In the kitchen, Gloria was cooking breakfast on an electric heating stove.
Calling it cooking was generous; in reality, it was just slightly heating up pre-packaged ingredients produced by corporations and sprinkling on some synthetic seasoning.
Lin Ke stood to the side watching the edible items heating up on the counter, his mouth twitching continuously.
He really shouldn’t have held any damn expectations for Night City’s food.
[Protein Blend] Drink Quality: Common Description: A meat alternative produced by Protein Farms, containing protein, fat, carbohydrates, minerals, and all essential human nutrients.
PS: You don’t want to know what the primary ingredient is, but the citizens of Night City call it milk.
[Bread] Food Quality: Common Description: Synthesized and baked from carbohydrate starches with a small amount of cellulose to increase satiety.
PS: It’s just a name.
If you eat only this with a bad digestive system, good luck taking a dump.
[Synthetic Meat] Ingredient Quality: Common Description: Main ingredient consists of high-protein crickets, enhanced with beef flavor molecules and savory aromatics.
PS: Insect protein is still protein.
“Look at this—what kind of garbage is this?!
Doesn’t Night City have any normal food?”
“Wait, no!
Maybe this *is* normal food in the eyes of Night City citizens.
Meat is meat, milk is milk, and bread is bread.
Only someone from a peaceful era like me would think these ingredients are bizarre.”
“Hungry?
You’ll have to wait a bit longer.
Today’s breakfast is beef sandwiches with milk,” Gloria said, noticing Lin Ke staring at the cooking counter and assuming he was hungry.
These ingredients had cost her a pretty penny.
If she hadn’t considered that David was at an age where he was growing and needed nutrition, she wouldn’t have brought herself to buy them.
She could easily fill her own stomach by soaking five-Eurodollar starch energy bars in water.
*Milk, my ass!*
If he remembered correctly, Protein Farms raised crickets and earthworms.
Even if this stuff was processed to taste like milk, he wouldn’t drink it.
“In my hometown, stuff like this is only used to feed dogs,” Lin Ke said disdainfully.
But then he felt the remark sounded a bit insulting to people.
Still, spoken words were like spilled water; he couldn’t take them back.
“Oh, then your hometown must be pretty wealthy.”
Gloria didn’t think there was anything wrong with what Lin Ke said.
After all, keeping a dog in Night City required a monthly pet tax of 1,000 Eddies.
Only rich folks living in North Oak could afford such pets.
Dogs in big shots’ households even had dedicated nannies and bodyguards, living far more lavishly than the poor of Night City.
Lin Ke didn’t want to talk anymore.
Originally, he had wanted to check what ingredients were in the kitchen to complete his beginner quest.
Now it seemed he had better use his own ingredients to finish it—he had already delayed it for twenty-four hours.
[Chef’s First Meal] Description: Cook once to begin your culinary career.
Quest Reward: 10 EXP, Chef Skill Crystal
What should he make?
Lin Ke checked his inventory.
The only edible items were a few Pink Aberrant Fish caught by the Hunter and two pieces of dried meat looted from a chest.
He inspected the spice jars in the kitchen—there was only salt, sugar, and a bottle of chemically synthesized peanut sauce.
[Salt] Seasoning Quality: Common Description: Chemical composition: sodium chloride.
PS: A byproduct of Arasaka’s seawater desalination plant.
[Sugar] Seasoning Quality: Common Description: Carbohydrate.
PS: A byproduct of converting genetically modified wheat into CHOOH2.
Only sugar and salt were usable.
Forget the fish; he’d make a dragon meat soup.
As long as he controlled the salt amount and didn’t throw in random junk, the soup wouldn’t taste bad no matter what.
Besides, the meat of a Herbivore Dragon should taste pretty good, right?
[Dried Rations] Food Quality: Common Description: Chunks of Herbivore Dragon meat dehydrated and air-dried in a cold environment.
Consuming restores stamina.
Glancing over the existing kitchen utensils, Lin Ke grabbed an alloy cylindrical stockpot with a labeled capacity of three liters from a three-tiered shelf nearby, along with a metal cutting board.
“What are you doing?”
Gloria flipped the sizzling meat patty with a spatula, looking at Lin Ke’s actions with confusion.
“I’m making a little something for myself.
Don’t worry about it.”
“Heh, do you even have ingredients?”
Ignoring Gloria’s side-eye, Lin Ke turned around and filled half the pot with water from the sink.
Before he could put the pot on the burner to heat up, the liquid inside actually started glowing with fluorescence!
?!
[Contaminated Water] Drink Quality: Poor Description: Contains excessive microplastics and trace radioactive substances.
Long-term consumption causes gene mutations, chromosomal aberrations, and severe damage to physical health.
PS: This water is much harder than Britain’s water.
Drinking too much of that causes hair loss; drinking too much of this costs your life.
Lin Ke had never seen water so brutal.
He dipped a finger into it and licked a drop.
The tip of his tongue went slightly numb, with a heavy metallic rust taste.
It tasted just like licking the positive and negative terminals of a battery with his tongue when he was a kid.
*Ptu!*
Pouring the water from the pot down the sink, Lin Ke turned his back to Gloria and stashed the empty stockpot into his inventory.
A few seconds later, when he pulled it out again, the pot was already filled with a deep pot of crystal-clear spring water from the mountain pool.
Next, Lin Ke washed the surface dust off his only two pieces of dried meat and stored them back into his inventory.
In the kitchen, putting on a front, Lin Ke pulled fist-sized pieces of dried meat from his coat pocket.
Once cleaned, the dried meat looked similar to cured bacon—the dried lean meat half-wrapped inside a layer of congealed fat, with distinct red and white colors and a rather appetizing appearance.
Lin Ke pulled out his hunting knife and sliced both pieces of meat in half on the metal cutting board.
Then, pressing the cut side against the board, he sliced all the meat into thin, red-and-white marbled ribbons.
Since the dried meat was already cooked, he pinched a slice and popped it into his mouth to taste it first.
Smacking his lips, it was slightly salty, but the meaty flavor was rich.
“Looks like I should add less salt to the soup later.”
Sprinkling all the meat slices into the stockpot, Lin Ke moved the pot to the stove and started heating it up.
As the water temperature rose, tiny bubbles began to surface.
The dried meat slices absorbed water and softened.
Lin Ke picked up a ladle and began stirring to prevent the meat slices from sticking together as they heated up.
From a perspective invisible to others, Lin Ke saw tiny specs of light emerge in the void like fireflies as he stirred with the ladle, falling and merging into the stockpot.
The ingredients inside underwent a subtle transformation.
The congealed fat in the meat slices melted effortlessly into the water, turning the soup a milky white.
Then, the proteins in the meat hydrolyzed, releasing savory amino acids that generated rich umami.
A dense, intoxicating aroma wafted out along with the steam rising from the pot.
“Is this the effect of the Chef class talent?
It accelerated the reaction between the ingredients and the water.
It’s only been a few minutes, but it feels like it’s been simmering for hours!”
While Lin Ke was staring at the milky-white broth in deep thought, Gloria sniffed the air and shuffled closer, poking her head over to peek into the pot.
Inside, meat slices tumbled amidst rolling bubbles in the milky-white broth, which was the source of the rich meat aroma filling the room.
“Mom, what are you making?
It smells so good!
I could smell it all the way in the bathroom.”
David poked half his body out from the kitchen doorway, only to see the two standing so close they were practically touching.
The smile on his face vanished.
With a scowl, David squeezed between them, physically separating the man and woman.
Lin Ke ignored David.
He scooped a half-ladle of white soup, blew on it, and once the temperature was right, sipped the rich broth into his mouth.
Smacking his lips, it tasted amazing, but he felt it was still missing a little something.
He picked up the salt jar from the seasoning area, shook a thin layer—about a few grams—onto the ladle, and stirred it into the soup to build a base flavor.
Then he picked up the sugar jar and added a tiny pinch to highlight the umami.
He stirred it up and tasted it again.
Mm, perfect.
[Quest Completed.
Obtained: 10 EXP.
Reward delivered to Inventory.]
[Cooking Completed.
Obtained: 3 EXP.]
[Dried Meat Broth] Extraordinary Soup Quality: Common Description: Overflowing with vital life energy.
Consuming greatly relieves fatigue and restores bodily vigor.
PS: Even if the consumer is a cybernetic borg, it will still take effect.
That is the rule.
Scooping up half a ladle of broth, Lin Ke blew away the hot steam, ignored David in the middle, brought the spoon to Gloria’s lips, and said with a smile, “Gloria, try my soup and tell me how it is.”
Rolling her eyes at Lin Ke, Gloria rejected his direct feeding.
She reached out, took the spoon herself, and took a small sip of the milky-white broth.
The savory broth lingered in her mouth for merely a split second before her body’s instincts compelled her to swallow it into her stomach.
Gloria felt a wave of warmth spread from her stomach throughout her body—a deeply comforting sensation, like soaking in a hot bath.
In a place Gloria couldn’t perceive, a faint trace of life energy was absorbed by her body along with the soup, nourishing her flesh and blood which had been weakened by severe overwork.
However, the amount was far too small, nowhere near enough to repair her battered, fragile body.
“It’s delicious,” Gloria offered a very simple evaluation.
“If it’s good, drink more,” Lin Ke chuckled, reaching into the upper cabinet to grab three soup bowls.
He ladled a generous bowl of meat slices and soup for everyone.
David had intended to express that he wouldn’t drink anything from a stranger, but when the bowl was handed to him, the rich meat aroma wafting relentlessly into his nostrils broke down his mental defenses.
*Maybe I’ll just take a tiny sip to try it?*
Yet the moment the soup hit his mouth, he couldn’t stop.
His body instinctively craved the nutrients and life energy within the broth.
And so, the three of them gathered around the pot, drinking bowl after bowl until the pot was scraped clean.
“Burp~”
“Burp~~”
“Burp~~~”
Gloria covered her mouth, smiling embarrassed.
David and Lin Ke also let out long belches, exhaling the warm heat in their stomachs.
They hadn’t exercised restraint and had finished off everything.
David’s face flushed red.
Being a young boy with thin skin, he couldn’t bring himself to stay any longer and immediately headed out the door to catch the maglev train to school.
Watching David leave, Gloria returned to the kitchen.
She wrapped the untouched milk in plastic wrap and stored it in the fridge, then turned the meat patties and bread slices into three sandwiches, packing them into a paper bag for lunch for herself and Lin Ke in the car—no worse than the vending machine nutrition meals.
Then, like a virtuous homemaker, she tidied up the kitchen, washing the pot, cutting board, bowls, and spoons, before wiping down the stove.
Lin Ke was slumped in a couch potato pose on the living room sofa, taking out the skill crystal and crushing it directly.
[Soup (Novice)] [Proficiency: 0/300] [Effect: When simmering ingredients, transfers all nutrients from the ingredients into the soup.]
With ordinary soup, no matter how thoroughly cooked, at most 10–20% of the nutrients dissolve into the liquid.
As long as the physical structure of the ingredients remains, most nutrients stay in the ingredients themselves.
The dried meat broth he had just made was an example; they had eaten plenty of meat slices while drinking the soup.
With this skill, wouldn’t his cooking take off completely?
Just then, Gloria walked out of the kitchen holding a paper bag, saying to Lin Ke:
“Let me show you around Night City.”
“Sure.
*Burp~*”