Ch.204Side Story: Cooking? – 1

“……The atmosphere is still tense. No, should I be grateful that they’re not trying to kill each other here?”

Sitting quietly at the kitchen table waiting for the food, I observed the mood of the three seated beside me.

Charlotte looked extremely uncomfortable, Serena couldn’t hide her sharp edge, and Christine had her eyes closed in silent prayer. In summary, all three were in a state where the slightest provocation could set them off.

How did the situation end up like this?

It all started with something trivial.

After escaping from fixed time, I made every effort to develop my body. The mere fact that even the smallest things were gradually changing made me unbearably happy.

My growth rate was also incredibly steep. Now, several months after that incident, I had reached a level equivalent to an intermediate magician even without drawing on the power of the other four.

Moreover, not just me, but Serena, Charlotte, Christine, and Olivia—everyone teaching me—were all somewhat satisfied with the current situation.

The fact that I rarely went outside and mostly stayed in the mansion played a significant role in this.

Unlike before when I wandered around all sorts of places, I was now confined to one spot, making it possible for them to come here and see me whenever they wanted.

More precisely, I had no need to go outside.

Why would I go out when the children beside me were the kingdom’s finest instructors and sparring partners? Especially when those four would come find me even if I stayed cooped up in the mansion.

Well, the biggest reason was that I couldn’t be certain what those four would do to each other if I left the mansion empty.

Just recently, when I went out with Christine for that brief moment, they each destroyed one sofa in the reception room, so naturally I had to be even more careful.

After that, if I needed to buy something, I just sent Charlotte or Olivia.

Serena was the type to whip out Wind Shear and commit mass slaughter at the slightest provocation, and Christine was the type who might offer an entire village as human sacrifice even without provocation.

“If it’s my husband’s request, I should naturally comply. It’s what a wife should do, is it not?”

“What do you need, Abel?”

Charlotte was overjoyed at my request to buy groceries, saying it was obviously a wife’s duty, while Olivia showed the most sensible reaction among the four.

After practically giving up on going out, I had time to spare, and the solution I came up with to use that time more constructively was to significantly increase my training time.

It was a desperate measure born from the idea that if I gave each of them tasks to keep them from thinking about each other, they might naturally fight less.

The strategy was to cut off the cause if the result couldn’t be prevented.

At first, it seemed like a pretty good idea. Serena and Christine were so focused that they practically erased the other three from their minds, so it was fair to say I was halfway successful.

“Teaching such useless things, it seems like nothing but a waste of time. Are the four of you not concerned about wasting time on such meaningless methods?”

That is, until Charlotte started picking fights with the other three.

If there was any conflict among the four, Charlotte was the cause with 99% probability. The remaining less than 1% was due to the other children.

Serena and Christine weren’t the types to engage in verbal fights. If something displeased them, they’d draw their swords or throw punches before speaking.

Olivia was the most sensible and normal, but that didn’t mean she would avoid confrontation when provoked.

How could she, when she still retained memories from times when madness literally overflowed?

“Useless?”

Sure enough, Olivia immediately sharpened her tone in response to Charlotte’s provocation.

“My husband has long since perfectly constructed the theory in his mind. Yet, why repeatedly explain what is already in his head? If that is not a waste of time, what is? I cannot understand.”

“Theory and practice are clearly different, you know? Abel asked me about applying theory to practice. They say ignorance makes one brave, but did you not hear anything from Abel? If you don’t know, why not just stay quiet?”

What followed happened in rapid succession.

Serena, greatly displeased by Charlotte referring to me as her husband, barged in with Wind Shear in hand, and in the midst of this, Christine suddenly swung her fist and blew away half the mansion.

That became the signal for another round of fighting, and even Olivia, who had been trying to stop the fights until now, joined in, turning it into a four-way battle of enormous scale.

By the time I intervened to stop the fight, after briefly clutching the back of my neck, my mansion and the surrounding land had been completely devastated in that short time.

The situation seemed to settle down with all four receiving a scolding from me, but the real problem arose afterward.

Olivia, still harboring resentment, sneered at Charlotte, and as the two engaged in a second round of verbal sparring, the topic inexplicably shifted to cooking.

It was about whether someone who constantly called herself a wife was properly fulfilling those duties, whether she could properly support her husband.

One of the duties mentioned was cooking.

Since all other matters could be sufficiently resolved with magic, the focus concentrated on cooking, where results were most direct and clear.

It really started as nothing significant, but the result became a sort of cooking competition, a battle of pride, conducted in this atmosphere after the complete destruction of the mansion.

Even I found the progression absurd.

‘Still, this is much better.’

But I didn’t stop it. I even subtly encouraged it.

I thought this was healthier, albeit absurd, than fighting and killing each other. Choosing the lesser of two evils, if that makes sense.

The best would be for the four to get along, and the second best would be for them not to fight even if they weren’t friendly… but that seemed almost impossible.

And cooking? Compared to what they usually did, this was an incredibly wholesome competition.

Much better than kidnapping women who happened to be in the same space as me, gouging out their eyes, torturing them to death, dismembering their bodies, cutting off limbs, pulling out spines, and performing human sacrifices.

I was truly grateful for even this much.

“Hmm…”

“Do you have something to say, Charlotte?”

“It’s nothing. I just don’t like the fact that such a thing has to enter thy husband’s mouth.”

Though her words were still harsh.

Olivia was first in line, and Serena, Charlotte, and Christine sat around me, quietly waiting for Olivia’s cooking.

The three kept fidgeting as if displeased that the situation was proceeding so wholesomely. Had I not been restraining them, they would certainly have overturned everything.

‘Olivia’s cooking… I think I used to eat it a lot before.’

The ‘before’ I’m referring to was easily more than a few hundred years ago. That is, when I was at the magic tower.

Back then, I didn’t need to eat food, but Olivia would regularly make something and feed it to me with all sorts of excuses.

So I knew Olivia’s cooking skills very well. If those skills hadn’t deteriorated, the food would probably be quite excellent.

“Abel! It’s ready!”

Olivia approached the table with a big plate in hand, smiling brightly. White steam rose from the dish on the plate.

“This is…”

“It’s a dish you used to eat a lot with me ‘before,’ isn’t it? How about it? Doesn’t it bring back memories?”

The faces of the other three contorted as she deliberately emphasized the words ‘before’ and ‘with me.’ Olivia looked triumphant, as if she had scored a point.

The dish on the plate was roasted chicken legs. Four in total. Enough for one each, excluding Olivia.

“What I made it with… Oh, I forgot the ingredients are supposed to be secret, right?”

I had set a condition that only ingredients stored in the kitchen’s subspace with frozen time could be used, as differences in ingredients could become an additional factor.

To ensure fairness for those cooking later, used ingredients would be restored to their original state by reversing time.

It might seem questionable to use high-level magic like time freezing and reversal, which far transcends human concepts, for mere food storage and cooking competitions, but…

I picked up a steaming chicken leg with my hand. Strangely enough, despite feeling the warm heat, my fingers holding the leg weren’t hot at all.

I took a bite of the chicken leg with a light heart, and…

“Cough!”

As soon as the meat touched the membrane of my mouth, I coughed and vomited blood.