Reign Voltagrave paid Izen's theatrical barbarism no mind. He saw it as the desperate, pathetic act of a cornered animal. While Izen had been committing culinary blasphemy, Reign had finished whipping his egg whites into a flawless, gravity-defying meringue. The foam was so stable, so perfectly structured, it stood in stiff, glossy peaks that seemed to absorb the light of the celestial dome above them.
He was now gently poaching the spherical yolk in a precisely temperature-controlled water bath. His movements were confident and immaculate. He was on track to create a dish of transcendent perfection.
Izen, meanwhile, continued his simple, rustic work. He whisked the shattered yolk and white together with a fork until they were a uniform, pale-yellow liquid. There was no separation, no deconstruction. Just a scrambled egg mixture. The judges watched with expressions of deepening horror. This was not cuisine; it was what a common laborer made for a hurried breakfast.
He then placed his small, simple pot on the induction cooktop. From under his station, he retrieved his ingredients.
One was the bowl of beaten egg.
The other was a plain, unlabeled cruet of clear liquid. Water.
And next to it was a small, familiar salt cellar. It was filled with the cheap, common, iodized salt he had spent a week purifying.
That was it. That was his entire arsenal against Reign's "Celestial Dawn." An egg, water, and salt.
He poured a little of the water into the pot and brought it to a simmer. Then he poured in the egg mixture. He began to stir, gently and continuously, with a pair of simple wooden chopsticks. He was making scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs. In the Grand Symposium of Purity. The sheer, unmitigated audacity was almost sublime.
"I don't understand his strategy," Ciela narrated, her voice a tense whisper. "He's making the single most basic egg dish in existence. There's no technique on display, no innovation. Is he deliberately trying to lose?"
In the Hearthline Guild, Kael was hyperventilating. Grit was gripping the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles were white. "What is that kid doing?" he growled.
Only Nyelle Ardent, alone in her kitchen, was beginning to see the glimmer of a terrifying possibility. She looked at Reign's complex, sterile process and then at Izen's simple, organic one. 'You shout, I listen,' Izen's words echoed in her memory. Reign was shouting at the egg, forcing it into new shapes, separating its very being. Izen was just… listening. Letting the egg be an egg.
Izen continued to stir. As the curds began to form, he did something subtle. He moved the pot on and off the heat, controlling the cooking temperature not with a machine, but by feel. It was an ancient, instinctual technique, the kind of skill a grandmother possesses, not a student at a high-tech academy.
He cooked the eggs until they were barely set, still custardy and creamy, a vibrant, perfect yellow. He took the pot off the heat.
His final step. The seasoning.
He picked up the salt cellar. He didn't sprinkle the salt from on high like a showman. He just tipped a small, measured amount into the eggs. The very salt he had refined, whose every flaw and characteristic he had memorized.
He gave the eggs one final, gentle stir and slid the creamy, glistening mound onto a simple, plain white plate. He didn't shape it or garnish it. He just let it be.
It was a plate of scrambled eggs. Nothing more, nothing less.
At the exact same moment, Reign placed the finishing touch on his masterpiece. He levitated the poached yolk sphere using a focused sonic beam and gently lowered it into the waiting embrace of the meringue cloud. With a pair of silver tweezers, he placed a single, perfect crystal of Fujiyama salt on top. "Celestial Dawn" was complete. It was breathtaking. A piece of edible art.
"Time is up!" the proctor declared. "Present your dishes."
Reign went first. He presented his dish with the flourish of a master artist revealing his life's work. The judges murmured in appreciation. The visual was a perfect 10/10.
Then, Izen walked forward and placed his simple, almost laughably plain plate of scrambled eggs on the dais. A stark, brutalist contrast to Reign's ethereal creation.
Marrowe Pastiche looked at the plate as if it had personally insulted his ancestors. "Chef Loxidon," he began, his voice dripping with condescension. "Before we taste this… dish… do you have a name for it?"
Izen met his gaze and gave a small, simple smile. "Yes," he said.
"Breakfast."
The unpretentious name was the final straw. A few of the judges couldn't hide their derisive smirks.
Tasting began with Reign's dish. As per protocol, each judge took a small, mother-of-pearl spoon and sampled the "Celestial Dawn."
Their faces lit up with appreciation.
"Sublime," The Executioner declared, her voice surprisingly soft. "The meringue has the texture of a dream. The yolk… its richness is almost overwhelming. A perfect expression of the egg's potential."
The others agreed. The praise was lavish. It was a technical marvel, a dish of flawless, otherworldly perfection.
Reign allowed himself a small, triumphant smile. It was over. He had won.
Then, with grim obligation, the judges turned to Izen's plate. They each took a clean spoon and scooped up a small amount of the creamy, yellow scrambled eggs. They looked at it, then at each other, as if to say, Let's get this farce over with.
They put the spoons in their mouths.
And then, reality broke. Again.
Marrowe Pastiche froze. His eyes, which had been narrowed in judgment, slowly widened. The other judges had similar reactions. Utter, profound, system-crashing shock.
The flavor was… just egg. But it was the most egg-like egg any of them had ever tasted. By whisking the yolk and white together, by gently cooking them into a homogenous whole, Izen hadn't deconstructed the egg's soul; he had integrated it. He presented the complete, unabridged story of the Hoshi-no-Tamago.
The creamy texture of the gentle curds was a perfect cradle for the flavor. And then, the salt hit. The cheap, purified table salt.
It didn't just season the egg. It detonated it. The pure salinity slashed through the incredible richness of the yolk, supercharging its flavor, making it brighter, bolder, and more potent than it had been in Reign's dish. In Reign's creation, the salt was a respectful seasoning. Here, it was an accomplice. An antagonist that, by its very nature, made the protagonist stronger.
But that wasn't the final trick. That wasn't the reason their systems were crashing.
Because they had just tasted Reign's dish—a dish of pure, unmitigated richness with no fat cut, no acidic balance, no texture contrast—their palates had been overwhelmed. They were fatigued. They were... full. A second bite of Reign's dish would have been cloying. It was a dish you could only admire.
But Izen's simple scrambled eggs, perfectly seasoned with that aggressive, clean salt... it cut through the lingering richness on their palates. It cleansed them. It refreshed them. It made them hungry again.
After a lifetime of eating "perfect" food, of being sated and satisfied, the single most powerful and forgotten sensation was suddenly returned to them.
Hunger.
Izen hadn't just made them a perfect dish.
He had introduced a flaw—hunger—into their perfect, jaded palates. He had served the peasant's potato to a panel of kings.
Marrowe Pastiche slowly lowered his spoon. His face was pale. He looked at Reign's beautiful, perfect, artistic dish, a dish he could no longer imagine eating another bite of. Then he looked at Izen's simple, humble, empty plate, which he desperately wished was full again.
He looked at Izen, not with contempt or even awe, but with a terrifying, dawning understanding.
"You…" Marrowe whispered, his voice trembling. "You didn't cook the ingredient. You cooked us."