Failure Is the Mother of Success
Electric burners that lit with the push of a single button.
Convenient multi-function ovens with settings for time, temperature, and humidity.
Countless cooking tools powered by electricity.
It would have been a lie to claim he never missed the fruits of modern civilization that promised “more convenience, more simplicity.” Yet eleven years after his reincarnation had been more than enough time to adapt to a life where not even a whisper of that civilization could be found.
No—there had never really been anything to adapt to. The decade he spent as a serf in Moston Village, the place of his rebirth, had been a scramble for survival: grab and eat whatever you could whenever the chance arose. There had been no room to care about anything else.
It might have crossed his mind after he entered Winterhome in Coldon, Iceland.
Of course, it hadn’t.
Mary was far more convenient than any of that.
Praise her—the ultra-all-purpose, dazzling brownie maid.
Thanks to a woman who threw herself into work so eagerly that one could not help thinking every household ought to have one, three-quarters of the expected inconveniences simply vanished.
The remaining quarter, of course, was still there.
Even so, it had its own advantages. Food from the wood-fired oven—whose heat was a nuisance to control—and the bread (baked by Mary) carried a deep, lingering aroma that mere wood chips could never imitate, producing a flavor and fragrance all their own.
Unlike the household stoves of his previous life, the raw, powerful firepower here let him attempt dishes that had been difficult or frequent failures back then.
Had he dropped straight into this world with his past-life memories intact, it might have been different. But after ten years as a serf—and with Mary around—it was manageable enough.
Humans, however, are greedy creatures.
Karem occasionally, very rarely, missed those cooking tools from his previous life. It was the sort of thought any chef might have: wanting better, more advanced equipment rather than mere convenience.
He only thought it.
“So, is that cube on the table it?”
“Huh? No, no. That’s just something I was tinkering with for fun. The assignment and research are over here.”
“Hmm. Is that so.”
Catherine withdrew her interest and followed Robin as he beckoned her over, but Karem could not do the same.
“Young Master Robin. May I take a look?”
“As long as it’s only with your eyes!”
“Of course.”
Having received the owner’s permission, Karem walked naturally toward the rectangular prism that had seized his attention.
Looking closely, it’s definitely not plastic.
The front lid with its dial, through which the interior was faintly visible, was far too opaque to be ordinary glass. The gray frame around the body turned out to be gray porcelain, and the black body itself, upon inspection, was pitch-black wood.
“So, what homework did the old man hand you?”
“Here. Research notes and samples.”
“Hmm. Methods for utilizing monster materials and sample production.”
Flap—flap—
Looking carefully inside the opaque lid, he saw magic circles drawn on the top, bottom, sides, and rear that flickered faintly at regular intervals, dimly lighting the interior.
Originally there ought to be something like a microwave generator in there.
The interior was completely different from a microwave of his previous life. Even staring at the magic circles told him nothing.
Karem lost interest and circled the table to examine the cube’s exterior more carefully. In the center of the back was a magic stone fitted as tightly as a gem in a ring.
It was different in many ways from the magic stones he had seen before.
The color alone already shows a clear difference.
The opaque dark-blue magic stone he had seen on the trip to Afterglow had been dismissed by Catherine as trash. The crystal—the magic stone—before his eyes now was the complete opposite.
“Slime, is it?”
“Well, the shell for the shell, the fluid for the fluid, the core for the core—there are quite a few uses. I casually picked it as one of the topics.”
“Hmm. Forest slimes can be found by combing the woods even in Iceland.”
Looking at something that resembled a clear sapphire in the rough, he finally understood why the earlier stone had been called garbage.
So this is the power source, then?
Of course, many of the magic tools Karem had seen so far had nothing that looked like a magic stone. Or perhaps they were embedded somewhere out of sight. As long as they worked, it did not matter.
Then, on a sudden impulse, he glanced at the ring on his left hand.
Is this a magic stone too?
He casually brought his left hand next to the stone. But to someone with zero connection to magic, both the magic stone and the ring simply looked like jewels.
Flap—flap—click.
“Well, this seems decent enough.”
“Nothing for Atanitas to criticize?”
“Right. Especially the slime fluid. Shells and cores get used often, but the fluid is usually discarded.”
“…Trolls, or drakes. What about the other assignments?”
“Nothing special. Keep at it. More importantly—”
Sensing the atmosphere winding down, Karem turned his head.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Uh, I was just curious about this cube.”
“What, that?”
“It doesn’t look ordinary.”
“Hmm.”
Catherine agreed inwardly. The cube’s smooth, glossy exterior was unique even to her eyes.
“You have quite an eye for design, Young Master Robin.”
“…It feels weird getting praised for something outside the assignment.”
“I think you should just be happy about it, Young Master.”
“No, I’m getting my homework checked right now.”
“So what is this cube used for?”
“Hey. Karem… never mind.”
Robin let out a heavy sigh and roughly shoved the inspected reagents and papers onto a shelf.
“It’s a ripener I made for fun.”
Ripening—as in the ripening I know?
Karem looked at him with that question in his eyes. Robin nodded, stepped closer, and rapped the cube—the ripener.
“Reagents, potions, magic materials—there are a few things that need aging before use. Waiting was just too annoying.”
“Oh. Is that so?”
“You understood what I meant, right?”
“Yes.”
In cooking terms: a groundbreaking machine—a magic tool—that drastically shortened the time meat spent simply sitting under the name of aging until it grew tender.
“This cube?”
“Yeah. But it’s a failure. A failure.”
Robin shook his head from side to side.
“I don’t know where I went wrong. Magic materials came out soft and thoroughly cooked as if they’d been boiled, and reagents in jars or bottles seemed to be aging at first—then got so hot I had to throw them out.”
“Well, Young Master Robin. You’re still at the level of just finishing homework, and you’re already trying to make magic tools. Of course it would turn out that way.”
“Ugh. Did I get too greedy?”
Robin scratched his head as if he already knew the answer, but Karem’s mind was elsewhere.
Ah. Wait. Something’s coming to me.
Liquid heated until it was hot.
Ingredients cooked until they turned thoroughly soft.
There had been a three-letter cooking technique…
He had used it fairly often in his previous life, but after more than ten years without recalling it, the specific name would not surface.
Ah, this is dredging up past-life memories.
The half-year study-abroad craze when he had been an elementary schooler. After speaking nothing but a foreign language, he had been thoroughly embarrassed when the word for “apple” refused to come for several days.
“It seemed more like cooking than ripening.”
“I’ve got it!”
Robin’s words were the catalyst. Karem finally dragged up the name of the cooking tool and technique he had buried in his previous life. Crying out in joy, he latched onto Robin’s ripener.
Robin had told him to look with his eyes only—but Karem no longer had the mental bandwidth for such trivial instructions.
Sous-vide.
That cooking technique was worth every bit of this.
“Atanitas. Why is Karem suddenly like that?”
“Haa. Here we go again.”
“Is this a frequent occurrence?”
“When cooking is involved, his eyes roll back in his head—keep that in mind, Young Master. And hey. Karem. Snap out of it.”
Catherine briefly rubbed the corner of her eye, then lightly smacked the back of Karem’s head.
That restored his composure.
“Ah, sorry. I got too excited.”
“So. Why the excitement this time? At least give me a reason.”
“Well, um… I just got excited at the thought that a cooking tool I’d only ever imagined in my head is sitting right here.”
Of course he did not believe it would be exactly the same. A sous-vide machine was a product of modern cutting-edge science. The Magic Ripener before him was a failure Robin had made as a hobby.
Karem knew the odds of failure were high. Even with a proper sous-vide machine you had to endure countless trials and errors before producing a reliable result. How high could the success rate possibly be with a declared failure?
Expecting a decent result right out of the gate from something its own maker called a failure was pure greed.
But mistakes are the mother of invention.
Looked at the other way around, it meant there was still a chance of success.
For Karem, that was enough.
“In that sense, Young Master Robin.”
“What. You want to borrow that failure?”
“Yeees. And if possible, I’d appreciate it if you taught me how to use it too.”
“Haa…”
At the sudden request, Robin roughly scratched his greasy hair and met Catherine’s eyes. When she shrugged as if to say do whatever you like, he nodded with the air of a man who had no choice.
“Well. Honestly, I was curious about what you’d make with it too.”
“An excellent choice.”
“Heh. You’re pretty confident without even properly hearing how to use it.”
“The developer can teach me himself. May I take it?”
At a loss for words, Robin simply nodded. Karem lightly picked up the (failed) ripener and walked out of the room.
“…Atanitas.”
“What.”
“Was he like this before too?”
“Who do you think discovered Red Witch’s Finger and vanilla, and how?”
“…No way~”
Robin waved his hand, telling her not to joke, but Catherine only looked at him in silence with a complicated expression before leaving the laboratory.
Robin, who had said “no way,” immediately followed after her.
Kitchen.
While Mary was kneading flour, Karem set Robin’s ripener on one side of the kitchen and listened to the explanation.
Operating the ripener was simpler than expected. Put the ingredients in the container, close the lid, turn the temperature dial and the time dial, and wait for the result. That was it.
However, because it had been made half as a hobby, even at maximum temperature the water never quite came to a boil, and the timer topped out at twenty-four hours.
On top of that came vivid cautionary tales of thoughtlessly tossing in magic materials only to find them crushed and melted all over the floor.
“So, are you planning to put the ingredients in a bowl?”
“I won’t use bowls or containers.”
“Then there won’t be anywhere proper to put them, will there?”
Karem answered the question without words. He took a transparent membrane from the shelf and held it out with both hands in a flourish.
“Slime Skin?”
“Huh—this is slime?”
At Robin’s words Karem simply blinked and looked down at the membrane—texture like slightly thick vinyl—the slime shell.
“Jigmeser got a few from me a while back, saying he wanted to try them for baking.”
“They were stocked in the greenhouse too.”
“He liked them, said they were much more convenient than funnels. I guess he scattered them around telling everyone to try them here and there.”
“Huh.”
As Karem merely nodded at the unexpected backstory, Catherine spoke with a thoroughly dumbfounded expression.
“You’re telling me the thought of trying it first occurred to you without even knowing what the tool you use actually is?”
“…Is that how it is?”
“You need to kill some of that passion for cooking.”
“No, Catherine. I’ll counter.”
“Fine. Let’s hear it.”
“This is clearly Lord Alfred’s—the most important place in Iceland. So anything dangerous that could be used with impure intent would go through strict screening before it was allowed in, right?”
“Not wrong.”
“And if they’ve been distributed even as far as the greenhouse, that means virtually every kitchen in Winterhome is using them. Isn’t that essentially verification that it’s a thoroughly safe material?”
While making his excuses to Catherine under Robin’s cold stare, Karem’s hands never stopped moving. He opened the slime shell, placed inside the beef tenderloin seasoned with salt and pepper along with herbs, then seared the opening with the stove flame until it was nearly sealed. Through the remaining gap he used a straw to suck out as much air as possible, then seared it shut completely—imitating a vacuum pack.
“So you’re going to put that in as is?”
“Hmm… I’m curious about that too. But let’s play it safe.”
As he answered, Karem took out a small pot and filled it halfway with water. He placed the tenderloin sealed in Slime Skin into the water and set the whole thing inside the ripener.
“We’ll wait like this for a day.”
“…All day?”
“Yes. All day long.”
Catherine and Robin stared at him with looks that clearly said, Is that really all?
“Uh, even if you look at me like that, the fact that it has to cook for a full day like this doesn’t change. The ripener won’t fit in a hundred-times magic barrel.”
In other words, they truly would have to wait exactly like this. Catherine shook her head and walked out of the kitchen.
“Geez. Their opinions will change once they taste it.”
“The odds of failure are higher.”
“How can cooking succeed every single time?”
“You’re truly hopeles—ah.”
Robin, who had been shaking his head, suddenly jerked his chin up.
“Brother William was going to ask if you could teach him some cooking.”
“The second young master? Suddenly?”
“How would I know?”
Robin had no answer for Karem’s confusion.
In truth, he was just as flustered himself.