Chapter 143
“Wait.”
In front of the entrance to a certain basement.
The blonde elf blocking the doorway glared at the visitor, then slowly opened her mouth.
“Purpose?”
“For the pursuit of fine dining.”
“Elves?”
“Pretty, cute, and everything.”
After checking a few formalities, the gatekeeping elf stepped aside and bowed.
Verified User, ElfIsPrettyAndCuteAndEverything.
She was the leader of this secret gathering.
As they entered, a gloomy, dark space appeared beneath radiant Elladrien.
The only thing in the center was a square dining table sitting all by itself.
“Is everyone here?”
When she entered, the elves who had gathered beforehand raised their heads, their ears twitching.
There were several dozen of them, roughly.
The reason they had gathered here was simple.
Greed and forbidden food.
They had come to eat a dish they had to consume behind Head Mod's back.
“Ah, Ms. ElYegwi...”
“Then this time too...”
When the elves who had gathered beforehand cautiously began to speak, ElYegwi flicked her hand.
Then the elves inside all came out carrying dishes in unison.
“Aah!”
Food that made you gasp just by looking at it.
It was a cubed dish made from a fiend known as a ‘Gourmet Slime.’
The dish was literally nothing more than a slime cut into squares and placed on a plate.
The reason the elves had hidden and gathered like this over mere slime cubes was...
“Syrup, minced garlic, ketchup, sugar, gochujang, and so on. It's a slime we raised by feeding it those things.”
“Uaaah...”
“And of course, we aged it by soaking it in soju at the end, so don't worry about the cooking method.”
It lay in how the slime was prepared.
What was a slime, anyway?
It was nothing more than a pathetic little fiend.
But Gourmet Slimes were different.
A Gourmet Slime's flavor and traits changed based on the food it ate over the course of a week.
“Is all the feed from the Market?”
“Of course.”
In other words, the more luxurious the spices they fed it, the better its flavor and texture became.
The elves had not only raised a fiend for a week for the sake of fine dining.
They had used Market food as feed for a fiend for an entire week.
“Before we eat, you all know this, but this must not be told to anyone.”
There was an unwritten rule in the gallery.
Never carelessly throw away or leave behind Market food.
In other words, they had dared to invest the Market food Head Mod had personally created and shared with the gallery out of noble goodwill...
...in a fiend for an extended period, all for the sake of one gourmet meal.
“If this were ever to get out...”
One of the elves asked nervously.
“Permanent gallery ban.”
“!!!”
“Eeeek.”
A permanent gallery ban, more frightening than death.
But the elves merely trembled in place, their ears quivering.
That was how exquisite the dish was.
“Then...”
A green-haired elf spoke while trembling, her eyes filled with greed and excitement.
ElYegwi nodded at that.
“Let's eat.”
At those words, everyone covered their entire heads with the white cloths wrapped around their bodies.
Please don't let Head Mod find out about this.
Or perhaps to lessen the guilt of having fed the food Head Mod had spread for the hungry gallery to a fiend.
It was just as they were slowly cutting the slime and putting it into their mouths.
Head Mod*: lol
Head Mod*: What are you guys doing?
“Huh...?”
A strange message suddenly appeared before her eyes.
“Whatever happens, keep eating and keep moving.”
Before ElYegwi, who was blankly blinking, stood Full-HP Elf, who had infiltrated undercover with a sword pointed at her.
*
“So this is a Gourmet Slime?”
I successfully raided the elves' secret gathering.
What I gained from it was the dish the elves had been eating so carefully behind my back...
But after hearing the recipe, I was dumbfounded.
“You just fed it some spices and ate it after it grew tasty?”
That was all there was to it: they raised a slime by feeding it Market food, then ate the slime after it had grown delicious.
They had covered their heads with white cloths while eating, so I thought it was Ortolan again.
Ortolan was a dish made by gouging out a small bird's eyes, force-feeding it until it grew fat, and drowning it in alcohol.
The cooking method was so cruel that it had been banned by law, but compared to that, this was completely harmless.
“They'd faint if they saw modern livestock farming methods.”
As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with it.
But the gallery users felt differently.
[Title: Creepy: The Dish Elves Were Secretly Eating.jpg]
(GIF of a Gourmet Slime being raised)
(GIF of Market spices and food being scattered as feed)
(GIF of someone covering their face with a white cloth and eating)
...
(GIF of a frog meme with a shocked expression)
(GIF of a frog meme charging forward in rage with a knife)
I wondered why the elf bastards had been so quiet, but what the hell are they doing with Head Mod's Market food?????
[Upvotes 6942] [Downvotes 102]
- Wow, no, that's genuinely disgusting lol
- Wow...
- I waited forever for pepper and was disappointed when it sold out, but holy shit, slime?
ㄴ No, I just laughed the instant I saw it.
For starving medieval people, the cruelty of the recipe was beside the point.
Only a few months ago, they had desperately longed for even a single loaf of moldy bread.
They were absolutely furious that the elves had hoarded and monopolized precious Market food to feed it to a slime.
- There's a limit even to joking around lol
- They're throwing a fit over Market food.
- Your greed knows no bounds. I genuinely have to give you credit.
“Is it really that bad?”
I was the one who was more bewildered.
It felt like this might actually turn into interspecies factionalism, so I wrote and posted a notice.
[Notice: Everybody, calm down, calm down]
Posted by: Head Mod*
(GIF of a cat staring straight ahead)
Didn't you just feed a slime because you wanted to eat something tasty?
Why are you all so angry? (Genuinely asking)
[Upvotes 9999+] [Downvotes 201]
- Ah lol
- You're telling us to calm down? Want us to calm you down?
- I came here ready to swear at them, but the author happened to be Head Mod lol
ㄴ Ah, we have to hold it in lol
ㄴ Whose food was it in the first place? lol
- Head Mod ㅠㅠㅠㅠ
- Ah ㅠㅠㅠ I'm really sorry ㅠㅠ
- Phewㅠㅠㅠ Thank you so much, seriously ㅠㅠ
ㄴ Ah, those elf bitches... just seeing the text makes me angry.
I posted a notice brimming with reason, as befitted a modern person, but it had no effect.
More shocking than anything was that even the elves themselves thought this was wrong.
“The elves... apologized?”
The haughty elves were apologizing.
The gallery users apparently attached a meaning to Market food that went beyond simply eating it.
- But seriously, why isn't Head Mod bothered?
- Seriously, I'm getting pissed just watching this.
- Head Mod, don't hold back, seriously. Even a saint would slap them for this.
[Title: The Reason Head Mod Wasn't Bothered...jpg]
(Lewd elf image posted at dawn)
(Screenshot of Head Mod directly commenting on lewd elf image 2)
(GIF of an elf selfie wearing high-defense armor)
Probably because of the elf porn, yeah.
[Upvotes 12] [Downvotes 102]
- How does that make any sense?
- Seriously lol. Just thinking about what they did makes me furious.
- What would a beautiful-girl archmage like Head Mod lack that she'd look at elf porn?
- But I find it hot.
ㄴ ?
ㄴ Name a food you like, quickly.
ㄴ Mint chocolate, please.
ㄴ Mint-choco appreciator.
Rather, they started coming up with all sorts of reasons, thinking I was holding back my anger.
In short, I had forgiven them, but the gallery users hadn't.
- Ah lol, the more I think about it, the angrier I get.
- When I think that it's because of the elves that I couldn't eat pepper, my hands and feet start trembling and I can't sleep, seriously...
- Give me back my Coke, goddammit.
Far from being put out, the flames only began to spread further.
I took my eyes off the gallery and looked at the Gourmet Slime cubes Full-HP Elf had sent me.
[Gourmet Slime Cube]
A Gourmet Slime raised with four tablespoons of syrup, two tablespoons of ketchup, one tablespoon of gochujang, two tablespoons of sugar... and so on.
A cubed dish soaked in Chamisul at the end and fried in oil.
It tastes like well-fried chicken.
“It's that tasty?”
Food the elves would eat even in hiding.
- Crunch!
I speared it with a fork and took a bite.
I tried it to see whether it really was that delicious.
“...?”
I couldn't tell what it tasted like.
So I took another bite.
But it still didn't taste like, Wow, this is so fucking delicious I can't stop eating it!
“It's just okay, though?”
It was literally just that sort of flavor.
It was tasty, but not tasty enough to go through that troublesome cooking process for.
Besides, it was a familiar taste I'd had plenty of times before.
I reread the system description slowly and realized it.
“These are the ingredients for yangnyeom chicken sauce.”
The strangely reddish color and crispy texture.
It was simply an inferior modern version of yangnyeom chicken.
“They caused all that commotion just to eat this?”
That was why I understood it even less.
I had already dropped chicken before, after all.
Of course, I had dropped yangnyeom chicken once, too.
“Ah.”
But as I thought about it, I realized.
“Everything related to cooking had been meal kits, right?”
The chicken I'd dropped several times, the pizza, and all the other food had been meal kits.
The kind of meal kits you could find at a military PX.
Of course, they tasted good.
I'd eaten that kind of food countless times myself.
“But it was inevitably incomparable to chicken eaten fresh at a chicken restaurant.”
This Slime Cube with its ambiguous flavor, two percent short of the mark...
...was something young elves had made after learning the taste from chicken meal kits and wandering in search of more.
But since they had never tasted real yangnyeom chicken, they had been satisfied with this instead.
“Hmm...”
Until now, I'd only cared for food meant for browsing the gallery.
Known as gaming food, I preferred simple meal kits that I could eat while browsing the gallery.
“I kind of want to let them try it once.”
Besides, meal kits could produce wildly different flavors depending on who cooked them.
I did want to show them the taste of hot yangnyeom chicken fresh from a good chicken restaurant.
But how?
The shop had never sold anything like that before.
[Level Up! 10 → 11]
[From level 10 onward, you can choose your level-up rewards directly!]
[Please choose a reward.]
1. Upgrade shop inventory
2. Unlock Real-Life Fight Gallery PvP Area
“Oh.”
I had been steadily eating whenever gyeongdan piled up.
As luck would have it, a new system appeared along with the level-up, so there was a way after all.
*
- Upvote if you want the elves to drop dead lol
- These bastards don't have any sense of right and wrong.
- If I were Head Mod, I'd permanently ban them all.
“Ugh...”
Verified User, ElYegwi.
She was utterly dejected, her ears drooping limply toward the floor.
But it wasn't because everyone in the gallery was cursing and pointing fingers at her.
“...I want to eat a Slime Cube.”
Her favorite food in life was the yangnyeom chicken meal kit that had once been distributed through the Market.
And now she couldn't eat the Slime Cube made to resemble it as closely as possible.
“Should I secretly make some?”
She had thought about it several times, but it was impossible.
Once they learned about it, Ellad had begun directly monitoring her.
The elves, afraid of incurring Head Mod's displeasure, had imposed their own sanctions.
“Eeeek.”
In the end, she collapsed from yangnyeom chicken withdrawal.
Like a fish out of water, she had been flailing on her bed for quite some time.
[Market Detailed System Unlocked!]
[Please show ‘Market/People of the Market’ lots of interest.]
“People of the Market...?”
ElYegwi raised her head at the new notification.
An additional detailed system, like a gacha, had appeared inside the Market.
She had no idea what it was, but the moment she entered People of the Market as if possessed...
[Welcome to ‘People of the Market’!]
[Here, you can pay for an orderable menu item and request it from Head Mod.]
[If Head Mod accepts, the menu item will be delivered to your home!]
“Huh?”
So she had to request it from Head Mod, and it would only arrive if Head Mod accepted?
“What could be on the menu... Gasp.”
She tilted her head, then entered the menu.
1. Yangnyeom Chicken
“Y-y-yangnyeom chicken!!!!!”
There it was: her soul food, yangnyeom chicken.
The very food that had only been sold a few times through the Market.
“Order it right now!!!”
Remembering the taste of the cold yangnyeom chicken she had eaten as a meal kit, she immediately submitted a request.
[Head Mod has accepted your request!]
[Delivery complete!]
And just a few seconds later, along with the acceptance, a square paper box dropped from thin air with a thud.
“Elf yeah!”
It was a small box she could hold with both hands.
“It's different from a meal kit?”
Unlike a meal kit, the inside of the box held fully cooked chicken with steam rising from it.
She was puzzled by its appearance, so different from a meal kit, but the moment she bit into a drumstick, entranced by its shape and color...
“...!!!!!”
Both of ElYegwi's ears shot straight up toward the sky.
The ears of the ElYegwi who had eaten it stood straight up toward the sky.