episode_0095

Cain was peacefully enjoying his stroll.

‘This is nice.’

Walking around leisurely, sightseeing here and there as if he were visiting a tourist spot, was quite fun.

Seeing the landscapes he had witnessed in Prophecy RPG in real life was great, but it felt even better because it gave him the sensation of traveling through European tourist destinations.

However.

There was one downside.

‘How is there not a single street food I actually want to eat?’

It wasn’t that the food was completely tasteless.

If he had to describe it, it was actually quite delicious.

This world had cheat-level ingredients like monster meat, after all.

Even just sprinkling some salt on it made it tasty.

It was tasty, but—

‘How is there not a single seasoning?’

Salt-grilled meat?

It was genuinely delicious when he ate one.

But.

Eating the same flavor over and over would naturally get boring.

This stall sold salt-grilled meat.

That stall also sold salt-grilled meat.

Every street vendor was selling nothing but salt-grilled meat.

‘And they’re all the same type, too.’

All of it was orc salt-grilled meat.

Sure, orc meat was one of the most common types in Prophecy RPG, but that didn’t mean other meats didn’t exist at all.

However.

Since all meat in the Prophecy RPG world was obtained through hunting, if the only thing caught that day was orcs, the cooks had no choice but to make orc dishes.

…He understood that, but—

‘At the very least, they could change up the seasoning or cooking method to create some variety in flavor!’

All they had was charcoal-grilled meat.

Every stall just sprinkled salt on it.

Every food alley was nothing but charcoal-grilled meat.

No, seriously—just changing the cooking method would make a difference!

Using vegetables or fruits could create so many more flavors!

So why weren’t they doing it?!

‘Ugh… Now I get why Serena praised my cooking so much.’

The so-called “chefs” here didn’t bother researching cooking.

They didn’t change their grilling methods.

They didn’t even attempt to develop seasonings.

This was a world where the very concept of culinary diversity didn’t exist.

‘It was the same in the game.’

Even in Prophecy RPG, only a tiny fraction of people ever engaged in culinary research, while the rest just stuck to the same simple dishes they always ate.

‘Back when it was just a game, I brushed it off…’

After all, it wasn’t like he was the one eating it, and in most RPGs, cooking your own food was more efficient than buying meals from restaurants.

He had assumed the game developers deliberately made restaurant food low-tier for balance reasons.

But.

This was reality now.

A world of real people with real appetites.

Yet no one was researching cooking?

Something was off.

‘Sure, the ingredients are so good that just grilling them makes them tasty, but…’

Eating the same thing every day would get old.

People would naturally crave variety.

Just look at Serena or the Hero’s Party—they were always begging him to cook new dishes.

‘Especially Serena.’

So, wanting to eat diverse foods was a perfectly natural desire.

But they weren’t even attempting to create different dishes?

Weird.

So he asked.

“Why don’t you make other kinds of food?”

“Huh?”

“Is that even a real question?”

“What?”

“Wasting precious food is a sin.”

“A sin?”

“You don’t even know this? It’s the most basic teaching of the Goddess of Light, Lady Serena.”

“??????”

Confused by the nonsense he was hearing, he pressed for details—and it turned out to be real.

[Cherish your food.]

…That was the entire message.

“Wait… You’ve got to be kidding me…”

He had read about it in Prophecy RPG’s lore.

During the era when the world nearly faced annihilation by the Demon Legion, the Goddess of Light, Serena, descended and granted humanity the last habitable land.

At that time, she left behind a few pieces of advice:

Do not kill. Help one another survive. Cherish your food. And so on.

Her words were meant to encourage cooperation among humans on the brink of extinction.

Those teachings were recorded in the holy scriptures and had been passed down ever since—which was why no one researched cooking.

What if experimenting with cooking led to failed dishes that had to be thrown away?

What if food ended up in the trash?

That would be defying the Goddess’s words.

So, to uphold her teachings, they simply didn’t research it.

‘This is insane…’

It wasn’t Serena’s fault.

Back then, food was so scarce that people resorted to eating dirt and tree bark.

Conserving food was the norm, and recklessly wasting ingredients for culinary experiments would have been unthinkable.

But.

That was all in the past.

Now, thanks to the Goddess of Abundance, food was overflowing.

Monsters were hunted efficiently, so meat was abundant.

So why were they still following those outdated words?!

‘Sigh… I should tell Serena to revise the scriptures later.’

Back then, it was just game lore, but now, this was the world he lived in.

So.

If there was room for improvement, it should be improved.

When you visit a tourist spot, you have to try the local cuisine!

If things stayed like this, no matter where he went, he’d be stuck eating nothing but salt-grilled meat!

‘This is bad.’

For someone like him, who wanted to travel and enjoy himself after everything was over, this was a critical issue.

Food tourism was one of life’s greatest joys—how could he let that be ruined?

Lost in these thoughts, he took the time to examine the world’s problems one by one.

‘Back when this was just a game, none of this concerned me.’

But now, it did.

This was the world he’d live in until he died.

The world his children would live in.

So he observed even the smallest details and took notes.

[Please, for the love of god, implement sanitation laws.]

The Hero’s Party had water magic and purification spells, so they managed to live relatively cleanly.

But.

Ordinary people who couldn’t use magic?

They lived in filth.

No—most of them didn’t even realize their way of living was filthy.

‘What kind of world has people just dumping their crap in the streets because there’s no proper disposal system?!’

At least rural areas were somewhat better.

They had techniques for turning waste into fertilizer, and if that was too much trouble, they could just dump it in uninhabited areas.

But.

Cities didn’t have that option.

They didn’t have vast farmlands needing fertilizer like rural areas, nor did they have many uninhabited spots to dump waste.

So?

Where did they dispose of their waste?

The answer: the very streets people walked on.

That’s right.

The path he was walking on was a potential target for flying feces.

“Eeek!”

Thud!

That was way too close.

If he hadn’t blocked it with an ice wall, his armor would’ve been splattered with sewage.

Wow.

This was a medieval fantasy world?

‘From a distance, it looked so beautiful…’

Now that he was living in it, he realized just how good modern life had been.

‘Now that I think about it, there are way too many inconveniences.’

The more he looked, the more he found.

But.

Until now, nothing had been too bothersome.

Why?

Because magic was brokenly convenient.

‘Especially Lia.’

Lia could use magic of all attributes, and she was smart enough to replicate most spells after just one explanation.

Thanks to her, life was incredibly comfortable.

She could magic up something like a toilet.

Or a bed.

Or an air conditioner.

And so on.

Lia was like a living genie—just say the word, and she’d make it happen.

‘Looking at it this way, Lia’s seriously amazing.’

He only realized today how bad the city stank.

Lia had been silently casting odor-removing spells everywhere, so he’d never noticed until now.

‘I should treat her better.’

Up until a moment ago, he’d been treating her like luggage.

I mean, come on—what kind of “hero” bursts into tears and clings to him the moment a fight starts?

She was basically dead weight.

But.

Now that he was traveling alone, he understood.

Lia wasn’t dead weight.

She was a hardworking hero who’d been putting in effort where he couldn’t see.

With that in mind, he bought her a gift.

‘I was planning to get this anyway.’

According to the Prophecy RPG guide, this city’s blacksmith dumpster contained an endgame-tier item.

‘This is it!’

A worn-out suit of armor. A rusted sword.

At a glance, they looked too old to even recycle, and no magical energy could be sensed from them.

But.

Excluding the holy sword and holy armor reserved for the Hero, these were among the best equipment in the game.

In terms of raw performance, they fell slightly short of other legendary gear, but their overwhelming versatility made up for it.

Even as a Prophecy RPG veteran, he had used these from start to finish.

That’s how good they were.

‘Well… part of the reason I stuck with them was because they were easier to get than other legendary gear…’

Other legendary equipment was insanely hard to obtain, but this?

Just pick it up from the dumpster.

That easy.

‘Plus, their true form is amazing.’

Right now, it was just a rusted suit of armor, but once equipped and infused with magic, it would transform into its true appearance.

‘You see stuff like this in manga sometimes.’

A sword that looks like a worthless hunk of rust until the protagonist wields it, then transforms into a legendary blade.

Like Tessaiga from InuYasha.

Or…

Uh…

There were others, but…

Can’t remember any right now.

Anyway.

That’s the kind of gear this was.

So he took it.

‘Should I head back soon?’

He’d finished his letters.

He’d met all the NPCs available here.

So.

It was about time to return, but—

Thwack!

Someone suddenly struck the back of his neck, and he collapsed.

‘Ah… the item…’

He tried to use his emergency rescue item, but—

Whoosh.

His kidnapper was faster, dragging him away with spatial magic before he could do anything.

As a Prophecy RPG veteran, he could confidently declare:

The attack probability was 0%.

…And right after saying that, he got kidnapped.

Hmm…

At this rate, even if he got rescued, he’d die of embarrassment afterward.