The next day, I woke up early in the morning and headed to the kitchen for work, where I saw soldiers returning after fighting through the night.
They all had hollow, haggard eyes and unsteady, shuffling steps, making the fatigue of battle all too palpable.
Though it was only temporary, I had been granted the position of commissary officer.
So when an emergency broke out yesterday, I had tried to stay awake and wait, but the mess cooks had strongly opposed the idea.
“Hurry up and go to sleep! If the commissary officer stays up all night and goes to work half-dead, won’t we have to eat dogshit porridge again!”
“Ah.”
If this was consideration, I suppose it was consideration. Thanks to them, I’d slept well.
While scanning the faces of the soldiers who had suffered through the night, one knight who was unusually alert and full of energy approached.
It was none other than Arthur… but his expression was extremely stiff.
His face was so rigid that you might mistake an ‘ultra-serious’ speech bubble for being glued to the side of his head.
“Jinwoo-nim. Step this way for a moment…”
“Yes?”
With a grim yet secretive gesture, Arthur led me to the provisions warehouse inside the kitchen.
What was he going to do in this secluded place with no one around? What was this?
After looking around several times to confirm there was no one nearby, Arthur finally opened his mouth like a dam releasing its blocked waters.
“Jinwoo-nim. No, Master!!!!!!”
“Kuaaack!! Ugh!!”
Arthur, shouting my name in a voice of extreme, ecstatic joy... hugged me tightly with his plate-armored body still on.
I didn’t even feel ashamed about being hugged by a male knight with a massive, bear-like physique.
It just fucking hurt.
“Thanks to Master, my realm has risen!!!!!!”
“Aaaack!! I get it, so let go, you crazy bastard!!!”
Only after recognizing my screams did Arthur belatedly loosen his arms.
I gently touched my throbbing waist and ribs.
They didn’t seem to be broken.
Arthur felt embarrassed by his own excited actions and smiled awkwardly.
Honestly, I’d still been feeling groggy from waking up, but whew. I was wide awake now.
“I-I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself..”
“Phew... it’s fine. By the way, what’s going on? Explain slowly.”
“Ah, yes! So...”
Arthur told me everything about the changes he’d experienced after eating my food.
He’d suffered for ten years trying to break through that realm, but after eating last night’s curry, his realm had risen.
Not just him, but the other soldiers had also become noticeably stronger...
“Anyway, the Monster Wave has been virtually repelled. The battle will end within two days, and we’ll likely begin cleaning up the battlefield soon after.”
“That’s good to hear. Ah, then Arthur-nim, which stage of swordsman are you now?”
“I’ve entered the Sword Expert stage!”
Arthur answered my question excitedly.
The stages of a swordsman were divided into ‘Sword User,’ who cannot use aura; ‘Aura User,’ who can create sword aura with aura; and ‘Sword Expert,’ who maximizes that sword aura to unleash a blade aura.
The stage above Expert was technically ‘Sword Master,’ but because so few reached that realm, in practice it was used more as an epithet for a few Sword Saints than as a systematic rank.
‘I don’t really get it.’
I felt sorry for the excited Arthur, but it didn’t really resonate with me.
Aura this, blade aura that... since I didn’t know their power.
Still, there was no need to kill the mood. I chimed in and congratulated him.
“Congratulations. With a Sword Expert around, we can rest easy at night.”
“Haha! Thank you.”
“But isn’t this a celebratory occasion? Then why are you telling me secretly in such a secluded place?”
I said, suddenly having a question while congratulating him.
Wouldn’t the knights be even more loyal if their platoon leader was an Expert, and wouldn’t Duke Kailan be pleased as well?
To this, Arthur answered with a deliberately serious expression.
“It is indeed a celebratory occasion. But the problem is the method by which the realm was surpassed.”
“The fact that you ate my food?”
“Yes. Rising in realm is no simple matter. Half of swordsmen cannot even become Aura Users. The number who can rise to Sword Expert is far fewer. So if word got around that eating a certain food immediately raised one’s realm, what do you think would happen?”
“They’d surely come looking for that food. Danger could arise in the process, you mean.”
“Exactly.”
The reason I kept [Mana Market] a secret was because I might become a Flour-Dispenser Mk.1 if I wasn’t careful, and indeed, if such rumors spread, it seemed dangerous.
Food that raises your realm just by eating it? Wow!
‘I’d definitely become a kidnapped and imprisoned chef.’
Power-mad authorities would probably abduct me without a trace and have me mass-produce food like a factory.
The soldiers must have felt themselves getting stronger after eating my food, too, but that could still be dismissed as individual suspicion or their imagination.
But Arthur, the platoon leader of the knight order, becoming a Sword Expert after eating curry? This had an impact that couldn’t simply be overlooked.
“Thank you for looking out for me. That could have been a disaster.”
“Jinwoo-nim is a benefactor not only to me but to the entire knighthood. It is only natural that I look out for you. I should get going now. I will definitely repay this favor. Thank you!”
“It’s really okay...”
Without seeming to hear my last words, Arthur quickly left.
He must be tired from fighting, and even if I didn’t know the details, it seemed he still had matters to settle.
That aside, was it really okay to keep making food like this?
If I kept cooking using my abilities, I’d get caught eventually.
Since I couldn’t help using [Mana Market], maybe there was a function to deactivate [Hand Taste]?
=====
[Hand Taste Lv.Max] is a passive skill. It cannot be deactivated.
=====
As if reading my mind, the status window hammered home that there was no such thing as an ON/OFF function.
‘Ah, whatever.’
If something happened, I’d deal with it when it happened.
Since Arthur said he’d repay the favor, I could just ask him for help if I was in danger.
I pushed aside my stray thoughts and made curry for breakfast.
I’d thought serving the same menu twice in a row might be a bit much, but that was my mistake.
“Damn. What the hell is this food.”
“It’s delicious, I said it’s delicious!”
Despite it being a repeated menu, the soldiers ate it as deliciously as if tasting it for the first time.
Probably because the food they’d eaten before had been so bad.
“Sigh... We’ll have to soak hardtack for lunch again. It’s already horrifying.”
“Ah... that’s true. But dinner will be delicious again, right?”
“We’ll have to take comfort in that.”
I eavesdropped a bit on the soldiers’ conversation as they ate.
I hadn’t meant to, but I heard them anyway.
Come to think of it, they’d said lunch would be field rations. Was that hardtack?
I asked a mess cook about the hardtack I hadn’t paid attention to yesterday.
“Yes? Har-hardtack, you say?”
“Yeah. Can I see it?”
“Yes. It’s over there.”
The mess cook guided me to where the hardtack was.
But following the cook’s guidance, I arrived at a place where there was no hardtack in sight, only a stack of brown bricks.
“Where’s the hardtack?”
“Yes? It’s right here.”
“These are bricks.”
“This is our hardtack.”
“Huh.”
Flustered, I let out a stupid sound.
I’d expected it to be different from the hardtack I knew, but wasn’t this too different?
Were they lying by putting bricks here?
I picked up one brick... no, one hardtack, and tapped it lightly.
Thud. Thud.
Clack!
I tapped it with my hand and even struck it against the floor, but the sound was impossible to believe from something supposedly made of flour.
You can eat this? Can you even cut it in the first place?
“How do you eat this?”
“We chop it into pieces and boil it in hot water to eat it like porridge.”
“How do you chop it?”
“We split it with an axe.”
“???”
I couldn’t hide my shock at the appearance of a cooking tool I had never imagined.
Was an ingredient that required an axe really an ingredient?
It wasn’t for hunting, it was just bread...
But the mess cook looked at me with an innocent face, as if asking what the problem was.
So this was the standard for otherworldly combat rations.
It wasn’t the time to be worrying about the menu.
After breakfast distribution ended, I ordered all the mess cooks.
“Bring the flour used for making hardtack!”
This wasn’t hardtack.
It was time to show this otherworldly fantasy what K-hardtack was.
***
Hardtack was originally tasteless.
On Earth, hardtack existed since ancient Egyptian times under the name hardtack.
By lowering the dough’s moisture content to below 6%, preventing mold growth, it was an extreme survival ration.
Eggs, dried fruits, and yeast were not added either.
Because adding such things to the dough made preservation that much harder.
Therefore, hardtack was food that could not possibly taste good—food whose very purpose turned its back on flavor.
But that was a thing of the past.
Modern food science gave hardtack its taste back.
To be honest, modern South Korean hardtack might be classified closer to a biscuit than hardtack, but what did it matter?
As long as it tasted good, that was enough. It was dried, anyway.
The savory-sweet, crunchy and chewy hardtack, redolent with the nuttiness of barley, that I’d grown sick of eating in the army.
Looking at the typical dough ratio for modern hardtack, the ingredient that went in the most along with flour was shortening, or margarine.
This was to obtain the fat’s unique flavor, crunchy texture, and increased dryness by mixing in oil.
Powdered milk was added too.
Powdered milk was a similar concept to oil, but an ingredient more focused on taste and flavor.
I had roughly worked out the hardtack dough ingredients in my head.
I gave orders to the mess cooks.
“Prepare the largest dough tub in this kitchen.”
“Yes! Understood.”
“You, go to the local tavern and scoop some beer foam.”
“Yes? Foam?”
“Yeah. About three barrels’ worth?”
“Under... stood.”
They might wonder what beer was for when I said I was making hardtack, but since I was making it in bulk, it was better to scrounge up whatever ingredients I could and add them.
Beer foam had components similar to malt extract and could be used as a substitute for yeast in dough fermentation.
After giving orders to the mess cook, I too completely left the knight order’s garrison and used [Mana Market] in a secluded alley.
「Butter」
「Powdered Milk」
「Salt」
「Sugar」
「???」
▼
I produced butter, powdered milk, and sugar—4kg, 3kg, and 3kg respectively.
I felt the lethargy of mana draining away, but just like with the spices, I could exchange them at a good rate.
“It’s amazing every time I see it... This is really okay, right?”
“I told you it’s fine. Help me carry some of this.”
“Tch.”
Iseria, who had been watching from the side, looked on with an expression half worried, half amazed.
I had that Iseria help carry the load too and returned to the kitchen.
The mess cook was startled to see me return after briefly stepping out with precious ingredients on the level of black pepper—butter, powdered milk, and sugar.
“C-Commissary Officer? Isn’t that sugar? Is it okay to use it when making hardtack?”
“It’s fine. I brought it myself. Help out instead of fretting.”
The mess cook made an expression as if he were committing a terrible atrocity.
Shortly after, the mess cook who went to get beer foam returned, and I began kneading the dough in earnest.
Typically, one bag of packaged hardtack in modern times is 30g.
Taking that as one portion, and since hardtack can be preserved anyway, if I prepared about 1,800 portions in advance, that would be 54kg.
I just needed to calculate the ratios from the total amount to mix the dough.
Since there was no precise scale anyway, I couldn’t match it exactly.
Roughly: flour 7, water 1.2, butter and powdered milk 0.5, barley flour 0.3, salt and sugar 0.3.
You add all the beer foam here, and knead while adding flour, starch, and water so the dough doesn’t get too wet.
“Oh, Lady Maria. Why do you test me so...”
“Commissary Officer... my arms hurt so much...”
“Cheer up! Fighting!”
Of course, I wasn’t doing it. I’m the commissary officer, after all.
The muscular mess cooks alone seemed a bit insufficient to make 1,800 portions, so I called over some priests and nuns who looked free.
Though their specific military classifications might differ, they were priests and nuns under the broad category of logistics.
‘This is commissary officer power.’
Having replenished manpower with the formidable authority of a commissary officer in the logistics department, before long, the dough achieved the texture of the hardtack I was familiar with.
A smooth yet firm dough texture, like croissant puff pastry sheets.
We dusted flour on a large, spotlessly cleaned prep table and rolled the dough thin.
After folding and rolling the thin dough—folding and rolling, repeating this about four times—the layers became quite firm.
The final completed dough sheet was about 2mm thick.
Though it looked very thin, it was appropriate considering it would puff up slightly during baking.
“From now on, your name is Chunsik.”
“Huh? What?”
“I’m saying it’s your turn to suffer, Iseria.”
Iseria, who had been sitting comfortably in a chair watching everyone struggle with the dough, wore a bewildered expression.
Who said you could laze around alone?
The reason I hadn’t made Iseria do anything until now was because she had that much more work ahead of her...!
How to precisely cut hardtack dough and bake it uniformly like a factory in a medieval fantasy?
“Become a machine, Iseria.”
“Ah, no!!”
Such magical work was naturally left to a magician.