TPCFE 01

Chapter 1

“177…… 178…… 179!”

Luciela straightened her back after crouching on the kitchen floor.

Just ten seconds of rest.

“Huff…”

She panted heavily as she looked at the enormous pile of potatoes she had prepared.

Every potato, peeled until its surface was smooth and gleaming, looked plump and delicious. But all that came from Luciela’s mouth was a sigh.

The number of potatoes she had peeled since morning was a whopping 179.

Which meant she still had fifty more to go.

“Ugh…… it hurts.”

She tried to force her stiffened finger joints straight, but they barely moved.

Before she had started peeling the potatoes, she had remembered the head chef shouting at her the previous day, so she had removed the scales from a poisonous thornfish 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 they were all awful people.

From the very first day the head chef had seen Luciela a year ago, he had planned to dump the most dangerous and difficult jobs in the kitchen on her.

More precisely, ever since he had seen how fast and precise her hands were when preparing ingredients.

“Oh, you butchered Red Bison meat? And you’re only thirteen?”

At the time, she thought he was a good person. She had obviously been so hungry that her brain had stopped working.

“Let’s start you as an apprentice for now. Normally, I don’t take children as young as you, but I’m making you a very special offer. Do you know how competitive this position is?”

“Okay!”

He had smiled at her so warmly that she had eagerly believed everything he said.

Though, to be fair, she hadn’t had any other choice.

It took the head chef less than three days to dump every dangerous and difficult task that had to be done in the lord’s castle kitchen onto Luciela.

“Peel ten sacks of Bloodred Onions. They’re ten times hotter than regular onions, so don’t forget to stay away from everyone else while you do it.”

“Hey, you’re done cleaning the underground ice storage, right? If there’s any loss, you’ll have to pay for it yourself.”

“You little brat! You still haven’t finished removing the mucus from the Seven-Colored Octopus? What, it’s hot and you got burned? Shut up and hurry up unless you want me to make you regret it!”

His friendly tone from the first day gradually became more and more abusive, and sometimes he even hit her.

But Luciela endured it.

As an unpaid apprentice, she didn’t have enough money to travel somewhere else. More importantly, she still hadn’t found any trace of her mother.

A year ago, the last place her mother had worked before disappearing was right here—the Nor Lord’s Castle.

Her mother disappearing and then turning up somewhere completely different was something Luciela had grown accustomed to. The problem was that several of her mother’s belongings had disappeared from the lord’s castle.

“My daughter, Mommy has written down all the settings from the original work in her diary. If Mommy doesn’t come back, make sure you keep that diary safe.”

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……!”

Luciela gave up on trying to straighten her hand and grabbed the peeler again.

After she finished peeling the potatoes, she had to clean the shell of a Steel Turtle, but at least she would be able to eat a snack before then.

She glanced at the plate where a steaming potato, grilled with butter and skewered on a stick, was waiting.

And it wasn’t just an ordinary potato. It was a Tornado Potato.

Luciela had recreated the shape exactly as her mother had described it, saying that she used to eat them occasionally in her original world. It was one of Luciela’s favorite snacks.

She had even gone to the trouble of casting a buff on it, so eating it would allow her to finish today’s work early.

The fact that she would pass out in the afternoon because she had exhausted her mana casting the buff wasn’t something she needed to worry about yet.

“Today is a really important day, so I have to work even harder.”

Her bright green eyes shone intensely against 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 finally be able to receive a salary of two gold coins a month.

Furthermore, once she officially became part 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 her wages and eventually leave this place.

“Let’s do our best!”

Having steeled herself, Luciela clenched her fist with a hand covered in wounds and calluses that no child her age should have had.

And just as she had halfway finished peeling her 180th potato—

BANG!

The kitchen’s back door burst open, and a man walked inside.

“Hey there, kid.”

It was Nigel, the head chef of the lord’s castle.

Upon spotting Luciela, he greeted her while shaking his enormous belly.

“What’s this? You still haven’t cleaned the Steel Turtle shell?”

Nigel frowned as he looked at the Steel Turtle shell lying in one corner of the kitchen.

“I’m pretty sure I told you it was urgent. You’re terribly slow.”

“……I’ll do it soon.”

Luciela barely managed to suppress her rising anger as she muttered.

Full-time employee. Just think about becoming a full-time employee.

“Yeah, hurry up and do it.”

Nigel urged her on, poking her crouched back with the tip of his foot.

“We have to close the kitchen early today because we’re having a celebration party.”

“A celebration…… party?”

“Yeah. Your very own head chef received a twenty-gold-coin bonus from the lord.”

A heavy-looking pouch hung from his waist.

Luciela stared at him with a confused expression.

“Why did you get a bonus……?”

She desperately suppressed the words that almost slipped out.

Your cooking sucks.

“Why? Because my cooking has been receiving praise from the lord lately, and the soufflé omelet I made today was praised as a ‘masterpiece of the century.’”

Nigel boasted with a shrug.

A greasy smile spread across his fat face.

“……Soufflé omelet?”

Luciela dropped the potato peeler she was holding.

“……But I made that.”

Luciela’s voice sank low.

The dropped peeler rolled across the floor with a sharp clang, but Nigel didn’t even blink.

“I worked on it all night! You saw me doing it!”

“You idiot. Any dish that crosses the threshold of this kitchen is my dish.”

Luciela clenched her fists tightly.

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 anger.

“The last castella, the meringue cookies before that, the French fries and apple pie……! You lied and said you made all of them! You promised that this time, you’d mention my name! You said I needed that so I could get paid……”

“Oh, right. Your full-time position.”

Nigel completely ignored everything she had said before and snapped his fingers as if he had just remembered something.

“We decided to postpone that for another year.”

“……What? What are you talking about?”

Luciela blinked, her eyes wide.

“You’ve been pretty lazy lately, you see.”

He continued with a mocking chuckle.

“It would be good for your future if you spent another three years developing your skills while receiving nothing but room and board.”

Anger surged up from the pit of her stomach.

Three years.

Being forced to continue this hellish unpaid labor for another three years was basically the same as being told to live as a slave for the rest of her life.

He had intended to do this from the beginning.

He had never planned to let her leave, nor had he planned to treat her fairly.

He had only intended to use her as a machine for cooking and preparing ingredients.

Because he knew that she had nowhere else to go.

Something snapped inside Luciela’s mind.

The last thread holding her reason together had broken.

“……I quit.”

“What?”

She was done holding back.

“I said I quit.”

Luciela raised her head.

Her eyes shone fiercely, completely at odds with her adorable face.

She reached inside her clothes, pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper, and dropped it at Nigel’s feet.

“I’m quitting. After I submit this to the head butler.”

“What is this supposed to be……”

Nigel bent down and picked up the paper.

A moment later, his expression stiffened.

“This…… what is……?”

“You can tell by looking at it, can’t you? A list of all the corruption you’ve committed over the past year.”

Nigel’s tiny, rice-grain-like eyes widened as he blinked repeatedly.

“Cor……ruption? You wrote all that down?”

“Yep.”

Luciela smiled sweetly at him as he trembled with a sense of betrayal.

“My mom told me something. She said I should write down important information whenever I remembered it. She said that’s what keeping a diary was for.”

• April 12 — Embezzled ten pounds of sirloin and falsified the market ledger.
• May 19 — Overcharged for sugar and spices and pocketed the five-gold-coin difference.
• June 3 — Diverted the wage subsidies meant for the lower-ranking cooks……

Nigel’s eyes darted frantically as he read through the densely packed writing.

“Th-the total is 127 gold coins and 40 silver coins. And, just so you know, I wrote several copies. One of them is hidden somewhere inside the lord’s castle where it will be discovered at an appropriate time, so tearing this one up won’t accomplish anything.”

Luciela spoke calmly, completely unfazed.

A year ago, she had still been innocent and trusted people easily.

But she also had a personality that demanded revenge whenever she was betrayed.

“Y-you little brat……!”

Nigel’s face turned bright red as he gasped for breath.

Then, as though he had gathered his thoughts, he let out a contemptuous snort.

“Hmph. Go ahead and try! Do you really think anyone is going to believe you?”

He slammed his hand against the counter.

“The lord can’t live without my cooking anymore, you hear me?”

“What? Did his tongue break?”

“Even without the recipes I got from you, I have the ‘Magic Powder’ in my hands! A divine ingredient that can transform even the most garbage cooking into a gourmet masterpiece!”

Nigel pulled a small glass bottle from inside his clothes and shook it in front of Luciela, as though mocking the pure confusion on her face.

“With this, I’m invincible. Even if you die and come back to life, you’ll never get your hands on something like this.”

“……!”

“The lord is practically addicted to it already. What can you possibly do with a mere hundred-something gold coins……”

Luciela’s eyes widened as she stared at the bottle he was shaking.

Inside the small glass bottle was a fine, sparkling powder with a faint pink tint.

She knew exactly what it was.

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, a transmigrator, had called it “MSG” and described it as a drug-like ingredient—the ultimate essence of umami, more powerful than any delicacy in the world.

And it was also one of the things Luciela had been desperately searching for.