That Time I Got Sent to Another World Where All of the Girls Are Super Hot and Super Into Me Because I Am Super Strong and Have Very Powerful Abilities that God Gave to Me Because Me and Them Were Friends When I Was in Grade School and God Is Actually A Loli Who is Also in Love with Me Because I Am A Super Epic Person Who Will Defeat The Demon Lord Who Threatens The Entire World but the Demon Lord Actually is in Love With Me and the Demon Lord is a Super Hot Busty Babe Who is Actually Just Trying to Get My Attention Because I Have a Cellphone That Can Contact the Internet and Can Get Anything Shipped To Me Within 2 Days But I Barely Need It Because I Am Actually the Most Strongest Guy Alive Because I Have Super Strong Powers Like Being Able to Lift Your Mom Really Easily Which is Nearly Impossible Because Your Mom is So Fat But is Actually A Secret Anime Busty Babe Who is Really into Me Because I Am Super Cool and Better Than Your Dad Because He is Super Lame Which I Am Not

Lesson 2.41.5 - That time I was reincarnated into another world and solved a culinary problem

Bonbon watched Hiro disappear through the wall. Her stomach clenched, and it only had a little to do with the soup bog festering mere feet away from her. She'd quickly learned from experience that Hiro disappearing from line of sight was often an omen of things to come. Still, while Bonbon could only wait and see what kind of bullshit he'd come up with next, she could at least enjoy a moment of downtime. It always seemed like she was able to gather her thoughts a little better when Hiro wasn't around.

She frowned. That last thought was a little worrying. He... wasn't actually using a [Skill] on her, was he? She couldn't discount it entirely, but it could just as easily be the fact that it was usually easier to think without a human tornado casting army-destroying magic around at random.

Bonbon set her pan down on the improvised range she'd set up.

"That's amazing!" One of the cooks exclaimed. "You can cook things without them catching fire!

This cooking lesson was starting out a lot more basic than she'd expected; she'd already spent the last few minutes explaining the concept of a frying pan to the cooks. It seems like the soup pit was essentially their only method of cooking. They knew what fires and rocks were, at least, so she'd been able to stack rocks into a sort of stove, lighting a cooking fire underneath them. She'd prefer to use a cooking rune, but there was no way she was going to give up hers, and the cooks weren't sure if the city had anybody capable of [Runecrafting].

"Bon-chan, does this look good?" Ciel asked. The [Paladin] was stationed at a prep table Bonbon had set up, and had been practicing chopping carrots and onions along with the other cooks. Bonbon leaned over and inspected her handiwork.

"Much better. Your pieces are a lot more even now."

Ciel pumped her fist, disproportionately proud of having cut vegetables into roughly evenly-sized pieces. "Heck yeah! I picked up [Cooking Basics] thanks to you!"

"Good job!" Bonbon congratulated her. A tiny surge of pride pulsed through Bonbon's chest. Helping other people learn... this was what she'd set out to do in the first place. Spreading recipes and culinary knowledge was her holy mission and her main ambition, but that ambition was in service to the betterment of everybody's lives. That improvement... that growth, that happiness. That was what really made Bonbon feel like she was making a difference.

"How's this?" one of the cooks asked her. Bonbon looked over at the strange and lopsided chunks the chef had chopped his carrot into. She gave him a smile that she hoped was encouraging, doing her best to keep her wincing internal.

"Better," she told him. "You didn't cut yourself this time."

The cook bobbed his head, holding his bandaged-hand up to receive a high-five from Ciel. He proudly went back to his work, his arm only trembling slightly from the pain of Ciel's mighty palm.

Well... baby steps. Progress was progress. Bonbon turned back to her own work, showing another chef the proportions to use for the salsa she was working on.

"About this much mango, then toss it with the peppers and onions like this. They should about match this size here. Let me know once you're done, and I can show you how to toss it with the dressings."

"I'd never think to come up with this stuff..." Ciel admitted. She raised her hand to rub her nose, but stopped after a sharp look from Bonbon. She rubbed her nose with the back of her arm instead. "I never cooked much in the temple on account of I have pretty trash taste. Probably all the junk I ate growing up."

Bonbon chuckled. "Did you eat a lot of sweets as a child?"

Ciel looked up at her, blinking in confusion. "Huh? No, I meant I ate a lot of junk. Like, trash."

"H-huh?" the elf asked, stopping mid-chop and looking over at Ciel, her face a mask of horror. "You ate... trash?"

"Yeah, when I had to. I grew up on the street before the Church took me in."

Bonbon paled, feeling guilty "O-oh... I'm sorry, I didn't..."

"Nah, it's not a big deal," Ciel replied, shaking her head. She seemed completely unbothered. "There were a lot of restaurants in my city, and the Church would give out bread every now and then, so it's not like I went hungry or anything."

"W-well... that's good," Bonbon replied, chuckling nervously. Having been raised as a [Princess], the concept of poverty was pretty foreign to her. Her travels had given her a greater understanding of what it meant to be poor, but she was still nowhere near fluent.

"And now I'm here, on an adventure with the [Legendary Hero]! Even learning how to cook! It's a heck of a step up!"

Bonbon wasn't really sure what to say, so she just nodded and smiled. That was usually enough to get through most awkward conversations.

"How'd you wind up traveling with Hiro-kun, anyhow?" Ciel asked. She lifted her cutting board and slid her cut onions into the mixing bowl, picking out an uncut carrot one of the lazier cooks had tried to sneak in. "Did you know him or something?"

"Well..." Bonbon began, "I-"

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I quickly [Noclipped] my way back into the room, and fast-forwarded through all the stuff that I'd already done at the end of the last chapter, to catch back up to the narrative.

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"Alright," I announced to my gathered cooks. "Now you do all that."

The cooks hesitated, probably because they were intimidated by my cooking prowess.

"Don't worry," I reassured them, "I'm already expecting you to do terrible at first, so don't worry about impressing me!"

Two of the cooks exchanged a look, while another got his hand bit trying to ask Wanda for a bite of the hamburger I'd made.

"So, like... um... how do we use these metal things?" one of the cooks asked.

"What was in those bottles?" Another chimed in, and the rest started to ask question after question.

"What kind of meat was that?"

"Where'd you get the noodles?"

"Why did you, like, toss the bones in the fire?"

"I thought you were making a bowl of soup. How'd it turn into some kinda weird sandwich?"

"Do we have to use a sword to chop the veggies?"

"What were you spraying out of your hands?"

I sighed to myself, shaking my head. "Don't worry about the details! Just focus on the core steps and it should turn out fine!"

I clapped my hands and stepped back, watching as the cooks stepped forward and started examining the various cookware and ingredients I'd laid out. I couldn't help smiling. The last time I'd looked over at Bonbon's section, she was cooking something lame like fish. These hamburgers would blow her simple dishes out of the water! This was going to be great!

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This was terrible! I stared in horror at my side of the kitchen. One of the cooks had gotten trapped into the stockpot, which was on its side. Another one had opened up a package of the noodle and was grilling it in the frying pan. Another one had a mass of bottles gathered around a pot, and kept pouring different combinations into a pot together like she was trying to find new potion recipes in a video game.

This was a disaster! I clutched my head and looked over at Wanda.

"How could these guys be so bad at this?!" I asked her (rhetorically, because I already knew the answer was 'they are Isekai Dirtworlders'). "We've already gone through almost all of our ingredients, and they haven't made anything edible!"

Wanda shrugged, throwing a bit of fried noodle in her mouth and crunching it. "Wan! This is technically edible."

"Technically edible might be good enough for these beach bums, but if I'm going to win this contest, I'm going to need better than that. We need something technically delicious."

"Uh... Mr. Hero guy?" One of the chefs asked, walking up to me with an empty cellophane packet in his hand. "We're all out of the noods, dude."

I sighed again, hanging my head. "Damn it... this is going nowhere. I'm going to need to order more noodles."

Wanda's ear twitched and she cocked her head at me. "Order, wan?"

"Don't worry about it," I told her, giving her distraction headpats. "I meant um, grow."

I looked out over the kitchen again. At this rate, would I even have anything to show for the contest? The good news at least was that these people were so useless, I was sure that Bonbon would also be helpless to...

I looked over at Bonbon's side of the room, and a chill went down my spine! One of the cooks had accidentally splashed me with a pot of water. But more importantly, Bonbon's cooks were... actually cooking?! I stared, dumbfounded as one of them slid a grilled fish onto a plate of vegetables. W-what the hell?! Had Bonbon gotten some kind of mind control skill since the last time I'd checked? I quickly activated my [Appraisal (but secretly infinite knowledge)] skill to appraise her.

Name: Bonbon A. Petit

Active Title: [Enterprising Cook]

Faction: King Presley's Elvish Nation

Race: Elf

Level: 10

EXP: 260/950

Skill Points: 90

Gold Stars: 5

Gacha Coins: 0

HP: 1025/10025

MP: 295/295

SP: 205/205

FP: 2/2

Attributes:

Stranth: 25

Dexterity: 45

Swoleness: 25

Magic: 56

Karma: 210

Mojo: 20

Luck: 28

Skills:

[Walking Mastery - Lvl 4] [Hustling Mastery - Lvl 1] [Cooking Mastery - Lvl 8] [Burning Resistance - Lvl 4] [Slashing Resistance - Lvl 4] [Pain Resistance - Lvl 4] [Stabbing Resistance - Lvl 2] [Crushing Resistance - Lvl 2] [Fish Resistance - Lvl 1] [Food Critic Basics] [Enterprising Chef] [Kitchen Hands] [Knife Supremacy] [Speak with Animals] [Speak with Plants] [Stealth] [Improved Dexterity] [Beautiful - Lvl 10] [Double Chop] [Triple Chop] [Conga Line Basics - Lvl 1] [Aura (Food Preservation)] [Command: Kitchen Crew - Lvl 2] [Elf Ears] [Elf Eyes] [Lesser HP Regeneration] [Lesser Stranth - Lvl 1] [Immortal] [Magic Conscription] [Culinary Magic] [Magic Perception] [Magic Casting] [Divine Cookery] [Princess] [Secret Princess] [Fated]

Titles:

[Cook] [Enterprising Cook] [Scion of the Kitchen] [Trendsetter] [Chosen of Flavos] [Princess] [Rogue] [Elf] [Teammate] [Human Killer] [Monster Killer]

Knife Artes:

[Precision Slash]

[Instant Draw: Knife]

Culinary Artes:

[Short Order Chef]

[Crunch Time]

[Precision Serving]

[Unbreakable Apron]

[Acquire Taste]

[Perfect Flip]

[Extend Ingredients]

Trendsetter Artes:

[Mill Rumors]

Pugilist Artes:

[Fire Punch]

Spells:

[Create Food]

[Unburn]

[Bestow Flavor: (Spicy)]

[Bestow Flavor: (Sour)]

[Bestow Flavor: (Good)]

[Fistful of Spice]

[Purify Food and Drink]

[Freeze]

[Revitalizing Aroma (Fresh Bread)]

What the hell?! She'd leveled up a few times, even though I hadn't leveled up once?! That was... beyond unfair! Besides that, she'd gained a couple skills, and leveled some of her other skills up as well... I don't know if I'd be able to tell which one of her skills let her mind-control the cooks, but I was willing to bet one of them did. It was the only possible explanation for how she could be getting them to do something I was failing at.

I glanced back at my team, hoping that perhaps something had changed in the last 30 seconds. Only one of the elves was still there, sitting on the ground and stirring a pot full of whole vegetables, and nothing else.

"Where did the rest of them go?" I demanded, powerwalking over to her with my hands on my hips to assert my parental-adjacent authority.

"They left," she said. "Surf's up, so they took a break."

Damn it... it was just as bad as I thought. This recipe was too advanced for them.

"Wanda, do you know any recipes?" I asked. Maybe my amazing earth recipes were too much to handle in general. Maybe if Wanda had a primitive recipe from this world, it might be more up their alley. My cute doggirl [Slave] sat and thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

"First, we'll need a [Thunder Crystal], and some [Chark Berries], wan! Get some water boiling, then dissolve some [Medium-Strength Detergent] in it and grind in some rust, wan! Then-"

"Wanda..." I asked calmly, "Does this recipe make... food?"

"Nope, wan!"

I sighed, giving her another headpat to encourage her effort. "We can practice making [Potions] later, Wanda. I need to figure out some way to win this contest. But what kind of food requires little to no effort, but is also absolutely delicious?"

I kicked one of the small prep tables in the kitchen, using [Kinetic Remodeling] to turn it into a chair. I plopped down into it, scratching my head to try to pull-start my brain. This was tough. I thought for sure that hamburgers would the be best bet, but maybe I should have gone with pizza after all? What else was easier to make than hamburgers? Out of the corner of my eye, Wanda hopped to her feet. I quickly averted my gaze from her apron as it flipped up from the motion.

"Wan! I've got it!" she shouted. "The perfect plan!"