Another Reincarnator
Karem had not been this busy in a very long time.
To keep the flow of offerings uninterrupted for the gods in their incarnate forms, he fried and tossed massive quantities of wyvern chicken for the burnt offerings on the makeshift altar. Every time he set a plate of wyvern chicken before the simple altar on the table, only clean dishes remained. After a long stretch of frying and ferrying plate after plate, the gods finally seemed satisfied.
"...Whew. They ought to be content with that. From now on I'll just have to make offerings more often."
Plates slick with crumbs and sauce, bowls wiped clean, a table without so much as a single feather left on it. Next time, he thought, he might have to present offerings even while on the road.
Karem decided to leave the cleanup for later. Right now there was something far more important.
He dragged a chair over.
"Sssssss. Haaaaaah."
The last of the garlic soy sauce wyvern chicken he had set aside while frying now sat in a heaping bowl on the table before him. His already empty stomach, worn out from hard labor, was tormented by the rich, greasy fried chicken and that salty fragrance that tasted delicious from scent alone.
Under the mana-stone lamps that brightened the gloomy weather, the golden-brown mountain of wyvern chicken, tossed in a light brown sauce, glittered like a chandelier.
No time to fetch utensils.
Karem pulled the bowl closer like a personal plate and plucked up a piece of wyvern chicken that nearly brushed his chin.
Crunch.
A texture different from the thick-battered chicken he usually ate. Using only a water batter made the coating lighter than a double batter, yet the crispness was no less. Twice-fried chicken. Because the shell was thinner, the crunch itself was even stronger than what he was used to.
"Ugh... this is what I live for."
After that first crispy bite came the low-fat wyvern meat tearing between his teeth. It wasn't dry of juices, yet that distinctive mealy texture came through loud and clear. Still, the water-batter coating had been seasoned on its own, and over that came the deep savor of the soy sauce he had tossed it in like a quick stir-fry, the fragrance of garlic, and a faint brush of ginger at the finish.
Chew—chew—
"...Where'd I put the beer again?"
Moisture wasn't entirely gone, but the sheer density of protein had left his mouth and tongue parched. Karem quickly fetched a beer mug and the barrel. Then, without pouring, he went right back to eating chicken.
The already desert-dry interior of his mouth, stripped of every drop by the mealy wyvern chicken, now rolled with the remnants of batter. He forced himself to keep chewing through it. And the moment he could endure no longer—
He poured the beer.
Glug-glug-glug-glug—
Using divine power, he chilled the beer ice-cold as it filled the mug to the very brim. Then he downed it in one go.
Gulp— gulp— gulp—
The refreshing chill of ice water in the dead of winter, right in the middle of a desert where even dew was impossible to find. The beer, chilled so hard by divine power that his chest ached and his head throbbed, drew a spontaneous sigh of bliss.
He was just considering whether to stop there when—
Knock-knock-knock-knock!
"Gulp—khuhp! Gulp—khak! Keheuk!"
The untimely knock made him choke. "Kuh-hack! Cough! Cough! Ack! It—it went down the wrong—keheuk!"
Karem swallowed the erupting cough along with a mouthful of air, narrowly avoiding a rainbow fountain show. The burning pain in his nose and chest remained, though.
Knock-knock-knock-knock!
Whoever had turned uninvited guest into synonym for visitor paid no mind and rapped again, harder than before.
"Ahem. Ahem... Who the hell is it?"
Bang-bang-bang-bang!
It was no longer knocking. The door rattled on its hinges as if fists were hammering it. Irritated, Karem strode over and yanked it open.
Death stood there on two feet.
In Europa, the requirements for knighthood were far looser than the reverence surrounding the title might suggest.
A weapon, a full suit of plate, martial prowess, a reputation, one knight willing to perform the dubbing, and witnesses. Leave the cost and the people aside—meet those conditions and anyone could become a knight. There were even knights who made a living solely by dubbing others.
As a result, second sons and lower of noble houses aimed first for knighthood, and wealthy non-nobles who wanted noble status for their children often pursued the same path. One might expect an oversupply of knights to cause problems, yet surprisingly few arose.
Bluntly put, a knight was a fighting noble. They died in duels, hunts, subjugations, territorial wars, and countless other ways. Prosperous landed nobles usually headhunted knights who had already been filtered through every civilized and barbarian threat and formed knight orders around them. Iceland, with not a single knight order and every knight under the High Knight Commander, was the odd one out; even if expensive, a collection of human weapons trained solely to kill others contributed to a territory's peace simply by existing.
There were regions ruled not by nobles but by knight orders acting as organized bodies. In any case, when the strong gathered and became known, the countless gossip-mongers in taverns and outside them naturally ranked power and superiority. Objectively sorting such rankings was nearly impossible, so fists usually settled the matter in the end.
Yet in Kingsland the gossip-mongers were of one mind: only one knight order and one knight stood as the strongest candidates.
The Royal Guard, devoted solely to the king and the royal house. And its captain, Sir Michael Jackson the Bloodstained.
Ironically, while the Royal Guard itself was showered with respect and awe, its captain was infamous among the nobility as an object of terror, contempt, and loathing. The reasons were many. First, his name itself was that of one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King's army—enough to give every scholar in Europa a fit. A commoner sitting in the prestigious seat of Royal Guard captain made him an inevitable target of jealousy.
Michael was one of the kingdom's few Sword Masters, a rank befitting his post, yet many nobles outside Iceland found the mere fact of a commoner standing above them intolerable. Had Michael at least bowed and scraped, things might have been different. But he was famous for a rigid, unbending character. Provocation and political games were answered without exception by duel—always to the death.
And if only he had been ugly, the resentment might have been easier to bear. That mix of bad-boy and real-man attitude, combined with a still-youthful, handsome middle-aged face with strong lines, set fire to the hearts of countless women. Love and hate were in perfect balance.
Michael, Kingsland's hottest topic until the Crystal Jubilee briefly stole the spotlight.
"Status Window."
Beep-ling—
He was, in fact, a reincarnator. More precisely, a reincarnator who possessed the growth cheat light-novel and web-novel readers commonly called a game system.
Walking an empty corridor, his eyes scanned the translucent sky-blue UI, but his mind was a tangle of confusion. A Confusion debuff icon he had almost never seen since becoming a Sword Master floated at the top of his vision.
...That... that was definitely soy sauce.
It had begun with the flood of ingredients and newly developed recipes pouring out of Iceland once summer arrived. Fried chicken—the national snack of most Koreans—then mayonnaise, pudding, ice cream, crêpe cake, and more. Nearly half a century after reincarnation, the sauces, dishes, and recipes that carried the unmistakable imprint of his previous life's memories had resurfaced. He had lived close to a hundred years across both lives and thought he had forgotten almost everything, yet tasting the foods he had gone so long without resurrected the dead memories.
Not completely. Still, even in a world where gods truly existed, he felt faith stirring for the first time. He was not joking. Michael was serious.
Above all, the chili peppers.
No—Red Witch's Finger, they called it.
Michael had never imagined the poisonous herb he had only heard of was that. And then tomatoes and bell peppers he had never seen before. Of course, it could simply have been a cooking or alchemy genius born of this world who developed the recipes. Michael had thought so at first. But even a genius could not churn out so many recipes like a machine. That required a specialist in the field.
Tomatoes and bell peppers still puzzled him, though.
"Ahem, ahem. Grandmaster. Good day to you."
"Right."
Some knight whose charge he did not know had run into him and offered the barest greeting, radiating the blatant air of someone forced into it. Michael paid it no mind. That reaction was a passive skill for any knight of noble birth.
What mattered now was not some bodyguard.
Soy sauce. And the chef who created it.
A fellow reincarnator who might be Korean like himself. In all the decades he had lived without leaving the island since being born in the Seophon Kingdom, Michael had met only one other reincarnator.
Jjajangmyeon? You mean zhajiangmian, you Gaoli bangzi.
He had torn that one apart with his own two hands. He had hated Chinese people from the start. Of course it had caused him some trouble afterward. The name of the King of Pop he had publicly adopted to attract others who shared previous-life memories had been reduced to that of a commoner noble-killer bearing the name of a long-dead Four Heavenly King of the Demon King's army.
No—how the Four Archangels became the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon Army was beyond even Bloodstained Michael's eyes. Yet the previous-life Kim Jeong-hun, the present-life Michael Jackson, did not regret it. Even if he regressed right now, he would kill that man even more thoroughly.
Jjajangmyeon, seasoned fried chicken, corn cheese, and potato hot dogs were excellent Korean food. The heavenly nation that was Earth's president had proven it.
And for the first time in decades, the Kim Jeong-hun that Michael Jackson had buried in memory and heart rose like an undead answering a necromancer's call.
Sniff sniff. Wait. What's this smell?
As expected of Sir Jackson. This is the sauce the Icelandic chef staying at the castle this time brought as a gift. Gangjang—
Wait, gangjang? You mean soy sauce?
Yes? Yes. Would you like a taste?
And now Michael was heading for the private room Lumierix had told him about, to meet the one who had scattered countless recipes and sauces and created the seasoning that made his soul's homeland rise before his eyes. His presence was so murderous that people approaching from afar began looping around corridors and staircases just to avoid meeting him. Even baby Prince Henry, who had somehow grown close enough to drag Alicia along in a mad dash, instinctively changed direction. Michael noticed, of course. Why was everyone turning away? And why was the baby prince turning back after coming this far?
Only Michael, eyes flipped by soy sauce, failed to realize he was spraying aura in every direction and causing every possible nuisance as he passed.
At last he reached his destination. Now he only needed to knock on this door...
Hoo... I wasn't this tense even fighting a manticore.
Michael raised a fist to knock, then stopped and wriggled his clenched hand in the air.
...This smell.
Faint yet unmistakable fried aroma seeping through the door crack. A sweet-and-salty soy-sauce-based fragrance that bounced off the tip of his nose. The unique sound of sauce-soaked yet still crispy, chewy batter of seasoned chicken twisted Michael's head.
A smell similar to the last supper he had eaten in his previous life, before he became this wreck, a memory he had buried deep.
Gulp— gulp— gulp— gulp—
The sound of someone downing a refreshing beer in one go.
Michael's instincts overrode reason and knocked on the door.
Knock-knock-knock-knock!
"Gulp—khuhp! Gulp—khak! Keheuk! Kuh-hack! Cough! Cough! Ack! It—it went down the wrong—keheuk!"
Ah, he must have choked while drinking. Michael decided to be magnanimous and understand. He knocked again.
Knock-knock-knock-knock!
"Ahem. Ahem... Who the hell is it?"
The sound of someone rising came from inside, but Michael's impatience only grew. Bang-bang-bang-bang! He pounded as if to smash the door.
The door flew open.
At last.
A young man whose looks were a little different from the typical Anglo-American Western features of Seophon people, hinting at exotic blood. But that was not important right now.
Michael's gaze locked past the young man's deathly pale shoulders onto the fried chicken on the table and the even stronger smell rolling from it.
Soy sauce.
Chili powder.
The abundance of his previous life.
Strength left him; Michael's knees hit the floor with a thud. Clutching Karem's clothes with both hands like a lost child who had found his parents, he wailed in utter desperation.
"Oh God!"
Reincarnator Kim Jeong-hun, captain of the Royal Guard, Sword Master Michael Jackson. For the first time in this life he cried out to a god.
And the god stood right before his eyes.
That god was standing in front of him right now, having opened the door.
Tears came.
Attached Material
— Garlic Soy Sauce Chicken —
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.