When Cedric opened his eyes, the world was strictly horizontal.
The first thing he smelled wasn't the scent of fresh morning dew or the ozone of a magical summoning. It was the stench of rusted iron, stale blood, and the collective, unwashed breath of ten thousand people screaming for his head.
Below him lay a literal mountain of the departed. Severed heads were stacked like discarded cabbage crates, their expressions frozen in various stages of silent agony. Hollow eyes stared back at him from the blood-soaked hay. On the back of his neck, he felt the coarse, chilling bite of the black iron guillotine groove. It was slick with the residue of the man who had occupied this space ten minutes prior.
Directly above, the "Fang of the Empire"—a bronze blade heavy enough to cleave a dragon's spine—hung suspended by a chain that groaned with a rhythmic, teeth-gritting rasp. Every vibration of that chain sent a shudder through the wood of the platform and into Cedric's marrow.
This opening, Cedric thought with a dazed irony, is a bit too well-done.
Suddenly, a transparent interface flickered across his retinas, glowing with the aggressive neon green of a toxic lime.
[System detected high-quality cooking environment: {The Cauldron of Public Scorn}]
[Atmospheric Pressure: High (Excellent for tenderizing tough fibers)]
[Current Main Ingredient: Yourself (Human, Male, 19 years old)]
[System Evaluation: Fat distribution is surprisingly even for a peasant, marble score: A3. Muscle tension is currently too high due to impending decapitation. Suggestion: Relax the neck muscles. If the meat is tense when the heat—or the blade—hits, the texture becomes stringy and unpleasant.]
Cedric felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his chest. A cooking system? He was a Michelin-starred chef in his previous life who had died from exhaustion over a truffle risotto, and now he was being appraised as a slab of A3 wagyu by his own brain.
"Execution—!"
The roar came from the high platform. The Overseer, a man named Barton, was a wall of flabby, corrupt flesh. He looked like a slab of luncheon meat that had been left out in the sun for a week too long—veined with broken capillaries and oily with sweat. He raised a fat, ring-encrusted hand, his eyes shimmering with the sadistic glee of a man who enjoyed watching things break.
"Wait a minute!" Cedric roared.
His voice wasn't a plea. It wasn't the pathetic wail of a condemned man. It was the sharp, authoritative bark of a Head Chef during a dinner rush. It carried a frequency that commanded attention.
CLANG!
The executioner, a hooded giant whose brain was likely ninety percent gristle, jerked the release lever back by reflex. The massive blade jolted to a halt, shivering just 0.01 centimeters from Cedric's vertebrae. The wind generated by its sudden stop whistled against his skin, cold as a tombstone.
"Begging for mercy now? Too late!" Barton sneered, leaning forward so far the silk of his doublet groaned under the pressure of his gut. "Cedric, the Royal Kitchens are for masters, not charlatans. You were tasked with preparing the 'Imperial Braised Lion's Head' for Princess Isabella's engagement banquet. Instead, you served a literal head of a Gryphon—a sacred beast of the realm! The King has decreed: since you like rare ingredients so much, you shall become one. Today, you aren't the chef. You're the soup base!"
The crowd cheered. "Boil him! Chop him! Feed him to the hounds!"
Cedric didn't tremble. He didn't cry. Instead, he did something that silenced the front row of the gallery: he cricked his neck, leaned back as much as the iron collar allowed, and fixed a look of profound, professional disdain on the massive bronze blade. It was the look a master jeweler gives a piece of glass, or a five-star chef gives a dirty dish cloth.
"Look, big guy," Cedric spoke up, his voice projecting across the square. "I don't know who manages the maintenance in this 'Cauldron of Scorn,' but they need to be fired. When was the last time this blade was honed? Look at the bevel. It's uneven. The edge is rolled in three places."
The Executioner blinked beneath his hood. "What?"
"And the rust!" Cedric continued, his voice rising in genuine indignation. "That's not just oxidation; that's a biological hazard. There's green verdigris and... is that dried gore from last Tuesday? If this drops, the wound is a one-way ticket to a tetanus infection. Do you have any idea how much that ruins the flavor profile of the 'meat'? A clean cut preserves the juices. This? This would just tear the fibers. It's sloppy. It's amateur. It's an insult to the profession of killing."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the birds seemed to stop chirping. The tens of thousands of commoners stood frozen. They had come for a bloodbath, not a lecture on metallurgical hygiene.
"You... you lowly kitchen rat!" Barton's face flushed a deep, bruised purple, resembling a beet that had been boiled for three hours. He had spent his career watching people beg, scream, and soil themselves. He had never been critiqued on his 'cutlery' by a man whose head was seconds away from a basket.
"You dare lecture me on the tools of justice?" Barton screamed, spittle flying from his jowls. "It doesn't need to be clean to kill you! It just needs to be heavy!"
"That," Cedric sighed, closing his eyes, "is exactly why your kingdom's culinary scene is a joke. You care about the weight, but you have no respect for the process."
[System Notification: Host's 'Chef's Arrogance' has triggered a psychological de-buff on the enemy. Barton's blood pressure is rising. Probability of a reckless, uncoordinated strike: 98%.]
[System Suggestion: Prepare for 'The Flash Fry'.]
"Chop him! Pull the lever! Turn him into mincemeat!" Barton roared, pounding the armrest of his gilded chair.
BOOM!
The executioner, panicked by the pressure, slammed the lever down. The heavy bronze blade plummeted with a piercing, banshee-like howl. It wasn't a clean fall; because of the Executioner's trembling hand, the blade wobbled in its track, turning into a blurred streak of cyan light aimed with chaotic, crushing force at the back of Cedric's neck.
In that split second, time didn't slow down for Cedric—it deconstructed. His pupils contracted, the irises spinning like aperture blades. In his vision, the screaming crowd faded into a gray blur. The opulent platform, the purple-faced Overseer, the blood-stained hay—all of it bled of color. The only thing that remained vivid was the falling weapon. It was no longer a blade; it was a semi-transparent physical schematic.
[Target: Bronze Guillotine Blade]
[Composition: 85% Impure Bronze, 10% Ferric Oxide, 5% Dried Biological Waste.]
[Structural Integrity: 42%]
[Critical Weak Point: Third rusted segment from the center. Stress fracture detected at the microscopic level due to poor casting.]
[Processing Method: {God-tier Massage Technique - The Bone-Crushing Palm}]
God-tier Massage Technique? Cedric thought. You mean the one used to tenderize Kraken meat? Fine. It'll do.
Cedric didn't pull away. He didn't try to shrink his neck. To the onlookers, it looked like he had accepted his fate. But in reality, his muscles were rippling with a precise, high-frequency vibration.
The blade struck.
"KWANG—!!!!"
The sound wasn't the wet thud of steel hitting bone. It was the sound of a cathedral bell being struck by a mountain. A shockwave of sound rippled outward, shattering the glass windows of the nearby apothecary. In the center of the dust cloud, the "Fang of the Empire"—the legendary blade that had executed three thousand rebels—didn't cut. It didn't even bruise. Upon making contact with the skin of Cedric's shoulder, the blade seemed to hit an immovable object of infinite density.
Because Cedric had shifted his body by a mere three millimeters, the entire momentum of the four-hundred-pound blade was concentrated directly onto its own internal stress fracture. The bronze groaned. Then, it screamed. Like a sheet of dry ice being struck by a hammer, the massive blade shattered. Dozens of jagged, glowing shards of bronze exploded outward, whistling through the air like shrapnel.
Cedric casually reached up. His hands, freed by the vibration that had also shattered the iron pins of his collar, moved like a blur. He caught a foot-long shard of the blade in mid-air. He twirled it between his fingers. Spin. Flip. Catch. The jagged bronze became a silver flower in his hand, a lethal extension of his will.
He patted the dust off his tattered tunic and stood up on the platform, towering over the heads of the dead. He looked down at the black iron base of the guillotine—a solid, two-hundred-pound block of pure metal. With a grunt of effort that looked far too easy, Cedric hoisted the iron base over his shoulder with one hand. He weighed it, nodding to himself.
"The thermal conductivity of this iron is actually superior to the bronze," Cedric mused to the stunned crowd. "It's thick, sturdy, and seasoned with a hundred years of... well, let's call it 'organic essence.' It'll make a perfect heavy-duty skillet."
The silence in the square was so thick you could carve it. Barton, the Overseer, had fallen out of his chair. He was scrambling backward on his hands and knees, his silk robes dragging through the dirt. His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish, but no sound came out.
Cedric stepped off the execution block. Every time his boots hit the wood, it sounded like a drum of doom. He lugged the massive iron block with him, the metal scraping against the stone as he descended the stairs toward the high official.
"Guards! Guards! Regicide! Sorcery! Kill him!" Barton finally managed to shriek.
A dozen armored men-at-arms rushed forward, their halberds leveled. These were the elite, trained to suppress mages and monsters alike. Cedric didn't even look at them. He flicked the bronze shard in his right hand.
Whirr—!
The shard danced through the air, vibrating at a frequency that bypassed the structural integrity of steel. In a single, fluid arc, it sheared the tips off all twelve halberds as if they were made of overcooked asparagus. The guards froze, staring at their headless poles.
Cedric stopped three paces from Barton. He leaned down, his shadow eclipsing the terrified man. He flashed a textbook-perfect chef's smile—the kind that promises a wonderful meal, yet his eyes remained as cold as a deboning knife in a meat locker.
"Milord," Cedric said, his voice dropping to a predatory whisper. "You said you wanted to stew me. You said I was the 'soup base.' But there's a rule in my kitchen: The one who can't handle the heat doesn't get to decide who goes in the pot."
He slammed the two-hundred-pound iron base down onto the stone tiles in front of Barton.
CRACK.
The marble pavement spider-webbed for ten feet in every direction.
"I don't like being an ingredient," Cedric continued, reaching out to grab the folds of Barton's multi-layered neck fat. He pinched the skin, rolling it between his fingers with a terrifying, clinical focus. "But you? Look at this marble score. The subcutaneous fat is thick. The sedentary lifestyle has made the tissue soft. If I render you down, I could get at least five gallons of high-quality lard."
"Please... I... I was just following orders!" Barton blubbered, his bladder finally giving way.
"A chef doesn't care about orders," Cedric said, his grip tightening. "A chef only cares about the final product."
Suddenly, the ground began to tremble. From the direction of the Royal Palace, a piercing shriek rent the sky. A squadron of Royal Gryphon Riders—the 'Sun-Eaters'—were diving toward the square, their golden armor gleaming. At their head was a figure in crimson plate, wielding a lance that hummed with magical fire.
[WARNING: SSS-Rank Ingredient {The Royal Grudge} is approaching!]
[Ingredient Profile: Princess Isabella (Level 60 Paladin). Note: This ingredient is extremely 'spicy' and carries a high toxicity level (Political Conspiracy).]
[System Prompt: Would the Host like to open the 'Imperial Banquet' quest line? Reward: Legendary Kitchen Ware - {The Bottomless Wok of Chaos}.]
Cedric looked up at the diving Gryphons. He didn't run. He didn't hide. He simply picked up a discarded seasoning pouch from a nearby fallen merchant's stall and took a sniff.
"Rosemary and black pepper," he muttered, shaking his head. "They really don't know how to season a hunt in this country."
He looked back at the terrified Barton, then at the approaching Princess.
"Well," Cedric grinned, tossing the bronze shard into the air and catching it. "If the Palace wants to play 'Kitchen Nightmares,' I'm happy to be the critic. But someone's going to have to pay for the prep time."