BRRRRRRRRRRR-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK!
The jackhammer's vibrations shook Izen's entire station, making the polished chrome countertop rattle like it was caught in an earthquake. To everyone watching, it was pure, unadulterated chaos—a madman desecrating a holy space with a tool of demolition.
Reign Voltagrave shot a look of disgust at the spectacle, then scoffed and turned away. A lesser chef would be rattled. He was not. Blue plasma flared around his pan as he began the 'Electrosear' process, caramelizing his perfect tomato slices in a nanosecond to lock in their pure, sun-drenched essence.
A divine aroma began to rise from his station. It was clean, elegant, and singular: the scent of a perfect summer's day, concentrated into a single, breathtaking note.
In the commentator box, Ciela was squealing with unholy glee for her viewers.
"He's literally using a power tool, you guys! I can't even! This is the biggest train wreck in Aethertaste history! Smash that like button if you think he should be arrested for crimes against cuisine!"
But Nyelle Ardent wasn't laughing.
Her crimson eyes were fixed on Izen, her brow furrowed in deep concentration. She was a sorceress of heat, a master of energy transfer. And she could feel something… strange.
Beneath the deafening mechanical roar and the slapstick comedy of a man in a cat apron wielding a jackhammer, a subtle energy field was forming. It wasn't the clean, elegant Umamancy that Reign was weaving. This was something else. Something raw, chaotic, and almost… primal.
'He's not just pulverizing it,' she realized, her heart skipping a beat. The vibrations weren't random. They had a rhythm. A frequency. 'He's using the resonant frequency to… to do what?!'
Down on the arena floor, Izen was in his own little world, deaf to the jeers and the chaos.
'A little more on the bass notes,' he thought, angling the jackhammer slightly. 'The bread crust holds the memory of the fire from the oven. The tomato skins remember the pull of the vine. The lemon rind remembers the sting of its own zest. They're all asleep. Gotta shake them awake.'
This was the first principle of a forbidden art: Residual Alchemy. Every ingredient, even the most pathetic scrap, contains a 'memory lattice'—a complete history of its existence. Normal cooking uses the ingredient itself. Residual Alchemy awakens its soul.
After a few more seconds, he stopped. The machine whined down, and the sudden silence was almost as jarring as the noise had been. The pile of trash was now a uniform, gritty, grayish-brown paste.
He then reached into his toolbox and pulled out his next tool: a commercial-grade paint sprayer, the kind used for houses, attached via a hose to a small tank strapped to his back.
A fresh wave of bewildered silence rolled through the Colosseum.
He calmly scooped the unappetizing paste into the sprayer's reservoir. From a worn leather pouch on his belt, he added a pinch of what looked like common salt, a dash of regular black pepper, and then, a single, murky drop of dark liquid from a small, unmarked vial.
The judges in the front row looked physically ill. Marrowe Pastiche, the chief judge whose palate could supposedly discern the soil pH where a carrot was grown, looked upon the scene with an expression of profound disappointment. This was a mockery of his entire life's work.
Izen aimed the nozzle of the sprayer at a pan he had placed on an induction burner.
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!
A fine mist of the gray-brown slurry hit the hot surface with a sizzle.
And then, the smell hit.
It wasn't a smell. It was an event.
It wasn't the singular, pure scent of Reign's dish. It was a symphony.
First, the impossible, explosive aroma of a thousand sun-ripened tomatoes burst through the arena, a scent so rich and powerful it made Reign's single, perfect tomato seem muted and shy.
Then, interwoven with it, came the soul-stirring scent of freshly baked bread, of a crackling crust and a warm, soft crumb.
Then, a bright, sharp tang of an entire lemon grove after a fresh rain, followed by the earthy, peppery fragrance of a field of basil, so vibrant you could almost feel the sun on its leaves.
The aromas didn't just mix; they harmonized. They layered over one another, telling a story of soil and sun and fire and life.
The crowd, which had been laughing seconds before, fell dead silent. People were sniffing the air, their eyes wide with confusion. Husbands looked at wives. Students looked at their teachers. No one understood.
Up in the VIP box, Ciela's jaw hung open, her live stream completely forgotten.
Nyelle shot to her feet, gripping the railing so hard her knuckles turned white. Her crimson eyes glowed with an inner fire. That smell… it wasn't just a smell. It was a feeling. It was the memory of her grandmother's kitchen, a scent she hadn't experienced in fifteen years. But how? How could that come from a pile of literal garbage?
"What… is that?" she whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of awe and disbelief.
Down below, Reign Voltagrave froze. His perfect, aristocratic composure finally, catastrophically, cracked.
He sniffed the air, and his face went pale. His own dish, his masterpiece of Purity, suddenly smelled like… nothing. The complex, overwhelming fragrance from Izen's station had completely hijacked the arena's atmosphere, drowning out his own delicate aroma. It was like comparing a single, perfect flute to a world-class philharmonic orchestra blasting at full volume.
His eyes, now filled with a furious, panicked disbelief, snapped toward Izen. "What did you do?!" he snarled.
Izen just gave him a cheerful, slightly vacant smile. He used a spatula to scoop the now-thickened paste from the pan and plopped it onto a plain white plate. It looked awful. A lumpy, brownish-red pile of goop. As a final, insulting touch, he garnished it with the single, wilted basil stem.
The timer above the arena let out a sharp, jarring buzz.
BZZZZZZT!
"Time's up! Present your dishes to the judges!" the Proctor's voice commanded.
Reign strode forward, his movements stiff with rage. He placed his dish, 'Electroseared Sun-Kissed Tomato with a Plasma Emulsion,' before the judges. It was a work of art. It was beautiful. It was elegant. It was Purity incarnate.
Then came Izen, shuffling forward in his mismatched clogs. He placed his plate down with a plain clatter. The judges stared at the unappetizing mound.
Chief Judge Marrowe Pastiche looked from the plate to Izen, his expression one of pure, unadulterated contempt.
"And what," he said, his voice dripping with enough ice to cause a frostbite, "do you call this?"
Izen beamed, his smile wide and genuine. "Leftover Stew."
The name was so simple, so mundane, it was the final insult. A wave of secondhand embarrassment washed over the entire audience.
Marrowe picked up his solid silver spoon, his hand tight with controlled anger. This farce was over. He would take one obligatory bite, disqualify this clown on the spot, and have him blacklisted from every respectable kitchen in the world.
He dipped his spoon into the lumpy brown stew.
He raised it to his lips, the entire world watching, holding its breath.
And he took a bite.