Tower of Death - Floor of Cooking (2)

That was the heart of the trial on this Floor of Cooking: a dish that would satisfy the three judges who had just appeared. And then, as if the whole affair had been lifted straight from the pages of a cooking manga, the next announcement rolled in.

The theme of the contest. Death.

"What? The theme of a cooking contest is Death?"

"How can Death even be a theme?"

"Can you actually make a dish out of that?"

Nobody seemed able to wrap their head around it. Cooking existed to be delicious — to make people happy. Being told to cook under the banner of Death felt like a joke that had forgotten to be funny.

"Death, is it..."

Rote's reaction, though, was something else entirely. The moment the theme landed, he already looked as if he had the shape of a dish forming in his mind.

I, on the other hand, could not find a single thread to pull. How was anyone supposed to cook Death? And even if I managed it, would the judges actually be pleased? I had never been a chef to begin with. I had only started cooking at all after this class fell into my lap, and a theme this vicious felt well beyond anything I could cobble together.

My worries, unfortunately, were not invited to the starting line.

The clock began to bleed away as if it had no intention of granting us even a second more to think. Rote, already carrying a rough sense of what he meant to cook, started walking at an unhurried pace toward the place they had just indicated — the one stocked with ingredients.

"Teach. Death? You getting any kind of idea what we should make?"

"No. Not even a little."

"Then what's that guy trying to cook?"

I put Rote out of my mind the moment he disappeared down the ingredient passage and called everyone together. If we were going to survive this theme, we needed a council.

"The theme is Death. What kind of dish do we even make with that?"

"I can't find an answer either, I'm afraid. Death... it's simply too far removed from any ordinary culinary theme."

Kim Pu-reum, our Scholar, tried to tease out a thread with his own abilities, but a cuisine of Death was so alien that nothing useful surfaced.

We tossed ideas back and forth, getting nowhere — and that was when my eyes snagged on the Goddess of Job Advancement, seated among the judges.

If I asked, would she actually tell me?

We had met once before. Maybe that was enough to pry a hint out of her. I made my way over.

"Hello there."

"Yes. It has been some time."

The Goddess of Job Advancement greeted me with a radiant smile. No sooner had the courtesy left her lips than she appended something under her breath, a muttered aside meant for no one but herself.

"That damned White Dragon is still hanging around, I see."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing at all. Oh-hoho."

She had whispered it softly enough that I was not supposed to catch the words, but the way her gaze flicked sideways and narrowed at the White Dragon told me everything I needed to know.

"Goddess, might I ask you something?"

"And what might that be?"

"To be honest, I'm having trouble making sense of this theme."

"The theme of Death. Hardly a simple one."

She knew it as well as anyone. This was no gentle prompt.

"I'm afraid I cannot tell you, however. Would that not compromise the fairness of the contest?"

"I... suppose it would."

She was right. A prior acquaintance was not a license to hand me the answer. If she did, this would stop being a contest at all.

"Besides, does not everyone receive the meaning of death in their own way?"

"In their own way?"

"Yes."

That was all she would give me. A meaningful little smile, and a gesture that said, quite gracefully, that she would say nothing more.

Different for everyone, huh.

She had a point. The word itself was enormous. In the ordinary sense, death was the moment a life snapped short. But if you refused to stop there, the meaning shifted from person to person.

Someone crushed under a mountain of debt, hounded without rest, might decide that dying would be the kinder thing. Or perhaps it was the student ground down by relentless bullying. The one hollowed out by a loss too large to name. The one barred forever from the single thing they had wanted. The moment a person looked at their own life and thought, this is already a dead life — was that not death as well?

Knowing that, though, did not bring me a single step closer to a dish.

I went back to the others and we kept turning the problem over, until Kim Pu-reum suggested we stop theorizing and move to where the ingredients were.

"Wouldn't it be best to look at the ingredients first? After all, a dish is made from ingredients. I don't think we can decide on a recipe until we ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠know what's available."

He was absolutely right. That was probably why Rote had started walking the instant the theme was announced, thinking as he went. Inventing the perfect Death dish here in the stands would mean nothing if the ingredients to cook it did not exist.

"Let's move. Now."

I was on my feet and heading for the ingredient stores before the words had finished landing. The time we had burned on nothing but thinking came to a full thirty minutes. Most of us were strangers to a kitchen. The first principles of cooking had not been waiting conveniently at the front of anyone's mind.

"Whoa. These are all ingredients?"

"How much is even here?"

"This is way too much, isn't it?"

The people who stepped into the ingredient hall could only stand there with their mouths open. A mountainous stockpile rose around us, enough to feed someone for years — a space as wide as a full athletic field, carpeted with ingredients I had never seen, never heard of, and in some cases could not have invented if I tried.

"Whoa. That's insane."

"Wait. What is that?"

"Huh?"

Something was walking the aisles between the sprawling heaps.

"A monster?"

"Why is a skeleton wandering around between the ingredients?"

A handful of skeletons, and none of them looked particularly threatening. And it was not only skeletons.

Level 1 monsters had been stationed all over the hall. When I looked at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them more closely, something else sat displayed above their names.

What is that supposed to be?

The monsters wearing the Helper tag were bustling in every direction, each of them busy with some errand of its own. I watched one of them — the Giant Eagle — kick off the ground, climb into the air, pluck an ingredient that had been suspended in the sky, and deliver it straight to Rote. Rote took what had been brought to him and, without ceremony, began to cook.

"I think they really are helper monsters."

"This place is enormous. They're probably just here to haul ingredients."

Fair enough. If we tried to hunt down every ingredient ourselves in a space the size of an athletic field, the clock would eat us alive. So you named what you needed, and the helper monsters fetched it from their own territories and brought it to you.

"First things first. Let's figure out what's actually here."

"Wow — there's a mountain of truffles over here."

"That's not all. Look at this caviar."

Truffles and caviar, both absurdly expensive, were stacked in careless heaps. And that was only the beginning. Saffron. Edible bird's nests. Even Ayam Cemani, those impossibly rare all-black chickens that cost ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a fortune. Ingredients said to be the hardest in the world to obtain had been laid out here as if they were ordinary pantry stock. There did not seem to be a single thing we could not get our hands on.

Seeing the ingredients, unfortunately, did not tell me what to cook.

"There's so much here it's making it worse."

"Well, the number of dishes we could make just became infinite."

Looking at the stores had only made the answer slip further out of reach. I decided to steal a hint, if nothing else, and glanced over to see what Rote was making.

Pufferfish?

A dish that could kill you if the preparation went even slightly wrong — and that was said to be a taste beyond compare if the poison was cleaned away with a master's hand. Rote was cooking fugu. He was going to serve a dish that could, with one careless cut, become death itself. Tailored to the theme with almost insulting neatness.

It fits. I'll give him that.

A cuisine sitting right up against Death. I could not follow him down that road. I might have been able to strip the toxin and put a plate together, but a copy of Rote's dish was never going to beat Rote.

Hah. So what now?

Watching him cook had only driven my thoughts deeper into the mud. I still had no direction, and the clock did not care.

Death...

I turned the theme over one more time. The image death called up was different for every person. Poison was the picture ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anyone could reach for. But the death each judge would accept — that could be an entirely different creature.

Wait. Death. Death... that's it!

The idea arrived all at once, bright and complete. If everyone received death differently, then the dish simply had to be built to match.

"I know what I'm going to cook."

"Teach! For real?"

"Yeah. Just watch."

I said it and drew a fork. The others stared at me as if I had lost my mind — we were supposed to be cooking, and the only tool I had bothered to take out was a fork. I could hardly blame them. They had never seen how I cooked. Of course they looked at me like that.

"All right. Shall we get started?"

"Want us to grab the ingredients?"

"No need. The ingredients will walk over on their own."

"Sorry? Oh — you're going to use the helpers?"

I only smiled at that, a smile with something unkind folded inside it, and called the helper monsters milling nearby. Then I drew my knife and cut through them in a single, clean rush.

The monsters parted into neat, beautiful cuts. Things that had been living creatures a breath ago were suddenly ingredients, laid out in front of me as cleanly as anything in the hall. I gathered what I wanted and flicked a glance at the clock.

"All right. My turn to start cooking."