The duel was over, but the chaos had just begun.
As Izen shuffled out of the Colosseum's back exit, humming his off-key tune, he was completely unaware of the digital firestorm he had ignited. The clip of Marrowe Pastiche weeping had already been ripped, edited, and meme-ified. #GodOfGarbage was trending number one worldwide. Ciela Vantablue's stream had crashed from the sheer volume of new subscribers.
The name Izen Loxidon, which didn't even exist in the culinary world an hour ago, was now on the lips of every chef, critic, and foodie on the planet.
But Izen wasn't looking at his phone. He was looking for the academy's main refuse center. He'd spotted it on a map earlier. The dinner service for the main cafeteria would be wrapping up soon, and that meant the kitchens would be throwing out the best stuff.
Meanwhile, back in the Colosseum, the authorities were trying to manage the fallout.
"Residual Alchemy?" Dean Tethys Quirin murmured, watching a replay of the duel in his private observation suite high above the arena. His face, usually a mask of pleasant riddles, was uncharacteristically grim. He swirled a glass of amber liquid, his knuckles white. "So, a practitioner has finally appeared in the open. And a monster of a talent, at that."
His assistant, a severe-looking woman with glasses, stood rigidly beside him. "Sir, the Voltagrave Conglomerate is already on the line. They are demanding a formal investigation into Loxidon for 'culinary heresy' and use of 'unsanctioned techniques.'"
"Let them demand," the Dean said, his eyes fixed on the screen as Izen packed away his paint sprayer. "The rules of the placement duel are clear: any tool, any technique, as long as the dish is edible. We have no grounds to disqualify him." He took a slow sip. "In fact, we have grounds to give him a perfect score."
"But sir, the political pressure—"
"Will be immense," the Dean finished, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "Excellent. The academy has been too peaceful lately. A little chaos is good for the digestion." He tapped a button on his console. "Find out which guild Izen Loxidon has been assigned to. And put a Level 3 surveillance detail on him. I want to know everywhere he goes, everyone he talks to, and everything he eats."
In the VIP commentator's box, Nyelle Ardent was fielding a dozen calls at once.
"No, I don't know what it was!" she barked into her phone, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. "Yes, I smelled it! It was impossible! It smelled like… like history!"
She hung up and immediately took another call. "Ciela, shut up about your follower count for one second! Did you get a clean recording of the energy signature from his station?"
Ciela, still floating on a cloud of digital fame, was checking her analytics. "The what? Oh, yeah, the tech team is analyzing it now. They said it wasn't Umamancy. It was… I don't know, 'noisy.' Like a thousand signals all at once instead of one clean one."
Nyelle's mind raced. Umamancy was the art of conducting flavor. What Izen had done wasn't conducting. It was… necromancy. He had raised the ghosts of flavors from their graves.
"Where is he now?" Nyelle demanded.
"No idea," Ciela chirped. "He just… wandered off. The camera crews lost him. It's perfect! Adds to the mystery! My fans are calling him 'The Slumdog Cuisinier'!"
Nyelle gritted her teeth in frustration. She didn't care about nicknames or streams. She cared about the art. And that boy, that clown in a cat apron, had just shown her an art she never knew existed. It both infuriated and fascinated her. She had to find him. She had to understand.
At that very moment, the subject of all this chaos was ankle-deep in potato peels.
Izen had found the main disposal bay behind the central kitchens. The air was thick with the smell of discarded food. To anyone else, it would be disgusting. To Izen, it was paradise.
'Ooh, carrot tops,' he thought, his eyes lighting up. He carefully plucked a bushel of the leafy green tops from a bin. Most chefs threw them out, thinking them bitter. Izen knew that if you blanched them just right, they had a deep, earthy sweetness you couldn't find in the root. 'Perfect for a pesto.'
He found some slightly bruised apples, the trimmings from a rack of lamb, and a whole bucket of day-old rice. It was a treasure trove.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?!" a gruff voice shouted.
Izen turned. A burly, sour-faced kitchen worker was marching toward him, holding a dripping trash bag. "This ain't a charity kitchen, kid! Get outta here before I call security!"
"Oh, sorry," Izen said cheerfully, holding up the carrot tops. "I was just admiring these. They're too good to throw away."
The worker scoffed. "They're garbage. Just like the rest of this." He gestured to the bins. "Now beat it."
Izen just smiled. He reached into his apron pocket and pulled out a small, foil-wrapped parcel. "Here," he said, holding it out. "A trade."
The worker eyed him suspiciously. "What is it?"
"Just a snack. I made too much earlier."
Grudgingly, the worker took the parcel. It was still warm. He unwrapped it to find a simple-looking biscuit, made from what looked like dark, coarse flour. It didn't look appetizing at all. With a shrug, he took a bite.
And froze.
His sour expression melted. His eyes went wide. The flavor of a thousand wheat fields, of warm butter, of his mother's baking on a cold winter morning, flooded his senses. The biscuit wasn't just food; it was a memory of every good thing he had ever forgotten.
He looked down at the half-eaten biscuit in his hand, then back up at Izen, his mouth agape.
Izen just gave him a little wave. "Enjoy," he said, and with his arms full of salvaged treasures, he happily shuffled off into the evening, leaving the kitchen worker standing speechless in a pile of garbage, having a minor existential crisis over a biscuit.
Unseen, from a rooftop two hundred yards away, a figure in a dark uniform lowered a pair of electro-oculars.
"Subject Loxidon has made contact with a kitchen staffer," the agent whispered into his collar mic. "He appears to have… weaponized a biscuit. Sir, I don't think Level 3 surveillance is going to be enough."