A few more days passed.
I was increasing the precision of my toxicity-detection magic while also
searching for a way to deal with the Belkas’s poison.
Thanks to having set the right direction, the toxicity-detection magic was definitely nearing completion.
Through repeated experiments, I adjusted its sensitivity,
and verified the results while diluting Belkas venom in water.
The problem was how to eliminate the toxicity of the Belkas liver.
I had nearly reached the limit of what I could find by digging through books.
I had already read every poison-related text in the storeroom.
Thinking there might be a book worth buying, I even stopped by the village bookstore,
but I couldn’t find anything that seemed useful.
I sat at the counter and picked up the last remaining book.
It was an old book that had been shoved into a corner of the storeroom.
The cover was so worn that I could barely make out the title.
When I opened it, I found it was a book compiling traditional preserved foods from around the world.
Fish cured in salt, vegetables soaked in vinegar, herbs preserved in oil.
Its contents were closer to materials on food culture than to a cookbook.
In truth, it was a book far removed from dealing with poison.
I turned the pages simply because it was the last book left.
It was a chapter on fermented foods.
Pickled dishes from various regions of the continent.
Methods of preserving meat and fish using specific terrain.
It described how, in optimal environments created by nature,
ingredients could be preserved for months,
or even years, if left long enough.
I was reading that section absentmindedly
when my hand stopped.
Months to years.
Something caught on those words.
I set the book down and thought for a moment.
I began to search through the memories of my previous life.
Back when I worked as a chef.
It was when I visited a small local restaurant in Ishikawa Prefecture to study Japanese cuisine.
The place specialized in pufferfish,
and served a variety of dishes using it.
Among them, there was one dish that left the strongest impression on me.
Fugu no ko nukazuke.
Pickled pufferfish ovaries.
Pufferfish was a deadly poisonous fish.
Its internal organs, especially the ovaries, were truly ingredients of death filled with lethal poison.
And yet there, those highly toxic ovaries
were served as casually as well-dried pollack roe, as a side dish with drinks.
The detoxified pickled pufferfish ovaries were a delicacy with a deep umami and a unique flavor.
A delicacy one risked one’s life to eat… and I had heard that people had actually died after eating ones that were improperly made.
After experiencing that shocking dish, pickled pufferfish ovaries, for the first time in my life,
I naturally looked up how it was made.
Ovaries packed full of eggs were cured in salt,
then mixed and layered again with rice bran inside traditional wooden barrels.
After that, fish essence was sprinkled over them at intervals as they fermented and aged.
Then, after two to three years, strangely enough, all that terrifying toxicity would disappear,
making the pufferfish ovaries and eggs edible.
I still remembered it.
But I didn’t know the detailed method or the principles behind it.
I even seemed to recall that the people who made it themselves said they didn’t know why the pufferfish poison vanished.
Belkas and pufferfish.
Both were deadly poisonous fish.
I didn’t know the exact mechanism by which the poison was removed in fugu no ko nukazuke.
But I definitely knew the result.
A strange cooking method where only the technique existed, while the principle remained unknown.
I slowly rose from my seat.
Perhaps the Belkas liver could have its poison removed in a similar way.
I had no certainty.
But among all the clues I had found so far, it was the most plausible.
I thought it was more than worth trying.
The problem was… the dish that had inspired me, fugu no ko nukazuke, took three years just to make.
As I headed toward the kitchen, I organized my thoughts alone.
I couldn’t wait three years.
But fermentation and pickling were, in the end, arts of time.
No matter that I had once been a grand mage,
I couldn’t fast-forward time itself.
But I could manipulate the phenomena that were supposed to occur over those three years.
Temperature, humidity, the state of the rice bran, the phenomena caused by the proliferation of various microorganisms.
If I precisely detected all of these,
found the parts that could be manipulated, and artificially accelerated them.
In fact, I had once used magic to directly insert water molecules into soybeans that normally had to be soaked in water for a long time through osmotic pressure, shortening the time needed to plump them up.
But was it possible to finish a three-year fermentation and aging process in just a few days?
Surprisingly, in theory, it was possible.
…In theory.
If I used Meta Control to operate mana on an extremely fine scale,
I might even be able to shorten the fermentation process of the Belkas buried in rice bran by manipulating even the activity of microorganisms.
However, compared to soaking beans in water,
it would require magical techniques on an entirely different, far higher level.
After all, the complexity of simple bean soaking and fermentation with aging could not even be compared.
It was an unprecedented method.
There was no guarantee it would succeed.
But in order to serve the dish Moshul wanted,
I had to try anything I could.
* * *
The next day,
I obtained a large amount of rice bran and wooden boxes from a nearby village.
I didn’t know the exact recipe for fugu no ko nukazuke,
but I intended to recreate a similar environment somehow with only the knowledge in my head.
With fermented foods like this, if the precise ratios and methods weren’t followed, the result wouldn’t come out properly.
It wasn’t something I could manage by clumsily imitating it without knowing the exact recipe.
The same was true of kimchi, one of the fermented foods most familiar to me.
If you only vaguely knew how to make kimchi,
mixed together ingredients that looked roughly similar, and left them at room temperature, all you’d get was food waste.
Every fermented food had an ingredient that served as its key point.
Just as catalysts existed in alchemy… there was a crucial point in fermentation.
It was impossible to hit that point through a few rounds of trial and error and half-baked predictions.
The profound aspects of recipes passed down over hundreds, or even thousands, of years could not be reproduced in a short period of time.
But I had magic.
Meta Control was a technique that divided mana into extremely fine units and operated it with utmost efficiency.
With this, even if the recipe was somewhat wrong,
I could forcibly prevent the worst-case scenario of the food completely spoiling.
I began my preparations in earnest.
First, I put on leather gloves, opened the box,
and carefully took out the Belkas.
The cleaning came first.
Removing the internal organs.
It was no different from cleaning an ordinary fish,
but because poison also came from the Belkas’s fins and skin, I had to be extremely careful.
Just in case, I spread mana thinly over my hands, wrapping them like a protective barrier.
It was a double-layered structure: the gloves handled the physical protection,
while the mana membrane blocked toxic substances from seeping through the gaps in the gloves.
“Boss! I can’t watch this!”
“Who told you to watch?”
“Can I go outside and pull weeds?”
“Do that.”
Aris quietly left, averting her gaze.
I proceeded slowly and precisely.
I slit open the Belkas’s belly,
and carefully separated the liver while making sure not to rupture the gallbladder.
The liver was larger than I expected and had a deep red color.
When I used toxicity-detection magic, the mana vibrated so intensely it made me dizzy.
It meant the poison was packed in properly.
I first buried the liver in salt.
Then I stretched mana out thinly and began sensing the condition inside the layer of salt.
While maintaining a constant temperature,
I monitored how the salt reacted with the toxic substances.
As time passed, the salt began to seep into the Belkas liver due to osmotic pressure.
Simply put, it had begun to be salted.
But salt alone did not draw out enough of the Belkas liver’s toxicity.
Using mana, I further strengthened the osmotic action of the salt.
The rate at which moisture and toxicity seeped out increased.
It would be impossible to completely remove the deadly poison in the Belkas liver through this process alone,
but I trusted the wisdom of those who made fugu no ko nukazuke and proceeded for the time being.
How much time had passed?
The initial salting process, which would have taken a year under natural conditions,
reached a similar state in a single day with the help of magic.
I couldn’t say it was completely identical.
In natural fermentation, subtle changes occurred as time accumulated,
and I wasn’t certain I had perfectly reproduced them with mana.
But the direction was right.
I took the Belkas liver out of the salt layer and moved it into a box filled with rice bran.
According to the original recipe, pufferfish ovaries cured in salt for about a year
would be buried in rice bran, placed in a traditional wooden barrel, and fermented for another two to three years.
What was it that removed the toxicity during this process?
Was the toxicity neutralized by the chemical action of microorganisms?
Or was there some action that extracted the poison?
For now, I couldn’t know.
But staking my pride as the chef who had opened this restaurant,
I swore that I would find a way to remove the Belkas’s toxicity…
That was the vow I made.
* * *
The royal capital.
Moshul’s study.
Seated by the window, Moshul slowly tapped the tabletop with his fingertips, eyes closed.
Old books and documents were piled around him.
Among them, on one side, stood a golden frame.
Inside the faded frame was an old newspaper clipping.
[Cantabile Selected as the Finest Restaurant in the Royal Capital]
Beside the article was a portrait of Moshul in his younger days.
He looked far younger and sharper than he did now.
A confident smile hung at the corners of his mouth.
Moshul opened his eyes and looked at the photograph for a moment,
then turned his gaze out the window.
Cantabile.
It was the restaurant he had run for over twenty years.
A restaurant where the foremost nobles of the royal capital lined up to make reservations,
and one had to wait months just to secure a single meal.
He had poured everything he had into creating that restaurant.
Researching cuisine, selecting ingredients, training staff.
At first, it had been enjoyable.
The expressions of wonder on customers’ faces as they ate.
The nobles who came looking for the chef and offered him a handshake.
The favorable reviews printed in newspapers.
But at some point, it changed.
Was that admiration genuine,
or was it simply because they had eaten famous food at a famous restaurant?
He could no longer tell.
Customers did not come because Cantabile’s food was delicious,
but because the fact of having come to Cantabile itself was the goal.
The harder it was to get a reservation, the more they wanted to come,
and the more expensive it was, the more delicious they felt it to be.
One day, as Moshul cooked alone in the kitchen, a thought suddenly came to him.
What am I cooking for right now?
No answer came.
That was the beginning.
Gradually, the culinary industry began to look different to him.
It became more important to advertise that good ingredients were used than to actually use good ingredients,
and the story of a dish gained greater value than the taste of the dish itself.
True chefs grew fewer and fewer,
while the number of people selling cuisine only increased.
Everywhere he went, it was the same.
The more famous the chef, the more skilled they were at selling their own name.
Moshul hated that.
The word hated was not enough.
It disgusted him.
Closing Cantabile was something he decided abruptly one day.
The staff were shocked.
Regular customers protested.
The press came to ask why he was closing.
Moshul said nothing.
He simply locked the restaurant doors,
then left the restaurant behind without a word.
After that, he traveled across the entire continent, seeking out restaurants.
He believed there must be some place that served true cuisine.
But wherever he went, it was the same.
Places leaning on fame,
places relying on lavish decoration,
places selling stories.
He could not meet a chef who staked their life on true cuisine itself.
The more that happened, the sharper Moshul became.
Every time his expectations crumbled, anger piled up.
That anger became venomous criticism.
Or perhaps it was not anger,
but disappointment.
Disappointment at failing to find the true chef who must exist somewhere.
And that disappointment piled up and piled up, becoming the Moshul of today.
A poison-tongued critic.
A difficult gourmet.
The nightmare of chefs.
That was what people called him.
Moshul did not think those words were wrong.
There was only one thing.
He had not yet given up on finding what he sought.
That alone was the reason he continued to seek out restaurants.
Klaus.
The restaurant run by that man, who was said to be a former mage, was certainly different.
A restaurant that did not chase only commercial success,
but seemed to pursue some other goal.
Moshul had not seen a restaurant like that in a long time.
To begin with, even its location was insane.
But in this world, there were also hypocrites who disguised themselves as something special.
Moshul wanted to know just how sincere Klaus was about cooking.
That was why he had set as his condition
the absurd ingredient that no one had ever even thought of eating until now:
Belkas liver.
Even Moshul himself, who had made the order,
did not think there was any way to use Belkas liver as food.
Perhaps it was an impossible demand born from his stubborn belief
that there were no longer any chefs in this world who truly pursued gastronomy.
* * *