Chapter 84
On the first day of the competition, the amphitheater was packed with people.
It was called a cooking competition, but the atmosphere was almost more like a swordsmanship tournament.
Nobles and commoners mingled in the stands, while rows of workstations had been set up on the central stage.
Even though they had been arranged spaciously with room for the contestants to move, the stage looked cramped with all one hundred of them standing there at once.
Magic crystals installed by the Magic Tower floated high above, and Estelle was continually adjusting something with the mages below them.
One crystal showed the contestants' hands, while another showed what was happening over the pots and pans.
They had been set up so that even people at the back of the stands could watch the knife work and heat control.
Cooking had now become something done in the middle of an amphitheater.
The world had changed in a strange way.
I sat in the judges' section and looked over the list of contestants.
There were many names among the hundred that I had never heard before.
There was a cook from a small provincial inn, and a craftsman from a port city who had apparently done nothing but grill fish.
A former military mess cook, someone who had handled a huge cauldron at every rural festival, and an old man who had spent his entire life making soup in a noble household had entered as well.
Seeing names like those put me in a strangely good mood.
Cooking had always existed in places like that too.
It wasn't found only beneath the signboards of fancy restaurants; it was also in the blackened pots of inns and the huge cauldrons of the army.
A chef's time went into the warm food handed to hungry merchants at one corner of the dawn market, too.
The competition was meaningful simply for having drawn out people like them.
Of course, there were also people on the list whose names I knew.
Chef Fernand, famous for his lamb dishes in the southern part of the capital.
Lucas Bremont, whose wine sauce was renowned even in noble households.
Marta, the old woman who ran a small restaurant near the Royal Theater where actors supposedly lined up to eat.
And several noble-house chefs who had once competed against Chef Olgren.
The unknowns and the famous had taken the same stage.
Albert Lanang, seated beside me, swept his gaze over the contestants and snorted.
“Half of them look like they're nervous enough to cut off their own fingers, and the other half look like they've already convinced themselves they've won.”
Chef Olgren said quietly,
“There will be a few real chefs among them.”
“That's why we're here.”
Albert sat with his cane resting across his knees.
“Kyle Prat, don't go easy on them in the first round. If we go easy on the mediocre ones here, it will only get more brutal as we go on.”
“I know.”
I looked at the small glass set in front of the judges' section.
It was the aftertaste-removing potion made by the Magic Tower's alchemists.
It was almost transparent and had only a faint smell.
I took a sip. It had an ambiguous taste somewhere between water and herbs, but it definitely settled the grease and flavors lingering in my mouth.
A potion to preserve the judges' sense of taste. It would have been nice if something like this had existed in my previous life too.
After tasting all day, there were times when everything I ate tasted like salt and nothing else.
Even when I had competed on a cooking survival show, I had almost been eliminated because of some guy cooking with fermented skate right in front of me… Ugh.
Just then, a stir arose from one side of the stands.
It was because of the imperial head chef.
Gracian Perdo, the current imperial head chef, was seated in the VIP section close to the judges.
He was wearing a uniform emblazoned with the imperial crest, but his expression was somewhat… closer to that of a dog tied up with a bowl of feed right in front of its nose, unable to eat.
His eyes remained fixed on the central workstations, and his thick fingers kept drumming on his knees.
I quietly asked Uncle Bernard, who was standing beside me,
“Why does that gentleman look like that?”
Uncle Bernard lowered his voice.
“From what I hear, he strongly wanted to take part in this competition.”
“The imperial head chef?”
“Yes. I heard he said he absolutely wanted to enter. But His Majesty personally forbade it. He seems to have decided that if the imperial head chef entered, it would become a political issue regardless of the result.”
I looked at Gracian again.
Even now, he was watching the contestants' hands rather than their faces.
His gaze was so serious as he examined, one by one, how they held their knives and the order in which they arranged their pots.
These weren't the eyes of someone who had come to watch.
They were the eyes of a man dying to be standing in there himself.
‘Is he insane?’
The current imperial head chef had apparently wanted to compete in the preliminaries alongside a hundred chefs.
He had position, honor, and responsibility for the Emperor's meals, so why did he specifically want to pick up a knife and fight here?
The answer came quickly.
‘Because he's a chef.’
Before the competition began, Gracian approached me during a brief break.
He looked quite a bit older than me and was on the thin side.
But his hands were impressive.
His finger joints were thick, and his wrists were sturdy, like those of someone who had trained for a long time.
Before anything else, I saw a man who had held a knife for many years.
“Baronet Kyle Prat.”
“I haven't been formally invested yet, but I'm Kyle Prat.”
Gracian wore an expression that said he wasn't interested in such details.
“I've heard about the Flame Course. Rumors have even reached the imperial kitchens. I hear you use a sauce made by reducing oysters and clams. Do you incorporate umami from seaweed as well?”
His first question after the greeting was about sauce.
I paused for a moment before answering.
“Yes. But I don't use much. If the seaweed flavor comes too far forward, it disrupts the rounded flavor of the oysters and clams. I use a powder that extracts only the umami from seaweed.”
Gracian's eyes flashed.
“Just as I thought. If it came too far forward, the smell of the sea would turn harsh. Then how do you balance the acidity?”
“It depends on the dish. Sometimes I use fruit, and sometimes a light vinegar.”
“The nobles won't like it if the vinegar is too strong.”
“That's why I use just enough to leave the aroma. Rather than making the sourness noticeable, it's closer to stripping away the greasy flavor.”
Gracian nodded, apparently satisfied.
“Good. Then what about the temperature of the pan?”
This man didn't stop.
I exchanged a few more words with him.
He seemed to have forgotten that the competition was about to begin, bringing up heat control, spice combinations, and the temperature problems that arose during large banquets in the imperial kitchen one after another.
His questions didn't stop, from the difference in doneness between the first and last dishes when grilling meat for several hundred people at once, to ways of masking the smell of blood in duck meat.
As we talked, I realized.
This man had no interest in politics and no interest in authority either.
He was the sort of person who saw even the position of imperial head chef, treated as equivalent to a count's rank, as simply a place to cook to his heart's content.
He seemed to like the position because it allowed him to use the Empire's finest ingredients and largest kitchen.
That's why he had wanted to enter the competition.
Not to win honor by taking first place, but to see how well he measured up among those hundred people.
He was a madman who knew nothing but real cooking.
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
‘There are so many different kinds of madmen in this world.’
Count Kleber was crazy about money, Estelle was crazy about research, and Elysia was… crazy in every respect.
This man was simply crazy about cooking as a whole.
Gracian looked wistfully toward the central workstations.
“If His Majesty hadn't stopped me, I would have been standing over there too.”
“Wouldn't the other contestants feel pressured if the imperial head chef entered?”
“A chef has to learn to hold a knife under pressure.”
I liked that answer.
But at the same time, another thought occurred to me.
‘The Emperor did the right thing stopping him.’
If this man had entered, it would have become not a competition but a gauntlet to take down the imperial head chef.
The contestants would probably have been so focused on somehow beating Gracian that they would have forgotten to show their own cooking.
Gracian took his eyes off the central stage and looked at me.
“By the way, Kyle Prat, I hear people at social gatherings say that you're the greatest chef in the Empire today.”
“Me?”
“There's no need to pretend you don't know. If the rumor has reached the imperial palace, it must have reached your ears by now.”
‘I have heard it.’
Gracian lightly thumped his chest.
“I am said to be the greatest chef in the Empire's history.”
It was quite an imposing title to claim aloud.
And yet, strangely, it didn't sound like empty boasting.
His face showed the confidence that only someone who had proven those words could possess.
“The greatest chef in the history of the Empire and the greatest chef of the current era.”
Gracian lifted the corners of his mouth.
“Someday, let's have a proper match. We can set aside rank and everything else and simply make dishes with the same ingredients within the same time limit.”
‘This isn't some clash between the strongest in history and the strongest of the present.’
A few people who had been listening nearby were also discreetly watching us.
I thought for a moment, then answered with a smile.
“All right. Let's do that sometime.”
“You're accepting more easily than I expected.”
“But when that time comes, you'll be the challenger, Gracian.”
The people around us fell silent for a moment.
Gracian's eyes widened, and then he grabbed his stomach and laughed heartily.
“The challenger!”
His laughter was so loud that even the people seated in the VIP section turned to look our way.
After laughing for a long while, he wiped the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Good. I like your confidence. When the time comes, we'll let the cooking decide which of us is the challenger.”
“That sounds like an unfavorable condition for me.”
“Are you scared already?”
“I'm just boosting the challenger's morale.”
Gracian burst out laughing again.
‘I've gotten myself into trouble.’
I'd only tossed out a line as a joke, but with this man, it seemed entirely possible that he would set a date and come looking for me at the imperial palace.
Still, I didn't dislike the idea.
I could tell from that brief conversation alone that he was an extraordinary chef.
If I competed against someone like that with no rank on the line, using nothing but cooking, there would be much for me to learn.
Whether I won or lost.
Of course, I had absolutely no intention of losing.
In all my life, the only people who had ever beaten me in a cooking duel were some bearded guy who had studied in Italy and that crazy webtoon artist who used secret arts of the Unorthodox Sect.
I had absolutely no intention of adding this man to that list.
I pointed toward the central stage.
“But today, you're here to watch, so please keep a close eye on the contestants' cooking. If you spot a good chef, perhaps the imperial palace will take an interest.”
Gracian's expression changed at once.
“I like that.”
He really could only be motivated by talk of cooking.
Just then, a large bell rang from the center of the amphitheater.
It was the sound announcing the start of the first round.
The hundred chefs took their places in front of their respective workstations.
Some stood trembling with nerves, while others drew a deep breath and closed their eyes.
Some had already gripped their knife handles tightly before the bell even rang.
The noise filling the stands gradually died down.
I gave Gracian a light bow and returned to the judges' section.
Albert looked at me and asked,
“Is the current imperial head chef still insane?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“He's my successor's successor, and my successor used to shake his head at him. Said he was a madman.”
Albert said that, then looked toward Gracian for a moment.
“What were you talking about to make him laugh like that?”
“We agreed to have a match later.”
Albert's eyebrows rose slightly.
“Did you challenge him first?”
“No. He's the challenger.”
This time, even Chef Olgren turned his head.
Albert said nothing for a moment, then snorted.
“I like his nerve.”
Chef Olgren smiled quietly.
“If the two of you compete, I'd definitely like to watch.”
“We haven't even set a date yet.”
“If he's that sort of person, he'll probably try to set one before the day is over.”
I looked toward the VIP section.
Gracian seemed to have already forgotten our conversation and was staring intently at the contestants' workstations.
‘It's frightening because I really can see him doing that.’
I checked the glass containing the aftertaste-removing potion once and looked toward the contestants.
It starts now.
There are unknown chefs, and there are famous head chefs.
Even the imperial head chef who hadn't been allowed to enter the competition was over there, eyes shining as he watched every hand movement.
The Empire's chefs stood in the middle of the amphitheater.