Chapter 41: Hero’s Special Drink (Enhanced Version)

“The first cooking competition of Sea Realm now begins.”

As soon as Ella’s voice fell, a giant clock’s illusion appeared directly above the venue and began to tick, its endpoint set for 30 minutes.

Without a second thought, the fifty players rushed towards the ingredient storage point.

Before the preliminary round, players were allowed to use the basic ingredients stored in the venue, but the price was that they couldn’t take out anything they had prepared in their backpacks beforehand.

However, this didn’t matter.
After all, it was just the preliminary round.
It wasn’t yet time to really show their true skills, but they absolutely couldn’t be too careless in case they messed up.

The officials had prepared many kinds of vegetables in the ingredient area.
Basically, all the common vegetables in the exchange post could be found here.
Even for the local products within the domain that were not in the exchange post, the officials had prepared half a shelf for selection.

Although the choice seemed wide, if one wasn’t quick enough, after others had picked all the most versatile and delicious vegetables, you could only frown at the strange-tasting and incompatible plants.

This refers to the Sea Realm specialty, the small potato [White Fruit], and the all-purpose vegetable, the Sea Realm tomato [Jade Branch Fruit], which was the cucumber-like fruit Yan Shuangwen had used to make cold-dressed tomatoes.

After all, a household in the Flower-Planting Nation could be without any vegetables, but absolutely not without potatoes and tomatoes!
One could imagine how popular these two vegetables were.

In an instant, the shelves holding the white fruits and jade branch fruits were emptied.
Players who were a step late could only dejectedly go to pick second-tier vegetables.

The so-called start of the competition is the start of the competition.
The real competition had already begun the moment Ella announced it, naturally including the part of taking ingredients.
The preliminary round didn’t restrict you from cleverly using a dish that already had a recipe, but whether you could successfully get the vegetable combinations you wanted was also a test of your own ability.

Among the fifty people, only about one-third successfully got everything they needed and looked particularly happy.
The remaining two-thirds didn’t look so relaxed.
They could only temporarily switch to another recipe or re-experiment with permutation and combinations.

Ge Feifei was one of the successful one-third.
She happily placed a handful of white fruits on her cutting board, then, instead of using the flame pedestal provided by the officials, she pushed everything to the side, stretched out her palm, and a small red flame emerged from it.

That’s right, what she planned to make was the very thing that had once captivated the snail Tom and made the little snail unforgettable—grilled white fruit that tasted like french fries!

Grilling was the least used cooking method by players, because the flame pedestal could only be used as a modern version of an induction cooker.
Its design structure determined that it couldn’t be used for direct grilling.

Among the four magic systems, only nature-type mages had the chance to cast fire, and not every nature-type could obtain a fire element magic skill.

So when Ge Feifei produced this flame, it directly attracted the attention of many players near her.
Their envious gazes were all cast over.

The audience in the stream room also keenly discovered this scene.
Because the holographic live stream could be freely adjusted, many people directly adjusted their perspective to Ge Feifei’s area, watching her increase the flame on her hand and place a string of white fruits on it to flip.
Then she seemed to have coated it with some kind of juice.
The white fruit was grilled until its surface was slightly charred, and the golden-yellow charred color looked particularly tempting.

[What is this? Grilled fruit? No technical content at all, doesn’t look like it’s going to advance.]

[But that girl’s ability to produce fire out of thin air is so cool. I also want to go to Sea Realm to learn magic.]

[Person in front, even if it’s just grilling fruit, the word “grill” has a lot of technical content.]

[That’s true. I follow a nature-type streamer who also has a fire element skill, but he just can’t produce fire, at most just a few small sparks. This girl actually has such a big ball of fire!]

[So that’s how it is? It seems to make sense. Making fire in the sea, an ordinary person probably can’t do it either.]

[I don’t know why, but I think I smell a little fragrance…]

[Placing bets, placing bets. Is this sweet or salty? Place your bets.]

[Person above, are you looking down on our spicy party! (dog head)]

[If it’s spicy, the house takes all (confirmed).]

While paying attention to Ge Feifei’s showy palm-fire operation, the audience also inevitably noticed Ge Jiao next to her.
The two sisters were twins.
Although there were some differences in their hairstyles and temperaments, their appearances were almost identical.

The materials Ge Jiao used were also very simple.
She sliced two jade branch fruits and added them to a pot to simmer, then broke open half a big-mouthed vine fruit, squeezed out the sweet and greasy juice with a knife, and added it all to the pot.
She stirred it slowly with a wooden spoon until the mixture in the pot slowly thickened, and finally seemed to have turned into some kind of greenish-green sauce.

[Good lord, what is this? Cucumber sauce?]

[Person in front, judging by appearances?]

[Hahaha, I know! I saw a streamer before, and that cucumber-like thing is tomato-flavored!]

[Wait, tomato, simmered sauce!?!]

The audience had indeed guessed what Ge Jiao was making now.
It was the eternal, beloved by countless people, and essential sauce for french fries—ketchup.

Because the rules of the preliminary round were very clear—each player was only allowed to make one dish.
Since her sister was making french fries, she couldn’t make ketchup.
And french fries without ketchup, although also very fragrant and tempting, were missing a bit of soul.

Originally, Ge Jiao didn’t have much thought for the finals either.
She might as well be Ge Feifei’s accompaniment, making ketchup on the spot to be sent to the judging panel with her french fries.

The tacit cooperation between the two Ge sisters was undoubtedly extremely competitive, while Hua Yibing on the other side was in a predicament.

“Oh no, oh no, I didn’t get that green grass. I can’t let the judges taste my legendary Brave’s Special Drink! QAQ”
Hua Yibing counted the materials he had brought back and said with a mournful face.

Yan Shuangwen was right next to him and heard this sentence clearly, the corner of his mouth couldn’t help but twitch.

“You’re not really planning to make that dish in the preliminary round, are you?”

“Although the appearance is a bit lacking, the taste is absolutely no problem!”
Hua Yibing felt that his cooking talent was being questioned and puffed up his cheeks in rebuttal.

Yan Shuangwen was silent for a moment, then threw a coral tree fruit he had gotten to Hua Yibing.
“You can try using this instead. They both have a refreshing effect anyway, so there shouldn’t be any problems.”

Huahua caught the fruit with one hand and very naturally took his roommate’s suggestion—although Yan Er’mao was very annoying usually, he definitely wouldn’t screw him over at a critical moment.
Since he had spoken, it meant he thought this matter was feasible.

As the most popular one among the fifty contestants, he naturally had many fans specifically watching his perspective.
Hua Yibing’s obedient attitude instantly aroused the mockery of the bullet comments—

[Brothers, type ‘Hua Yibing who can bend and stretch’ on the public screen.]

[《About how I’m too much of a noob to snatch from others so I can only ask my roommate for help》]

[《This main be is clearly super bad but is doted on》]

[《You guys shouldn’t add everything to the book title, hey》]

[Is no one concerned about Huahua’s original dish? I think it’s called Brave’s Special Drink? It sounds like an adventurer’s exclusive drink.]

[Person above, you’re overestimating him. I feel it’s a weird drink that only a brave person can drink.]

[ls might be telling the truth.]

In short, the contestants on the scene had already begun the process of cooking their dishes.
For a time, boiling pots, stir-frying pans, and frying pans of all kinds appeared one after another.
Someone had even set up a thin stone slab on a pedestal, which looked a bit like grilling.

And because the system had not provided any special knives, most of the players were using their personal weapons to perform operations such as cutting, chopping, and hammering.
Thus, the audience was fortunate enough to see someone use a one-meter-long broadsword to cut a fruit the size of a flower, and someone use a gem-encrusted hammer to squeeze the juice from some root vegetable, and the diamond-like, crystal-clear gems were all dyed purple.

Hiss, stop it!

Thirty minutes passed quickly.
The clock above the players’ heads let out a high-pitched roar, as if some ferocious beast was roaring at the sky.
Some players were so scared that their necks shrank, and they looked at the top in horror to see if a monster was attacking.

“A roaring alarm clock, no need to worry,” Ella explained symbolically.
Then she waved her hand, and a long table slowly rose in front of the audience seats.
The table was evenly divided into fifty areas, each with a corresponding number for the contestants to identify.

“Contestants, please place the prepared dishes on the table.”

The players carried their plates forward one after another, placed them in front of their corresponding numbers, and then returned to their positions as instructed by Ella.

The railing between the audience seats and the long table slowly lowered.
The players, acting as the public judges, walked down one after another, tasting a bite of each dish, then giving their scores before moving on to the next.

With one bite, some people’s faces lit up with surprise, some’s expressions were ferocious, and some didn’t even have time to make any expression before they shot out like a balloon with its opening released, circling the venue back and forth, completely high to the extreme.
After two minutes, he landed, panting, looking as if his essence and spirit had been completely consumed.

This dish was actually so terrifying!

For a time, all the judges silently moved away from the bright red soup at number twelve—who would have thought that just by coming out to be a judge for a food competition, there would be the danger of social death on the spot?

But there was no way.
In the end, they couldn’t avoid it.
The rule for the judges was that they had to taste all fifty dishes and give a score.
In an instant, dozens of gazes full of resentment were all focused on number twelve, which was Hua Yibing.

Huahua silently squatted down and hid himself under the platform.

After all the scores were given, and all the judges had experienced a memorable social death scene, it was finally time for the system’s rating.

Ella waved her small red wings and flew back and forth over the platform once, and the scoring was over.
A score immediately popped up above each of the fifty dishes—at the top of the score box was the total score, while on the left below was the score given by the public judges, and on the right was the score given by the system.

Ge Feifei’s french fries passed without any surprise, but her system rating was not very high among the selected dishes, only 9.0 points.
While Hua Yibing’s improved version of the Hero’s Special Drink got an extremely high score of 9.5.

Looking down the list, almost all the food with attributes had a score above 8, and it seemed that the system score for brightly colored food was always higher…
Ge Jiao looked over all the dishes, lost in thought.

Later, when she replied to a post on the game forum from someone crying about their dish’s score always being very low, she shared the pattern she had discovered.
After this pattern was personally verified to be effective by the original poster, this post was pushed to the top by live-skill players.
From then on, the dishes in Sea Realm subtly deviated in another direction.

But that’s a story for another time.

Now, the ten selected people stood with their heads held high in front of the platform further ahead, while the forty unselected players also received a consolation prize from the system, a reputation value and a random mysterious crop pack.
But they were not in a hurry to leave.
Instead, they ran to the audience seats, planning to watch the competition to the end—who would be the lucky one to win the grand prize?

At this time, the curtain at the very top of the venue was suddenly pulled open, revealing a high platform inside.
On that high platform were two sets of exquisite tables and chairs made of mahogany.
There were also low-key patterns on the chair backs.
If an expert were here, they would definitely lament why such a powerful defensive rune was carved on an ordinary chair.

And Ella, who had been acting as the host, turned to face the high platform.
Her head was slightly lowered, her right hand on her chest, her gaze respectfully lowered to the ground, as if welcoming the arrival of some extremely noble being.

The previously somewhat noisy scene became extremely quiet.
The bullet comments in the stream room also gradually became fewer.
Everyone’s eyes were on the high platform of the venue.
There, the final judge of this cooking competition, and also the owner of the entire Sea of Death—the merman lord Sykes, would appear.