9:00 AM at the Kitchen hall E for the first-year students. 30 students stand apart owning each cooking isles that were designated for them, each was equipped with state-of-the-art cooking wares, stoves, knives, and other gadgets or types of equipment all related to cooking. Different basic to some advanced herbs and spices were present as well.
"Everyone got 2 hours to prepare a single decent dish using the ingredient from the task that was assigned to you as the main topic ingredient of the dish. Those who can not satisfy the palate of yours truly and my visitors... better get ready." Miss Laura, who was standing at the stage in front of the student relayed with a clear loud voice.
She sat together with two other professors. One was the class 1-B adviser, a middle-aged man who wore a pair of eyeglasses giving of some bone-chilling stares was Mr. Tofee, known to have a sophisticated personality who always take things seriously. The other one was known by everyone, the vice president of the university, Mr. Bacon. A regular tasting judge for the whole university, he was known to seek students with potentials from the 3 different tracks, he always shows up especially on cooking exams held inside the university quarters. His family also holds one of the biggest industries the monopolize beast ingredients across the nation.
Some students started to sweat cold from the tension, some even gulped big-time from pressure. They never knew how taxing it is to do the real thing in front of the professor and the big shots of the university. Yet Nil on the side was focused not knowing that he was the one being scouted.
Back at the entrance examination, 4 students out of 150 got the perfect score on each test that was prepared by the school president herself. The 3 students were automatically assigned to the first section, class 1-A. But the other one was thrown at the class 1-E barely managing to enter the university after hitting up the female instructor at the examination desk. Of course, that person was none other than Nil.
...
The countdown on the visual timer started to flow down as soon as it reached zero everyone started to change personalities from tense students to professional cooks. Even the lazy Mirone was dicing some kind of herb at an abnormal speed but the precession was on point.
The task assigned for the Mainline Chefs was to buy some uncommon ingredients at the market by only using a certain amount of money. As for Mirone, he only needed to play with his words versus the merchant selling some buttered truffles, he was unexpectedly good at persuading but knowing that his track was a Mainline chef, he was trained to be that way.
It's only been 15 minutes since the timer started, yet most of the students were done prepping and were about to start cooking. Except for some students that require some special preparation for the ingredients that were assigned to them.
Nil was having his time figuring out what kind of dish he would prepare with the rock eggs and the special broth. He was a perfectionist who loves surprises when it comes to cooking. With the regular rock egg and broth, a normal chef might immediately go for the soup adding some scrambled rock eggs for it was common for rock eggs to be scrambled because of its rock-solid shell that requires a high understanding of the ingredient to open it up with the yolk being untouched. But doing the regular thing was what the judges were expecting and that's not how Nil does things especially now that he had the assistance of a system!
'System, list all possible dishes with the ingredients on hand.' Nil internally commanded.
Countless names of dishes were listed instantly on Nil's field of view, the list was arranged by the level of difficulty.
"Ohh!"
Nil was elated after browsing through the list, after reviewing each food he started to prepare the tools he needed for his chosen dish.
Seeing that Nil was about to make his move, Mr. Bacon's attention who was scanning each movement of the students with his keen eyes was captured in an instant, since Nil was placed just near on the front of the rows, his movements could be observed without effort. But after observing Nil for a minute the three judges were dumbfounded at what they saw.
Nil was holding a large kitchen saw that was used to break apart huge bones from massive beasts. Even some students who saw Nil pulling out a huge saw were startled.
"Eh?" Mr. Tofee was the first one to react. It was common knowledge that the vulture's rock egg was famous for its though shell, if a common kitchen saw can crack it open with its rich yolk remaining intact the apprehension rank of rock eggs would surely drop drastically.
With assistance from the system, the rock egg in a size of a fist on Nil's hand started to turn to a wireframe-like see trough structure of different colors, but it was only for the vision of Nil.
The tattoed rune on Nil's right index finger holding the 3-foot long kitchen saw started to spin. But was unbelievably quick even Nil himself wasn't able to notice. After a second, the system transferred the necessary steps to peel out the egg yolk which would take some hundred or thousand tries for a regular chef.
Of course, the professors know some different special preparation for the rock egg but the current preparation they see from Nil was something they never saw.
Nil started to grind the saw aline to the wireframe structure shown by the system.
Different colors surround the egg from the wireframe except for some faded red lines across, it was the weak spots base on the system's guide.
Nil only needed a few decent strokes at the red line on the surface of the rock egg, the next thing Nil held was a boning knife.
After leaving some dents using the kitchen saw, Nil applied pressure on those depressions left by the kitchen saw, using the tip of the pointed boning knife, spiderweb-like cracks started to appear from the egg.
Visible shock appeared from the judges' faces. Even, Miss Laura with a calm demeanor raised an eyebrow from the view.
"Splendid! What unique way!" Mr. Bacon clapped his hand in praise.
Nil, on the other hand, was rejoicing as well.
"User-level up to 10, Apprentice Rank reached!"
"User-level up to 11!"
"User-level up to 12!"
Flashes of notifications appeared before Nil. 'Three levels? This is basically cheating! But wait, who cares?' Nil thought.
The moment the drill vulture's rock egg cracked open Nil separates the precious yolk from the whites.
The dish Nil comes up with was a regular Tamago Kake Gohan from his past lifeworld it was a regular seasoned white rice meal dish topped with raw egg yolk and some other meat or vegetable together.
After washing up some high-grade rice provided from the ingredients at the kitchen counter. Nil yet again surprised the judges.
The special shabu-shabu broth was used in an exchange of water to cook the rice.
Some students who saw Nil uttered some comments from the sidelines.
'Wouldn't it be a rice porridge?'
'The mellowness of the rice would be overthrown by the rich flavors of the broth!'
'I think too much highly of him, might have pulled some string to get a perfect score from the exams.'
The silent one Mr. Tofee whispered, "Just what are you planning?"
Neither did they know that the broth was already re-polished by Nil using common spices to complement with the white grain rice.
"30 Minutes Left"
A monotonous voice echoed throughout the hall.
Students started to quicken up their own paces to make some final adjustments and to refine their dishes