The "God's Restaurant" was located at the apex of the Pillar of Heaven, a sprawling estate of solid gold and solidified sunlight that drifted above the clouds. To the mortal chefs who had won the lesser prizes of the competition, this was the ultimate pilgrimage. They ascended the crystalline stairs on their knees, weeping with gratitude, believing they were about to receive the "Nectar of the Infinite."
To Cedric, it just felt like an overpriced tourist trap with poor ventilation.
"The oxygen saturation is too low up here," Cedric remarked, fanning himself with his silver ladle as they crested the final cloud bank. "At this altitude, water boils at eighty-five degrees Celsius. You can't even properly hydrate a dried noodle, let alone slow-braise a legendary protein. Who designed this kitchen? An interior decorator with a death wish?"
Behind him, the "Logistics Team" followed. First Prince Aurelian was still strapped to the two-hundred-pound black iron guillotine base, his face a permanent shade of beet-red. Next to him, "Ashes"—the solidifying Shadow of the former Food God—was carrying a bag of high-grade charcoal and grumbling under his breath.
"Master, be careful," Ashes whispered, his golden eyes darting toward the towering marble pillars ahead. "These are the High Authorities. They don't take kindly to... well, to people who point out their sauce is broken."
"If they didn't want their sauce criticized, they shouldn't have invited a professional," Cedric snapped.
Elsa, the Ice Phoenix, drifted beside them, her white apron fluttering in the high-altitude winds. She sniffed the air, her sapphire eyes narrowing in a look of profound, avian disgust. "Master... the smell. It is not 'Holy.' It is... fermented."
Cedric paused. He inhaled deeply. His pupils contracted as the [System] began to filter the atmospheric particles.
[System Notification: Atmospheric Analysis Complete.] [Detection: High concentrations of 'Distilled Human Emotion' (Terror 40%, Despair 30%, False Hope 30%).] [Chef's Note: These aren't seasonings. These are cheap chemical additives used to mask the scent of rotting mana.]
Cedric's face darkened. "Fermented, Elsa? No. It's worse. They're serving 'Fast Food' and calling it a miracle."
The Great Hall of the Gods was a cavernous space where the walls were made of singing diamonds and the floor was a river of liquid starlight. At the far end sat a long table carved from a single block of Ancient White Jade.
Seated there were the High Gods—entities of pure light and terrifying pressure. At the center sat the God of Light, a towering figure whose skin glowed with the intensity of a thousand suns. His hair was a corona of solar flares, and his eyes were two burning white voids.
On the table were plates of shimmering, translucent meat and bowls of glowing, golden liquid. The mortal chefs who had arrived before Cedric were huddled on the floor, their faces pressed against the starlight, waiting for the "Blessing"—the leftovers from the divine table.
"Behold," the God of Light boomed, his voice vibrating through Cedric's teeth. "The Great Cycle. You mortals provide the 'Ingredients'—your faith, your spirits, your very lives—and in return, we grant you the honor of tasting the Divine Refinement. Come, children. Partake of the Light."
He flicked a morsel of translucent meat toward the kneeling chefs. They scrambled for it like starving dogs, fighting over a piece of "Divine Essence."
Cedric walked straight past the scrambling chefs, his boots clicking rhythmically against the starlight floor. He stopped three feet from the God of Light, leaning over the Jade table.
"Master!" Ashes hissed, reaching out to grab Cedric's apron. "The pressure! You'll be crushed!"
But the pressure didn't touch him. The [Phantom Stir-Fry Footwork] Cedric had mastered didn't just work on floors; it allowed him to "vibrate" his own physical presence, slipping through the gaps of the God's divine aura like a knife through a poorly made sponge cake.
Cedric didn't look at the God of Light with awe. He looked at the plate in front of the deity. He leaned down, took a deep, theatrical sniff, and then made a face so visceral, so genuinely repulsed, that the singing diamond walls actually went flat.
"BLEGH."
Cedric gagged, backing away and covering his mouth with his hand.
"Master?" Aurelian whispered, struggling under the iron base. "Is it... is it poisoned?"
"Poisoned?" Cedric wiped a tear from his eye, his face twisting in professional agony. "I wish it were poisoned. Poison has a distinct chemical profile. This? This is just... lazy. It's an insult to the very concept of a calorie."
The God of Light froze. The corona of fire around his head flared into a violent, angry red.
"Mortal," the God hissed, the air around him beginning to ignite. "You dare stand in the presence of the Source and speak of 'Laziness'? This is the Essence of Joy. It is the distilled purity of ten thousand saintly souls, slow-aged in the Sacred Solar Fire for a millennium!"
Cedric stopped gagging and stood up straight. His eyes were cold, sharp, and filled with a terrifying, technical clarity.
"A millennium?" Cedric scoffed, pointing a finger at the shimmering meat. "You've been 'aging' this for a thousand years? Then you've failed at basic time management. Look at the edges of this 'Essence of Joy.' They're frayed. The spiritual fibers have been over-exposed to high-intensity radiation—your 'Sacred Fire'—which has caused the delicate mana-bonds to break down. This isn't 'Joy' anymore, you amateur. This is 'Despair jerky'."
The other Gods at the table—the Goddess of Fate, the God of War—all stopped eating.
Cedric walked along the table, critiquing their plates with the speed of a machine gun.
"And you," he pointed to the Goddess of Fate's bowl. "This 'Thread of Destiny' soup? It's over-reduced. You've boiled the causality so long that the flavor has turned bitter and metallic. It's like drinking a bowl of rusty nails and regret. And don't get me started on the 'Nectar of Eternity'."
He picked up a golden goblet, swirled the liquid, and poured it onto the floor.
"High sugar content, zero acidity, and a finish that tastes like wet cardboard. You've used your 'Sacred Fire' as a blunt instrument. You aren't 'Refining' these souls, you're just scorching them because you don't know how to control the thermal spectrum. You call this a blessing? I call it the leftovers of a group of primitive scavengers who found a campfire but never learned how to use a thermometer."
"SILENCE!"
The God of Light stood up. The Jade table cracked under his grip. The pressure in the room surged, threatening to flatten every mortal within a ten-mile radius.
"You speak of 'Control'?" the God roared. "I AM THE SUN! I am the ultimate heat source! I do not need 'technique'! My will is the fire that creates the world!"
"The Sun is a great light source, but it's a terrible stove," Cedric countered, his voice steady. "It's too broad. Too 'noisy.' You're hitting these ingredients with the entire electromagnetic spectrum when you should be focusing on the infrared-mana band. Elsa, show this 'Lightbulb' what a focused thermal gradient looks like."
Elsa stepped forward, her wings expanding. A wall of blue, absolute-zero frost met the God's solar heat. Where the two energies clashed, a terrifying, hyper-compressed "Culinary Vacuum" formed.
"Ashes! The bellows!" Cedric commanded.
The former Food God didn't hesitate. He dropped the charcoal and began to pump his divine mana into the air. "Watch closely, Apollo-wannabe! This is what happens when you have a Master at the helm!"
Cedric grabbed the edge of the Ancient White Jade table—the one the Gods had been eating from for eons. With a roar of effort, aided by the [System's Kinetic Enhancement], he didn't just lift it.
He flipped it.
KRA-KOOOOOM!
The jade table, covered in "Divine Essences" and "Sacred Nectar," flipped through the air, sending the God's dinner crashing onto the starlight floor in a chaotic mess of shimmering goo and broken crystal.
"What... what have you done?!" the Goddess of Fate shrieked, clutching her silk robes. "That was the harvest of a century!"
"I've done you a favor," Cedric said, pulling his black iron skillet from Aurelian's back. "I've cleared the table of your 'trash' so I can show you what an actual meal looks like. Aurelian, get the cleaning supplies. Elsa, I need a localized 'Blast-Chill' on the floor. Ashes, ignite the Solar Fire—the filtered version."
Cedric looked at the God of Light, who was currently trembling with a rage that could level a continent.
"You think you're a God because you eat people?" Cedric asked, his silver ladle glowing with a cold, predatory light. "In my world, you aren't a God. You're just an inefficient heat source with a god-complex. You've been wasting the best 'Ingredients' in the universe for ten thousand years. Today, the bill is due. And since you've clearly lost your palate, I'm going to have to re-educate your tongue... with a dish made from the very 'Sacred Fire' you're so proud of."
The God of Light lunged across the wreckage of the table, his hand glowing like a supernova. "I will erase you from the annals of time!"
Cedric didn't move. He held up his iron skillet.
[System Notification: Skill Triggered: {Heat-Absorption Siphon}.] [Target: Divine Solar Strike. Quality: SSS. Action: Converting 'Wrath' into 'Searing Kinetic Heat'.]
The God's fist struck the bottom of the iron pot. Instead of an explosion, there was a dull, heavy clunk. The white-hot solar energy didn't incinerate Cedric; it was sucked into the black iron, causing the skillet to glow with a terrifying, violet-red intensity.
"Good 'Wok-Hei' potential," Cedric remarked, his eyes reflecting the purple fire.
He swung the ladle, catching a wisp of the God's own solar-corona hair. He tossed it into the glowing pan.
TSS-SHHHHHHHHH!
The sound was like a choir of angels screaming in a deep-fryer. The aroma that erupted from the pan was so intense that the mortal chefs on the floor began to convulse with a sensory overload. This wasn't the "muffled" scent of aged souls; this was the "Loud," aggressive fragrance of a God's ego being sautéed at ten million degrees.
Cedric tossed the pan with a rhythmic, violent grace. He added a handful of "Void-Salt" and a splash of "Condensed Despair" (which he had purified from the floor).
"Open your mouth, 'Lord of Light'," Cedric commanded, his voice echoing with the authority of a Head Chef in a rush. "It's time you tasted your own medicine. Only this time, it's been properly seasoned."
With a flick of his wrist, Cedric sent a single, searing morsel of the "Sautéed Solar Corona" flying into the God of Light's open, shocked mouth.
The God's eyes went wide. His corona flickered. The white voids of his eyes suddenly regained pupils, which dilated until they were nearly all-black.
He didn't scream. He didn't explode. He simply fell back into his crystalline throne, his body shivering as the "Searing Umami" of his own power, processed by Cedric's technique, bypassed his divine defenses and struck his very soul.
"The... the depth..." the God of Light whispered, a single tear of liquid gold rolling down his cheek. "I... I have been eating 'ashes' my entire life. How... how can a mortal... make 'Me' taste so good?"
Cedric didn't wait for the God's praise. He turned to his team, who were currently staring at the weeping deity in absolute silence.
"Aurelian, Ashes, pack up the base," Cedric said, his voice returning to its usual, bored drone. "The quality of the 'Divine Light' here is better than I thought, but the management is a disaster. I'm not staying in a restaurant where the owner cries in the dining room."
He looked at the other Gods, who were now staring at him with a mixture of terror and a new, desperate hunger.
"Master," Elsa whispered, pointing toward the back of the hall, where a massive, obsidian gate stood sealed with seven seals of blood. "The 'Pantry' of the High Heavens. The resonance behind that door... it is not solar. It is... 'Primordial'."
Cedric's hand tightened on his ladle. He looked at the [System] readout.
[Warning: SSS-Rank Ingredient {The Heart of the First Chaos} detected behind the Obsidian Gate.] [Status: Uncooked since the dawn of time.] [Chef's Note: If we can get that into a reduction, we can finally fix the flavor profile of the universe.]
Cedric grinned, a dark, predatory light in his eyes.
"The Heart of Chaos, huh? I've always wanted to see if 'Entropy' has a nutty finish. Ashes, get the heavy-duty scrubbers ready. We're going to need a lot of clean pots for what's coming next."
The Gods watched in silence as the "Barbarian Chef" walked toward the most forbidden gate in existence, his iron pot clanking against the starlight, ready to turn the very foundation of the cosmos into a side dish.