Chapter 721: Survival Food (1)

“Leave this country...... and never come back.”

At those words from the kid.

Howard and I, who had been in the middle of our research, turned our gazes toward the kid.

“You weren’t cooperating with those zombies...... those corpses, were you.”

In any case, we were currently stalling until Ariella and the unit members gathered information.

I decided to ask about the part I had been wondering about anyway.

“You don’t know what those things might do to you if you keep that up. Why were you doing it?”

“I told you. Because I don’t like them.”

A simple reason.

But.

Judging by the kid’s attitude now, it did not seem like the kid was too young to understand the difference in strength.

And from that intimidated look, the kid seemed to feel fear too.

Personally, I could not understand doing something that might put one’s life at risk for that simple reason alone.

“......My friends were all killed by those corpses.”

“I heard that. But that isn’t a reason for you to do something dangerous too.”

“Actually, the fact that my friends died itself isn’t what pisses me off.”

“Hm?”

The kid spoke with a dark expression.

“The truth is...... even if they hadn’t died to the corpses, none of them would have lived long anyway.”

“You mean they would have died to some other monsters regardless?”

“No. It’s not because of the apocalypse. Even if those monsters hadn’t appeared, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference.”

At those words.

I could understand what the kid was trying to say.

“I don’t even remember my parents’ faces. By the time I came to my senses, I was already living among friends who were in a similar situation to me.”

They said the world’s economy had improved a great deal in modern times.

But there were still plenty of countries with difficult circumstances.

North Korea was one of those countries too.

At least in North Korea as well, the number of people starving to death had probably decreased as time passed.

But that was the case for the central areas the government could support.

The farther one went toward the outskirts, the more that support decreased, and the more severe the poverty became.

“I saw countless people around me starve, get sick, and die. Even before we died to those corpses, a lot of my friends had already died for all kinds of reasons.”

“.......”

“Even I was only holding out this much because of this thing called awakening. If not for that, my condition was bad enough that I wouldn’t have lived long either. Dying to the corpses was, well...... probably just having a death that was already coming moved up by a few days.”

It was difficult for me, born in an affluent country, to imagine.

But somewhere in this world, countless people must have been dying miserably in environments too poor to describe.

This kid had been one of those cases.

“So it doesn’t matter? That’s a little different from what I heard at first.”

“Well, separate from that, those corpses are still the ones who killed my friends. It’s true I was a little pissed off about that too. But what matters is.......”

With the kid’s head buried against {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} those knees.

The kid clenched those teeth.

“Those things asked me to help them.”

“......?”

“They said they were in a situation where they were going to die from ‘nothing more than starving.’ They said they wanted to survive somehow.”

And.

This part was apparently.

“Starving to death is nothing more than that?”

The part that had pissed this little kid off.

***

That prince had made the same request to me.

He said they were fated to die from nothing more than starvation, and wanted a way to resist that.

It was a request I had not thought much of.

But.

“Starving to death was everyday life for us.”

It seemed a little different from the position of someone who had already been placed in that fate.

“When winter approached, there was nothing to eat, so we had to try to secure even a little food. Even then, a lot of people couldn’t eat enough and starved to death in the cold.”

From my perspective as well, that many lives dying of starvation was something that could be called “nothing more than.”

But if I thought about it, more lives than I could imagine died from hunger.

“They called that strange, said they couldn’t accept it. Then what does that make my friends who died starving?”

For humanity too, the ratio had only decreased after entering the modern era.

In the wild, more than 50% of living creatures born apparently died from starvation.

In truth, starving to death was a fairly common thing as the final fate assigned to living creatures.

“For us, the problem of eating and surviving even one more day was more important than anything. But they talked about it like it was nothing. Like they shouldn’t die so meaninglessly.......”

“.......”

“After killing my friends who were trying to eat and survive even one more day, now they don’t want to starve to death? What’s so great about bastards that survive by parasitizing corpses?”

Starving to death was also one ending given to living creatures.

Treating that natural ending as “nothing more than,” and saying they did not want to meet such a low-grade ending themselves.

“I don’t want to cooperate with things like that. I don’t like them.”

The attitude of those zombies.

To this kid, it must have felt endlessly arrogant.

'......If I think about it, considering a two-year lifespan short is similar.'

From a human perspective, I had thought it was right to say their lifespan was excessively short.

But if I thought about it, their essence was that of insects.

And if I viewed it as an insect’s lifespan, a few months would be normal, and two years would fall on the long side.

The lifespan and fate of starvation they had pitifully mocked themselves for.

If averaged across all living things, they might fall into a fairly ordinary category.

“......I understand your position. But with other people’s lives being held hostage, we’re in a position where it’s a little difficult to blindly refuse cooperation like you.”

“They threatened me in a similar way too. But up until now, not only me but the other people are fine too, aren’t they?”

That part had certainly been a little strange, but.

Until now, this kid had been the only chef.

Because they knew hostages did not work on this kid at all, perhaps they had not harmed the hostages.

And.

“Now we’ve been added...... and there may be other chefs besides us too.”

“Hm.”

“Now that they might be able to secure other chefs, they might harm us, and the moment they think threatening us through hostages works, they might really hurt the hostages.”

“So you’re considering cooperation?”

Then.

The kid gave a small laugh and said,

“Those people may not be people worth saving to that extent.”

“......?”

“They’re people who would have died anyway if you hadn’t helped them...... and they aren’t good enough people that you have to save them.”

When I looked at the kid with a puzzled expression.

The kid gave a bitter smile and said,

“To you, those hostages probably look like the weak, right?”

“For now.”

“From my position, it’s a little different. I saw the faces of those hostages too...... and among us, they weren’t the weak. They were the strong.”

Even if they had survived by fleeing and hiding.

They were people who had survived until now in this world.

Hostages made up entirely of awakened.

“When there were too many monsters, and the number of zombies kept growing...... people judged that they could no longer survive in the open and decided to hide. But no matter how awakened someone is, it’s hard to stop hunger.”

“.......”

“The food those people ate while hiding...... how do you think they secured it?”

This was a country that had already possessed few food reserves.

Most of even those food reserves had probably been in facilities occupied by powerful monsters.

The remaining food must have been truly scarce.

“I guarantee you, if you know what happened back then, the thought of saving them will vanish completely.”

As for what would have happened over that tiny amount of food.......

Well, I could roughly imagine.

'Just because people look like the weak right now doesn’t mean they’re good people.'

When they were the strong.

Perhaps they had inflicted great harm on a number of people beyond imagination.

“......Even so, my thoughts are the same. I can’t choose to abandon normal humans.”

“Tch.”

“If they’ve done something wrong, that’s a problem that can be made to be repaid while they’re alive. More importantly.”

Rather.

After hearing that story, I felt puzzled and asked,

“What about you?”

“Mm?”

“You asked how the people secured the food they ate while hiding. I’m asking how it was for you.”

This kid was human too.

And also an awakened.

The kid had talked about the way other people obtained food.

But the kid, too, would have needed food to eat during the period of hiding.

In that regard, I was asking whether the kid had done something no different from the others.

“......You people are chefs too, right?”

“Hm?”

“Then why are you asking something like that? Obviously.”

The answer the kid gave to that question of mine was a little unexpected.

“I cooked.”

***

“Cooked?”

At the kid’s words.

I looked at the kid as if asking what that was supposed to mean.

However.

“Yeah. Cooked.”

Rather.

The kid looked at me with a puzzled expression, as if asking why I would ask that when I was a chef too.

I let out a hollow laugh at that expression.

'It’s not like the word cooking is some miracle cure-all.'

I was a chef too.

I knew the power of cooking, and I knew it was something incredible.

At the same time, I also knew very well that the power of cooking was not omnipotent.

Among them, if there was one greatest restriction cooking had, it would probably be.

'Ingredients.'

In the end, in order to see the effects of cooking, one needed to secure ingredients and go through the process of making dishes with those ingredients.

No matter how outstanding a chef was.

If there were no ingredients to cook with, there was no way the power of cooking could be displayed.

The reason I had put my hands on monster cooking in the early days of the apocalypse was also.

In the end, a phenomenon born from a lack of food ingredients.

When people decided to hide away.

The kid had said something had happened over the insufficient food.

That food the others had taken back then must have been the ingredients a chef needed more than anything.

I wondered how the kid had cooked without that.......

“As I said, my friends and I had to worry every single day that we might starve to death. And I was the one in charge of cooking.”

At that moment.

A thought suddenly came to mind, and I looked at the kid.

[Ingredient Appraisal (Enhanced)]

[Awakened: Doyun]

[Low-Grade Chef]

There were quite a lot of awakened.

And among them, there were also many awakened who had overlapping occupations.

The individuality of those awakened only began to properly stand out after level 30.

But that did not mean.

All awakened before level 30 possessed uniformly identical abilities.

Common skills and common traits were fixed, but skills and traits outside of those differed depending on the awakened.

It was only that the differences became greater after level 30; differences between awakened existed even before then.

In my case, I was a military cook.

I had skills and traits specialized in combat and large-volume cooking.

In Howard’s case, he was a veteran chef.

He was specialized in ingredient management, or creating one high-level dish.

“We worked hard to find things to eat, but there were many days when we couldn’t. Even with no ingredients, I had to make some kind of dish somehow.”

And.

In that kid’s case.

“Eating baked mud or boiled tree bark was common.”

In an environment where finding proper food ingredients was difficult.

This kid had to live as a chef.

That was why.

[Skill]

[Ultra-Extreme Survival Cooking]

[Many people believe that an excellent chef refers only to someone who makes splendid and delicious dishes.]

[But the world is wide, and environments differ greatly.]

[In an extreme environment where it is difficult to secure even the bare minimum of food ingredients, an excellent chef may come to refer to someone who can create food that allows one to “survive” somehow.]

The kid’s hand scraped the floor.

The dust piled on the floor was grasped in that hand.

[It is possible to create dishes from any ingredient, even ingredients that contain no nutrients necessary for survival at all.]

[The dish created in this way contains the minimum nutrients necessary for survival.]

Srrrrk.......

And in that hand, it was turning into “food.”