Cooking Swordmaster [EN]: Chapter 243

‘That person is an Ancient Dragon……?’

Unkempt hair growing haphazardly and drowsy eyes still clouded with sleep. Moreover, there were even white traces of drool dried on his lips.

Judging by his appearance alone, he was no different from a vagrant wandering the back alleys.

— Be careful, partner. That one is the real deal.

Magnus’s lips twisted as he stared at Cainchel with hazy eyes.

“What is it, a mere insignificant thing daring to interrupt the speech of the True Dragon?”

He was aware of the Bishop’s presence connected to Cainchel’s neural network.

It was something no one had ever done before.

Magnus spoke without moving his lips or even his vocal cords.

【Halt】

Instantly, Bishop’s movements, which had been wriggling wildly, ceased.

‘……What. He activated magic with just a single word?’

Cainchel swallowed dryly without realizing it. If Magnus attacked with hostile intent, he was certain he wouldn’t be able to stop him.

“Don’t be so nervous. I won’t recklessly attack someone reeking of my own kind.”

His voice was so drowsy it made even the listener feel languid.

“……But what exactly is your True Name?”

“You mean you summoned the True Dragon without even knowing that?”

A dragon who has lived for thousands of years distorts the laws of the world with his will alone.

Water flows from below to above, and a fully bloomed flower returns to a bud.

That was the power of the oldest draconic language.

Magnus continued his explanation, yawning widely.

“Dragons live by absorbing mana [magical energy]. As they become Elder Dragons, they become more assimilated with the world……. Kooool…….”

Then he fell asleep again, his head drooping.

Cainchel had to call his name again.

“Magnus Basileia, sir?”

At that, Magnus leaped up from his seated position.

“Ugh, ughaaak! I told you not to keep calling my True Name! It feels like fingernails scratching a steel plate against my ears!”

“……That sounds quite painful.”

“Anyway, draconic language is powerful, but if you overuse it, assimilation accelerates. In my case, I’ll probably become a volcano, right? What delays that as much as possible is the True Name, which distinguishes the True Dragon from what is not. Does that satisfy your curiosity? Then I’ll erase the related memories now.”

“Erase memories? What on earth…….”

Before Cainchel could finish speaking, Magnus reached out his hand and activated the draconic language.

Instantly, the memories related to Magnus’s True Name disappeared cleanly from Cainchel’s mind.

“There, done. With this, I’ve erased not only my True Name but also the circumstances of how you learned it. Usually, dragons only reveal their True Name to someone they completely trust. So, let’s save calling me by my full name for when we’re a little closer. Haaam……. I’m going back to sleep now.”

Magnus’s draconic language reverses cause and effect, making events as if they never happened in the first place.

However, there was something it couldn’t erase.

[Gourmet Skill resisted ‘Causality Reversal’.]

Even draconic language couldn’t completely erase the traces of over 20,000 times of roasting. Cainchel recalled the taste of chicken lingering on his tongue.

‘It seems I learned the Dragon Lord’s True Name while cooking chicken. Well, that’s not what’s important now.’

Humans remember the taste of food they ate in childhood until they die. It seems that as the Gourmet Skill rose to 7 stars, a similar ability was added.

‘Anyway, if the Dragon Lord’s True Name is needed again, I can just fry some chicken.’

Cainchel got up from his seat, imagining Magnus screaming if he heard that.

Fortunately, the memory that the cause of the great drought was the dragon remained intact. That was a completely different event unrelated to the True Name in the first place.

“Magnus-nim [esteemed one].”

“Yes. How nice it is that you only say the first part. Anyway, don’t try to forcibly remember the True Dragon’s full name. If you make a mistake, your mind could collapse.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But have you been using a lot of mana lately?”

Magnus scanned Cainchel up and down for a moment with hazy eyes.

Then he let out a strange groan.

“Kh, kheum. How did you know? Were you eavesdropping on my sleep talking?”

“Isn’t the Ottoman Empire suffering from a severe drought because of that?”

“Ah, that? Who do you take me for? I know that much too. But what can I do? If the True Dragon nested elsewhere, even more people would have died. It’s only because it’s a desert that the damage is limited to this extent.”

Magnus was right. If he hadn’t lent his strength, the continent would have already been conquered by the demons that emerged from the Demon Realm.

Compared to that, the fact that less rain falls in the desert is nothing.

However, from the perspective of those suffering from the great drought, it is not something that can be easily laughed off.

Abdullah growled like a wounded beast.

“Kheuheueuk……. To have found the cause of the great drought and be unable to do anything…….”

However, he couldn’t direct hostility towards Magnus.

No matter how much he was the head of the Janissaries [elite Ottoman soldiers] and the Sword Master of the Desert, what was in front of him was an Ancient Dragon.

An almost godlike being who had lived since the age of mythology.

“……Cainchel Gong [a respectful title]. I entrust the negotiation with the Dragon Lord to you. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the Ottoman Empire are in your hands. I hope you will handle it well.”

Cainchel nodded silently.

Now was the main point.

“If you eat the food I make, you can obtain a sufficient amount of mana without absorbing it from the surroundings. Then the great drought that has struck the Ottoman Empire will also be resolved. What do you think? If you wait a little, I can make the most delicious dish…….”

However, the answer that came back from Magnus completely shattered everyone’s expectations.

“I don’t want to eat it?”

Abdullah’s face turned pale. Magnus only had to eat the food Cainchel made. Then rain would fall again in the Ottoman Empire, and all problems would be solved.

But why was Magnus refusing such a simple thing?

“It seems you have an expression that needs explanation. I’ll keep the reason as simple as possible since I want to finish quickly and sleep. I’m the only red dragon with such a good personality, you know?”

Magnus said that he hadn’t eaten anything for over a thousand years.

His staple food is only mana absorbed from the surroundings. He is still sustaining his life through that.

“In other words, asking the True Dragon to eat food is like throwing meat at an elf.”

‘Meat to an elf…….’

It was such a touching expression.

It seemed that getting Magnus to eat a dish made directly was more difficult than expected.

However, the more difficult the opponent, the more fired up he became. Cainchel looked at Magnus with the calmest expression possible.

“But you’re saying that eating itself is possible, right?”

“Of course, it’s possible. But I recently ate food offered as a sacrifice by someone. But I couldn’t taste anything. It was like chewing sand. It seems I’ve lost my sense of taste as I’ve gotten older.”

‘Ugh. The difficulty has increased further. But the fact that he ate food offered as a sacrifice means he still has an appetite, right?’

A different light flashed in Cainchel’s eyes. Perhaps there was a clue to solving this incident there.

When he talked about that, Magnus shrugged his shoulders with an expression of having been caught off guard.

“That’s right. For a dragon to age means that it is becoming an existence that is increasingly difficult to call a living being. The loss of taste is just the beginning. The True Dragon will lose more and more in the future. Haaam……. I wish someone would come out to take over the position of Lord before I completely weather away and disappear…….”

Magnus said such words and began to doze off again.

His appearance seems to be about the same age as Cainchel.

But the reality is an old dragon just waiting for the day he dies.

“Then will you eat it if I make a dish that can restore your sense of taste?”

“Hmm……. It seems like something is lacking with just that, right? Ah, that’s right. If you cook it in a way I’ve never eaten before and bring it to me, I’ll eat it. I’m giving you a lot of leeway with this.”

Magnus is a dragon who has lived for as long as 10,000 years. But does a dish cooked in a way he has never eaten before really exist?

* * *

Cainchel had to rack his brains all night to find the answer.

If it was simply creating a new dish, he could easily do it using the Brilliant Road.

However, Magnus’s order was food cooked in a way he had never eaten before.

There are as many dishes on the continent as there are stars.

But the types of methods for cooking them are fewer than expected.

Most of them are steamed, boiled, seasoned, stir-fried, or grilled. Sometimes they are served raw, but that would not satisfy Magnus’s picky taste.

‘Wait a minute, what about that…….’

Cainchel recalled grilling meat with magma caused by the attack of the super-giant golem.

Wouldn’t magma grilling be a dish made in a way that Magnus has never eaten before?

“Sorry, but I’ve eaten that before. To be exact, it was orc meat.”

“…….”

He decided not to ask in what situation he ate the meat, as the dream would be ominous.

In the end, Cainchel realized that he could not solve this problem alone.

And he went to the man who had pushed the taste of beef to its limit in a way that even the Brilliant Road had not shown.

Jaime, who briefly heard the situation from Cainchel, said with great joy.

“I never thought I would be working with Cainchel Chef so soon. It seems that yesterday’s enemy has become today’s colleague. Hahaha!”

“Anyway, I think Jaime Chef’s formed meat is definitely a dish made in a way that has never existed before.”

“Unfortunately, formed meat is not suitable for that guest’s request. It is certainly a food ingredient made in a way that has never existed before, but what that person requested was a dish made in a unique way, wasn’t it? I think chicken made with low-temperature aged chicken would be much more suitable for that condition.”

“He said he’s already eaten that too.”

“……This is really difficult.”

When I thought about it, it was similar but definitely different.

Cainchel did not tell Jaime that the person he had to make the dish for was the Dragon Lord.

He just made it up that there was a very picky guest.

If he said that the fate of the Ottoman was at stake in the dish he was making now, he wouldn’t even be able to stand still in tension.

Jaime smiled and patted Cainchel’s shoulder so hard that it made a sound.

“Actually, I have a hidden weapon that I have been hiding from you.”

“A hidden weapon?”

“Ah, could you wait a moment?”

Then he ran to the lodging where he was staying and took out a piece of paper stained with oil.

Usually, when you say paper, you think of parchment made by thinly spreading and drying sheep’s skin.

It was incredibly expensive because it used the entire leather.

However, paper made from wood as a raw material began to appear in earnest about a hundred years ago.

It was still one of the main sources of income for the Magic Tower.

— Euhahaha. Partner! I’ve been hiding it until now, but it was this body that popularized that Western paper!

‘Oh? You’re alive, Bishop.’

— Of course! I was just temporarily unable to move due to the draconic language magic!

His voice was strangely excited.

It seems he was embarrassed that he was suppressed by Magnus without being able to do anything.

‘Anyway, paper made from wood has been fully commercialized since a hundred years ago, right? Then Magnus must only know about parchment or papyrus. But what kind of dish are you going to make with paper?’

— Hmm……. Do you pour something like water on the paper?

As Cainchel looked at him with an expression that he was curious to death, Jaime smiled and showed him.

“Now, you can cook with paper like this. How is it? It’s very easy, right?”

Cainchel’s hands began to tremble with excitement.

To think that you could use paper in this way.

If he used this, he would be able to create an unprecedented dish that even Magnus, who has lived for 10,000 years, has never seen before.