From on top of a taxidermied Rhinophant, the beast's height providing a panorama of the festival.
Henry spotted several blue-haired festivalgoers in the packed streets but none with the trickster God's specific shade.
Nerin's diminutive form was perched on top of a tentpole, eating a bagel with bored, goat-like chews, indifferent to the current prank.
No eagles or harpies were flapping their azure wings in the night sky above.
"Finished!" cried the Artist in mime costume from behind the group portrait. Dismounting the masterpiece from the easel, they rotated it and displayed it in its full splendour.
The portrait was true-to-life with one minor exception - everyone had azure afros, including Donkey Bro and Alfgrim, who'd been posing at the Rhinophant's feet.
Hundreds of light-beams erupted from the painting and showered over the group, causing their headscarves to pop off as their scalps exploded into a frizzy azure tangle.
You have entered the effect range of a Magical Artwork, receiving
The 'blessing' propagated throughout the crowds of nearby festivalgoers. Hats went flying, hairclips snapped, soldiers in helmets walked into each other as their eyeslits were blocked by blue fuzz.
"Hohohohohohoho," guffawed the Artist mischievously.
His mime disguise disintegrated into leaves, revealing an azure-haired teen wearing a double-sized chef hat to contain his antlers and a matching apron.
"Come, Professor T., I have waited a lifetime to fulfil this dream, we delay no longer."
"It better be sensible," said Henry, jumping down from the creature.
"I always am! Students, keep those clothes on, you're dressed perfectly for the occasion!"
The Kingdom of Southeast Asia and Oceania Grand Cook-Off. A marquee tent adorned with tastefully-draped fairy lighting and sculptures of precious stone, the ritzy atmosphere being complemented by the serenading of a string quartet.
In the lead up to the main event, diners in fancy evening dress were being served lavish course after lavish course. At tables, each equipped with their own cooking station and personal chefs, Dukes and Countesses were wine-and-dining prospects that they wished to bring into The Empire's fold. Amongst the guests were wealthy business owners, rising geniuses, C-list celebrities from the real world, and, most notably, none of The Slum's usual unwashed, crime-loving, mannerless proles.
Here, was a raft of civility, floating on the polluted Slum sea.
The meal's final course, which would be The Grand Cook-Off itself, was to be prepared live by a hundred of The Kingdom of Southeast Asia and Oceania's top Cooks. (The Empire wouldn't allow the full-course to be handled by the competitors in case anyone was too eccentric).
Presently, the Cooks in question were waiting outside the entrance along with the exotic ingredients of their chosen dishes - fresh grapes picked from the vine an hour ago, sauces as hot as lava, live possums screeching in cages. Looking across them, one could tell at a glance that they were seasoned competitors, having earned their place in The Grand Cook-Off over the previous weeks at preliminary County- and Duchy-level rounds. The 8 chefs whose dishes scored the highest tonight would progress to the next round, where they would face off against the top chefs of the entire Empire. The losers would be sent packing back to their Villages with a small consolation of Slum Points.
In addition to the usual pre-competition nerves and excitement, some of the Cooks had a slightly chilly air. The source of their coldness was a dozen intruders in their midst whose chef hats were pure white, not coloured to match any Village. These were Central City Cooks who'd been added to the competition last minute, not through risking their wok on the line, but through the oppressive backing of The Church.
But the Village Cooks wouldn't grumble - at least not outside of private message. Burning to defend The Slum's values of equality, community, democracy, merit, and freedom, they sharpened their knives to a keener edge.
Bring it on!
Into this tense culinary battlefield, Henry and co were making their way.
"Are you wondering how I nabbed tickets on such short notice?" Karnon in his chef hat gave a Cook they passed a taciturn nod of encouragement, as though they were part of the same profession. "Abusing connections!"
"To hell with that," grumbled a sullen teen with short legs and shabbily-thinning hair. "Give me a form more befitting of my noble rank!"
Karnon had transformed the monsters into people in order to sneak them in. Alfgrim The Human, having only gained Sentience yesterday, was twisting his neck rapidly back and forth, sniffing the air.
Henry'd filtered this all out momentarily. His attention was fixed upon the song drifting out of the marquee tent, which he recognised as a mellowed-out version of Under The Sea from Disney's The Little Mermaid.
When he'd watched the classic movie in The Overdream, he'd been confused about its appeal to cinemagoers of the 20th century. He felt the film version had butchered the original fairytale, where the naive mermaid, abandoning her family and home to pursue a fling with a rich guy she couldn't even communicate with, was rewarded for her short-sightedness with death. All the original's lessons about setting realistic expectations, not changing yourself too much for others, and monitoring your reckless children had been abandoned for a sappy romance. It was quite baffling how...
Beside him, Anderson groaned in disgust. "In what way is this dismantling the old caste system?"
He was commenting on the guards surrounding the marquee tent, who'd been stationed to keep out of the 'riff-raff'. This friend of Henry's was the most familiar with the local culture after exploring the zone's art.
"Food and love," replied Henry, "it's hard to hide one's pretentions during the basic activities. Of course, you'd have to be a moron to believe that a cabal styling themselves as royalty could ever be egalitarian."
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
"Hey!" shouted a nearby Cook, infuriated by this stranger badmouthing thei—
Henry blocked them with a hand. "Get back to me in a week."
By then, Oliver Spears should have published his hit piece against The Empire.
At the marquee tent's entrance, a doorman in a tuxedo and black sunglasses despite it being night frowned at Henry's approaching group, giving them a brisk ocular patdown.
"Sorry we're late!" Karnon sauntered up to him. "Traffic was a nightmare!"
"Tickets." The doorman's tone was dry and unamused, theirs being the thirty-second group he'd have to send packing this hour.
The God presented a bare palm. Swiping his other hand over it, he fanned out a deck of upskirt panty shots.
The doorman was mute.
"Sorry, how embarrassing." The God swiped again, fanning out the tickets.
The doorman, lowering his black sunglasses, checked their authenticity with a Peopleworker skill. The crease in his brow deepened when he discovered that they weren't forgeries.
"Nine people," he stated. "Seven tickets."
Karnon gasped at the others with the shock of a mother learning that her baby had been switched at the hospital. "I must have forgotten two in my wagon. You lot go ahead of us, Professor T. and I will be in shortly after."
While Henry's friends went inside, he was taken by Karnon to a nearby alleyway, a safe distance from any prying ears - or at least Karnon tried to but Nerin and Rose continued to follow them.
"Away, you decrepit dwarf!"
"Nope."
"Ignore them," said Henry. "So what's the proposal? Release a swarm of rabid locusts? Bomb the joint? I'm not seeing the lifelong dream part."
Karnon fell to his knees again and clasped Henry's hands. "All those detractors, all those senseis who refused to—"
"Skip ahead."
"Help me, Master Chef T., you're my only hope!"
The God had snuck his scroll of prank ideas into Henry's palm. There was an entry at the bottom which had obviously been added only minutes earlier, the ink wet.
'Fulfill lifelong dream of winning first place in Kingdom of South East Asia and Oceania Grand Cook-Off'.
The air filled with the chirping of crickets, a Cook rushing past with a basket of the insects.
"Does the dish suit your palate, Master Chef T.?"
Henry groaned.
The prank proposal was itself a prank...an anti-joke. Awful.
"It's hysterical," argued Karnon. "The hijinkery is very subtle. There'll be two comedic angles. Firstly, after snooping around, I sniffed out a scheme from The Slum scum to rig the Cook-Off to prove their superiority over Central. You and me, we're going to disguise ourselves as a pair of Chefs from The Big C, toss up an unbeatable salad, spoil their apples, smother their faces with pie. Can you bake a pie?"
"I can't. How'd you acquire a slot? Blackmail?"
Karnon snorted arrogantly. "I won the wildcard tournament earlier with a sandwich, honest to Myself. Second angle, you're The Tyrant, I'm Karnon The God. Us two fabled figures participating in a petty cooking competition, no one would ever expect that. Hilarious!"
The God stopped, giving everyone a self-pleased grin, expecting them to break into belly-hurting laughter.
There was nothing more to the prank.
When no one reacted, Karnon spritzed himself with droplets from a water bottle, summoned a bed, and lay down on it like a terminally ill grandfather addressing his grandkids. "These final hours...sucked dry by your joy vampire of a grandmother...miserable fate...my greatest regret, you ask? Why, it was that day my soul was squeezed and suffocated by a ludicrous expectation to craft a jape that avoided widescale ecological devastation...I know, impossible...yet I did it anyway. I debased myself by moderating my mischief. While presenting the stunted lark, I equipped the jester's false smile and told my closest friends, my bosom buddies, that this would do. And do you know what happened? Nothing. Not a tiny tee-hee-hee of sympathy. That's your inheritance, you ungrateful brats, a warning to never lend another your heart!"
Henry coughed. "The core of the 'prank' is decent enough, I guess. It's just lacking zest. Can you acquire a second slot?"
"Done!" Karnon sprang out of his sickbed, snapping his fingers. A moment later, they overhead the roar of a lion escaping its cage and the death scream of the Cook who'd been planning on mincing it. "What's on the menu?"
"Here's the side-dish: you, Karnon, against me, The Tyrant, in the heat of the kitchen, God-on-Man, chopping board against chopping board, the winner whoever gets first place. Hilarious."
Karnon was pleasantly surprised, rare was the fool who challenged him, Karnon. "And I suppose we'll be spicing up the soup with steaky stakes? If I win, find me a loophole in The Tenets of Vi'akati so I can get divorced."
Henry refused. "I'm not that confident in my culinary skills. I want a full set of Spelltomes from Tier-6 to Tier-8; request something on that level."
Since he'd been gaining level-ups via miracles from The Overdream, he would soon upgrade Tiers in his Scholar class, allowing him to activate more powerful Spelltomes. These could prove valuable while hunting down the remaining Syncretist pieces after he was finished with Suchi; they were also useful for self-defence. The only issue was that he couldn't obtain them on his own due to the game's gatekeeping of higher-Tier items and crafting materials. Typically, a Zone Guardian would also be barred from trading or gifting them, but it was possible by doing Legendary-tier quests that heavily-disfavoured the player, such as a wager with a God of trickery.
Karnon stored the Spelltome knowledge for the future. "Three days worth of your guild's full production capabilities for prankcrafting."
"3.4 days, but I get a veto on the pranks and can decide how the days are proportioned. I'll be fair."
The God nodded. "Rules?"
Henry mulled over the matter before replying. There was a certain balance one needed to achieve with Karnon. Overly-strict rules, the God would ignore, but if they were 'reasonable', he would play ball. An oddity about him was that he seemed to relish in the creative practice of adapting his pranks to new conditions. For example, if he'd truly desired, he could have probably voided his marriage with the Princess by himself, only he hadn't because it amused him, a sort of self-prank.
Henry didn't understand it completely.
"Tier-4 ingredients or below to avoid rousing suspicion. No tampering with each other's food or ability to cook, no fixing the judges. Aside from that, use any method you want to make your meal."
"Any?"
"Any."
"Hahahahaha..." Karnon chortled ominously, a mini stormcloud condensing around him, thundering and zapping flies with bolts of lightning. "Is this what we call certain victory? Hahahaha..."
Slapping an entry pass into Henry's hand, the God cast his global teleport. A tangle of vines dragged him into the ground, his mischievous laughter continuing to resonate from the earth.
"He's not a bad Cook, by the way," said Nerin. "It was unwise to challenge him."
"Is that so?" Henry replied calmly, producing a cookie for the Goddess.
Nerin, at first unimpressed by the mundane-looking treat, was taken aback when she noticed its Legendary classification. In the world of Cooking, this status was reserved for bewilderingly-convoluted dishes made from rare, priceless materials. Achieving this with a food item so simple was ludicrous.
Curious, she took a small bite.
When her teeth broke off a section that crumbled onto her tongue, the wrinkles of her aged face softened. Revived was the expression of her youthful self centuries ago roaming through the continent's inner jungles with the birds tweeting in the canopy and the heavy rain droplets drumming on the leaves. This dominant note, of supreme cosiness, danced upon her tastebuds in harmony with several minor others. In this single cookie were packed the warm rays of Suchi's sun, the relief of laying her cheek on the wool of her favourite goat, the exhilarating colour of Savannah Blossoms carpeting the plains after the Ibanpita's summoned monsoons...it was the taste of Suchi itself.
Taking a second bite, the Goddess pursed her lips in wonder. "The taste...the intensity...ten...no, eleven...no, twelve Ingredient Harmonies...how can this be?"
"The skills of the ancient Cooks are complex and unfathomable." Henry stuck to his cover story of finding the recipe in ruins.
The late Bruce Lee had once said, 'I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.'
What then of the man who has practiced one kick 100,000 times by abusing infinite digital resources in his hyperbolic-timechamber hat?
Henry, staring at the patch of dirt into which the God had vanished, cracked his own mischievous smile.
"Can I try one?" asked Rose.
He winced. "Hell no."
That would be a disaster. He didn't need this crazy witch having another reason to stick around.