The walk back to the Hearthline Guild was silent and heavy. Kael looked like he was marching to his own funeral. Elara kept nervously glancing back at the roaring workshop of the Titan Tools Club, as if expecting them to charge out and dismantle their guild hall right then and there.
The moment the door to Hearthline creaked shut behind them, Kael's composure broke.
"We're doomed," he whispered, slumping against the wall and sliding to the floor. "Utterly, completely, apocalyptically doomed. 'POWER'? Their entire guild is a monument to that theme! Their signature dish is the 'Full-Boar Roast,' where they cook an entire wild boar using a modified jet engine turbine! What do we have? A leaky faucet and a sentimental brick hearth!"
"He wagered himself, Kael," Elara said, her voice trembling. "If we lose, Izen-san will be their slave!"
They both looked at Izen. He hadn't said a word. He was standing in the middle of the room, his eyes closed, his expression serene.
'Power,' Izen thought, turning the word over in his mind. 'Grit Hark thinks power is heat. Volume. Size. A big fire. A big piece of meat. An explosion.'
He remembered watching blacksmiths as a child. They used a big fire, yes. But the true power wasn't in the fire. It was in the hammer. The focused, repeated application of force. The power of pressure.
He remembered watching winemakers. They used grapes, but the true power wasn't in the fruit. It was in the months and years of silent waiting in a barrel. The power of time.
'They want a power competition?' he thought, a flicker of a smile touching his lips. 'Okay. Let's show them power.'
He opened his eyes. The panic in the room seemed to vanish under his calm gaze.
"Kael, Elara," he said, his voice even. "We need ingredients. But not the usual kind. I need you to go back to the central kitchen's disposal bay."
"More scraps?" Kael asked miserably. "What are we going to do? Build a scarecrow out of potato peels?"
"No," Izen said. "I want you to bring me every single bone you can find. Beef bones, chicken carcasses, pork ribs, lamb shanks. Anything and everything they've thrown out after butchering. And all the vegetable peels. Onion skins, carrot peels, celery butts. The most worthless, flavorless, discarded parts. Bring them all."
Kael and Elara exchanged a look of profound confusion, but the certainty in Izen's voice was absolute. They nodded numbly and scurried out the door on their strange mission.
While they were gone, Izen went to his room and returned with his red toolbox. He didn't pull out the jackhammer or the paint sprayer. He rummaged near the bottom and pulled out a strange device. It was a stainless-steel box about the size of a microwave, with a heavy, clamp-down lid and a complex control panel of dials and gauges. A thick power cable snaked from its back.
When Kael and Elara returned, hauling two massive, stinking bins of bones and vegetable trimmings, they stopped dead in their tracks, staring at the machine.
"What… is that?" Elara asked, her nose wrinkled from the smell of the raw bones.
"This," Izen said, patting the metal box, "is an industrial ultrasonic cleaner. It's normally used for cleaning machine parts and jewelry at a microscopic level."
Kael's eyes widened behind his glasses. "You're going to… clean the bones with it?"
"No," Izen said, a glint in his eye. "I'm going to cook with it."
He opened the lid. Inside was a simple steel basin. He began to fill it, layering the ingredients with a strange precision. First, a layer of heavy beef marrow bones, which he'd cracked open with a hammer. Then, a layer of onion skins and celery ends. Then, the lighter chicken carcasses. Then carrot peels. He packed the basin tight with the "garbage" his guildmates had collected. Finally, he just barely covered it all with water and a handful of salt.
He sealed the heavy lid, clamping it shut with a heavy CLANK. He then began turning the dials on the control panel.
"The Titan Tools Club will use a massive amount of heat to blast flavor out of their meat," Izen explained as he worked. "It's a violent, inefficient process. Most of the nuanced flavor burns away. They're using a sledgehammer." He tapped the side of the machine. "This is a scalpel."
He flipped a final switch.
The machine did not roar to life. It emitted a low, deep, almost imperceptible hum.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
"The ultrasonic waves create millions of microscopic bubbles in the water," Izen said, his voice barely louder than the hum. "These bubbles form and collapse thousands of times per second, creating intense, localized pressure and heat at a cellular level. It's not burning the bones. It's vibrating the very marrow out of them. It's gently shaking the soul out of the vegetable peels. It's an extraction of flavor so deep and complete, it's like cooking them for a hundred hours in a single moment."
Kael and Elara stared at the humming box, mesmerized. There was no fire, no smoke, no dramatic flair. Just a quiet, intense hum and a process they could barely comprehend. It felt less like cooking and more like a high-level scientific experiment.
For ten minutes, the only sound was the deep thrum of the machine. Then, the first wisp of steam escaped a valve on the lid.
And with it came the smell.
It wasn't the smell of a barbecue or a roast. It was something else entirely. It was the deepest, richest, most profoundly savory aroma either of them had ever experienced. It was the concentrated essence of a thousand wholesome meals, the very soul of comfort and nourishment. It was a scent so powerful, so dense with umami, it felt like a physical weight in the air. It didn't just smell good; it smelled important.
Kael, who had been on the verge of a panic attack twenty minutes ago, felt the scent wash over him, calming his frayed nerves and making his stomach rumble with a hunger he hadn't realized he had. Elara's eyes were wide with wonder.
This was their weapon against a jet engine. Not a roar, but a hum. Not a fire, but a vibration.
It was the quiet, undeniable power of turning nothing into everything.