<948 - Oknodie's Rampage: The Ultimate Monster Cuisine Competition (1)>
The life of a Jaku was on the test bench.
If the Monster Cuisine Competition was successfully operated until the closing ceremony, they would survive without suspicion.
On the contrary, if they made a clumsy and awkward presentation before the closing ceremony, they would draw the professors’ suspicion, be exposed, and could end up dead on the spot.
“Then, participants who have submitted their registration fees, please wait in the waiting room, and spectators, please wait in the spectator stands. Due to the nature of the event, it may take some time for participants to gather before the event starts, thank you for your understanding!”
The Jaku ordered the restless monsters hiding around to be immediately evicted, providing each a cooking hat or something similar to wear as they entered.
Crazy! What about unique cuisines?
Unique.
One of a kind.
An item that only one person in the world can create.
Creating a hundred such special dishes in a short time was nearly impossible.
But desperate people often unleash superhuman strength and draw out all their inherent possibilities.
“Monster cuisine.”
Kinslaying wasn’t foreign to monsters.
Not all monster cells operate this way, but the properties of those that do enhance synergy become stronger the more they are collected.
Normally, monsters wouldn’t go so far as to cook it.
What if they lost power while applying heat?
This was where the paradigm shift began.
Long ago, how did the Empire Nobles become food masters?
They developed new recipes by cooking unboilable monster dishes.
The method was the same.
Just as the Empire Nobles became pioneers of the Empire, it was time for the monsters to rise as great challengers!
The Monster Forest is overflowing with rare monsters.
These were ‘rare ingredients’ that had never existed in the world before, no one had ever challenged.
Of course, it’s overflowing. The Forest is where we dispose of those who have undergone prohibited experiments in our research or have overbred, as well as those that we need to observe in their natural ecosystems.
Moreover, the Jaku, having more access to information than usual researchers in the Buzhaar Research Agency, was almost a sage regarding the Monster Forest.
“Artillery Unit. Observe the ‘lower monsters’ reigned in locally and bombard their habitats.”
The artillery unit turned their barrels to unleash long-range strikes towards Oknodie, ensuring it wouldn’t escape anywhere.
Artillery fire that deviated from the strictly prepared trajectory stimulated large-scale monsters, and an attack from a distant massive species smashed the artillery position in an instant, turning some of their number into blood mush.
“Assassination Unit. Immediately shift ambush positions to the predicted movement paths of ‘large species monsters’ detected by the vibrations of the bombardment as soon as the firing ends. Relay the expected movement paths.”
The Assassination Unit, which would explosively induce various status ailments to the immobilized Oknodie, shifted to block and eliminate the colossal monsters.
Most of them fell quickly to the unexpectedly swift counterattacks of those massive species monsters.
“Martial Arts Unit. Your job is… to capture the fleeing monsters as ‘ingredients.’”
With the mission of capturing ingredients, the Martial Arts Unit had to subdue the neutralized Oknodie.
The Jaku felt aggrieved, having to take on such a challenging task despite mobilizing an all-star lineup like this.
Yet, that despite the involvement of professors showed the Jaku’s competence.
Typically, they wouldn’t resist at all and just die.
This scene could showcase the worth of climbing up to the position of Jaku while brushing past the huge, powerful monsters under Professor Buzhaar’s supervision.
“Ingredient capture complete.”
“Where should the collected ingredients be placed?”
“Magic Unit. Construct specialized containment procedures and isolation facilities according to the various characteristics of the ingredients to prevent their toxins from contaminating the earth or air!”
Originally intending to confine and neutralize Oknodie among the heaps of toxins, contrary to their intentions, the isolation structure became a storage room for Oknodie’s food.
In a rush for food storage, the Magic Unit soldiers tasked with storing harmful corpses within the isolation facility rapidly began to drop like flies due to containment failures and the toxicity of the corpses.
Amidst all these sacrifices while gathering the ‘ingredients’ for the competition, the Jaku called upon their talents just as much as those from the Martial Arts Unit.
“Iron Wall Unit. You are… the food fighter participants.”
Tank-like monsters with high resistance and stamina discarded their heavy armor and vicious shells to hurry into the participant waiting room.
“Hello!”
“Hi.”
“…Nice to meet you.”
“You all are really big! Can I feel your biceps?”
“Biceps? That’s difficult.”
“…No thanks.”
Oblivious to the serious atmosphere among the monsters, Oknodie approached with a bright smile, happily extracting information about the new event characters to build rapport.
“How many servings do you eat in a day?”
“Red meat versus blue meat! Which is tastier?”
“Have you tried the explosive dried cod with dynamite-level explosive power?”
“I have one in my food backpack, want to try?”
“Oh, you don’t like seafood! How about the explosive tree sap instead?”
One monster, overwhelmed by Oknodie’s unstoppable curiosity, shivered and extended their hand.
“I’ll eat it, so please be quiet.”
“Sure!”
The monster trusted in their resistance.
Not all monster cells could obtain side effects without issue.
The less refined the cells due to a lack of points, the more forcibly consumed cells, and the slower the characteristic improvement through their mana techniques, various toxins would be secreted to survive, followed by essential survival-type resistance.
The monster stepping up to silence Oknodie was one with rare monster cells that could stir up blood flow explosions, with overwhelmingly high explosive resistance.
Pfft!
As swelling gases filled them up, the monsters thought little of it.
What a ruckus with digestion, they merely observed.
When the monster that drank the explosive tree sap finally clutched their belly, groaning in pain.
And as their belly swelled larger and larger, like a balloon, only then did the monsters realize something was amiss.
In due time, the monster’s face was overwhelmed with unbearable pain.
Bang!!!
The blood and guts that made up the monster splattered across the waiting room.
Under the rain of blood pouring from the ceiling, one monster let out a scream.
And just then, a few drops of explosive tree sap slipped into the screaming monster’s mouth.
The explosive tree’s characteristic was to mix seeds into the sap for reproduction and to explode the target that drank the sap, spreading their spawn with its explosion!
Unaware of this, the monsters’ bellies began to swell one after another.
“NO! NO!”
“Help me! Please, help!”
“How do we stop this?!”
The monsters screamed in despair, unable to withstand their mounting fears.
“No! If you handle the resistance properly, you can stop the self-replication of explosive cells…? Even with high mana techniques, it can be held off… You didn’t improve your resistance or mana techniques coming to the food fighter competition??”
No monster left in the waiting room could comprehend Oknodie’s incredulity.
Bang!! Bang!!! Splurt!!!
Monstrous participants exploded, spraying blood and flesh everywhere.
Beyond the chain explosions, a monster that survived tucked away in a corner looked down at their arm.
There was a piece of bone, flung from an explosion, piercing through their skin.
Pffffhhhhh.
Even without drinking blood, the explosion’s effects forced blood to seep into the situation!
The series of explosions continued, second, third, fourth.
There was nowhere to escape the continuous blasts within the waiting room.
Physically and magically.
Monsters unable to withstand the blasts perished completely.
“What the hell? What on earth is happening?!”
The panicked Jaku rushed in late.
Had their identities been exposed?
Had they messed up?
Although the Jaku was anxious, Oknodie responded with a sheepish expression, lowering their mana protection.
“I just offered them snacks, and they suddenly exploded. If they can’t even handle this level of resistance, they shouldn’t be participating in the food fighter competition… Were they really participants? What about the competition? Sniff… Please say it’s not invalidated because there aren’t enough participants?”
The Iron Wall Unit, a precious force to captivate Oknodie, fell victim to Oknodie’s cunning plan and perished.
The Jaku, unable to vent their frustration at that grim reality, had to awkwardly move their facial muscles to smile.
“Of course not! Within the waiting rooms, the preliminaries would verify that the food fighters have proven their prowess to advance to the finals, and you’ve wonderfully validated that!”
“Phew! So they were participants I could lose!”
“…Participant Oknodie. Shortly, there will be a match against the finalist participants, so please wait quietly in the next waiting room.”
“Okay!”
Hastily placing another combat unit in the temporary waiting room after leading Oknodie in for a moment.
This time, all the participants were collapsed on the ground, dead.
“No, I only ate one higher-grade poison candy out of jitters before the competition, but it tasted bad, and the poison I expelled suddenly took other participants down!”
“…Congratulations on passing the second round of preliminaries!!!”
Five rounds of preliminaries were held, and the combat units had been reduced to five parties.
