Chapter 186

Chapter 186

She lifts the panel we've already talked about in advance.

Her eyes are wide as she smiles, as if she's still not convinced that this is the right thing.

"Wow, wow, wow, slime sauce sweet and sour pork. I've never heard of this dish before, are you sure you can eat this?"

Isheri turns her head and gives me a pleading look.

"Of course, I'm sure it's delicious. Shall we start with the ingredients?"

"Oh, yes, here are the ingredients!"

Of course I had the ingredients ready.

"Slime bodily fluids and a mountain of kingdom fire ants. Other than that, it's surprisingly ordinary! By the way, we use ready-made hot and sour soup!"

That's right. The only ingredients needed are those used to make the sauce.

For the sauce, it was enough to use what was already available.

"Why do you use ready-made ingredients?"

"Oh, it's simple, it's a ready-made product made by a bunch of master's students from a prestigious university, and it can't be bad, right?"

This is the kind of chef who sticks to a script.

In a dish like this, where the sauce is so important, it's best to use a ready-made product because it can always taste better than average if cooked well.

"After all, the sauce is the key to this dish."

The name of the dish is 'Slime Sauce Tangsuyuk', so of course it's a sauce.

"Okay, so let's start with the sauce. First, I put the slime fluid in a glass bowl. I just got this from the Ranger Club, and I froze it as soon as I got it yesterday, so it's in great condition!"

The clearer the slime fluid, the less good it is but the slime in the bowl is a brilliant green color. It was a very good product.

"But I've heard that slime fluids are incredibly basic, almost like poison?"

She shook her head, making an X with her hand at my question.

Yeah, because a gesture like that, with just the right amount of exaggeration, can easily draw viewers in.

"Exactly. If you drank this as is, you'd be in the emergency room in no time, and if you were a normal person, you'd probably die. But with this, it's a different story!"

As I said this, I clinked the yellowish liquid in the beaker.

"Alas, this is the mountain of kingdom fire ants you were talking about earlier?"

"Exactly! Interestingly enough, when you mix the slime's bodily fluids with the kingdom fire ant's acid, the acidity and salinity are perfectly neutralized. Did you know that?"

As I explain, I add the acid to the slime's fluid, and the greenish liquid begins to turn blue and thicken.

"The best part is that this thickens the slime's fluids. Now, with this, we've turned it into something you can eat."

"This is new to me. You're mixing poison with poison to make a dish?"

"That's an accurate description!"

She smiles and looks at the blue liquid, which has thickened completely.

"Now, here's the thing. It's perfectly edible as it is, but it's still not quite flavorful enough, so this is what we need."

With that, I poured in the sugar I prepared ahead of time, and she timed my reaction well, feigning surprise.

"That much? That can't be good for you......."

"Why would a health-conscious person eat sweet and sour pork, you should be eating a salad, it's just made to taste good!"

Yes! Health-conscious people should eat chicken breasts. Isn't that obvious?

"Plus, it's actually better for you than you think, because the mix of slime fluid and acid will restore your stamina in small doses."

Isheri grimaces at the visual of the finished sauce.

When she saw the finished sauce, she was intimidated but in terms of the video, it was a good editing point.

I mean, it's funny, right?

So I took it in stride.

"Sure. A rice cake that looks good is good to eat, right? This bright color. Doesn't it look delicious?"

"Uh huh....... Actually, I know that the color blue causes a loss of appetite──"

"──Doesn't it look delicious?"

"Yesh.......It looks delicious, haha!"

Isheri finally nodded with a forced smile.

"Then we'll have to eat it first, how do you make the sauce......."

"Isheri, are you a poke or a dip eater?"

"What? I'm definitely dipping──"

I poured the sauce on it.

"Huh?! What are you doing?"

"That's one of the advantages of this sauce, the sauce can't penetrate the hot and sour soup, so it's always crispy. Even if you leave it for an hour like this, the hot and sour soup will still be crispy, so don't worry......."

Sizzle.

"Ah. Do it."

I pick up the sauce-slathered tangsuyuk and hold it in front of her mouth.

Tsk. Tsk, the blue-colored sauce drips onto the table.

"Oh, did that hurt?"

"Yep. I thought if I told you to eat it, you'd hesitate again and then not eat it. Here, ah."

"Ah.......Ouch. Ow!"

Slowly and hesitantly, she opens her mouth, and at the same time I use my Aura and quickly shoves the tangy soup into her mouth.

In response, Isheri makes an odd sound as she squeezes her eyes shut.

"I can't chew it......."

"Chew, you have to chew to taste it!"

"Ew...... black......h...huh?"

She gradually raises her head and looks at me.

"Ma, it's delicious, isn't it?"

"Isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's kind of tangy and sweet, and it goes down smoothly on the throat......delicious?!"

Perhaps emboldened by the bite, she picks up her chopsticks and picks up another piece of Tangsuyuk.

"Mmm......! It's good, it's really really good!"

Eventually, her frightened expression disappears, and she starts to eat the Tangsuyuk with a giggle.

"You should try it, Eugene!"

"Oh, I'm fine. I ate something before I came."

......Truth be told. I was still a little scared to eat.

Well, this was made from a recipe I memorized in the game.

I've never even tried it myself.......

How can anyone eat this?

Yuck. I preferred plain old hot and sour soup.

"So, that's how I made 'Slime Body Fluid Tangsuyuk' with Eugene today, and I hope you, our subscribers and viewers, will try to make it at home, because it's easy to find the ingredients, and most importantly, it's super delicious!"

She decided it was time to wrap things up and started typing her closing remarks.

"Like and comment! Subscribe! Thank you for watching, and until now, I'm Isheri, the head of the Recipe Development Club at Seoul Hero Academy!"

"I'm Eugene Han from Familia."

──Thank you!

* * *

"Junior! It's awesome! It's awesome!"

Isheri let out a ragged breath, as if someone had broken open the classroom door in the early morning.

I don't know if it's from excitement or from jumping up and down.

"Ah, senior. Did the video go up well?"

I hadn't checked because I was working as soon as I got home, but now that I think about it, it must have gone up.

When I was thinking about it.

"Hey, look at this!"

She gasps and shows me her phone screen.

This is the YouTube homepage of the 'recipe development club' she showed me yesterday.......

"150,000?"

"150,000!"

"No, how do you get 50,000 subscribers in one day?"

"We did!"

Isn't this the kind of thing that happens to influencers?

That wasn't the end of it.

I clicked in and the number of subscribers changed. It was still going up, as if by some divine intervention.

I pulled out my phone and went to the "recipe development club" channel.

"...... You haven't subscribed yet, have you?"

"......."

I pressed subscribe.

As soon as I entered the channel, there was a thumbnail of me and Lee Seri in the "Popular Videos" section.

It had twice as many views as the other videos.

"That's good, I think you broke through the wall you were talking about."

"Yes, and now other people are even challenging me!"

"A challenge?"

True to her word, the associated video was the Slime Tang Soup Challenge.

Was this such a big deal that it needed a challenge? I had no idea it would cause such a stir.......

"That's not all, did you know that Eugene has a nickname?"

"......What is that?"

I'm uneasy.

"Now, look at the comments here!"

[TuneRay: Are all the academy kids so pretty and handsome? They're all good guys and good girls...]

[Gregory Jones: What can I do?]

[Rozé: I made it and it was really good! A new paradigm in the tangsuyuk world! TANGSUYUKNAM]

[To you, it's a bummer: we, our peers...... saw the new world, thank you. Tangsuyuknam, with this, our victory.......]

......What the hell is Tangsu Yuk-nam?

"This nickname is going to die hard, so I don't care."

It was common sense that a nickname like this wouldn't last long.

"Hehe. Once again, Eugene helped me a lot, so thank you very much."

As Isheri bowed to me, I heard a loud voice from the seat in front of me.

"Isn't that you?

"Why is she bowing down to Eugene?

'No matter what, how could you......'

Still, the bad boy frame is still on me.

"Don't be too hard on yourself. Other people might look at me weird if they see it."

"Ouch. Well, is that so, I'm sorry, I'll go first then."

She scrambles to her feet in response.

"Okay. Be sure to call me if anything happens."

"Hehe. Okay, see you later!"

Just like that, Isheri disappeared again, and in the quiet, I thought about laying down to rest...but.......

Drrrrr─ bang!

"Hey~! Tang Soo-yuk-nam, giggle. No boss, what kind of person's nickname is Tang Soo Yuk-nam?"

......This damn academy won't let me rest.

* * *

"......Today's villain we'll learn about is a villain that was once infamous around the world, the Demon Contractor. We will be learning about Kurus."

The first period was a class on villainology, taught by Mr. Park Yoon-ho.

"Before that, we'll learn about......Jin-woo Bevalt. What's wrong with your eyes? They're black and bruised. Did you go to the nurse's office?"

"I rolled down the stairs. I'm fine."

"......That's it."

Jin-woo, whose eyes were swollen from the incident before the morning inspection, looked at me with resentful eyes, but.......

"Honestly, Jin-woo deserved it."

"I agree. I watched the video but kept my mouth shut."

The two people in the front seat whispered as if to add an extra dose of dirt on Jin-woo.

"Heh......."

I can't say whether I thought he deserved it or not.

"Okay, so let's talk about Kurus first. Who knows about Kurus? Anyone?"

Mr. Park looks around the room as he says this, but no one raises their hand.

This was because so little was known about this villain.

"No one? Then──"

Just then, a student in the corner of the front row raised her hand.

It was Puppet Master Marie Nate.

"Ku, Kurus. He's a demon contractor and villain who made contracts with a total of 33 demons...... so he was able to handle a total of 33 different abilities, and while the quality of those abilities varied greatly, I heard that his ability to utilize them in a variety of ways gave many heroes a hard time."

The corners of my mouth twitched up as she spoke slowly and deliberately, but Mr. Park nodded.

"Correct. You know your stuff. Marie Nate."

"Thank you."

"Now, how did Kurus move against the heroes then, and how did the heroes move against Kurus then, let's see for ourselves."

With his hands in his pants pockets, he snaps his fingers and a wave of magic surges around him, instantly transforming the landscape of the classroom.

"What you're about to see is a sting operation in Beijing, China, 23 years ago. It was the capture of an S-class criminal, and it involved many heroes."

The location that surrounded us was one I'd seen a few times, and had even been to, it was the Forbidden City in Beijing and we were standing in the middle of it.

"Okay, here's a little test, I'll give the prize to the student who can fully demonstrate how to spot Kurus and how to apprehend him."

A round of applause was followed by another round of dizziness.

Mr. Park is luring us into an illusion to eliminate the limitations of space.

"You have 30 minutes. Discuss or look around, it doesn't matter how you do it. If you finish early, I'll give you free time. Then...... start."