Hotel Devalya, Night, Rio's Room.
*Sizzle**Sizzle*
The sizzling sound of oil kept resounding from the kitchen of the room.
While wearing a funny-looking apron, with bunny and cat patterns on it, Rio was cooking dinner today.
His face was as expressionless as ever, but his eyes were extremely focused on this dish. (He is barely decent in cooking skills…)
A cute giggle entered Rio's ears. It seems to have come from the dining table placed in front of the kitchen.
"Are you sure, you can cook?..." (Lia)
Lia had a smile on her face, she was suppressing her laughter. Seeing Rio in that cutesy-looking apron was really a funny experience after all.
Rio raised his head and replied in his usual emotionless tone:
"Yeah, I can cook some decent things…. At least it will be edible I think…" (Rio)
Rio's cooking skills have never been that good because never really focused on learning much about cooking. Even in his past life, he used to cook some random and easy-to-make food.
'In the first place, my tongue was kind of faulty in the previous life…' (Rio)
Due to his rough childhood days and various reasons, Rio's taste buds were damaged in his previous life.
He couldn't really distinguish the taste of the food he ate. And since he couldn't taste it, he didn't really care about whatever he had to eat.
As long as it was edible and nutritious, he ate it to survive.
This was also the reason why Rio's body was suffering from malnutrition in his previous life. Malnutrition caused his height to be short and his body to be weak and thin.
The Rio of the previous life was quiet, introverted, weak, and short. The only redeeming factor or you could say the only talent he had, was his intelligent brain.
Rio was so good at studies that he was envied by many fellow students. But as Rio was smart, he never fell for the tricks of bullies and always managed to avoid getting in trouble.
Even while being a Loner, he knew how to keep himself safe from the bullies and thus he lived his life in a boring and uneventful way. He was just surviving day after day like a living corpse with no particular reason to live.
'But now I have found that reason…' (Rio)
Thinking about that 'reason' Rio's eyes wandered off to the cute face of Lia who was staring at him while he was cooking.
"Hmm, need my help?" (Lia)
Rio shook his head in denial.
"No..I want you to review my cooking today… Master Chef Lia." (Rio)
Being called 'Master Chef' from Rio's mouth, Lia felt happy and her smile widened even further.
*Giggle*
Her cute giggles filled 'colors' in Rio's empty Life.
Denying the help, Rio again focused his eyes on cooking.
'I fear that if I keep relying on her, I might lose my ability to live alone… it's kind of weird…' (Rio)
'Her giggles are too addicting to hear… I feel like I might not be able to recover from this addiction called Love…' (Rio)
…
While cooking Rio's mind kept wandering on various things.
'Now that I think about it… I never found any cheat items in that dungeon…' (Rio)
'Oh wait… I might actually have found it…' (Rio)
For a protagonist, the heavenly luck produces cheats in various forms and shapes. They are mostly random and difficult to predict, but there are always some things present after all.
There's no way that the heavenly luck would not prepare anything. With Fade's luck, it would be impossible that he wouldn't gain anything from going on such a dangerous dungeon trip.
'If I remember correctly then, going to this dungeon caused Fade to find his weak spots…' (Rio)
Indeed, even that can be considered the influence of Luck. For Fade to shine in the upcoming 'Meeting of Gods', it was important that he needed either be strong or pretend to be strong.
Fade got injured in the dungeon and then got underestimated, and then the regular face-slapping session followed behind it.
Face-slapping others while still being in an injured state, if this isn't the most protagonist type of thing then what else is?
'This simply means that the cheat in this dungeon was, that it could make others realize their weaknesses…' (Rio)
'Unknowingly, I had already taken that cheat…' (Rio)
…
While in that dungeon, Rio realized his weakness which was his lack of a 'path' and a decisive skill like 'Soul splitting'.
When Rio realized his weakness, he immediately broke through and achieved immense improvement in his strength.
'Cheat opportunities come in many forms, I see…' (Rio)
Aside from Rio, Link realized that his physique was still too weak and thus improved further by achieving 'Dao Rhythm'.
Liam whose weakness was his hatred for Fade, found relief in Ellie's friendship, and thus his mind returned to the original stability just like it was before getting involved with Fade.
(For those who don't remember, I mentioned earlier in the final exams event, that Liam only lost to Fade because he lost his mind to hatred and his personality became unstable, which was a fatal weakness for a mage like him…)
Moreover, Riya found her father, and Lia understood more about her powers to support Rio from a distance in the final fight instead of charging head-on in the fight.
Damian found his weakness, which was Raji's hatred.
Even Kira found her weakness, which was her overprotective nature for Fade. And Fade also found his weakness, which was the flawed magic circuits that caused him to faint so easily.
In conclusion, from that dungeon trip, everyone got to learn something in the end. This kind of 'cheat' might not be a physical artifact, but it still was a great help to the whole party.
Rio and Link successfully broke through Rank A, which was already a great improvement in the combat capabilities of the whole party.
(The cheat was already there, from the start, you just didn't see it until I described it… my foreshadowing skills seem to have reached a new realm…)
…
(Back to present…)
After coming back from the dungeon. Everyone was tired, and thus they all went to their individual room to sleep and recover.
All of them slept for a whole day before finally recovering a bit.
When they woke up it was already night and the moon was brightly shining in the sky.
Lia came to Rio's room because she had nothing else to do right now.
Rio took this as a perfect opportunity to charm Lia with his cooking and thus he got to work immediately.
(His cooking isn't really that good to charm someone with it… but well, Lia was already happy from the fact that he was putting effort into it..)
Before entering Rio's Room, Lia thought that Rio must be sipping his tea like usual around this time.
But today was different.
Rio actually wanted to cook for her today, and thus Lia was quite happy to have someone caring for her.
While Rio was cooking Lia continued to stare at him. As if her eyes were being attracted by some mysterious force, she couldn't take them off him.
'Ugh… I feel like those love-struck maidens from children's bedtime stories…' (Lia)
Thinking about this, Lia herself felt quite embarrassed.
Just then Rio's finally completed his cooking session and brought the food over to the dining table.
"So here I present, Rio's special pancakes…" (Rio)
Rio put the pancake in front of Lia and wrote 'For my Love' on it.
Then he said that 'Moe moe kyun' line in his emotionless tone. It felt like a curse instead of a blessing but well, this was already the best he could do.
"Hahahaha!!" (Lia)
Seeing Rio trying to perform that 'moe moe kyun' while wearing that funny apron, made Lia burst into laughter.
She wasn't able to suppress her laugh anymore and she laughed so much that her stomach started to hurt a little. Slight tears appeared around the corners of her eyes from laughing too much.
Seeing that happy look on Lia's face. A small smile appeared on Rio's expressionless face.
'Well as long as you are happy…' (Rio)
"Okay, stop laughing so much and try it… tell me how it tastes…" (Rio)
Hearing Rio's voice Lia finally calmed down. She wiped the tears and then with an excited look started to eat.
After eating the first bite she glanced at Rio and said in a happy voice:
"It's Delicious!" (Lia)
"Is that so…" (Rio)
"Yeah!" (Lia)
Rio nodded his head in satisfaction at Lia's approval. He dragged a nearby chair and sat beside Lia.
"Okay, give some to too then…" (Rio)
"uh… here" (Lia)
Lia had to spoon-feed him that bite. She felt quite embarrassed from doing something like that but she did it anyway.
"hmm it's good, I guess.." (Rio)
Rio nodded his head in approval. (He can taste food in this life at least…)
"My turn…" (Rio)
Thus the back-and-forth feeding session continued till late at night.
Finally, Lia went back to her room and thus another lovely day came to an end.
…
…
Author's Notes.
Yo! It's your beloved author here! I seem to have gotten high amounts of diabetes from writing this chapter…
Question of the day.
How much diabetes did you get from this chapter?
1.+999
2.Infinite
3.Other (Tell me in the comments.)
By the way, don't forget to use those power stones and also leave a review if you like the story. Comment your opinion about the chapter. Your support is my motivation.