Chapter 01
“177…… 178…… 179!”
Luciela straightened her back after sitting hunched over on the kitchen floor.
Just ten seconds of rest.
“Huff…… Huff……”
After catching her breath, she looked at the enormous pile of potatoes she had stacked up.
Every potato, peeled until its surface was smooth and shiny, looked plump and delicious. But all that escaped Luciela’s lips was a sigh.
She had peeled a whopping 179 potatoes since morning.
Which meant she still had fifty more to go.
“Ugh…… It hurts.”
She tried to straighten her stiff fingers, but they wouldn’t cooperate.
Before starting to peel the potatoes, she had remembered how the head chef had yelled at her the previous day and decided to remove the scales from the poisonous scorpionfish first.
As a result, her left hand was now half numb.
It would have been nice if someone in the kitchen had lent her a pair of protective gloves, but no such miracle occurred.
Most of the kitchen staff were relatives of the head chef.
And every last one of them was rotten to the core.
From the very first day he had seen Luciela a year ago, the head chef had planned to dump the kitchen’s most dangerous and laborious tasks on her.
More precisely, from the moment he had discovered how quickly and accurately she could prepare ingredients.
“Oh, you managed to butcher Red Bison meat? At just thirteen years old?”
Back then, she had thought he was a good person. She had clearly been so hungry that her brain had stopped working.
“Let’s start you off as an apprentice. We don’t normally accept children as young as you, but I’m making a very special offer just for you. Do you have any idea how competitive this position is?”
“Okay!”
Because he had smiled at her so warmly, she had eagerly believed everything the head chef said.
Not that she had any other options.
It had taken the head chef less than three days to dump every dangerous and difficult task that needed to be handled in the lord’s castle kitchen onto Luciela.
“Peel ten bundles of Blood-red Onions. They’re ten times spicier than regular onions, so don’t forget to stay away from everyone else while doing it.”
“Hey, you must be finished cleaning the underground ice storage, right? If anything’s missing, you’ll have to pay for it.”
“You little brat! You’re still not done removing the mucous membrane from the Seven-colored Octopus? What do you mean, it’s hot and you’re getting burned? Shut up and hurry up, or you’ll regret it!”
His kind tone from the first day gradually became harsher, and sometimes he even resorted to hitting her.
But Luciela endured it.
As an unpaid apprentice, she couldn’t afford the travel expenses to move somewhere else. More importantly, she still hadn’t found any trace of her mother.
The last place her mother had worked before disappearing a year ago was right here: Lord Nor’s Castle.
Her mother disappearing and then reappearing somewhere completely different was nothing new. The problem was that several of her belongings had disappeared from the lord’s castle.
“My daughter, I’ve written down all the settings from the original work in my diary. If I ever fail to come back, make sure you hold on to that diary, okay?”
And so, thirteen-year-old Luciela had decided to get a job somewhere that was likely to have her mother’s diary.
It was only later that she realized she should have carefully examined her employment contract before taking the job.
“Ten seconds. Done……!”
Giving up on straightening her hand, Luciela grabbed the knife again.
After finishing the potatoes, she would have to clean the shell of an Iron Turtle. Still, she would be able to eat a snack before that.
She glanced at the plate holding steaming, butter-coated potatoes roasted to perfection, each one threaded onto a skewer.
And they weren’t just ordinary potatoes. They were Tornado Potatoes.
It was one of her favorite snacks, made exactly in the shape her mother had described after occasionally eating it in her original world.
She had even gone to the trouble of casting a buff, so eating that snack would allow her to finish today’s work early.
The fact that she would collapse in the afternoon because of the magical energy she had spent casting the buff was a problem for later. It didn’t matter right now.
“Today is a really important day, so I have to work even harder.”
Her bright green eyes shone intensely, contrasting with her light blonde hair.
Once her work was finished, Luciela would finally stop being an unpaid apprentice and become a full-time employee.
In other words, she would be able to receive a salary of two gold coins per month.
Moreover, once she officially became a member of the lord’s castle staff, she would be able to move around places other than the kitchen and search for traces of her mother.
And after that, she could save up her salary and eventually leave this place.
“Let’s give it everything we’ve got!”
With her resolve strengthened, Luciela clenched her fist with her small hand, covered in scars and calluses that were far beyond what a child should have had.
And just as she had peeled halfway through her 180th potato—
BANG!
The kitchen’s back door flew open, and a man stepped inside.
“Hey there, little brat.”
It was Nigel, the head chef of the lord’s castle.
After spotting Luciela, he greeted her while jiggling his enormous belly.
“What the hell? You haven’t cleaned the Iron Turtle shell yet?”
Nigel frowned when he saw the Iron Turtle shell sitting to one side of the kitchen.
“I distinctly remember telling you it was urgent. You’re slower than molasses.”
“……I’ll do it soon.”
Luciela barely managed to suppress her rising frustration and muttered a response.
Full-time employee. Just think about becoming a full-time employee.
“Yeah, hurry up and do it.”
Nigel prodded her hunched back with the tip of his foot, urging her to move faster.
“We need to close the kitchen early today because we’re having a celebration party.”
“A celebration…… party?”
“That’s right. Yours truly, the head chef, received a bonus of twenty gold coins from the lord.”
A heavy-looking pouch hung from his waist.
Luciela stared at him with a confused expression.
“Why would you get a bonus……?”
She desperately suppressed the words that almost slipped out.
Your cooking is terrible.
“Why, you ask? Because my cooking has been receiving high praise from the lord lately, and the soufflé omelet I made today was even called a ‘masterpiece of the century.’”
Nigel boasted, shrugging his shoulders.
A greasy smile spread across his fat face.
“……Soufflé omelet?”
Luciela dropped the potato peeler she was holding.
“……I made that.”
Her voice sank into a low, cold tone.
The dropped potato peeler rolled across the floor with a sharp clink-clang.
But Nigel didn’t even blink.
“I worked on that all night! You saw everything yourself!”
“You stupid girl. Any dish that leaves this kitchen through the doorway is a dish made by yours truly.”
Luciela clenched her fists.
The anger that had been building deep inside her chest surged upward.
“How many times…… How many times has this happened already?”
Her fingernails dug into her palms, but she couldn’t even feel the pain through her rage.
“The castella last time, the meringue cookies the time before that, the French fries and apple pie……! You lied and said you made all of them! You promised that you’d mention my name this time! You said that was how I could get paid…….”
“Oh, right. Your full-time position.”
Ignoring everything she had said before, Nigel snapped his fingers as though he had just remembered something.
“I decided to postpone it for another year.”
“……What? What are you talking about?”
Luciela blinked, her eyes widening.
“You’ve been pretty lazy lately, you see.”
He continued with a snicker.
“It’ll be good for your future if you spend another three years honing your skills while receiving nothing but room and board.”
Rage surged up from the very depths of her stomach.
Three years.
Telling her to endure three more years of this hellish unpaid labor was practically the same as telling her to live as a slave for the rest of her life.
He had intended to do this from the very beginning.
He had never planned to let her go or treat her fairly. He simply intended to use her as a machine that cooked and prepared ingredients.
Because he knew she had nowhere else to go if she left this place.
Luciela felt the thread of reason inside her mind snap.
“……Screw this.”
“What?”
She was done holding back.
“I said I’m quitting.”
Luciela lifted her head.
Her eyes shone fiercely, a light completely at odds with her adorable face.
She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from inside her clothes and casually dropped it at Nigel’s feet.
“I’m quitting. After I submit this to the head butler.”
“What the hell is this supposed to be……?”
Nigel bent down and picked up the paper.
The next moment, his expression stiffened.
“This…… What in the world is……?”
“You can tell by looking at it, can’t you? It’s a list of all the corruption you’ve committed over the past year.”
Nigel’s tiny, rice-grain-sized eyes widened as he blinked repeatedly.
“Cor…… ruption? You wrote all that down?”
“Yep.”
As he trembled with a sense of betrayal, Luciela smiled sweetly.
“My mom told me something. She said I should write down important information whenever I remembered it. That’s why I keep a diary.”
- April 12: Embezzled ten geun of sirloin and falsified market records.
- May 19: Overcharged for sugar and spices, pocketing the difference of 5 gold coins.
- June 3: Diverted salary subsidies intended for lower-ranking cooks……
“Y-You little bitch……!”
Nigel’s eyes darted frantically as he read through the densely written list.
“Total: 127 gold coins and 40 silver coins. For your information, I wrote several copies, and I hid one of them somewhere inside the lord’s castle where it can be discovered at an appropriate time. So tearing this one up won’t accomplish anything.”
Luciela continued speaking without the slightest concern.
A year ago, she had still been innocent and trusted people easily.
But she was also the kind of person who always took revenge after being betrayed.
“Y-You little brat……!”
Nigel’s face turned bright red as he gasped for breath.
Then, as if he had collected his thoughts, he let out a contemptuous snort.
“Hmph! Go ahead, then! Do you really think anyone’s going to believe you?”
He slammed his hand against the kitchen counter.
“The lord can’t live without my cooking anymore, you hear me?”
“What? Did his taste buds break?”
“Even aside from the recipes I got from you, I’ve got the ‘Magic Powder’ in my hands! A divine ingredient that can transform even the most garbage-like dish into a masterpiece!”
As though mocking Luciela’s face, which was filled with genuine confusion, Nigel pulled a small glass bottle from inside his clothes and shook it.
“With this, I’m invincible. Even if you died and came back to life a thousand times, you’d never get your hands on something like this.”
“……!”
“The lord is practically addicted already. What are you going to do with a measly hundred and some gold coins……?”
Luciela stared wide-eyed at the bottle he was shaking.
Inside the small glass bottle was a fine, sparkling powder with a pinkish hue.
She knew what it was.
Her mother’s powder.
More precisely, it was a powder that Luciela herself had made according to her mother’s instructions.
Her mother, who had been transmigrated into this world, called it MSG and described it as a narcotic-like ingredient containing the essence of umami, more powerful than any delicacy under heaven.
It was also one of the things Luciela had been desperately searching for.
