Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Currently, I have three quests in total:
“Greeting the people of Orsha Palace (Grand Duke Luwin’s mansion),” a sub-quest of “Preventing Destruction.”
“A letter that started from a 1 Jurang commemorative coin,” a sub-quest of “Paying off the Debt.”
And lastly, the recently received “Finding a chef for Orsha Palace (Grand Duke Luwin’s mansion)!”
I checked the quest I had just received.
[‘Finding a chef for Orsha Palace (Grand Duke Luwin’s mansion)!’
Oh my! This is a grand duke’s mansion without a chef!
What’s going on……!
Our Irina Seike is a picky gourmet who needs delicious meals even if she has no money.
If she keeps eating food like this, she might run away, forgetting about preventing destruction and everything else!]
‘……’
[What’s wrong? It’s true, isn’t it?]
‘It is true…… It’s so true that it makes me feel a bit bad.’
There was more to the quest:
[Now! Miss Irina Seike!
Let’s save the poor Grand Duke Luwin and yourself from the eyes of Cassis’s ruthless uncle.
(1) Find a new chef.
(2) Feed the male lead well until the chef arrives.
(3) Get the new chef’s cooking skills recognized.
Time limit: One week from today.
Reward: ■■ ■■ ‘■’ ■■■ ■■ ■.]
I kept my mouth shut.
Well, it’s not bad to do it.
It’s not bad, but… just one week?
The deadline was very tight.
I just arrived in the North yesterday, and the first thing I have to do is find a chef?
That doesn’t seem right.
I sighed deeply and asked Betty, who was standing behind me.
“So has the quality of food dropped since the chef left?”
“Actually, it’s been a bit longer than that.”
She said the chef left a year ago.
If the quality had been continuously dropping before that, it meant Cassis had been living on terrible food for over a year.
This wasn’t just a matter of taste.
“Hmm.”
Early in the morning, I checked the card left by Cassis’s assistant, Roen.
It contained information about some businesses he wanted to hand over.
Considering that I would be taking over and assessing Luwin’s situation, I would be insanely busy for the next few months.
Also, while I am sensitive about food, I’m not so picky that I’d need to find a cook within a week of just arriving in the North.
[Irina. Aren’t you going to do the quest?]
‘It’s too tight on time.’
I was contemplating whether it was worth completing the quest that required finding a chef within a week from today.
If we need to find a chef anyway, wouldn’t it be okay to do it later?
It’s a shame to give up the reward so easily, but it can’t be helped.
I shrugged my shoulders.
The system, as if saying to do as I please, didn’t push any further.
* * *
“Why hasn’t Luwin gone bankrupt yet?”
I looked at Roen as I put down the report.
Roen was taking time to help me with the handover.
As I skimmed through the confidential documents he handed over, I made a half-admiring, half-sighing remark as I grasped the current state of affairs.
“Well, Luwin has honor and tradition.”
“Marquis Cloi is truly an remarkable person.”
At my sarcastic words, Roen shook his head with a disgusted expression.
“Now, even that honor and tradition can’t sustain Luwin anymore.”
It was only a matter of time before Luwin would go bankrupt and have to give up its title, mansion, and territory.
Marquis Cloi had either ruined the existing businesses of the Grand Duke Luwin family or directly taken over some of the good ones.
It wasn’t that he was incompetent and ruined Luwin.
There was intention behind all his actions.
“Is Marquis Cloi’’s goal to swallow up Luwin?”
“…You’ve inferred quite a lot just from this.”
“It would be strange not to know.”
I held up a few page of a pledge that I had been studying for a while.
This pledge was made between the Imperial Family and Marquis Cloi, Cassis’s uncle, when he was the regent of Luwin.
The content was incredibly unfavorable to Luwin.
“Just looking at the insane act of putting up magic stone mining rights as collateral in exchange for astronomical investment from the Imperial Family in the luxury goods distribution business, I can tell.”
In the end, Luwin’s downfall started from the Imperial Family’s wishes and Marquis Cloi, who wanted to swallow Luwin whole.
The Grand Duke and his wife were already dead, and Cassis, who was a minor, couldn’t claim any rights.
“That’s right.”
Roen sighed deeply and handed me another document.
“As you can see, the businesses that Marquis Cloi ran in Luwin’s name all failed. We don’t know where the investment money went. Probably to Marquis Cloi’s family. The Imperial Family would have turned a blind eye.”
“Because tying Luwin’s downfall to the mining rights is cheap enough?”
“Yes, that’s right. Over the years, Luwin’s vast funds and power came from magic stones. There were many businesses, but the income from them was nothing compared to magic stones.”
To bring down Luwin, Marquis Cloi had to take away the magic stones.
But the magic stone mine was Luwin’s core industry.
Numerous contracts had been made over several generations to protect the mine, Luwin’s most valuable asset, making it untouchable.
That’s why Marquis Cloi, who was merely a regent, couldn’t do anything about it.
So the strategy put forward by the Emperor and Marquis Cloi was to prevent mining altogether.
No matter how expensive and valuable magic stones are, they’re just rocks if you can’t mine them.
So they restricted Cassis from mining with an absurd contract.
The hundreds of contracts protecting the mine couldn’t be touched even by Cassis, who had become the Grand Duke.
Cassis thought he might have to sell the mine to repay the enormous debt, but that too was impossible.
“The Imperial Family and Marquis Cloi are just waiting for Cassis to fall like this, aren’t they?”
“That’s right. They’re waiting for when he can no longer hold on, when Luwin finally goes bankrupt.”
“To swallow up Luwin and take the mine?”
“Yes.”
I let out a deep sigh.
What I had done was enormous.
A corner of my heart stung.
[It’s not Irina’s fault, I’m telling you.]
My mouth tasted bitter.
While receiving various loss-making businesses from Roen, I suddenly asked.
“What happened to the chef?”
Roen, who seemed to have a lot to say himself, let out a deep sigh that could have sunk the floor and said.
“There are circumstances.”
“A chef who’s only been here a week has a story?”
“You’re quick with information.”
“My goal is Luwin’s success, so understanding the internal affairs of the family is basic.”
Roen didn’t seem to want to explain any further.
Fine, if you don’t want to think about it, don’t.
I’ll find out myself.
I shook my head and said.
“Is it okay if I use the kitchen during my free time in the evening?”
“You’re free to use it, but… are you thinking of cooking yourself?”
Instead of answering, I shrugged my shoulders.
If I had another dinner like yesterday, I felt like it would upset my stomach.
Even with my poor skills, it seemed better if I cooked myself.
[Your skills aren’t poor!]
[The skills aren’t poor, I’m telling you!]
‘Yes, yes. Let me correct ‘poor’ to ‘low-grade’.’
* * *
‘Cooking’.
It’s the first skill I acquired.
Previously, during the quest to pay off Seike’s debt, the cooking skill suddenly opened up and gave me an F grade.
<System, is it possible to level this up?>
I was excited about getting a skill, but even after cooking for months, it remained at F grade. Seeing this, the system provided me with something called ‘recipes’.
‘Recipes’ provided by the system are completely different from recipes in the market.
For example, let’s say I’m making grilled fish.
In reality, for grilled fish, you would go through the process of putting oil in a pan, placing the fish on it, and grilling.
Here, the only difference is whether the fish ends up burnt or cooked deliciously from poor heat control.
However, the ‘Mackerel Grill Recipe D+’ I have starts with extraordinary ingredients.
[Mackerel Grill Recipe D+
Grade: D+
Description: Well, not bad. It’s delicious.
Ingredients: One piece of mackerel, pepper, salt, arugula, lemon jelly.
Method: Put all ingredients into a bonfire at once, use ‘Cooking Skill’ and wait for 1 minute.]
It’s like this.
I can understand pepper and salt.
Okay, I can understand arugula too.
But where on earth did ‘lemon jelly’ come from?
The method is also bizarre.
There’s no mundane method like cutting something and placing it somewhere.
You just throw everything in at once, use the skill, and suddenly ‘ta-da!’ a completed dish appears in my hand.
And shockingly, it was the most delicious mackerel grill I’ve ever tasted.
All the ‘recipes’ the system gives me are like this.
And the recipes I can make all differ according to my cooking skill grade.
Currently, I’m at ‘D+’ grade, so the recipes I can succeed with 100% probability are all ‘D+’ or below.
Once a recipe is collected, it exists in the system, so cooking is possible anytime as long as I have the ingredients.
Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to obtain recipes, so I don’t have many in my possession.
“I don’t have enough recipes, Mr. System.”
[You should have worked harder earlier.]
“Hnnng.”
I grumbled while flipping through the recipes I had in the kitchen.
Not only do I have few recipes, but the ones that seem decent are ‘A’ or ‘B’ grade.
By the way, I’ve been stuck at ‘D+’ for quite a while.
[You should have worked harder earlier. 222]
“Boo-hoo.”
I really should have cooked more diligently.
I always had my chef cook for me because I couldn’t do anything, and now I really can’t do anything.
“I never thought I’d come all the way to the North to cook.”
[You’ll probably do it often from now on.]
“Huh, why?”
[Because the current chef is Marquis Cloi’s pawn.]
Ah.
[My intuition tells me… probably in about a month from now!]
[He might put some poison in the dinner!]
Damn…
I thought the chef was just bad at cooking, but he’s the Marquis’s pawn.
And later, he might even add poison.
I stopped looking at the recipes and pulled out the quest I received earlier to find a chef.
It said not to work while eating unpalatable food and to find a new chef, but in reality, it meant to find a new one to protect the internal staff.
‘There’s always a reason for quests.’
I made a sobbing sound while scanning the quest a few times, then chose a recipe again.
Due to my upset stomach, I think I’ll make a hot meat stew today.
[Vegetable Beef Stew (C-)
Grade: C-
Description: A stew with various vegetables and beef.
The combination of tomatoes and meat keeps you from getting cold if you eat it in the cold winter. It boosts vitality! There’s a 10% chance your vitality might increase.
Haha.
Ingredients: Onion, carrot, tomato, chopped beef, garlic, butter, milk, water.
Method: Put all ingredients in a pot at once and place it on the fire! Then use ‘Cooking Skill’ and stir clockwise for 30 minutes!]
I took out the ingredients from the storage.
The advantage of the recipe is that it requires no special preparation.
Because the maid had washed them in running water, I poured all the ingredients into a small pot without a second thought.
The ingredients sticking out the pot looked quite bizarre.
When I first said I would cook like this, Seike’s chef was shocked.
I put the pot on the fire and used ‘Cooking Skill’, and there was a ‘pop!’ sound.
What followed was a thick, black, unidentifiable porridge-like substance in the pot.
“This… I can’t get used to it every time I see it.”
Groaning, I started slowly stirring clockwise with a wooden spatula, and gradually the black stew began to change.
After stirring hard for about 20 minutes, the pot turned red like tomato stew.
A delicious smell started to emanate.
“Wow, what’s this delicious smell?”
Maybe because it smells so good, a strange fly… no, a person was attracted.
A man with brilliant blond hair was standing next to me, who was diligently stirring with a spatula.
He was looking at the stew with a bright smile.
As I quietly looked at him, he brightly smiled and tapped my hand that had stopped stirring clockwise.
“It seems like it’s been a year since such a delicious smell came from Luwin.”
Haha!
The laughing man didn’t look very sane.
