ......Excuse me?
"Thanks to you coming by so often to eat fish dishes, we've had a lot more customers ordering fish lately. You know how it is. Imperials don't usually eat fish."
- That...... is all?
"Of course."
- .......
Michelle lost the ability to speak for a moment.
The request was completely outside her expectations.
She'd wanted to frequent his restaurant even without being asked.
- I...... I'm a bit flustered.
Lucas kept defying her predictions.
He was nothing like the humans Abamama had described.
Not a human who used mermaids solely for his own gain.
He was so very kind, so very decent.......
"Hahaha, do you know how hard it is to keep regulars coming back? And when a beautiful lady like yourself drops in often, it livens up the whole restaurant."
- B-beautiful.......
Michelle felt her face grow hot.
Her breath shortened, chest tightening.
She was still reeling from an emotion she'd never felt before when—
"Well then, I'll go settle this quickly and be right back."
Lucas inclined his head.
- I'll be waiting.
At her answer, Lucas smiled and took his leave.
***
I already knew Gerard was a famous explorer. I got the details from Heimer and Hamilton.
"He's a man who's conquered everything from the Winter Mountains in the north to the desert they call the western edge. He's probably set foot on more of the continent than any human alive."
"I've heard he's mad for exploration. The reason Cat-people even appear in the Empire right now is all thanks to Gerard."
"They say his combat strength is nothing to scoff at, either. If you're weak, you die in the brutal jungle."
"His autobiography claims he's survived this far on some peculiar intuition of his. Can't speak to the details myself, though."
Piece the information together, however briefly, and the picture came clear: Gerard was a man obsessed with exploration.
The type who got an adrenaline rush from tightrope-walking through nature, who chased the dopamine hit of overcoming extreme conditions. Addicts of raw stimulation.
That was why Gerard conquered the harshest wilderness of the frontier.
New information, ruins, elements like that—each of them was just another excuse for the next expedition.
He was a man who savored a very specific flavor of pleasure, the kind you only find at the extremes.
The world I came from had plenty of people like him.
Extreme sports enthusiasts.
People who loved pushing themselves to the limit in remote jungle terrain with minimal gear.
- Here we have a viper. It may be the king of the jungle, but right now, it's my lunch.
I found myself thinking of that one guy—the natural-protein fanatic who'd eat bugs and call them a perfectly good protein source.
Guys like this share certain traits.
Peak masculinity.
A competitive drive to conquer anything.
And an unbreakable pride.
Like dwarf sinew, basically.
The type that snaps before it bends.
For a moment, I considered just threatening Gerard and driving him off.
But that's precisely the kind of man threats don't work on.
That's the absolute worst plan. Scratch that.
Would kicking Gerard out solve anything?
No.
If he went back to the capital, he'd definitely send someone from the relevant guilds to investigate.
My role in it wouldn't be exposed, but.......
The mansion where Michelle was staying might be.
An investigation would follow, and they might find clues that the mermaids of legend actually existed.
So.
I needed to occupy his time with something else.
Or, failing that.
Redirect Gerard's attention somewhere else.
Redirect it. Right.
How?
Give him an even bigger hit of that explorer-specific adrenaline rush.
Gerard's threshold was already so high that ordinary stimuli couldn't satisfy him anymore.
What could possibly satisfy a man like that?
And then an item came to mind—something that could provoke both his towering pride and his craving for sensation at the same time.
Buldak Bokkeummyun. Dijinda Donkatsu. Silbi Kimchi.
The extreme end of the culinary spectrum. Foods whose sheer spiciness had made the careers of countless YouTubers.
Buldak Bokkeummyun in particular had been such a global sensation it sparked entire challenges overseas.
That was where I got the idea.
A spiciness that ignites the competitive spirit.
A heat so extreme it could make even an explorer who risked his life in the remote wilderness see spots.
A heat so intense you'd think you were dying as you ate it.
"That's it."
Finding chili peppers with the right level of heat wasn't hard.
"Spiciness, you say....... Sir Lucas, the bulgogi you already make is plenty spicy to me, and you intend to make something even hotter?"
Riman. Alchemist, mage, and now the man building modern innovations like freeze-drying systems and carbonation injectors.
"Yes. I want a level of spiciness that would make an ogre pass out mid-meal."
"Hmm. In that case, I do have something among my alchemical materials."
He fetched the exact chili pepper I needed most.
The thing was a menacing, vivid crimson—practically infernal.
That's the one.
"An explorer who was charting the jungle first discovered this fruit. They say the numbing burn is so intense that eating it alone is enough to make a man faint. These days, it's used in various forms of alchemy. Among alchemists, it's considered one of the ingredients you must never consume."
As expected of Riman.
I'd trusted he'd have it.
"Thank you."
"Haha, I'm glad it helped."
"And I have one more request."
"Name it."
"I'd like to take some of the sparkling water. How complete is it?"
"It's reached ninety-five percent of the carbonation level you specified. You'll be able to see the finished product soon."
"Ninety-five percent, huh....... Good enough. I'll grab a few bottles."
"As many as you like."
Riman seemed almost pleased that I was taking the unfinished carbonated water with me.
Maybe his trust in me had deepened after the freeze-drying system was completed.
It looked like he'd decided to enthusiastically approve of whatever I attempted.
A versatile alchemist with both skill and sharp instincts.
"What do you want that for, anyway?"
Blackbeard, the audacious dwarf drunkard who'd been watching from the sidelines, spoke up.
"I want to make a dish that awakens a man's spirit of challenge."
"A male's spirit of challenge, eh....... Now that sounds intriguing."
"Give it a try yourself sometime."
"Hmm, very well. Once it's done, I'll come find you straight away."
Riman, who'd been listening quietly, cut in.
"And who exactly are you making this for?"
"The man they call the greatest explorer."
"You mean Gerard? The one who came here because of the mermaids?"
"Yes."
"Ho-ho! This is going to be an entertaining spectacle. Sir Lucas versus Sir Gerard......."
"So spread the word, if you would."
"Spread the word?"
"The more people who show up to watch, the hotter the spirit of challenge burns, don't you think?"
Riman rested a hand on his chin and nodded.
"A spirit of challenge....... You intend to bring Gerard to his knees, then."
"Exactly. I intend to make him challenge me again and again."
And break him.
I meant to sear it into his memory—that this was the first thing he had ever failed to conquer. The first thing to make him taste despair.
Enough to make him forget mermaids even existed.
"Understood. I'll spread the word around the village and let people know. At this rate, even the knights will want to try it."
The knights wanting to try it, huh.
No.
They couldn't challenge it right now.
If they did, Gerard would feel a comparative sense of relief if he beat them.
This had to be a battle that thoroughly demolished Gerard.
Not just letting him taste a dish.
"No. We won't be accepting other challengers. The first challenger must, under absolutely any circumstances, be Gerard and Gerard alone."
Maybe later I'd open it up.
Not now.
"Tell the Viscount as well."
"Of course. I'll pass the message on to Sir Lancelot."
"Thank you."
"A pity. I was going to try it myself."
Blackbeard grumbled and stroked his beard.
***
"Haah. A wild goose chase."
Gerard didn't bother hiding his dejection and let out a sigh.
No further eyewitness reports of mermaids had surfaced from the coastal villages.
The only one who kept insisting he'd seen a mermaid was the original fisherman.
"And even his story is so vague it changes depending on when you ask......."
Had his instincts been wrong?
Maybe I've been at this too long.
He was already past forty.
His physical prime was behind him; now experience and hard-won reputation were barely managing to compensate for his declining physical ability.
For a man like him, an explorer's intuition was the one weapon that could never be allowed to rust.
"It's been four days since I started investigating this place, and I've got no credible sightings and no proof......."
He was at a dead end.
A genuine needle-in-a-desert level of difficulty.
Of course, he had once located a Cat-people village under similarly impossible conditions.
But the sea is vaster than any desert.......
A place where humans couldn't set foot.
That made it harder.
He was in the middle of exhaling another sigh when—
"Good to meet you, Mr. Gerard."
A man with neatly cropped dark-brown hair approached him.
The face was familiar.
The owner of the restaurant that had made his intuition resonate.
Lucas, wasn't it?
Given that the local knights addressed him with "Sir," he seemed to be a chef of knightly origin.
No idea why a knight is working as a cook, but.......
Gerard belatedly realized he'd been staring at the man without knowing it, drawn by the force behind those deep black eyes.
Provoking a kind of exploratory urge, maybe?
Lucas, still smiling faintly, spoke first.
"I'd like to make you a proposal, Sir Gerard. One I think might interest you. May I?"
"A proposal?"
That was when.
MmmMMMM!
The explorer's intuition that had guided Gerard all his life abruptly began to scream.
At this man.
An unprecedented certainty flooded through him.
This man has something.
"What is it?"
"Try challenging a dish at our restaurant."