The Three Things I Hate the Most
The Three Things I Hate the Most
Once our day's travel was done, the party pitched a simple tent and set up camp.
I built a campfire at the center of the site, set up a stand over it, and placed the wok on top.
Strictly speaking, I didn't actually need the fire. Not when the Empire had things like the Brewstar — that marvel of magical engineering.
But haul a Brewstar all the way out here and cook with it?
'Where's the romance in that?'
Honestly, when was the last time I'd even taken a trip like this?
Ever since I recalled my past life in this world, I'd never once gone on a proper journey.
During my time in the knight order, I spent most of it stuck in the mess hall. I did leave the barracks on the occasional expedition or mission, but that wasn't travel — it was duty. The kind with heavy tension in the air, where you couldn't let your guard down for a second because discipline was everything.
After I quit the knight order, I couldn't exactly rest, what with setting up the restaurant. And after the restaurant opened...
'Apart from hunting trips for ingredients, I've never once taken a real journey.'
I'd gone to the coast plenty of times, or into the woods — but that was procurement. A business trip, not a vacation.
So wasn't it understandable if I felt a little lighthearted for once?
Sure, we had an important objective: escorting the Saintess to Lilyan. Even so, the whole thing felt far less oppressive than an expedition with the order.
"......Grant them Your protection, I beseech You."
The Saintess was praying for the knights who had sacrificed themselves on her behalf. She said that if she prayed, God's care for them might increase, even if only a little.
"Do they worry you that much?"
"......Yes. They fought the Knights of Bellosa directly to protect me. I saw them fighting. I saw Mika and the other escort knights who took a different path from mine as well. Every one of them risked their lives for me alone."
Through every word, her clasped hands never loosened.
Except during meals, those hands were always folded together — and you could feel the desperation in them.
"They'll be alive."
"......Yes."
"Right now, you have to believe they're alive. If you don't, your spirit will break."
"......."
"Until we return to the capital, you need to hold firm. If you waver and crumble, their sacrifices will have been for nothing."
Amelia looked at me.
"Thank you, Sir Lucas. I keep finding myself indebted to you — in body and in spirit."
I left Amelia to her resumed prayers and turned back to the campfire, setting the wok over the flames and drizzling oil across the metal.
I pulled the meat from the ice box we'd brought for food storage, then fished out assorted vegetables and seasonings from the provisions pack.
A sharp sizzle erupted.
I tossed garlic and green onion into the roiling oil, gave them a light stir, then added the meat and the seasoning sauce and stir-fried everything fast.
Tonight's menu: a direct-fire Jeyuk Bokkeum set meal.
For the Saintess, a grilled deodeok heavily glazed in gochujang seasoning, with a few extra vegetable side dishes.
We'd rushed through lunch to keep moving, so now that camp was set, dinner deserved a proper effort.
When your mind's exhausted, eating well is how you get your strength back. That's the rule.
'Part of me wants to tell her to forget the pilgrimage and just eat some meat...'
But for some people, faith carries a meaning far deeper than I could measure.
I stared up at the star-scattered sky and let my mind wander.
'Maybe I'll make curry tomorrow.'
Eating curry out in the wild.
That was an ironclad tradition. Practically mandatory.
And on the last day, grilled meat.
That was the full camping course.
'I did bring some test batches of curry roux, after all.'
When I built the freeze-drying system, curry roux was the second thing I wanted to make — right after ramyun soup powder.
Curry roux was every bit as versatile.
Where ramyun soup powder saw heavy use in spicy broths, curry roux often found its way into fried dishes — to enhance their color and depth. Or into braised chicken, even pasta, whenever a dish needed more savory richness.
Curry rice was delicious in its own right. Was there anything simpler than a curry rice bowl packed with as much meat as vegetables?
I'm aware some people have bad associations with curry, thanks to school lunches and military mess halls.
'But make it properly, and it'll blow your mind.'
With that in mind, I'd done some digging and discovered that the western regions of the Empire used spices like cumin, turmeric, and fennel — the same spices essential to curry.
There was an old saying: if you want to know the Empire's fashion trends, go to the capital; if you want to know its food trends, go west.
Back when I'd read this story as a novel, it had even stated outright that over seventy percent of the Empire's culinary customs originated in the west. The place was famously food-obsessed.
'Thank goodness.'
A lot of the ingredients shared the exact same names as their real-world counterparts. If they hadn't, tracking them down would've taken forever.
'Then why rename something like gallek?'
Did the author swap out the names of ingredients she was familiar with?
I was busy airing my grievances against the author while stir-frying the meat. That's when it happened.
"Boss, watch out!"
Andrea shouted at me, urgent.
Clang!
Reflexively, I lifted the spatula I'd been using to stir-fry.
"Huh?"
An arrow was lodged clean in the wooden spatula.
"What the— what's this?"
"We're under attack."
I looked toward where the arrow had come from.
More arrows were already in flight.
Whooosh!
Andrea's magic whipped up a gale that swallowed every last arrow.
At the same moment, figures burst from the shadows.
Attackers who'd hidden themselves with magic.
Swords drawn. The red eagle emblem.
Knights of Bellosa.
Twenty of them.
"I got too comfortable."
I'd doubted they'd actually send a pursuit squad all the way from the western edge of the territory to the southern end.
'But they actually sent one.'
Our trail should have gone cold ages ago — they shouldn't have been able to track us easily.
But I suppose this was what it meant to be knights.
"Hand over the woman behind you. Now."
"Y-you people......to go this far......."
Amelia bit her lip as she spoke.
"What do we do?"
Andrea and Ivan both looked at me simultaneously.
"We deal with them."
"Understood."
Shing.
"Grant Your lamb the swiftness to move, that she may keep her faith."
The Saintess's blessing settled over the three of us.
Andrea and Ivan surged forward practically at the same instant.
"They're skilled opponents! Scatter and break their formation! Remember — our objective is singular!"
At the commander's shout, the knights fanned out in all directions.
At the same time, Ivan flung the throwing knives he'd kept hidden at his thigh straight at the vitals of a knight trying to slip past.
Thunk!
"Khurk!"
Andrea extended her left hand and fired her hand-crossbow, punching a bolt clean through another knight's skull.
"Looks like I'm not needed up front just yet."
I stood beside the Saintess with the wok in my left hand and the spatula in my right.
"Don't worry even if they break through. I'll protect you."
"......Yes. Thank you."
Behind me, Amelia was trembling.
Fear. And guilt — guilt that she'd dragged people into this mess again because of her.
She might be called a Saintess, but she was still a girl who hadn't been an adult for long. Watching people die to protect her couldn't have been easy to endure.
That was probably why she'd spiraled so deeply into her own delusions earlier.
Mentally and physically worn down, she'd fled into a distorted sense of reality to keep herself from breaking. Now that that escape was crumbling, the truth was rushing back in.
The other holy knights. Dead at the hands of Bellosa's men.
"You don't need to be afraid."
"......."
"Those two aren't going to lose. And didn't I promise you?"
I turned my gaze toward her and continued.
"That I'd protect you."
The knights who'd slipped past Andrea and Ivan's lines charged toward me, where I stood in front of Amelia.
"Tch. Using the part that touched food to hit someone feels a bit wrong."
I gripped the spatula by its neck and flipped it upside down. Then, with the long handle of the stir-fry spatula—
Whack!
"Gahk!"
—I struck the forehead of the knight leading the charge.
Mana laced the spatula. The knight's eyes rolled back and he collapsed, foam bubbling at his mouth.
"That cook's a knight too! Focus on him!"
The next three came at me in quick succession. I swung the spatula handle again.
One strike, one down.
Every time I landed a blow, another one dropped foaming to the ground.
"Let's wrap this up fast. I want to finish cooking before the ingredients cool."
The lead knight, gripping his sword in both hands, charged at me.
A thrust aimed squarely at my abdomen.
I blocked with the spatula and moved to counter.
Snap!
"Nghk!"
The neck of the spatula broke. It hadn't held up against the force of our mana clashing.
His skill was considerable — his mana was pure enough to shatter my spatula.
"You're getting on my nerves, you know that?!"
"Planning to fight with that pot now?"
I glanced at the wok.
Inside sat the half-finished Jeyuk Bokkeum, now cooled past saving.
'I can still salvage this.'
The vegetables hadn't completely wilted, and the oil hadn't started pooling on the surface. The longer it sat, the further it would slide from its peak, but if I intensified the seasoning a little, I could still bring it back...
Thunk!
A murderous reflex screamed. I raised the wok — and his blade punched clean through the bottom. Meat, sauce, and vegetables dribbled out through the hole.
"You dare take your eyes off me in the middle of a fight? I take that to mean you want to die."
"......."
The lead knight yanked his sword free and sneered at me.
"I intended to skewer your gut just like that pot. You reacted faster than I expected."
"You want to know something?"
I watched the food drip from the wok.
My head went hot.
Thump. Thump.
My heart pounded. Kept pounding faster and faster, like a runaway engine, no brakes.
"There are three things I can't stand."
"?"
"One — when someone calls my food tasteless and leaves it uneaten, turning it into trash. That one, I can understand. The food might genuinely not taste good. That's a failure of my skill. It gives me a reason to improve."
"What are you rambling about?"
"And another — when someone destroys my precious cooking tools. That one, I can also understand. Cooking tools will eventually break someday."
But here's the thing.
"You know what I really can't stand?"
"This bastard, right up to the end—!"
The lead knight raised his sword and lunged.
"Si-Sir Lucas! Dodge!"
"It's people who ruin my cooking mid-process. The carefully chosen ingredients I agonized over. The recipe I worked so hard to develop. Every ounce of effort I poured into making a dish meant for a customer — all of it ignored and destroyed."
As a cooking knight, that was something I could never, ever accept.
And this son of a bitch? He'd gone ahead and done every single thing I hated.
He'd created food waste. He'd broken my tool. He'd ruined my dish.
I grabbed the blade of the sword he'd aimed at my throat.
Clang!
His mana-infused sword stopped dead, as if it had struck an immovable wall.
"???"
The man's pupils trembled as he stared at me.
I knew that expression well. I'd worn the same face myself back when Vice-Commander Andy caught me off guard.
I might not look it now, but I was a former Imperial Princess's Knight Order member. I'd learned a thing or two.
"Tonight, you're scheduled for food waste."
Claaang!
I swung the now-useless, hole-punched wok — the cooking tool that had reached the end of its lifespan — straight into his face.
"Gurkh-gh!"
The cast-iron pan flattened the lead knight's features. He toppled backward.
Boom!
His heavily armored body hit the ground with a weighted thud, kicking up dust.
"......What the hell."
Why was that so easy?
I'd expected at least some grit. But he'd crumpled without even showing me that much.
Commander Luke would've hauled him awake and forced him back to work.
I looked down at the lead knight's face, smeared with what was now basically food waste — meat, vegetables, and seasoning all mashed together.
"You're cleaning all of this up yourself."
My eyes lingered, pained, on the food that had dribbled out through the hole in my wok.
"......What a waste."
I'd done it over a campfire to get that genuine fire-kissed taste. This had been my one chance to fully appreciate a proper charcoal Jeyuk Bokkeum. And this piece of trash had blown it.
I'd used up all my ingredients, too.
Tch.
Clicking my tongue, I turned and looked at Amelia, who'd been granting blessings behind me. The lightness in my body during that fight — that must have been her blessing at work.
'A Saintess's blessing really is something else.'
If I worked under a blessing while cooking, could I handle even more customers?
I toyed with the thought as I approached her.
"We're all done here."
"Ah, yes......."
I lifted my gaze toward Andrea and Ivan. Every last knight they'd engaged lay dead.
The only survivors were the four who'd slipped past their lines and charged at me instead.
'Good thing I kept these ones alive.'
We needed at least one prisoner to figure out the situation.
"Sir Lucas, thank you. Truly, thank you."
Amelia's eyes were reddened as she thanked me.
"It's too early for thanks. Until you've arrived at the capital — and until we've tracked down the other holy knights — no one should let their guard down."
"You're right. We still don't know their whereabouts."
"We'll find out naturally once that knight wakes up."
Andrea and Ivan said they'd sweep the perimeter, weapons in hand, and began searching the area around the campsite.
Now that we knew the enemy's pursuit was this close, we couldn't afford to be careless any longer.
Entirely separate from that.
Grrroooooowl.
Everyone's stomachs announced, loudly, that they were empty.
I looked at the hole-punched wok — the one I'd used to deliver the final blow to the lead knight.
"The wok's wrecked. I can't cook."
What a mess.
Then, without thinking, my eyes landed on the fallen knight's breastplate.
It had reasonable depth and a curved shape. Not a speck of tarnish on it — shining, pristine armor without a single stain to be seen. You could tell at a glance how meticulously this knight maintained his equipment.
"Hmm...... Saintess."
"Yes?"
"How thorough is purification magic, exactly? What can it purify?"
"Any impurity or filth, really...... Why do you ask?"
"Would you mind casting a purification spell on this armor for me?"
"Excuse me?"
Amelia blinked at me.
But if purification removed all filth, this ought to work fine.
I channeled mana into the lead knight's sword and used it to saw through his breastplate.
Shhk. Shhk.
I cut the breastplate into a reasonably sized piece and held it out.
"Purify this, please. It's our improvised wok."
Light wrapped around the breastplate — now a makeshift camping wok.