The Possession-Spoon Chef Feeds the Empire - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 2
“They say dishes made with this have a taste like paradise. No matter how much you complain about the fishiness or anything else, Lord won’t take your side over someone who makes him forget a flavor like this…….”
“So you’re the thief.”
Luciel murmured quietly.
“What?”
“That’s mine. Mine and my mother’s.”
Luciel pointed at the bottle Nigel was waving around.
“Do you know how carefully I had to balance the proportions for that single bottle of powder? I had to taste it down to decimal points until my tongue went numb.”
“What, what?”
The saying was true—the darkest place is beneath the lamp.
“The diary. Hand that over too.”
…….
Nigel’s eyes rolled for a moment as if confused.
But after a few seconds passed, understanding dawned on his face, and a nasty smile spread across his lips.
“Hmm…… So that blonde-haired librarian who disappeared so suddenly was your mother? Looking at you now, you’ve got the same eye shape.”
He teased Luciel’s glare by slowly drawing from his pocket a worn notebook, displaying it deliberately.
A brown cover stained by the oils of many hands, bound tightly with leather cord so the pages wouldn’t open.
It was unmistakably her mother’s possession.
“But I couldn’t make heads or tails of what’s written in this thing.”
Nigel pretended not to hear, giggling as he flipped through the pages with a crackling sound.
Of course he wouldn’t understand.
What was written inside was not the common language of the Empire, but Korean—the language of the world her mother originally came from.
In the entire Empire, only two people could decipher those characters.
Luciel’s mother, and Luciel herself, who had learned everything from her.
“I was going to throw it away—you really need this that badly?”
Nigel drawled as he waved the diary.
“Then go ahead and beg for it. No, wait.”
He said, stroking his chin.
“Swear to me you’ll work like a dog for three years, just like I said. Otherwise, I’m burning this worthless pile of paper right now…… What, you’re smiling?”
He looked at her with a puzzled expression, watching the slight curve at the corner of Luciel’s mouth.
“Of course I am. Now I can finally leave this place completely unburdened.”
It was the literal truth. Luciel had no need to hold back anymore.
Not that pig-like face, not that annoying manner of speaking, not that oily, condescending laugh that demanded she work for free.
She drew together every last shred of Mana she had left, the well nearly drained from spiralizing potatoes.
Then, from the kitchen floor, she snatched up a spine scale from the Poisoned Spine Fish she’d cleaned at dawn.
“Hey, hey, what are you doing? Surely you don’t know how to use Mana……?”
“Of course I do. Whose daughter do you think I am?”
In truth, she could barely manage any, but Luciel decided to frighten Nigel as much as possible.
A faint blue glow of Mana rippled across her fingertips.
She set the direction with her Mana, gathered all her strength, and hurled the spine scale.
Thwack—
The scale flew fast and struck Nigel’s forehead precisely.
As the poisoned spine scale embedded itself squarely in his forehead, cheek, and jaw, his face turned sickly blue in an instant.
“Gaaahhh?”
He let out a short shriek and collapsed with a thud onto the kitchen floor, losing consciousness.
Luciel caught her breath.
Now her Mana was completely exhausted, and her physical strength with it.
Stumbling toward Nigel, Luciel thrust the dropped MSG Bottle and her mother’s diary into her satchel.
“……Ah.”
As she moved to leave, something occurred to her, and she turned back, gently unfastening the Gold Pouch hung at Nigel’s waist.
“Laws are kept when you have the luxury to keep them. When you see something necessary for survival, you just take it.”
“But doesn’t that make you a criminal?”
“Our dear, I’m sorry, but your mother is already a wanted criminal. And yet here I am, living well with such a beautiful daughter.”
After all, that’s what my mother—who once had the highest bounty on her head in all the Empire—taught me.
Luciel gathered her belongings along with the pouch and left.
* * *
“Is that it ahead, Roukan?”
A man in his mid-twenties dressed in blue dismounted from his horse and gazed at the lord’s castle.
He had refined features and dark hair swept back neatly—a handsome youth.
“Yes, that is Nor Lord’s Castle.”
A tall escort following behind him dismounted as well and answered.
Kain Belaon, the dark-haired man, narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze across the castle walls.
“Could they be here…….”
He murmured.
For a brief moment, his throat constricted instinctively.
Could the one who saved him ten years ago, when he had been on the brink of death, be here?
It was a moment when the miraculous taste he had experienced ten years ago flickered across his mind once more.
“Let’s go in……then.”
“Yes, my lord…… Eh?”
The two men walking toward the castle stopped simultaneously.
The heavy iron gates guarding the castle began to creak open by themselves, and from within stepped one small foot.
“Who…….”
A girl—no, she looked barely fifteen years old.
Kain narrowed his eyes again and studied the girl intently.
Tangled blonde hair that looked unwashed for days.
An apron caked with flour and various sauces.
Hands swollen and bruised blue, as though bleeding.
In those hands, something that appeared to be a potato, peculiarly cut and skewered on a stick.
Worn-out clothes and shoes.
In short, she was terribly filthy.
* * *
Kain first experienced the Miraculous Taste about ten years ago, in the thick of a hellish Monster Subjugation Campaign.
At that time, the Empire was suffering a shortage of personnel due to years of continuous campaigns.
As the daily life of the Empire’s citizens fell into ruin, the Imperial Palace deployed one distant branch of the royal family to the campaign and ordered the nobility to do the same.
The Palace had set the example, so the nobles were to follow suit.
Most of the nobility did.
That is, just as the Emperor took a distant nephew to take credit, most nobles either paid their way out or hastily created adopted heirs to send in their stead.
House of Belaon was similar to the latter.
But this was not the intention of the Duke.
Marseuthus Belaon, Duke of House Belaon. Once a war hero and the sword of the Empire.
The proud knight believed one of his direct children would volunteer for the Imperial Army. However, all of them refused military service with various excuses.
“After all the children I raised…… If only Cedric were still alive…….”
His close cousins were the same, and eventually the turn came to Kain, the son of his cousin.
The grieving Duke summoned Kain, the only member of House Belaon who did not flee and accepted military service.
“Your name is Kain? How old are you?”
“Sixteen, sir.”
“Still not of age…… If you return alive, I will strip away your title. I will treat you better than my own son.”
The Duke arranged for sixteen-year-old Kain to join the Imperial Army at a mid-rank position rather than the lowest, so he could manage comfortably.
Normally, he could have fought in the middle ranks and returned, but the problem was that his superiors fled one after another.
When Kain came to his senses, he had become the commanding general of the remaining subjugation force. At the age of sixteen, in his first battle.
Kain gritted his teeth and continued fighting. There was nothing else he could do.
Miraculously, he led the knights to drive a horde of Basilisk Worms into the Valley, detonated the gorge with flaming arrows and barrels of oil, and even ventured alone into the wreckage to drive an arrow through the heart of the Queen Basilisk Worm himself.
Having achieved the subjugation force’s objective and secured victory, Kain collapsed, drenched in virulent poison.
For a long time, no one came.
Just as he was beginning to accept death and surrender to despair, strange voices began to sound through his clouded consciousness.
“Oh my, what’s this? Why is the Queen Basilisk Worm here? According to the plot, she shouldn’t be dead yet…….”
“Basilisk! Poison spray, spread it, do it!”
A woman and a child.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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