Chapter 188: Rusty Chicken

As he mentioned before, he found himself a new hobby. Well, it wasn’t exactly a new hobby, but rather one he was re-exploring. It came as a shock but since he had come to Goldencrest, he realized he hadn’t really cooked a proper meal for himself.

That was the reason he went to Gabriel for assistance. However, the bald and beefy professor gave him the most confused look when Julius asked if there was a way for him to use any of the school’s facilities to cook for himself.

He had been confused as to why Julius was trying to cook instead of training. Julius had not really sparred with Gabriel all that often lately. Previously it was because his soul hadn’t been healed but even after it had been, Julius chose to wear the suppression band. With the band on, Julius had been satisfied with the level of his current opponents and didn’t really feel the need to fight the already frightening individual known as Gabriel on top of that.

Okay, but not joking, it was just that Julius was too busy. There was always something that came up or distracted him, so he hadn’t been able to dedicate as much time to training as he had been. Though, he wouldn’t say that was necessarily a bad thing. His balance of training and relaxing had been noticeably improving.

However, even while badgering Julius to reconsider his thoughts on sparring with him, trying to explain to Julius that cooking wouldn’t get him stronger, Gabriel still promised to find out if Julius could use the kitchens. With that being said, Gabriel didn’t foresee how it would be a problem and he was right.

Julius was given permission to use the kitchens for his own purposes. It was a separate kitchen that many of the staff members used for their own private meals whenever they weren’t eating at the cafeteria.

At first, the adults who were using it were confused as to why a first year was using their kitchen. However, once Julius proved that he was allowed in there, they left him be. In fact, some of them were very friendly and Julius found himself cooking alongside some of them.

There was a particular guy named Johan, who was often there at the same time Julius was. This led to them cooking together. Johan was very helpful because, like Julius, he had a fire affinity. However, instead of using it for combat, he focused on becoming a chef.

Johan was a shorter male with tan skin. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and a short buzz cut to along with it. The only thing he was missing was a cigarette hanging from his lips and he would have looked like every late-night sous chef from his old world.

After a couple of meetups late at night in the kitchen, Julius and Johan formed a friendship of a sort. To Julius’s immense luck, Johan showed Julius his various skills that specialized in food preparation. They were some amazing skills as well. Julius could see some of them being used for combat purposes even though they had names that wouldn’t exactly go with fighting.

[Refined Dice] and [Polished Knifework] were two very good rare skills that showed Julius just how amazing some sharpness aspected mana could cut through materials and with extraordinary precision too.

Weirdly, Johan wasn’t shy about sharing his skills. His reason was that since he wasn’t fighting monsters or people, there wasn’t a need for secrecy. Julius kind of disagreed with that, but considering that it was this very mindset that allowed Johan to share his skills with Julius, he wasn’t about to complain.

At the moment, Johan was showing Julius his [Regulated Temperature] skill. It was a skill that fit perfectly for cooking. He considered his mastery over temperature to be excellent. However, Johan’s ability to control temperature exceeded Julius’s own control by a large significant margin.

Julius could get things within a few degrees of what he wanted, but when it came to consistently getting the same temperature with exacting accuracy, Johan was in a different league.

Julius understood the importance of a few degrees made in cooking. Take two pieces of chicken and cook one a few degrees over what you want and it can come out noticeably drier.

While Julius wasn’t going to get [Regulated Temperature] at this time, he was attentively observing Johan’s precise management of fire mana. There was a lot to learn just by watching Johan play around with his fire mana. After Johan finished his demonstration, he allowed Julius to have a turn.

“Remember, the key is to infuse your will into whatever you are heating up. It is all about feeling the right temperature, once you know what’s right, you can replicate that same feeling the next time,” Johan told him. Julius realized that Johan was a very much, go by feel type of guy. Which he didn’t mind at all. While sometimes it was hard to understand where Johan was getting at, once he got the general gist, it helped a lot with his own exercises.

Okay, focus. Don’t allow it to get dry like last time, he reminded himself.

The last time he had overcooked it by a hair and ended with something more akin to shoe leather than actual tender meat.

The time before that he hadn’t cooked it long enough and it ended up too rare. The meat was from a Tier 2 monster, which meant that unless you cooked it perfectly the meat would be practically unedible. This time though, he felt like he got a handle on it. As one would say, the third time’s the charm.

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He let out the breath he was holding. Then he gently and smoothly fed fire mana into the pan, making sure that each part of the pan was heated evenly. If there was any hot spots or places where heat was unevenly distributed it would result in potentially scorching part of the meat when placed in the pan.

There were mana-fueled stoves available to use, but Johan was insistent that this was the best and proper way, especially for someone with fire mana. It made the dish taste so much better when directly cooked with magical fire. Julius believed him too, Johan showed him the difference and it was clear upon the first bite.

The trick was to stay patient. Flooding the pan with heat would just ruin the entire process. Julius should know, he had made that mistake a couple of times already.

It took his entire focus. [Sage of Savagery] was very helpful in this regard, the epic ranked skill proving its worth and locked him in so that nothing but the pan existed in the world.