The Shipping-Obsessed Academy Welcomes the Regent
"Alright, this right here is the Cooking Science building, where the absolute cream of the crop of our Agricultural Food Science department is gathered, I tell ya!"
The buttons on Daisy's overalls looked as if they might pop off at any second due to her voluptuous chest, but she didn't seem to care in the slightest. Instead, she kept her mouth moving without a moment's rest, unloading everything from the academy's history to all kinds of random trivia onto Line, who was standing beside her.
"But Line, don't ya find it strange? Why perfectly normal cookin' kids are lumped together with the Agriculture department, reekin' of fertilizer and all."
"Ah... Yes, to be honest, I did think it was a bit of an odd combination compared to the Knight or Art departments."
Through the long Great War between humans and demons and the continental wars, the leadership of the Empire had been obsessed with one thing.
'Food that we can eat so we don't starve to death first.'
Pampered complaints about taste, texture, or elegance were all shut down with a single question: "So, do you want to starve?"
It was a time when the sole mission of the Agriculture department's researchers was to produce even a single calorie more efficiently, faster, and in greater quantities.
Amid that madness, the geniuses of the Agriculture department achieved the monumental feat of skyrocketing food production, ushering in an 'era free from starvation.'
But once they reached this point, they fell into a state of "what do we do now?" The new frontier presented to them was: "Let's raise food production efficiency to the absolute extreme and liberate ourselves from labor."
Having excelled at this as well, the geniuses of the Agriculture department began churning out inventions like mass-breeding methods for high-protein edible insects that reproduced a hundred times faster than rats, and ultra-concentrated chlorella culture fluid where a single spoonful met an adult male's entire daily caloric requirement.
The efficiency was certainly great. The efficiency, that is. But the problem was...
About a decade or so ago, the department deans and professors emeritus, who had been popping champagne in joy, finally faced the harsh reality.
'...Why won't the citizens of the Empire eat even a single bite of this perfect food we created?'
The citizens and soldiers of the Empire, who were no longer starving, took one look at the green chlorella mud-water and wriggling stir-fried larvae that the Agriculture department proudly distributed for free—boasting, "Look at how nutritious we made this! Mwahaha!"—and threw them right back.
"We'd rather starve to death with dignity than eat this crap, damn it! Eat it yourselves!"
No matter how hungry one was, there was a line that human dignity simply could not cross, but they had rushed forward while completely ignoring it.
Only then did the scholars of the Agriculture department, who had spent decades calculating nutrients and production rates at their desks, realize their mistake.
They realized that beyond merely eating to survive, the people of the world pursued the crucial values of 'taste' and 'elegance.'
"Honestly, it was ridiculous. So they practically begged the former head chefs of the Imperial Palace to come teach, and rushed to create this 'Cooking Science' department. They said they wanted to inject taste and the art of cuisine into those ignorant dirt-shoveling fools."
Daisy clicked her tongue and shook her head.
"But I still don't get why eatin' insects is so weird. Stir-fried grasshoppers and salty silkworm pupae are so nutty and delicious! Don't ya think?"
"Oh? You're right! Freshly roasted grasshoppers are so crispy and make a great nutritious snack. And silkworm pupa soup eaten by the hearth in winter is a real delicacy."
As Line nodded, Daisy suddenly stopped in her tracks and grabbed Line's shoulders with a bone-crushing grip.
"...Did ya just say grasshoppers? And ya know exactly what silkworm pupa soup is?"
"Ah, yes! Yes! We eat them all the time in the countryside."
"Are ya by any chance a Derevensky?!"
Derevensky.
It was a slang term in the Empire meaning 'countryside bumpkin' or 'backwater.'
"Huh? Yes! I'm from a very deep, remote mountain village!"
"JACKPOT!!!"
With a thunderous shout that echoed down the hallway, Daisy grabbed Line by the waist and lifted her high into the air.
"Aaaah! I can't breathe! Mmph!"
"Oh my goodness! I finally found one! This huge academy is full of nothin' but stuck-up noble brats and city slickers, so I didn't have a single hometown sister to comfortably spit on the ground with!"
As it turned out, Daisy was also a Derevensky.
Having helped her parents tend potato fields since childhood, she had accumulated vast knowledge in botany and biology. She was a super-genius student who had gained special admission to the academy after winning the grand prize at the Imperial Agricultural Olympiad with an original plant breeding method.
"I didn't have a single friend to open my heart to, so I soaked my pillow with tears every night in the dormitory. But meetin' ya, Line, makes me feel like I'm flyin' high! Oh, my little sister!"
"...Ah! Daisy-sunbae! I'm happy to the ends of the universe to meet a sister from back home, but now is not the time for this! The Lord Regent of the Empire and Old Gorky, the People's Commissar for the Protection of Culture, are on their way to the academy right now! We have to prepare the highest-class protocol refreshments and dishes by eleven o'clock!"
"..."
Daisy's cheerful, good-natured face instantly stiffened.
"...The, the Lord Regent?! That scary old man whose very gaze is said to slice off your neck is comin' here?!"
"Yes! And it's an unofficial audit, so the secretariat is on the verge of complete destruction! Please help me, sunbae!"
"Oh my, this ain't the time to be celebratin' a jackpot! Hey, everyone! It's an emergency! If ya want to keep your heads attached, get your brows to the ground and grab your frying pans!"
Terrified, Daisy grabbed Line's wrist and began sprinting into the Cooking Science department.
Upon entering the central kitchen of the building, they saw Cooking Science students dressed neatly in white chef uniforms. They were busy sprinkling gold dust on silver plates and building colorful macaron towers, diligently preparing desserts that looked blindingly luxurious.
"Ah, Daisy-sunbae! What kind of tear gas are you releasing now to cause a fuss? We're busy setting up a top-tier tea party, so go away."
"That pretty, useless sugar trash ya'll are makin' won't cut it! Hey, where are those bastards? Those four crazy beasts!"
As Daisy looked around and shouted, the students pointed toward a tightly shut private kitchen in a corner.
"They're probably holed up in there doing something insane again. They already fulfilled all their graduation requirements early, so they just spend all day doing weird things because they have nothing else to do. Why are you looking for them?"
"Sunbae, who are 'those bastards'?"
"They swept all the top spots in the Cooking Science department, but then claimed they got sick of cookin'. Now they're a quartet of madmen who spend all day liftin' heavy barbells!"
The moment the door opened, the smell of sweat and the subtle, savory aroma of egg yolks wafted out.
"One hundred twenty-seven! One hundred twenty-eight! Speed it up, you weak, third-rate cooks! Don't let the heat control slip!"
Four men, with builds robust enough to put Knight department students to shame, had stripped off their shirts and were furiously slamming giant cast-iron woks over the stoves.
Using egg yolks as the main ingredient, they mixed in starch, sugar, water, and lard, strained it through a fine sieve, and were now stirring it relentlessly with spatulas and woks over three hundred times without a single pause.
What is that? I don't know, but it's terrifying.
The biceps violently flexing every time they slam the woks are terrifying. The plump, rolling eggs are terrifying. The fact that absolutely nothing is sticking to the pots, spatulas, or chopsticks is also terrifying!
"...What on earth are they doing?"
"It's a legendary dish from the Far East called Sanbeodian, or the Three Non-Sticks. It's a sticky egg dish that doesn't stick to the plate, the teeth, or the chopsticks. To make it right, ya have to stand in front of the fire and beat it with a spatula five hundred times without stoppin' like a machine. They're crazy bastards who use cookin' as an excuse to train their bodies like that."
"Daisy! You're noisy, get out right now!"
"You guys, do a job with me!"
"What job? It's a pain. We already got perfect scores on our graduation projects, so whether there's a festival or not, we're just going to swing our woks here and go home."
"The Lord Regent is visitin' the academy at eleven."
"Where?"
"Our academy."
"So?"
"From now, in exactly one hour, we have to make a top-tier protocol dish that will make that incredibly picky Lord Regent smile."
"Are you crazy? Why should we? Does it make sense to conscript us with only an hour left? We already fulfilled our graduation requirements! We're graduating! Nobody can stop us!"
Line reached into her coat and pulled out the 'conscription order' she had received from Karl, the Chief of the Secretariat.
She had spotted a very useful clause at the bottom of the paper.
In case of non-cooperation, in accordance with military law and national emergency disposal provisions, the individual's academy registration will be revoked, and they will be conscripted as a kitchen police (KP) duty soldier at a frontline fortress.
"...Y-You're joking, right, cute secretary of the Chief of the Secretariat?"
The lead cook gripped his wok with a slightly trembling hand and swallowed hard.
"Will exactly fifty minutes from now be enough? We will perfectly present a legendary dessert set that will bring the Lord Regent to his knees."
Subjugation complete. The price for it, however...
"By the way, that freshman secretary..."
"She's the actual maniac who stomped on the podium during the entrance ceremony."
"To think she subdued that quartet of madmen in an instant..."
"As expected, you can't hide a true crazy bitch. Look at her eyes. She looks completely bloodless and tearless."
The brutal backbiting whispered by the Cooking Science students behind her echoed in her ears.
*Sniff.*
Time flew by in a blur, and finally, it was exactly eleven o'clock in the morning.
Karl and Elina had dragged the Knight and Bard students by their collars, somehow managing to prepare an event that looked reasonably grand.
Meanwhile, the quartet of madmen from the Cooking Science department had completed the perfect dessert set in the promised fifty minutes.
How those sweaty, muscular men had managed to create a delicate dessert set in just fifty minutes was a mystery Line would never solve, but she let out a sigh of relief that everything was ready.
In the distance, beyond the academy's entrance road, a black carriage came into view.
The golden wheels came to a halt precisely in front of the main building's stairs.
An attendant carefully threw open the carriage's massive door.