Chapter 2 (Part 3)

Leonardo, as if he couldn’t stand it any longer, took the plate from her and said.

“Are you so impoverished that you eat this garbage?”

About to shout in frustration at having her breakfast taken, Grace was preempted by Leonardo.

“If you can’t cook to this extent, why waste ingredients instead of eating preserved food?”

At his words, Grace slammed the knife on the table and replied sharply.

“I just wanted to eat something delicious!”

“And yet you burn it all? Even the last of the meat.”

Adding that it smelled strange, Leonardo’s words made Grace’s face flush.

Watching her unable to say anything, biting her lips, Leonardo held the plate further away and spoke in a cold voice.

“Anyway, it’s best not to eat this garbage.”

Just as Grace was about to shout in protest at the word “garbage.”

Leonardo pointed at the apron she was still wearing.

“Why don’t you take that off?”

“Why? You don’t mean to say you’re going to cook, do you?”

Grace looked back and forth between his face and hands, which seemed less skilled than hers, and reluctantly took off the apron and handed it to him when he urged her again.

As Leonardo donned the apron, he gestured with his chin toward the notebook.

“Meanwhile, why don’t you take a look at that notebook, Sir Lowell?”

He added not to forget to wear gloves as he walked into the kitchen, and Grace belatedly covered her face with her hands, overwhelmed by shame.

Even though she was so obsessed with the meat, she knew what her hands were like and still tried to cook.

And to make matters worse, she had exposed her skills to Leonardo!

‘Just die, Grace Lowell.’

It’s not like missing one meal of meat, or even not eating for a long time, would kill her.

Even when going on a beast subjugation mission to the north, the thought of meat didn’t even cross her mind because it was so tough.

‘What was I thinking, trying to cook just because I was hungry?’

Grace’s cooking skills were notoriously bad even within the 2nd Knight Order.

Whenever they camped due to hunting, they would rotate cooking duties among themselves to avoid letting her take charge of meals.

Of course, Grace was not allowed near the fire until everything was done.

‘Ah, but I really wanted to eat meat…’

If she hadn’t seen the meat when she opened the storage room, Grace might have given up on the idea of cooking.

But the moment she saw the meat with its brilliant crimson texture.

Grace couldn’t help but grab it as if she were enchanted.

‘If I just cut off the outside, I can eat it.’

Of course, Grace’s sense of taste wasn’t different from others or broken, so she was aware that it tasted strange.

But earlier, it was forgivable just because it was meat.

Pouting, Grace put on gloves and picked up the notebook, turning it this way and that. The emblem on the cover seemed familiar.

Tracing the emblem with her fingertips, Grace soon realized.

‘…This is the 4th Knight Order’s emblem.’

And that this notebook was a log of the 4th Knight Order’s duties.

In fact, Grace thought that trying to deduce when the corpse had appeared was meaningless.

This place was regularly visited for subjugations, and even three months ago, the 1st and 2nd Knight Orders had come here for a subjugation.

The 4th Knight Order only joins when subjugating large beasts. So, they hadn’t been here.

At least, not officially.

‘Sir Leonardo wouldn’t be unaware of that.’

Knowing that he was someone who meticulously checked such things to the point of being tedious, Grace opened the notebook, which clearly seemed like a knight order’s duty log, with a nonchalant face.

Even the contents recorded inside were just as she thought, a normal log.

Or it should have been.

“…What the heck is this guy?”

The duty log was entirely filled with one thing.

Pla.

The notebook, filled with only content about Pla, made Grace’s face pale as she looked at it, and she flinched at the thought that came to her mind.

‘Beast experiments.’

The log was full of records about Pla’s living environment, habitat size, breeding period, and other things that a typical beast researcher might be curious about. However, it looked strange because.

‘Pla is a beast that has already been studied by numerous scholars, and there are already many related papers.’

Pla, being a low-level beast, was abundant and had excellent reproductive abilities, so much information had been revealed about it in the early continental era when beasts began to appear.

Research continued afterward, so there were also many books recording new knowledge.

‘What kind of guy is this?’

Grace regretted that the owner of this log had already died.

With such dedication, there must have been another purpose, and it would have been her responsibility as the commander of the 2nd Knight Order to uncover it.

‘No way, he wasn’t really trying to do experiments, was he?’

Shaking off the ominous thought that came to her mind, Grace carefully examined the notebook again. And after reading the last page, she clenched her teeth.

‘He was a madman.’

The person who wrote this log seemed to have had a grand dream of controlling beasts.

She closed the notebook with a loud snap, her face now serious compared to before.

‘The 4th Knight Order consists of magicians and healers. Since it’s unlikely that a healer would have such a crazy idea, it’s probably a magician?’

Having thought that far, Grace unknowingly turned her head toward the kitchen.

A particularly delicious smell was coming from that direction.

‘…Did he really cook?’

Aren’t mages usually the type to be so engrossed in research or magic that they barely eat and end up collapsing from malnutrition, only to be discovered by a colleague just before dying?

At least, the mages Grace knew were mostly like that.

‘I’m really curious, seriously.’

Unable to contain her curiosity, Grace stood up and stealthily headed to the kitchen.

Drawn by the smell, curious to see if a mage was really cooking, she walked to the kitchen as if sneaking in like a knight.

Suppressing her presence as much as possible, she peeked inside and saw Leonardo’s back wearing an apron.

And the splendidly shaped food placed in front of him.

“…It’s real.”

He really made food.

A mage.

Leonardo really cooked.

Grace, forgetting she had come to spy, stepped inside and stood behind Leonardo.

Then the cooking Leonardo was startled and swung the ladle he was holding as if it were a sword.

“Oh, you’re pretty good.”

Grace easily blocked the ladle swung at her and smiled broadly.

In contrast, Leonardo was shocked that his surprise attack was so easily blocked. He thought he had caught her off guard.

As if reading his thoughts, Grace said.

“It was a sharp attack, but the movement was too big. Well, it’s pretty good for a mage.”

Saying that, Grace looked at the food he had made as if it were truly fascinating.

“A cooking mage. It’s the first time I’ve seen one in my life.”

“…Are you mocking me?”

At his words, Grace looked at him with a surprised face.

Blinking a few times, she spoke as if wondering why he thought that.

“It’s just because it’s fascinating.”

When Grace denied it cheerfully, Leonardo, feeling embarrassed for no reason, cleared his throat a few times and replied in a curt tone.

“I can’t compare to your cooking skills.”

“Ah, can you just forget about that?”

Seeing Grace clutch her head as if in distress, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

At that moment, both the one who laughed and the one who saw it froze in surprise.

The subtle silence was first broken by Leonardo.

“It’s not finished yet, so please go back.”

At Leonardo’s words, Grace made a face of disbelief and pointed at herself while asking.

“You’re giving some to me too?”

In response to Grace’s question, which seemed to ask if he was serious, Leonardo turned his back and resumed cooking, answering curtly.

“I’m giving it to you because it seems like you’d waste ingredients if left alone.”

Grace’s face broke into a surprised expression, and she muttered to herself.

“You’re a good person.”

Perhaps due to being in the body of the excellent knight Grace, Leonardo heard the small voice all too clearly, making his ears itch involuntarily.

As he searched for words to respond, Grace continued speaking.

“Oh, about that notebook. It belonged to a knight from the 4th Knight Order. It seems worth checking out.”

After saying that, Grace left the kitchen without waiting for his response.

Listening to her seemingly joyful footsteps, Leonardo chuckled wryly. After all, she was the woman who had looked at him as if she wanted to kill him just yesterday.

For a moment, the dream briefly flashed in his mind, but Leonardo quickly shook his head to dismiss it.

It was just a silly dream.

Meanwhile, Grace, who had left the kitchen, was in an exceptionally good mood.

So much so that she could dismiss the unpleasant incident from the morning and just before as nothing.

“Sharing food. He’s really a good person, isn’t he?”

Grace Lowell had a clear standard for a good person: someone who shared food.

More specifically, someone who personally made delicious food for her.

If they knew how to use a sword, they were even better.

“There are no bad people who share food in this world.”

Conversely, if she were good at cooking and Leonardo wasn’t, she would never have shared food with him.

Sharing a meal with someone she disliked was more wasteful than throwing it away.

It was a moment when Leonardo Fernandez’s evaluation within Grace Lowell slightly improved. All for just one meal.