Despite his great effort, he failed to learn anything.
Sinehowze did not conceal her cooking skills from the others. Nevertheless, Angor didn’t quite understand the way she moved. He did, however, notice something about her mirage.
A mirage was an illusion of food that naturally occurred when a Gourmet chef cooked something. Angor once fell into a mirage on The Redbud when he almost mistook a lit oil lamp as a delicious drumstick.
While such mirages could be deadly to mortals, it basically had no effect on apprentices who had set up their spirit models. Rather, they could use such mirage to tell what kind of food they were expecting.
For example, they saw the illusion of the Lord of Tentacles; it was literally dancing in cooking smoke while swaying its arms here and there to grab different, strange-looking side-materials such as miniature cyclones, the melted egg of some unknown monster, and tree leaves they couldn’t recognize. Slowly, the Lord of Tentacles stuffed them into its opened maw before its body caught fire.
When the fire died down, a dish of glowing “Exploding Lava Egg Soup” was presented to them.
Usually, people used such mirages to see what was used to create the dish, but as an illusionist, Angor saw something more from it, such as how the mirage was not created by the cook but was brought by a strange power generated when the enchanted cooking flame and the flavor of food joined with each other.
There were no illusion nodes involved. The mirage was only a delusion subconsciously produced when a Gourmet wielded his or her supernatural cooking abilities.
That was about everything Angor managed to see. He could understand none of Sinehowze’s cooking secrets or use what he learned to help with his Mana Bread.
“Drinking the Exploding Lava Egg Soup will help your magic attune with fire elements better and temporarily raise the power of your fire-related spells,” Sinehowze explained while preparing her plates.
There were pieces of egg and green herbs occasionally floating on the bright-red soup. While smelling the strong yet pleasant aroma, people could see the traces of remaining mirage lingering in the liquid.
“Ohh. It smells like fire.” Hermes inhaled as deeply as he could.
Loki was gulping loudly while his hands fumbled. It seemed he could no longer wait to taste his share.
Sinehowze placed a bowl of soup in front of Angor first. “It’s all thanks to you that I can get the monster egg. This shall be my reward.”
Although he did his best not to show it, truth was, Angor was just as eager to satisfy his starving stomach as Loki.
“Thanks,” he said and smiled at Sinehowze. He was beginning to regard this woman as a friend.
Sinehowze had been showing her joyful and carefree attitude as ever. There was only her friend, Carveline, who noticed something hidden behind Sinehowze’s facade. When Sinehowze looked like this, it meant she was plotting something... against someone.
Angor picked up his soup and took another sniff, which already sated his hunger to a certain extent. People said that food created by true Gourmet chefs was filling just by looking at them, and it wasn’t an overstatement.
Sinehowze’s smile grew bigger when she saw Angor’s lips moving closer to her soup.
But before Angor could actually drink any, a white, chubby hand moved in and snatched his plate away.
Angor and the other bystanders were all surprised by the sudden “intruder”, while Sinehowze’s smile froze on her face.
“Hey, Tana, you should tell Angor not to try everything made by Gourmets without knowing what it does,” someone said in a childish voice.
Alan had woken up and joined them. It was him that took Angor’s soup.
Tana failed to understand what Alan meant. “But I’ve been watching. There’s nothing wrong with her cooking or materials.”
“Yeah, but there’s something wrong with HER,” Alan said as he glanced at Sinehowze. Earlier, he would address Sinehowze as “a beautiful lady”, but he had some doubts ever since he saw the strange old man that accompanied Sinehowze.
It reminded him of “Gourmet of Darkness”, about whom Felicia once mentioned to her students.
“She... has something?” Tana frowned and checked Sinehowze again.
Sinehowze moved to Carveline and used her signature smile at Alan. “Hey, kid, please don’t tell such nonsense. I’m going to spank you if I lose customers because of you.”
Carveline chuckled and didn’t comment.
“Wait. There’s a problem with the soup?” Angor knew what Alan meant to say.
“Let me have a look!” Alan thumped his chest proudly.
Angor couldn’t help smiling at Alan’s character. The fat boy seemed not much different from when they were still on The Redbud. The life in Butterfly Tavern was probably pretty peaceful and relaxing.
Alan checked Angor’s plate from various directions and put it onto a small desk on the boat with a tight frown.
“So, what’s wrong about it?” Tana asked.
“Um... nothing. Yes, it does help you with fire magic,” Alan said, but he was uncertain about something. “But something tells me that there’s more to it.”
“Well, you’re not a woman, and you don’t have a ‘sixth sense’ for sure,” Sinehowze snickered. “If you can’t tell us anything, we just let people decide on their own. Everyone, drink it if you want. Otherwise, just leave more soup for me.”
Tana also checked the soup and nodded to others. “I didn’t find anything wrong.”
Alan did possess better talent at Gourmet, but Tana turned level-2 ten years ago, which meant she was more experienced. Therefore, everyone else chose to trust Tana’s words.
It was Hermes who made an example and downed his share.
Since someone reassured them, the others soon followed suit.
Alan made a duck-face, obviously unhappy about what happened.
Angor and Keely did not drink the soup. Keely’s lonely character prevented her from accepting gifts from people even if the soup fitted well with her fire-related talent. As for Angor... he chose to trust in Alan’s instinct.
Besides, he had no use for the soup’s beneficial effect. There were also potions with such merits. As an alchemist, he could always find these potions if necessary.
Sinehowze squinted her eyes at Angor’s decision, but she didn’t say anything since she just claimed that people were free to choose.
The brief meal allowed people to melt down their unfriendliness just a little.
Later, Angor found Alan and talked about their adventure in the wizarding world.
It seemed Alan went through a similar experience as Angor. The Butterfly Tavern traveled around the world on its own, which allowed Alan to see a lot of different places. However, he basically stayed inside the tavern all the time while concentrating on Gourmet studies. He didn’t pay much attention to the outside world. Coming to Floating Mech City was Alan’s very first field trip.
And Angor would say the same if he weren’t forced to Fairy World by an incident.
The two apprentices who had yet to see much of the world ended up talking about Old Earth.
Angor claimed that he might return home within this year. Alan was a little jealous about it since he missed his father, General Morn. However, he didn’t have what it took to travel through Devil’s Water again.
Alan saw Angor’s former teacher before—an ill-bodied man named Jon. Using what he had learned until now, Alan suggested several menus that might help with Jon’s condition.
Angor thanked Alan, but he knew that none of the food would help Jon stay away from the world’s consciousness.
Alan said he never saw Aleen and Mara again after leaving for Candy House.
After talking about their past and future ambitions, Angor tried to ask Alan about his “instinct” earlier. Since Sinehowze was still nearby, he used Voice Transmission just in case.
“Did you think Sinehowze put something bad in her soup?”
Alan nodded and replied in Voice Transmission as well, “I think she’s a ‘Gourmet of Darkness’.”
Gourmet of Darkness?! Angor realized he never heard of such a thing before.
“They’re different from the ordinary Gourmet Wizards from Candy House. How do I put it... You can consider a dark Gourmet chef as someone who seeks benefit via cooking, but not for the sake of creating food. I don’t know if Sinehowze is a dark one, but her skills look like those used by a legendary wizard my teacher told me before: The ‘Culinarian of Spirits’, Shinsky.
“The books said that Shinsky was a Gourmet of Darkness from hundreds of centuries ago. She used dishes to attract the spirits from other worlds to fight for her, kinda like summoner spells. But summoner spells are restricted by their users’ levels, and summoning something stronger than yourself can be risky and costs a lot of resources. Shinsky’s food though... It was more like ‘exchanging’ rather than summoning. She used good food to pay the spirits. If a dish suited someone’s taste well, that spirit would still heed her call even if he was a really powerful spirit.”
“You can do that?!” Angor widened his eyes.
“Yeah. The spirits called by Shinsky were bound by a certain contract. Once they took her food, they had to fulfill the conditions asked by Shinsky.” Alan glanced at Sinehowze again. The woman had scattered petals here and there by floating above the boat. “When that old man gave the monster egg to her, he said something like ‘it’s payment for dinner’ and disappeared. That looks like one of the spirits summoned by a dark Gourmet chef.
“If Sinehowze really knows something like this, then you should absolutely NOT eat her food. Otherwise, you’ll get caught in a contract without even knowing it.”