The door of the dungeon closed behind him, and darkness surged up, and the silver light of the kitchen knife in his hand became the only street lamp.
I’m not a hero, I’m a cook. There is no sword in the backpack, but newly picked mushrooms in the morning, a small jar of coarse salt, and a slightly deformed egg beater from under the counter. My restaurant is on the corner of Adventurer’s Town, but the problem is — there are not enough ingredients. It’s not that I can’t afford it, but that no one sells dragon-tail pepper or glitter snails at all. If you want it, you have to go down and get it by yourself.
The first floor is the mushroom forest. The glowing blue mushroom grows in the eye sockets of the giant’s skeleton, and the red mushroom that can bite people hides under the swamp. What I need is the kind of “moonlight mushrooms” that don’t move. They grow in the wettest corners. I squatted down and carefully cut the umbrella cover with a kitchen knife. Bubbles suddenly appeared in the pool next to it, and a fish full of teeth jumped out. I was so scared that I sat back, and the mushroom in my hand almost fell off. It turns out that the collection is not to press a key, but really to squat down, dodge, and see the time.
Taking mushrooms back to the store, I met Brandon from the blacksmith’s shop on the way, and his armor was cracked. “I heard that you went down?” He asked and handed me a glass of barley wine. “If you see the shell of the ‘hard crab’ next time, bring some back for me, and I’ll try to melt it into the iron.” I nodded and drank the barley wine, and my stomach was warm. It turns out that I went down not only for myself.
The restaurant is open at night. The adventurers came in with wounds and mud and put the bloody coins on the counter. “As usual, stew meat and add more bread.” The dwarf warrior Golf sat down with a few new scratches on his shield. I chopped the moonlight mushroom and threw it into the pot with the meat. When the fragrance came out, he closed his eyes and sucked his nose, and his shoulders relaxed a little. He said that he was almost crushed by the trap today, but after eating a bite of stew, he grinned again: “It seems that he can live another day.”
The next day, I went to a deeper mine for Brandon’s hard shell. The crab is so big that it walks horizontally with tongs. I couldn’t run away from it. I remembered that there was still chili powder left over from last time in my backpack. I took it out and sprinkled it on its eyes. When it was stunned and sneezed, I rushed over and knocked on its joints with the back of a kitchen knife. The shell was loose, and I quickly broke the next piece. He was embarrassed when he ran away, but Brandon’s eyes lit up when he got the shell. Three days later, he gave me a new kitchen knife with a dark light. “It’s mixed with crab shell powder,” he said. “It’s okay to cut the keel.”
In this way, I became the strangest errand runner in the town. The witch wanted the tear moss in the poisonous swamp to make potion, and I covered my handkerchief to pick it; the tavern owner wanted the cold frost berry in the depths of the ice cave to make new wine, and I wrapped my cotton jacket down to pick it. In return, I have a magic stove in my kitchen that won’t go out, a soup spoon that I can stir by myself, and a mushroom tea that can make a temporary night vision.
The deepest memory is not an escape from a danger, but a rainy night. The adventure team came back empty-handed, dejected, saying that the treasure was overtapped and the teammates were injured. They sat in my restaurant without anyone talking. I took out all the inventory, made hot soup, fried omelets, and sprinkled the last bit of honey on the toast. No one said anything when the food was served, but the sound of chewing gradually sounded. Golf drank the last mouthful of soup and put down the glass heavily: “Next time. It will definitely be done next time.”
I understood at that moment. My restaurant is never the end, nor is it a supply station. It is the midpoint of a circle. I went on an adventure for food and brought back the ingredients to make dishes; cooking made adventurers stronger and brought back more strange things to deeper places; these things made blacksmiths, witches and pub owners make better equipment, potions and encouragement to send us all to continue.
At the end of the game, there was still a specimen of the moonlight mushroom picked for the first time in my backpack, which had dried up. Brandon’s kitchen knife, the witch’s thermos, and the eternally full pepper bottle given by the tavern owner are hanging on the wall. I have never seen the dragon in the deepest part of the dungeon, but I can put a little dragon pepper in my stew, and I can spray a small fire after eating it.
After exiting the game, I will cook instant noodles. When I was waiting for the water to turn on, I looked at the thousands of lights outside the window. I suddenly felt that maybe every small town needs such a chef. You don’t need to be so powerful, just be willing to walk into the darkness for everyone’s dinner, and then return to the warm light with mud and a little glow, stewing all the fears and fatigue into a pot of things that can continue tomorrow.
_Cuisineer_ didn’t let me save the world. It made me put on an apron, pick up a kitchen knife, and then found that it was not a great hero who turned a world around, but the most ordinary temperature that was willing to leave a lamp and warm a bowl of soup for those who came back late every night.
