Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 18 - Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: Medicinal Cooking 

“Phew . . .” My experience with cooking for a large number of people all the time had really helped too. At the village, I normally just plunked down a couple of things, but this had been fun too. I would have liked to have polished each one a little more. 
“Kiddo, you were looking really good out there,” L’Arc said. 
“Indeed . . . a real craftsman. You pulled your weight too, Kizuna,” Glass said. 
“All I did was pick out the ingredients and cut the fish . . .” Kizuna replied. All of her allies were quick to praise me. Kizuna was downplaying her role in things too. That side of preparation was very important, especially when it came to fish. 
“You have a unique timing when applying your life force. I think it would be pretty hard to emulate,” Glass said. 
“Master’s food! Huh? We’re not allowed to eat it?” Filo asked. 
“He had Kizuna prepare something just for you. Look, Filo, Mr. Naofumi is bringing it over now,” Raphtalia said. 
“Yay! Oh boy, it smells delicious!” Filo said happily. 
“It might be kind of poisonous, so watch out for that,” I told her. 
“Oh my . . . can someone finally explain to us exactly what you are doing?” Sadeena asked. 
“Explain!” Shildina added. 
“It turns out we got involved in this cooking battle . . .” Raphtalia proceeded to explain to the sisters what was going on, with everyone else sticking their oar in whenever it suited them. 
“Will both chefs please bring their food forward? I’m sure Master Seya will win, but we will be eating the challenger’s food first,” the MC said, her biased flag still firmly flying. The judges started to carry my dishes toward their mouths. 
First the appetizer. 
“Hah, the food of this challenger surely can’t hope to compare to Master Seya’s—” the rotund noble started. After a single mouthful, his eyes opened wide and he started to scoff the food down. “This can’t be?! What is this? It’s delicious! Too delicious! And it feels like some kind of poison is draining from my body as I eat! So refreshing! This is the best!” The noble quickly accelerated into top gear, stuffing his face with everything in reach. The other judges were doing the same. They weren’t especially clean eaters, to be honest. 
“That meat looked practically rotten, and look at it now! The flavor, the texture, it’s stunning!” the noble exclaimed. 
“Because it wasn’t rotten at all. It may have looked that way at a glance, but really it was just aged meat that had become more delicious. And it was mixed in with the meat supplied to the restaurant. Someone went to all that trouble, but some other moron thought it was rotten and gave it to us,” I explained pointedly, looking at Seya, Trash III, and the other MC. Trash III responded by flipping me off. I could taunt with the best of them, and I mouthed some swear words back. 
“What’s this tingling in my nose I feel? It harmonizes so well with the texture. What condiments have you added?” the noble asked. 
“It’s a mixture of medicinal and fragrant herbs. Slightly spicy herbs that are good for your health and promote your appetite have been formed into a jelly with an awareness of medicinal cooking,” I explained. I signaled at the kid who was watching in the gathered crowd, knowing he would like this. 
“I see. That’s why as soon as I had one mouthful, I just felt like eating more. The more you eat, the more you want, and yet it makes your body feel strong and purified! What mysterious cooking!” the noble exclaimed. All of the judges were reaching for one dish after another. 
“This is like the soup that Master Seya always serves . . . but it’s far more delicious! It’s like swimming in a sea of concentrated flavor! Compared to this soup, Master Seya’s tastes like ditchwater . . . but what am I saying?!” the noble exclaimed. I had trouble understanding exactly why he would go so far too. He was the closest to a character from a cooking manga out of anyone here! Consommé wasn’t like being in the sea, not really . . . but maybe that’s what it felt like to him when he tasted it. His imagination was a little too flowery for me. 
“I would think it goes without saying that a carefully prepared soup is going to taste better than a simple powdered one,” I said. “Some third-rate chefs think serving something quickly makes it delicious.” I’d happily admit that being quick was convenient, but being delicious came from somewhere else. Of course, I was also fine with anything, so long as it was edible. 
“If you insult Master Seya any further, you will be disqualified!” the MC stated. 
“This is a cooking battle, and yet what I say will change the results. Is that what you are suggesting? Your Master Seya is more narrow-minded than I thought,” I said. 
“Hah. Let him have his moment,” Seya said, still looking pretty confident as he quieted down the MC. That said, there was an “I’ll never forgive you for this” look buried in his eyes that I couldn’t help but pick up on. The MC calmed down a bit, anyway. 
“This is a simplified version that I made in the time I had. If you give it more time to cook, it becomes what is called a double consommé,” I explained. 
“It can go a level higher than this?” the noble said, his eyes wide. All the judges were looking at me with their mouths practically hanging open. Talk about a lack of culinary education. 
“And this . . . am I to presume this is no ordinary stew? After everything you’ve cooked so far, I admit I’ve started to have certain expectations!” the rotund noble said. He and the other judges tried the stew. 
“What’s this now?!” one of them exclaimed. 
“Hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh! It feels like I can only laugh! There’s no time for talk when eating something so truly delicious!” the rotund noble said—a clear contradiction—as he continued to chatter on while stuffing his smiling face. He said there was no time for talk, even as he babbled on. “This fish is a pure delight! The sauce really brings out the flavor . . . It’s got a similar flavor to the gelatin in the appetizer, but it doesn’t get old, does it?” 
“I was conscious of resetting the tongue and bringing out a different experience through the combination of foods. Just by changing the order you eat things in will change the flavors you experience,” I said. 
“What?! You’ve even arranged that kind of surprise for us! But I’ve almost eaten all of it . . .” The noble looked over at the dishes the other judges were eating, longing in his eyes, but they had all almost finished as well. L’Arc and Glass looked on, practically puffing up their chests in pride, even though they didn’t exactly make much of a contribution. 
“Just what are we even doing?” Kizuna said, shaking her head. 
“Please, don’t ask me,” Raphtalia responded, also feeling how dumb this all was. Hey, don’t look at me! I had as much a clue as either of them. 
“Next, then . . . now this looks like something I’ve eaten before,” the noble said. 
“It’s roast beef, so I guess you have. I thought the main dish could get away with being simple,” I explained. 
“Good golly!” the man managed to exclaim around his mouthful. “This matured meat practically melts in the mouth! I know it’s meat, it should be meat, and yet it simply melts away . . . This is a realm of flavor normally reserved for the highest-quality marbled meat! This looked like red meat, nothing more, and yet it melted in the mouth! Ah, I can see it! I see it so clearly! The monster, aged, becoming an ingredient far more enhanced than it ever was in life . . . and now it is evolving, evolving in my mouth! Ah, the very soul of that monster is trembling with joy! The joy of being relegated to the rotten pile . . . and having been transformed into this! Having been saved!” The rotund noble spoke so quickly I was worried he might bite his tongue. 
Another one of the judges gave a wild shout. I looked over . . . and it seemed that horns had sprouted from his head. I wasn’t going to get involved with whatever that was. Raphtalia looked at me in surprise, but I just ignored her too. This was a crazy fantasy world, after all. Maybe a monster could be revived inside someone who ate it. The meat I used might have had some kind of parasitic attributes. 
“Kiddo, hey . . . that’s not going to happen to us, is it?” L’Arc asked, genuinely concerned. 
“No idea. I would keep your parasitic resistance up,” I told them. 
“And finally, the dessert . . . such a shame the meal is over already . . . oh my. Very simple. I feel refreshed and still just a little puckish,” the rotund noble said. 
“I know you’ve got another meal to eat after this, so I wanted to give you room to judge him too. That’s a medicinal dessert. It prompts digestion and builds strength,” I explained. 
“So thoughtful, giving such consideration to Master Seya! You must be the greatest rival he has faced so far!” the rotund noble proclaimed. All of the judges seemed pleased with the outcome . . . if not left wanting a little more. “My own regret is that there wasn’t more of it!” The rotund one was quick to voice that very thought. 
“I’ve seen what you are normally eating, after all. One of the fun things about meals is being left wanting more, no?” I said. At my reply, an expression of acceptance spread across the noble’s face, even if he wasn’t listening to everything I was saying. 
“Hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh! A cunning strategy, seeming to give consideration to your opponent while actually undermining him. Very clever. I tip my hat to you,” the noble acquiesced. Seya and his goons seemed pretty unimpressed with the reception we had received from the judges. They clearly didn’t want to see or hear their opponents getting any kind of praise. If they just paid some attention, they might have learned something from me, but they only had ears for praise for themselves. There was no hint at all of them learning anything from their battles. The judges certainly weren’t on their side at the moment. 
“If you want to give up, now is the time,” I told Seya. 
“That’s my line,” he retorted. He’d let us go first, and look where it had got him . . . I was willing to give him the room to step down, but he still didn’t have a clue. 
“Why all the herbs in the cooking?” Kizuna asked. 
“Someone asked me to,” I said. 
“Asked you?” she replied. 
“Yeah. It was to free everyone from the pollution of Seya’s cooking,” I told her. 
“Pollution?” Kizuna asked, looking puzzled. 
“You didn’t notice that?” I replied. “Well, just watch.” She wasn’t the brightest bulb, that was for sure. 
“Hmmm, I think I need to go wash up,” the rotund noble said. “I’ll be right back.” The judges proceeded to take turns visiting the washroom. Once they had all returned, it was time to eat Seya’s food. 
“Huh?” Kizuna, L’Arc, and Therese were looking puzzled. The other diners around us too. I guess there was cause for a little suspicion. 
“Well then, let’s enjoy Master Seya’s cooking,” the rotund noble said. He and the other judges proceeded to tuck eagerly into the dishes Seya made. In the moment the noble ate his first mouthful, a smile filled with confidence spread across Seya’s face. 
“This is the skill of a true chef!” Seya proclaimed. 
“You’re getting full of yourselves now because the judges have been so nice to you, but this is where you feel Master Seya’s awesome might!” the MC crowed, quickly joining in. The results hadn’t even been given yet and they were already claiming victory. There was only one side getting full of themselves here. 
Things weren’t going to go their way this time. 
“What the hell is this soup?!” the noble exclaimed, literally spitting it out of his mouth. “This is nothing like the normal delicious soup you serve! What’s going on?” He glared at Seya, unwanted soup dribbling back out from his lips. 
“What? What are you rambling about?! I made my normal, incredible soup!” Seya exclaimed. That powdered soup—incredible? He had added some things, some meat and whatever, but basically it was just powdered soup. That was only going to get you so far! Not to mention, it was cloudy and looked horrible. But that was the point—he’d been tricking them. The MC reached for the soup the noble had tasted and tried some herself. 
“There’s nothing wrong with it at all! This is Master Seya’s incredible soup, just like normal!” At her testimony that it was the same as normal, the noble’s eyes opened wide in surprise. This time he reached gingerly for the curry and tried a mouthful. 
“What’s this now? It tastes like nothing more than spicy mud! No, in fact . . . not that I’ve ever tasted it . . . but it looks more like, well . . . something else brown! It’s bitter and disgusting! I can’t even stomach the smell! What’s going on here?! Hmmm . . . the flavor has come back a bit, but it’s just . . . a regular curry. It doesn’t have any of that usual Seya curry taste!” 
“Impossible! This is the Seya Curry at the highest possible floor! Ah, it’s delicious enough to make my tongue melt!” There was just too large a gap between the evaluation of the judges and that of the MC. Voices of protest were starting to rise from the spectators too. The noble went on to try the other dishes, but he had a sickened look on his face and spat most of them out, holding his nose the entire time. 
“Master Seya, just what is going on here? Are you serving us this disgusting slop on purpose?” he asked. He had a look in his eyes like he just couldn’t believe what was happening. His trust in Seya seemed to only be enhancing the impact of this betrayal. 
“Impossible! How is my ultimate cooking being evaluated so poorly?” Seya shouted. Then suddenly his gaze snapped angrily onto me, accompanied by an accusing point. “You cheated! That’s the only way to explain this!” 
“I’d expect no less from someone like you, running to that as an excuse. I’ll say this, then. You’re actually right,” I replied. No matter how fair I tried to play things, we were dealing with the kind of people who always found fault as soon as they were defeated. So I’d just put a plan into action. Nothing that could really be called “cheating.” 
“Kiddo!” L’Arc exclaimed. 
“Mr. Naofumi!?” Raphtalia joined him. 
“Naofumi . . . I can’t believe you’d stoop so low!” Kizuna added. Everyone who was supposed to be on my side was now looking at me with suspicion in their eyes. I mean, sure, I had pulled a bit of a fast one, but they could have had a little more trust in me! 

Even the kid who’d asked me to help was looking suspicious. I wished they would all hear me out first. 
“Hey, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t do anything that would change their evaluation if the food actually did taste great. Seya had already cheated to enhance his own flavor, and all I did was reset that,” I explained. 
“What? You coward! What trickery is this!” Seya exclaimed. He wasn’t listening. 
“The proof is in the pudding. If you eat some of my cooking, the appetizer, the soup, or the dessert perhaps, and then eat some of your own food, you might experience the same thing the judges are going through now. This is the kind of thing you opened yourself up to by letting me go first,” I said, with a casual air. Kizuna jumped on that real quick. 
“I’ve seen this in an old anime! You cooked something with richer flavors, which made the opponent’s flavors taste washed out!” she exclaimed. 
“No! Nothing like that!” I shot back. Which side are you on! I had read a similar trick in a cooking manga myself, but I hadn’t used anything like that this time. I pointed at Seya’s cooking and continued my explanation. “When I first tried your cooking, I realized that it contained something addictive. Something likely far more addictive than tobacco, alcohol . . . even narcotics. That’s the true special ingredient in this delicious, captivating cooking.” 
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Kizuna shouted in surprise. Some hero she was! Even L’Arc, Raphtalia, and Glass looked surprised by this news. I wondered how they couldn’t possibly have noticed. 
“What is this now? You’re saying I’ve been fed something addictive?” the noble asked, also unable to hide his surprise. 
“And there’s nothing like that in your cooking, kiddo?” L’Arc asked. I almost wanted to slap him! Enough with the attacks from my allies! As if I’d ever add anything like that! 
“You want me to try it? If I did, you’d be unable to think of anything but eating . . . You’d be even worse than the people here in this town. Is that what you want?” I asked. Hearing this threat, L’Arc shook his head vigorously from side to side. L’Arc and the others were heroes, anyway, so they would have some resistance. 
“So what the hell did you do?” Seya raged. 
“Ah!” Kizuna finally cottoned on. “So that’s why you used so many medicinal herbs in your dishes!” 
“Exactly. The reason they all wanted to go to the washroom after eating was to expel the toxins. I also used other herbs to bolster the lethargic feeling that would bring on,” I explained. They had been eating the stuff habitually for a while, so they wouldn’t have been able to get rid of it all. But this should have at least a temporary effect. As proof of that, all the judges looked in far better health now than when I had first seen them. Those in the audience could easily tell the difference too. 
“Remember what the judges said when they were eating?” I continued, rounding on Seya. “That it felt purifying. Well, that’s exactly what it was. I drew out the toxins from your cooking with my herbs, recovered their vitality, and gave them some resistance. That’s all. That allowed them to give a more rational evaluation of your cooking while highlighting how disgusting the toxins in it taste.” It was basically cooking that made alcohol or tobacco taste really bad. 
The explanation was dragging on too. I could feel that myself. Explaining stuff seemed to take forever sometimes. 
“You must be joking! You should be ashamed to have cooked such filth!” Seya accused. I wasn’t ashamed of anything. In fact, I wanted to ask him if he wasn’t ashamed of making food full of addictive toxins. 
“You’re one to talk!” I shot back. “You’ve been putting toxins in your own food, gave me a pile of rotten ingredients, and made a load of nothing but instant food while crowing about how I’d ‘drown in your flavor’ or whatever! You’re the one who must be joking.” There had been less edible material in that pile than nonedible. He had given me that crap-pile to work with while also cowardly mixing highly addictive toxins into his own food. Not to mention the already bought-and-paid-for panel of judges! He couldn’t possibly expect me to take this farce of a cooking battle seriously! 
I really hated people who tried to rig the results of anything prior to it even taking place. 
“Ah, there’s one other thing I have to do,” I mentioned. I pointed at the noble and beckoned for him to come to me. Of course, he didn’t comply. Left without a choice, I moved quickly over to him. Seya’s allies, the restaurant staff, tried to stop me, but I just pushed them out of the way. 
“What is it? What do you want?” the rotund one asked. 
“Choose. Do you want to keep on being used like this, in a stupor of addictive toxins until you die, or do you want to try the food I make when I really get serious?” I asked him. He grunted at the question, and I pressed on. “My allies will probably tell you that my food is also delicious and highly addictive, so on that score, both might seem the same. But you do want to eat food that is just powder thrown into water, just reheated in a bag, or do you want to eat food made from proper ingredients, cooked and prepared with all due care to your eating experience?” This noble in particular had a kind of gourmet air to him, and I was sure I was making a better offer than continuing to eat this instant stuff. If he had thought my medicinal herb cooking tasted so good, I was confident the real deal would knock his socks off. I’d seen what our enemies were feeding him, after all. 
“Don’t let him trick you! My cooking tastes better for sure! There are no toxins in it! They’re making all this up!” Seya ranted. 
“That’s right!” Seya’s MC quickly backed him up. “You are one of Master Seya’s top-ranking customers!” The rotund noble in question looked in befuddlement between Seya and me. If he already wasn’t sure, that meant I had him. 
“They’re lying! My family ate at this place and now they’re all dead!” The kid picked this moment to speak up, in a nicely timed move. 
“Quiet! We don’t know why your family died,” someone in the crowd said. 
“You can’t blame Master Seya for all the bad stuff that happens!” said another as everyone nearby started to lecture the poor kid. 
“We won’t allow anyone to insult Master Seya!” The MC got in on the action too. “I’ll strip all your points if you do!” This threat caused quite the commotion in the crowd. 
“No, not that!” 
“You have to apologize, right away!” someone said. 
But the boy didn’t back down. 
“Don’t you think this is strange? You all used to cook at home before Seya opened this place! Now you eat here for every meal! Getting hooked on something and enjoying eating are two totally different things!” the boy shouted. 
“Shut up! We can’t live without Master Seya’s restaurant!” someone replied. 
“That’s right!” said someone else. Cooking really was ruling the whole town, that much was for sure. 
“I’m not sure . . . I like this . . .” The noble was further shaken by seeing all of this. It looked like he did have some good left in him. Now I needed to pry my fingers into the opening. I leaned toward him and whispered into his ear. 
“Once I win and claim all of his assets, I’ll take that accessory apart and give the recipes to you. Then you won’t even need him to make the cooking for you anymore, will you? You know who we are as well, don’t you?” I said to him. All his recipes were simple ones that could be made using tools. It was highly likely that if we could just get our hands on the recipes, anyone would be able to make them. The noble seemed to be having the same thought, because a change came over his eyes. 
“Challenger, return to your starting position! Master Seya, you calm down too!” the noble said. 
“Yes, yes, of course! The judges have seen which of us is loyally, faithfully doing his best! You’ve lost, giving away your tricks before the results have even been revealed!” Seya spat. 
We would see about that. As for “loyally, faithfully doing his best,” I didn’t have words to reply to that. Even speaking objectively, he couldn’t really be said to have been putting much effort in. 
I quickly moved back and returned to where I had done my cooking. 
“What is this feeling? Like something bad is about to happen,” Raphtalia said. 
“What a coincidence. I have the same feeling,” Glass quipped. 
“Hmmm. This is quickly becoming a pretty personal problem,” Tsugumi said. For her, she’d been in a similar position before in her own past. She looked pretty cool about things, given how that had gone. 
“That said . . . from what that boy claimed back there, it sounds like Mr. Naofumi did the right thing,” Raphtalia said. 
“The kiddo normally does,” L’Arc agreed. 
“The skills of the Master Craftsman,” Therese marveled. 
“Therese, hey . . . do you think you could stop becoming a totally different person when you talk about kiddo?” L’Arc said. He had his own stuff to deal with, that was for sure. He wasn’t any different from her anyway, going crazy over a single dish. 
“Master, is this all the food you have?” Filo asked. She was starting to bug me, but leaving her dissatisfied would only cause more trouble later. I put some soup in front of Filo. 
“Just make do with that a little longer. I’ll make you some more once we get back,” I told her. 
“Okay!” she said. Then I noticed the killer whale sisters, who had now been brought up to speed by Raphtalia and the others, looking at Seya with suspicion in their eyes. I wondered what was up with that. The judges had started whispering among themselves too. Seya and his goons were still glaring at me with some dissatisfaction. 
“Do you think we’re in the clear, Naofumi?” Kizuna asked. 
“No idea. In either case, I really messed up their cooking,” I said. That did make me feel a bit better. When I put aside the whole cooking battle thing, their bad attitude and lack of respect for cooking had been pushing me close to the edge. 
“I’m just not sure about your methods,” Kizuna said. 
“There’s nothing fair about this battle. The winner was always going to be the one who was more cunning, more conniving than the other,” I said. 
“Hmmm, it’s a shame you couldn’t just win because your food tasted the best,” Kizuna said. 
“Hey . . . you’ve been reading too many cooking manga. It’s an illusion that delicious and good things will be evaluated highly. What you need is popularity and demand,” I said. Of course, it had to taste good, but putting the emphasis on that as a bare requirement was also a problem. If you were planning on selling food in a restaurant, of course it had to taste good. Customers came because of other elements, because of popularity. If Seya’s restaurant collapsed here, it would cause trouble for all the judges. That was why I’d created an escape for them. In order to realize the future that boy wanted. Itsuki’s talk of justice? I didn’t care about that. If I didn’t fend off the dangerous sparks raining down on us, I’d get burned myself. 
Take this restaurant, for example, which was practically a crazy religion. Leave this place running and it could trigger all sorts of other problems. 
“That’s really how it works?” Kizuna asked. “Sounds more like being a merchant than being a chef.” 
“You’re not wrong. The most delicious food should be the winner. But Seya’s food doesn’t taste good at all. You guys wanted this, right?” I said. When I looked over at L’Arc and the others, they didn’t look entirely impressed. 
“This doesn’t really feel quite like what we expected . . .” L’Arc said. 
“If Seya had kept to the rules—the best taste wins—and fought fair and square, I wouldn’t have taken things this far. But think about what they did. They had no plans to give us a fair battle,” I reminded them. If they had given out equal ingredients and we simply had to cook something within the time limit, the results might have been different. But not with the way they had handled things. They had maximized their home advantage, giving us rotten goods and toxic fish. They’d even bought off the judges. They were cowards and had been rewarded accordingly. 
“I’d expect no less from you, Naofumi. The means still bother me a little . . .” Kizuna said. 
“It feels like I’ve seen the nastier side of this world,” Raphtalia added. 
“We need to be tough, or we won’t survive the enemies that lie ahead,” I warned them. Bitch was bad enough, but S’yne’s sworn enemies were the very picture of cunning. Something like this would just be the warmup for them. 
“I mean, you’re probably not wrong . . .” Kizuna said. 
“I reckon you’ve learned a lot from this experience. Even so, things seem a lot better here in your world, Kizuna,” I told her. That kid turning up with his big old basket and helping out wasn’t something I really expected to happen in our world. The best example I could think of was the kid who helped us when fighting the second wave. 
One good deed definitely deserved another, anyway. 
If the rotund one didn’t go the way I wanted, we’d use L’Arc’s authority to bend things our way. I was the Mirror Hero, after all, and heroes also had certain rights. 
The rotund noble and the rest of the judges all stood up, with faces looking more determined than before, their discussions finished. Some tension-creating music started to play. Itsuki wasn’t with us, but I looked around anyway, almost expecting to see him. 
“Duh . . . duh . . . duuum!” It was Filo, singing to herself. I both wondered who taught her that and wished she would stop it at the same time. She was only ratcheting up the tension! 
The noble and the others all held up their indicators. The one with Seya’s insignia was crossed out (they had already thrown away the ones to indicate us before the match even began). 
“The winner is the traveling cook!” they proclaimed. It looked like this skullduggery-filled cooking battle had ended with my victory.