CHAPTER 385: 385 DO AS YOU PLEASE, MASKED FOOL.

[Lucy’s POV: ] (Unfinished.)

"You’ve got some talent, kid."

The emperor looked straight in my eyes with a smirk on his filthy face.

"You convinced even me for a moment there with those words. I almost believed that all you were after was in fact the fulfilment of your goals."

There was a strange kind of anger in his eyes. A strange kind of thrill that was not present there a moment before.

"But... you’re so confident in your abilities that you do not consider the sheer difference of character that we have, hun?"

I didn’t want this, but at the end, it seems like this bastard finally figured something out.

"You act cold and you show that you do noy care about something unless your own plans are achieved, however, on the other hand, you talk about your own interests openly, ask me for a direct duel with THEIR presence as a threat, and not only that, you tell me about the demons that I myself purged from these grounds?

Hahaha, that’s some funny jokes you play, young child!"

An insurmountable amount of Mana exploded from his along with a strange laughter that reverberated throughout the entire battlefield.

"You almost had me there, hahahaha!"

The mana that he exuded strangely did not cross over to outside, but it was so intense that the soldier of his own ranks standing at the front of the lines ended up suffocating due to the sheer density of his mana.

"Hahahaha!"

Additionally, the creature that he was riding on, the giant earth drake, an S rank creature that was few of its kind present on this planet, ended up with Mana poisoning, reuniting in a deadly fluctuation of the Mana present inside of him.

"Hahahahaha...!"

The kind of destruction that his mere laughter was causing surprised even the opposing forces, my forces that were looking at this entire happening with complicated heart.

The knights of the crown Prince and the members of Gambit watching all this happening from the back of the ranks and from the floating island were surprised quite a bit.

"HAHAHAHAHA!"

And strangely, he laughed like that while looking directly into my eyes. Making the entire situation even more intimidating.

"Haaaa..." but then he suddenly stopped and sighed so loudly it echoed thrice throughout the battlefield.

I was looking right back into his eyes since his intimidation didn’t work one bit on me thanks to my crown skill.

It wasn’t going to work on me in any way anyway. There was no need to be intimidated by just this burst of emotion anyway.

"Do as you please, masked fool." He finally said in his usual, authoritative tone, and used his Authority on the near dead creature he rode on, and blew a new life into it.

*

"What?"

She just said there was no limitations to the ingredients and methods that we can use this time, something that even I had not expected to hear from her.

"The theme of this test will be (Sorrow) so throughout your entire three courses, you will have to make ’sorrow’ as the focal point of the dish that you make.

And, it doesn’t have to be the sorrow that we know by definition.

What the judges, the headmasters that have graced us, and I want to see form you all, is how you interpret the emotions of sorrow and channel them into making your dishes."

Lady Cleo had always emphasised the importance of the emotions while teaching cooking.

She always said how there is nothing possible in cooking unless you have the emotions for it. The feeling for it.

She knows how someone can make something by following the basic instructions and it would have all the taste and textures, but she knows one would not feel the emotions that the one eating this food wants to express... or forget in their given situations.

’For her, cooking was the most complex existing art style.’

To express something with the combination of various ingredients that are prepared with various methods was the same as preparing a very difficult potion or making a very difficult magic engineering equipment.

There were few things in this world that could produce the kind of effect, the kind of texture, the kind of aroma, and the kind of feelings that one wants to express as they want to express it.

There are some chefs in this world that travel far and wide in search of certain ingredients that would produce the kind of ’flavour’ or representation of the emotions that they wanted.

Lady Mendelian was also one of them.

’Lady Cleo was tied to the academy for a few centuries now, however, the fact that she had also travelled all around the world in search of things that could quench her curiosity.’

She had even been to places that the normal humans usually cannot and met creature and beings that not many people of this world ever get the chance to.

’She was perhaps as old as the headmaster himself, perhaps older.’

There was no way of telling just how old she was since for her, the concept of time was completely different from how we experienced it.

She was a creature of nature, so there were only a few things that made her different from the origin beasts like Celes or divinities born from nature itself.

She had lived within humans for long enough to know what was good and what she liked, so she knew emotions, feelings, and taste better than anyone else.

"You will have the same time as everyone else, you will have access to all the ingredients you see in the inventories, and you will have access to all the utensils you might want.

The techniques and methods you can use to cook can certainly be things that I’ve never taught in the class, however, remember that if you are trying to use a unique technique, you will have to explain to us what you are doing or why you would use that.

Aside from that, we will ask questions randomly while walking around the kitchen so you should be prepared to answer any of our questions at any moment.

Don’t be too worried about the quality and truthfulness of the answer since the marks will not be given based on what you say but how you say it when you are asked... or something like that.

Even I don’t know how exactly they will grade you this time."

It was very believable that she wouldn’t know how the marks were going to be given out since she was just a teacher in charge of this test.

The only role she had here was similar to the role of the headmaster and the other teachers, since even without her, this pre-prepared test would have gone on the same way.

But, since she was the only teacher in charge of this unique subject, she was here to do the work of a normal announcer herself.

"Well, that much would be all that you need to know, everyone." With an excited smile on her face, she looked around the kitchen, at us students who had gathered on their individual counters.

We had freedom to chose any ingredient that we wanted and we also had the opportunity to use method that we wanted in this test.

’This will be quite tough for them.’

If we can use any ingredient that we want along with any technique or cooking methods, then some students here will obviously have an advantage over the other students.

Many students among us had already learned cooking before we came to the academy.

Some used to do it as a hobby, while some of the students present around me hailed from the families of masters and grandmasters famous all around the culinary industries.

Some were masters of one kind of cuisine while some had refined their mastery of just one kind of food.

Some masters had taken in many of the students here as their direct disciples and had trained them from an early age.

’I was the same...’

But, there were still many that had only ever learned anything about cooking from this teacher before us.

Some of them had never even touched the cooking utensils until they joined this class thinking it would be easy since it was all about cooking— but that was the worst misconception they might have had.

’Lady Cleo’s class is famous among the students who actually know a few things about cooking and are connected to it in some way.’

There’s always a tough competition for a sat in her class since many of the masters and grandmasters of this world in the culinary industry had leaded some of the most valuable lessons of their lives from this person.

’She had produced geniuses.’

So, those who thought this was an easy class dropped out within the very first week of joining it.

While the rest who survived until the end and still had the desire to endure her harsh methods and teaching style, knew just what kind of things they might have had to face while staying in this class.

"Alright then~!"

-Clap! Clap! Clap!

She clapped her hands three times and gathered the attention of the audience and judges on the balcony.

"Shall we start 10 minutes early? Or do you all want time to think about what you will be making for us~?"

She was asking us but she was looking at the headmasters and the ones behind her. Since she knew the answers to that question already.

"Ah~. Looks like you will have ten minutes to prepare yourself. Oh! Then! How about I share an example with you all in the meantime~?"

-Snap!

She was a great chef herself who understood flavours better than perhaps even Lady Medelian. However, not many had actually tased her cooking.

’Not even many of the students had tasted it before.’