Chapter 107: Surging Power (1)
“My lord, I have heard the news. You sent the recipe to Lady Yuri.”
House Clementine’s chef, Hutton, asked Jeras, who was sitting at the table eating his meal.
Jeras, who had just finished eating, wiped his mouth with a napkin and placed it on the table.
“Ah, yes.”
“…With all due respect, does Lady Yuri finally have a suitable partner? There’s been an uproar in the marketplace. I wonder if she’ll be getting married sooner or later…”
“Haha, it would be nice if she could…but she’s not there yet.”
Said Jeras, smirking.
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Hutton’s words since it was a time-honored tradition of House Clementine’s use of magma bears in their diet.
The current patriarch, Jeras Clementine, had stumbled upon it as a child.
A young Jeras, who was very thin and dissatisfied with the world, asked his father, who was the head of the family at the time, Yuri’s grandfather, about it.
What is all this food for?
The patriarch’s answer was very simple.
‘The day I ate it, you were born.’
He didn’t understand the words at the time, but later, on his first night of marriage, he fully understood their meaning.
Similarly, the day he ate the nourishing food, Yuri was born.
Just because you want to have a child, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to do it, even if you have to go through a lot.
In that sense, it was a miracle and that was the tradition and history of Clementine’s fostering.
In that sense, Hutton was deeply worried.
It was his lord’s order, and he would obey it, but he hadn’t expected to send the recipe to Yuri, who wasn’t even engaged, let alone married, yet.
He wondered about Jeras intentions but Jeras knew this, and he spoke again to answer Hutton’s question.
“Consider it a lesson. It won’t do much good if she can’t cook properly anyway, and I can’t speak for her, but… you know how well she can cook.”
This was just a “warm-up” for Yuri, who would soon become a man’s bride.
One day, she would have to cook for her husband. That’s why he didn’t just send partial ingredients but sent a whole magma bear just to practice.
After all, magma bears are very nutritious on their own, so he figured it would be a good way to soothe Zetto’s hunger.
Even if it didn’t taste as good, it was still homemade, and that’s what counts.
A quick glance at Zetto convinced Jeras that he was the kind of person who would appreciate such things.
“…I suppose so.”
But even with his explanation, Hutton was still nervous and he wasn’t entirely wrong.
In fact, the Clementine family’s nourishment was so unique that it would be difficult to perfect, and the recipe would be ineffective without the various elements that had been left out.
It’s just a very nutritious food. Besides, Hutton was well aware that Yuri is a bad cook. But there was one thing he overlooked.
Once before, Yuri had come into the kitchen to talk to Hutton.
The Yuri of today has grown to be so graceful that she’s been given the name “Flaming Flower,” but back then she was a tiny little girl carrying a teddy bear that fit perfectly in her arms.
‘Hutton, I want one of those!’
At the time, Hutton was baking a very ordinary fried egg.
Hutton smiled and said, “Then the fried eggs on the table today will be made by you.”
And so began Yuri’s fried eggs.
He showed her how to do it and although sloppy, the fried egg was ready in no time. But when Yuri looked at it, she said it was too different from what Hutton had made, from the shape to the baking, and she wanted to make it again and Hutton let her.
Having three children of his own, he knew that children of that age tend to want to solve problems without help.
Once again, he heard the tapping of the eggs and Yuri began to fry them.
Whether it was her youth or her lack of dexterity, it was not easy to create a fried egg that looked as good as Hutton’s.
Eventually, Hutton’s fried eggs made it to the table but when Hutton returned from eating, Yuri was still in the kitchen, making fried eggs.
That’s when Hutton saw Yuri’s, and Clementine’s, “tenacity.”
Yuri’s hands didn’t stop until day turned to night, and then Yuri exclaimed.
“It’s perfect…!”
She had managed to create a fried egg that looked just like Hutton’s and cooked to a certain perfection.
And that’s just for a very simple fried egg…Hutton was a very skilled cook.
A young girl’s persistence alone could overtake a perfect fried egg.
That day, Yuri used up all the eggs in the house.
Looking at the countless piles of eggshells in the kitchen, Yuri raised a short finger to her lips and said to Hutton.
“Shhh…! Keep this a secret from father.”
Hearing the girl’s whisper, Hutton could only laugh weakly and had to rush to the market at dawn the next day to buy eggs.
In any case, the secret was kept, and Jeras never found out but he praised Hutton for getting Yuri to sleep so soundly when she was so energetic.
“A career is different, isn’t it…?”
He muttered under his breath.
Hutton ducked his head and narrowed his eyes at Jeras, who smiled at the meal, which was as satisfying as ever.
Still, it would be okay if she didn’t have enough ingredients this time, if she couldn’t remember the flavor of the last time she’d eaten it.
May she not be able to perfect the food this time.
Hopefully, the news would never reach his ears that Clementine’s young lady had gotten ahead of herself.
***
To Hutton’s dismay, the words come out of Yuri’s mouth in the kitchen.
“…Perfect…!”
Yuri exclaimed as she took a bite of her finished dish that was very similar to the nourishing food she had eaten before.
Yuri smiled with pride and looked around.
The kitchen was a mess while the day had been bright for a long time and Lucia had practically fallen asleep on the table.
It would soon be time to go to school at the Academy.
Yuri had every right to be tired after pulling an all-nighter, but she was just happy to be able to serve Zetto some ‘decent’ food.
As she cleaned up the kitchen, Yuri felt a pang of anxiety.
The cooking seemed to be done but there was still the matter of Lucia ‘tasting’, which she’ll ask her to do as soon as she wakes up.
Now all that remained was to invite Zetto to her room but this was not going to be easy.
Bringing a guy into a girl’s dorm was one thing, but the wording was another.
“…I’m going to cook him a meal…”
Yuri shyly muttered to herself, then shook her head.
The words slipped out of her mouth, thinking that no one would hear them since Lucia was asleep, but coincidentally, Lucia was awake.
She was only pretending to be asleep because she was so full that she thought Yuri was going to feed her.
‘What the…? What happened…?’
The friend that Yuri wanted to cook for was none other than Zetto but wasn’t Zetto dating Aizel?
Lucia was very confused, but she decided to continue pretending to sleep.
***
I was tired, but I made it to school on time.
Today’s class was an outdoor class in the back mountains dubbed a joint combat drill, it seemed to be preparing the cadets for an all-out war later in the day.
The cadets had to coordinate with their teammates to deliver a meaningful blow to Edward.
Once again, the groups were randomly assembled by Edward.
My group was the first to challenge Edward, and between Yuri and me, we were able to end the battle fairly quickly.
Well, except for the fact that Edward didn’t use his signature illusions.
Following my plan, Yuri unleashed a barrage of fire magic, obscuring Edward’s vision with smoke from the flames’ aftermath while the rest of the group tried to distract him by firing spells and arrows at him, hoping he would be trapped by the smoke.
It was then that I, who had used my Ki Sense to pinpoint Edward’s exact location, used Chapter 1.
With the protective spell broken, Edward said, “It’s not as easy as I thought to dodge a sword that I can’t see or feel, huh…” and smiled wickedly.
Sierra judged Edward to be a sullen fellow for deliberately allowing himself to be hit by an attack that he could have easily avoided.
As we watched the other teams fight, Edward seemed to allow the cadets to attack casually, as if he were giving them a pass if they showed a good combination.
While our group watched the rest of the group battle.
“Don’t shoot at me!”
Amon shouted in anger as he was knocked into the air by Lucia’s wind blast.
I don’t know if Edward is using this opportunity to eliminate Lucia’s weakness of fear, or if he’s just picking on her and making things difficult for his teammates, but he’s targeting Lucia intensively.
Her teammate, Aizel, was dodging Lucia’s wind spells and trying to get at Edward somehow but it was only a personal move and Edward wasn’t letting her off the hook so easily.
“It’s not as easy to use Lucia. Hmm…”
Crank, who had been munching on his bread while watching them, gave his assessment.
Crank was in the same group as me this time.
Not having anything to throw at Edward, who was engulfed in smoke, he let his shield fly.
I don’t know where Crank came from…but for that moment, I could call him Captain Terracia.
He was an A-class tank, after all, so I was beginning to wonder what kind of defense he had.
Anyway…The battle of Aizel group doesn’t seem like it’s going to end anytime soon.
Edward was getting angry because Aizel was acting alone but Yuri, who had left the field earlier, hadn’t returned.
I waited for her to return, but she showed no sign of doing so.
‘I thought we’d go for a bite to eat afterwards…’
I wondered where she had gone without saying a word, so I let the feeling drift away.
‘…There she is.’
I could detect Yuri’s movement from the other side of the forest so I stood up from where I was sitting in the tree and started walking towards where she was.
As I got closer and closer to Yuri, I could hear her voice without having to listen.
“Zetto… I was thinking of cooking for you…”
…For some reason, Yuri was talking about me.
[Cooking…?]
Sierra, who was next to me, was also puzzled by her voice.
Suddenly, Yuri slammed her fist into the tree in front of her.
“This isn’t it…! Whoa… What should I say?”
Whether she was concentrating or not, Yuri hadn’t yet noticed me approaching and her voice rang out once more from the center of the forest.
“Zetto, are you bleeding again? Oh, no. It’s not like I’m going to cook for you… or anything… Hmph…”
I didn’t know what the hell was going on but it wasn’t until I heard another slap on the wood that I could see Yuri.
She pushed the tree away with her left hand and stood against it like a wall.
Her mouth opened once more as she didn’t see Zetto, who was between the trees.
“Huh… Zetto, I’ll cook for you. Come to my room in the afternoon.”
Yuri’s rather charismatic…comments continue.
-Oops.
At that moment, I stepped on a branch as I approached Yuri since I was too embarrassed to pay attention to the ground.
“…Who is it?”
Yuri’s head snapped around at the sound and soon after she saw me.
“Zetto…?!”
“…Haha.”
I smirked and scratched my head.
“Were you… listening…?”
Yuri’s body trembled as she bowed her head so I walked over to her and replied in a nonchalant voice.
“I’m excited to hear about cooking, so can we go to Ms. Yuri’s room?”
As soon as I answer, Yuri raises her head and asks in a shy voice.
“…Really?”
[…Disciple?]
Sierra asks in disbelief.
“Yeah, see you later.”
I smiled and nodded since it was the only way to get out of this embarrassing situation.