Ren woke up on a plush velvet seat to the gentle rocking of the carriage. His first thought was that he had died and this was a very comfortable coffin. His second was that the Imperial summons was real, and his execution was going to be a fancy, high-class affair. He began to hyperventilate.
The carriage door opened. A woman in the severe grey of an Imperial Attendant looked at him, her face devoid of expression.
"You have arrived," she said. "Your commission awaits. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not touch anything. Follow me."
Ren stumbled out of the carriage into a quiet side street he didn't recognize. The carriage, and the attendant, vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving him standing alone before a dusty, unassuming bookstore. This was it. The place of his execution. Maybe they were going to kill him with a falling stack of encyclopedias. It seemed fittingly pathetic.
He pushed the door open. The little bell tinkled.
The three beings who would become his new wardens turned to look at him.
Ren saw an ancient, terrifyingly intense sage, a princess from the storybooks, and a woman who looked like a beautiful, silver-haired angel of death. They stared at him with an unnerving, unified focus.
Ren's blood ran cold. This was not an executioner's block. This was a tribunal of gods and monsters.
"So," Valerius Zathra said, his voice a low rumble. "The Vessel of the Culinary Arts has arrived."
Seraphina's eyes raked over Ren. He was scrawny, hunched over, with the terrified look of a mouse that had just stumbled into a den of lions. He exuded an aura of profound, almost weaponized misery. He was perfect. A master of disguise, she concluded instantly. He cloaks his immense talent in a shroud of pathetic weakness. No one would ever suspect him.
Aurelia gave him a small, encouraging smile, trying to put the terrified boy at ease. "Welcome. You come highly recommended. Your... creation at the festival was... deeply moving."
Ren had no idea what she was talking about. All he heard was that his sad, burned breakfast had somehow led him here. This was getting weirder and weirder.
"W-what is this place?" he stammered. "What do you want from me?"
"We want you to do what you were born to do," Valerius said, gesturing grandly around the bookstore. "You have been chosen. You are to be the Master's personal Chef. You will be responsible for preparing the sustenance that fuels the prime mover of this age."
Ren stared at them blankly. Master? Prime mover? Was he supposed to cook for the Emperor? But what was the Emperor doing in a bookstore?
Just then, a now-familiar creak came from the staircase.
Lyno appeared. He had heard the bell and the voices. A new person. His anxiety flared, but it was tempered by a different emotion: hunger. He had been subsisting on the chalky magic biscuits for days. His followers had promised him a chef, a real one. Could this scrawny, terrified-looking kid be him?
Lyno shuffled down the stairs, his eyes fixing on Ren with a look of desperate, hopeful anticipation.
Ren saw the unassuming man in simple clothes, and then he saw the way the three demigods in the room instantly bowed their heads in his presence. The power dynamic was terrifyingly clear. This quiet man was the master.
Lyno stopped in front of Ren. He was so excited at the prospect of a real meal, he didn't know what to say. His stomach, however, was an excellent public speaker.
GRRROWL.
It was a plaintive, demanding sound.
Ren flinched. The Master was hungry. They were all looking at him. It was his first test. He was a line cook. His purpose was to cook.
"I... I need a kitchen," Ren said, his voice barely a whisper. "Ingredients."
Valerius beamed. "But of course! The practicalities!"
This was a problem they had foreseen. Lyno's small room had no kitchen. But a solution had been... acquired.
Valerius led the way to the back of the bookstore, to a door that had previously led to a dusty, cramped storeroom. He pushed it open.
The room was no longer cramped or dusty. It was a masterpiece of magical and logistical engineering. A gleaming stove powered by a bound fire-elemental sat next to a crystalline ice-box that hummed with cooling magic. The counters were polished obsidian. The knives, displayed on a magnetic rack, had been personally "selected" by Seraphina and were sharp enough to shave a soul.
It was the most advanced and terrifyingly perfect kitchen Ren had ever seen.
"Your... workshop," Aurelia said proudly.
Ren stumbled inside, his eyes wide. He ran a hand over the cold obsidian. This was real. This was his. He could cook here.
"And now, for the first sacred ingredient," Valerius said with immense gravity.
He gestured. Aurelia stepped forward. She was holding a single, small, burlap sack. She opened it and, with the reverence of one presenting the crown jewels, she pulled out... a potato.
It was a lumpy, unassuming potato, still covered in a bit of dirt.
Ren stared at it. It was just a potato.
"This is not just any tuber," Valerius explained, sensing the boy's confusion. "This potato was grown in the soil of the Master's hometown, Oakhaven. It was watered by the same rain that falls upon this sanctum. It is saturated with his 'terroir.' It is the most philosophically pure and fundamentally grounded ingredient in the Empire."
He placed the potato in Ren's trembling hands. It felt... heavy. Weighed down by an absurd amount of expectation.
"Your first commission," Valerius declared. "Is to prepare a dish for the Master using this. And only this. Show us its soul. Reveal its truth. The Master awaits."
With that, the three of them backed out of the kitchen, closing the door and leaving Ren alone with a single potato and a god-tier magical kitchen.
The pressure was immense. Show them the potato's soul? Reveal its truth? What did that even mean?!
He was a line cook. He cooked eggs. He fried bacon. He burned toast.
He looked at the potato in his hands. It was a good potato. Simple. Humble. Honest. It reminded him a little of himself.
His mind was a blank. He had no grand ideas, no culinary philosophy. He just had a single, overwhelming emotion: a deep and profound sadness for the ridiculous situation he found himself in. He channeled that sadness, that feeling of being a simple, lowly thing in a world of impossible expectations, into his cooking.
He washed the potato. He peeled it, his movements economical from years of practice. He chopped it into small, uneven chunks. He boiled it in salted water until it was soft. He mashed it. He didn't add any cream or butter; he had not been given any. He just mashed it with a fork, adding a little of the starchy water back into it.
The result was a small, pale, lumpen pile of mashed potatoes in the center of a simple bowl. It was the plainest, most humble dish imaginable. It was a perfect expression of the potato's fundamental potato-ness. It was also a perfect expression of his own despair.
With trembling hands, he opened the door.
The three followers, and the Master, were waiting.
Ren wordlessly handed the bowl to Lyno.
Lyno looked down at the mashed potatoes. It wasn't a sandwich, but it was real food. Hot, steaming, real food. His eyes practically lit up. He took the offered spoon and scooped up a mouthful.
He put it in his mouth.
And the world stopped. Again.
It was not a flavor. It was a memory. The simple, starchy taste of the mashed potato was... comforting. It was warm. It tasted of home. Of simple meals on cold nights. Of a time before legendary assassins and mad sages had invaded his life. It was the taste of peace. The taste of serenity.
For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Lyno felt genuinely, truly... content. A single, small, real smile graced his lips. A smile of pure, unadulterated satisfaction. He looked at the sad boy in front of him.
"Thank you," Lyno said, his voice filled with a genuine warmth and gratitude that he hadn't been able to muster for anyone else. "This is... perfect."
The effect of his words, and his genuine smile, on the three followers was like a bolt of lightning.
They had never seen the Master smile like that. They had never heard him use the word "perfect."
Ren, the sad line cook from The Last Morsel, had not just cooked a meal. He had performed a miracle. He had nourished the body and soul of a living god and had, for the first time, elicited a sign of his genuine, unreserved divine pleasure.
Ren, for his part, was just glad the terrifying man liked his sad potato mush.
The Great Quest was well and truly over. The culinary Theurgist had passed his final trial. He was, without a doubt, the greatest chef in the universe.