The Great Hall of Humble Fare was a chaotic symphony of sizzling pans, bubbling pots, and the frantic curses of common cooks under immense pressure. The air was thick with a thousand competing aromas, from spicy street-stall noodles to hearty tavern stews. Hundreds of the Empire's best undiscovered chefs had gathered, drawn by the ludicrously large prize money offered for this strange, one-round competition.
In a shielded, opulent chamber behind the main hall, Princess Aurelia sat at a long, empty table. Before her was a single silver cloche. She felt the weight of her mission. She was not merely judging food. She was choosing the mortal who would be responsible for maintaining the cosmic engine that was her Master. It was terrifying.
An attendant entered, bowed, and placed the first dish before her. "From Chef Grugg of the Salty Squid Tavern," he announced. "He calls it 'Fiery Ice Crab Bisque.'"
Aurelia tasted it. It was hot on one side of her tongue and cold on the other. It was clever, a literal interpretation of "A Meal of Contradiction." But it was a trick. There was no depth, no harmony. A competent fool, she judged, and waved it away.
Dish after dish followed. "Singing Pork and Weeping Cabbage." "Sunrise Surprise Omelet with Midnight Gravy." "Solid Air Pudding." Each one was a testament to culinary cleverness, but none had the soul, the subtlety, the koan that Valerius had described. They were all statements, not questions.
Hours passed. Aurelia's palate was growing numb. The pressure was mounting. Had they miscalculated? Was there no one worthy in the entire Empire?
Then, the final dish was brought in.
"This is the last entry, Your Highness," the attendant said, his voice tinged with embarrassment. "From... well, he didn't give a name. He's a line cook from a greasy spoon eatery in the capital's poorest district called 'The Last Morsel.' He just called the dish... 'Breakfast.'"
He lifted the cloche.
The plate held the most pathetic, sad-looking meal Aurelia had ever seen in her life. It consisted of a single piece of toast, burned black around the edges but inexplicably untoasted in the very center. Next to it was a fried egg, the yolk broken and cooked solid, the white slightly rubbery. A single, limp strip of bacon lay beside it like a fallen comrade. There was no garnish. No sauce.
It was the culinary equivalent of a sigh.
The attendant visibly winced. "My apologies, Your Highness. He was a last-minute entry. A young man, very gloomy. Looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Shall I remove it?"
"No," Aurelia said softly, a strange curiosity piqued. This was not clever. This was not a trick. This was... failure. A profound, unmitigated failure of a dish. It was, in its own way, a contradiction. It was a meal that contradicted the very purpose of food. She had to taste it.
She took up her silver fork and cut a piece of the burnt toast. She put it in her mouth.
And the world stopped.
It was not a flavor. It was a feeling. The first sensation was of acrid, bitter disappointment from the burned crust. This was failure. This was hardship. But then, as she chewed, the soft, untoasted center released a surprising, gentle sweetness of the grain. This was hope, buried deep beneath despair.
She took a bite of the sad, overcooked egg. The rubbery white was bland, a taste of monotony, of endless, repetitive days. But then the cooked-solid yolk crumbled on her tongue, releasing a rich, savory, earthy flavor. The hidden reward at the end of a long, joyless task.
Finally, she tried the limp bacon. It was not crispy. It was soft, overly salty. It tasted of regret. It was the taste of a decision poorly made. And yet, beneath the salt, there was the lingering, smoky memory of what it could have been, a ghost of a perfect meal.
Aurelia put down her fork, her hand trembling. A single tear rolled down her cheek, echoing the one she had shed in the Master's room.
This was it.
This wasn't a dish. This was an autobiography. It was hardship, monotony, and regret, with a hidden, profound core of hope and solace. It was the most harmonious and subtle thing she had ever eaten. It was a perfect, edible koan. The question it asked was, "Is there beauty in imperfection?" And the answer was a quiet, resounding "yes."
And the chef... the gloomy, nameless boy who had created this masterpiece of philosophical cooking? He had to be a complete idiot. No sane person would intentionally create a dish that tasted so much like sadness and then serve it in a competition. He could not possibly know what he had just achieved.
Harmony. Subtlety. Unknowing Mastery.
He met all three criteria perfectly.
"Attendant," she said, her voice shaking with the gravity of her discovery. "Find that young man. Do not let him leave the city. Tell him the Emperor has a private commission for him. He is the one."
His name was Ren.
He was a twenty-year-old orphan with perpetually sad eyes and an uncanny ability to burn things in a way that made them taste unexpectedly poignant. He had entered the competition on a whim, thinking the prize money could help him fix the leaking roof of his hovel. He had made the only dish he knew how to cook, the breakfast he made for himself every joyless morning. He knew it was terrible. He had expected to be laughed out of the hall.
So when a silent man in Imperial livery approached him as he was leaving and handed him a sealed summons, he thought it was an official notice of his own execution for culinary crimes.
He fainted dead away, just as Lyno had.
When he awoke, he was in a plush carriage, on his way to a destination he did not know, for a purpose he could not comprehend, to serve a master he had never met.
The Great Quest for a Chef was over. The Culinary Theurgist, the Gastronomic Oracle, a profoundly depressed young man who specialized in melancholic breakfasts, had been found.
Far to the south, the Grokk continued its journey.
It had walked through the Desolate Marches, ignoring the shrieks of the damned things that lived there. It had waded across the Serpent's Maw river, paying no mind to the car-sized piranhas that broke their teeth on its stony hide.
It was now entering the verdant farmlands of the southern Empire. It walked through fields of golden wheat, its massive feet leaving fifty-foot-long crop circles in its wake. It ignored the panicked shouts of farmers and the ringing of alarm bells.
The Imperial sentinels, miles away, registered the disturbances.
"Commander, report. Widespread, linear crop damage reported in the Southern Gryphon Prefecture," a psionic message read. "Geological survey reports no seismic activity. Eyewitness accounts are... confused. They speak of a 'walking hill.'"
The commander, following his orders to the letter, assessed the data. Magical signature: null. Hostility index: null. The thing wasn't attacking anyone. It was just... walking. It was a bizarre, destructive, but fundamentally non-hostile phenomenon.
His orders from the Emperor, via the Spymaster, were clear: Do not engage any anomaly unless it exhibits direct and overt hostile intent towards the Sacred Zone. Intercepting this 'walking hill' would cause a commotion. A loud, messy, and potentially explosive commotion.
Commotions were forbidden.
"Analysis: A non-hostile, ambulatory geological event," the commander reported back up the chain. "Designation: 'The Wanderer.' Current trajectory indicates it will pass far to the west of the Sacred Zone. Action: Monitor only. Do not engage. Maintain the tranquility."
The order came back down: Confirmed. Maintain tranquility at all costs.
The sledgehammer, too stupid to be recognized as a weapon, continued its slow, inexorable march northward. And the most sophisticated defensive network in the world, blinded by its own very specific set of rules, had just decided to let it pass. The silent, walking apocalypse was on schedule.