Herta’s face showed none of the displeasure Ryan had expected.
Instead, she waved her hand dismissively.
“Just messing with you.”
Her tone was light.
“You getting familiar with this place quickly saves me the trouble of guiding you around. As for how you familiarize yourself—using your eyes or electromagnetic waves—I don’t care.”
She turned back to the console, and the holographic star chart rapidly transformed.
“Ability development is your own business. I only care about your ceiling and how much value you can provide.”
Herta closed the projection.
“Today’s testing can wait.”
She changed the subject abruptly: “I need to go to the kitchen now. You can come along.”
Kitchen?
Ryan was confused.
Weren’t these chores what the diligent little Herta dolls were for?
“Isn’t that what they’re for?” He gestured at the nearby dolls, voicing his confusion.
Herta was already walking out of the lab, not looking back.
“Hmph. Something made by hand is completely different from something made by a doll.”
She held her staff, the carpet beneath her slowly rising as one of the Herta dolls stepped onto it as well.
“I’m meeting someone important today. Doing it myself shows sincerity.”
Someone important?
Someone who warrants Madam Herta personally cooking?
A name instantly appeared in Ryan’s mind.
Ruan Mei.
That mysterious lady, also a member of the Genius Society, renowned for her work in life sciences?
“You coming or planning to run there yourself?”
“Oh, right. Coming.”
The kitchen wasn’t far from the main lab, but the interior once again left Ryan stunned.
This wasn’t a kitchen—it was a miniature Herta doll theme park combined with a high-tech food processing facility.
Dolls of various sizes—even more miniature than the ones he’d seen before—bustled about.
There were “fairy Hertas” the size of eggs, with tiny transparent wings, flying around delivering powdered sugar.
“Chef Hertas” stood at the counter, earnestly stirring batter with proportionally tiny utensils.
And there were even “rice Hertas” the size of rice grains…
Ryan finally understood what those densely moving little light dots on his mental map had been.
All these miniature Herta dolls!
At that moment, several standard-sized dolls—similar to the one that had guided him—walked over and surrounded Herta herself.
One began skillfully removing her lab coat, while another respectfully presented a thick, ancient-looking book to her.
Herta took the “cookbook”—which looked more like a spellbook—and began flipping through it seriously, muttering: “…substitute for Astral Spiral Honey… hmm… inert neutralization… temperature…”
Meanwhile, a standard Herta doll approached Ryan.
But unlike with Herta herself, it didn’t actively help him.
It simply held out its hands and looked up at him expectantly.
The message was clear: what are you waiting for?
Take it off yourself. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
Ryan: “…”
He had no choice but to remove the lace-trimmed lab coat himself and hand it to the doll.
The doll took the garment and scampered off with its short legs, its serious expression contrasting comically with its gait.
Meanwhile, Herta seemed to have settled on a plan.
She closed the spellbook and personally walked to the counter.
The surrounding dolls handed her various exotic-looking ingredients and instruments.
Ryan watched, dazzled.
Herta’s process was less like cooking and more like conducting a precise chemical experiment.
Thermometers, spectrometers, micro-centrifuges…
all manner of laboratory equipment made appearances in the kitchen.
When mixing the batter, she even used a micro-syringe to control the dosage of some purple liquid…
Throughout the process, Herta’s expression was remarkably focused—even more so than when she’d been adjusting star charts in the lab.
Finally, after a series of incomprehensible operations, a batch of batter—which looked…
well, reasonably colored and gave off an exotic sweet aroma—was placed into an oven that looked vintage but had clearly been modified.
Herta set the time and a type of energy wave parameter that Ryan couldn’t understand, then dusted off her hands.
“Done!” Her voice carried a hint of satisfaction that was hard to detect.
The oven began working with a soft hum.
Ryan, overcome with curiosity, moved closer.
“Wait… something’s wrong.”
BOOM!!!
A muffled explosion—not violent but sudden enough—blew the vintage oven’s door open.
The partially-formed cake mixture inside, bubbling with rainbow-colored foam, sprayed directly onto Ryan, who had been standing closest, covering him head to toe.
In an instant, he became a “cake person” covered in a colorful, sticky mess that smelled both burnt and sickly sweet.
Herta, meanwhile, had somehow already retreated gracefully to a safe distance by the kitchen door.
She stood with arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe, showing no surprise whatsoever.
Ryan stood frozen, his face caked with half-baked cake batter.
Inside the kitchen, the miniature Herta dolls hadn’t panicked at the explosion.
They were already automatically cleaning up.
Some flew up with little white towels to wipe the stains off Ryan.
Others were examining the oven for damage.
Everything proceeded in perfect order.
Ryan wiped the cake residue from his face.
He looked at Herta standing calmly by the door, then at the dolls preparing another round of ingredients and a second oven.
Sure enough, Herta acted as if nothing had happened.
She directed the dolls in cleanup while walking back to the counter and picking up the spellbook, muttering: “The ratio of dispersed stardust might have been off last time. This time I’ll use less…”
Ryan’s eyelid twitched.
Dispersed stardust?
That doesn’t sound like a normal food ingredient.
That’s possibly the Amber Lord’s dandruff!
Eating it gives you a shield or something?
He focused, and the vector lines appeared in his vision again.
This time, he paid special attention to the energy flow and temperature changes inside the oven and in the “ingredients” Herta was handling.
When Herta dripped that strange purple liquid into the batter for the second time, Ryan clearly “saw” the energy vectors inside the batter beginning to destabilize violently.
It’s going to blow!
Almost instinctively, Ryan’s electric field flickered, and he shot out of the kitchen in a blur, landing steadily in the corridor—even managing to straighten his stained collar.
He’d no sooner landed when Herta strolled out after him.
BOOM!
Another muffled explosion echoed from the kitchen, accompanied by rainbow smoke billowing through the doorway.
Herta glanced at Ryan—disheveled but quick on his feet—a flicker of surprise crossing her purple eyes before returning to calm.
“Good reflexes.”
Watching the dolls begin their efficient cleanup again, and seeing Herta preparing for a third attempt, Ryan finally couldn’t hold back: “Um… Madam Herta, maybe… let me try this time?”
Herta raised an eyebrow, her voice skeptical: “You? You know how to bake?”
“No,” Ryan admitted honestly.
“But I think I know what the problem is.”
He stepped forward and pointed to the basic cake batter that the dolls had prepared for the third time—plain-looking and unremarkable.
“Let’s use this basic batter. I’ll control the heating process.”
Herta stood at the door, noncommittal, but her look told him to proceed.
Ryan took a deep breath and focused.
He didn’t use the oven.
Instead, he held his palm slightly above the ceramic dish containing the batter.
Under his precise control, the electromagnetic field around the mold began to change subtly.
Air molecules were accelerated in an orderly manner—colliding and transferring kinetic energy precisely to the mold and the batter within.
In his electromagnetic perception, the temperature vectors were strictly controlled within a uniform, slowly rising range.
Soon, the mold began to warm, and the batter’s surface began changing visibly, releasing an appetizing baking aroma.
A small area’s temperature was stably maintained at a bit over a hundred degrees Celsius—exactly the ideal temperature for baking a cake.
Herta watched with interest, saying nothing.
She could sense the temperature changes.
Controlled within a range, yes, but still dissipating outward.
After a while, Ryan felt it was done and slowly withdrew his power.
A golden, fluffy, perfectly-formed cake base sat before them, radiating heat.
“See? At least this way it won’t explode.” Ryan let out a relieved breath, wiping non-existent sweat from his forehead.
Mostly mental exhaustion.
Herta stepped closer and examined the cake base carefully, then looked at Ryan with the corner of her lips twitching slightly.
“It seems your abilities, aside from running fast, serving as radar, and dodging explosions, can also function as a portable precision oven. Noted. An unexpected bonus.”
Ryan: “…”
So this is still data collection, huh?
“But,” Herta changed tack, pointing at the cake base, “a plain base isn’t enough. The most important flavor hasn’t been added yet.”
She picked up the spellbook and began flipping through it again.
Ryan felt a sense of foreboding.
Sure enough, in a genius’s dictionary, the word “safe” didn’t exist.
Success built on failure—the meaning was on full display…