Chapter 253

Fern was growing increasingly anxious, but she had no idea what else to do.

All she could do was pull harder.

"You won’t get her out that way."

Haruto’s voice suddenly came from nearby.

Fern stopped and turned toward him, clearly waiting to hear what she was supposed to do instead.

Haruto did not keep her guessing.

"Once a mimic has bitten down on its prey, pulling outward won’t make it let go."

"What you need to do is push her farther inside. The mimic will get disgusted and spit her back out on its own."

Fern hesitated.

There was no way she could immediately trust the advice of a complete stranger.

But she did not have any better ideas either.

Then Frieren’s muffled, tearful voice came from inside the mimic.

"Fern... do what he says... that method works..."

The moment Frieren confirmed it, Fern released her grip on Frieren’s clothes, planted both hands against her backside, and began pushing with all her strength.

The mimic, which had been clamped stubbornly around Frieren, suddenly shuddered.

A moment later—

Ptoo!

Its jaws flew open, and Frieren was violently spat back out.

She landed on the stone floor in an undignified heap, covered in the mimic’s sticky saliva from head to toe.

The instant Frieren was free, Fern raised her staff.

A magic circle appeared at its tip.

She was just about to blast the creature that had dared swallow her master when Haruto hurriedly called out,

"Wait!"

Fern stopped and looked toward him, confusion filling her violet eyes.

"This mimic is useful to me. Don’t kill it yet."

Haruto’s explanation was brief.

Fern said nothing, but she lowered her staff.

Then she walked over to Frieren, took out a handkerchief, and began patiently wiping the mimic slime from her clothes and hair.

Frieren sat there quietly and allowed Fern to clean her up.

Haruto, meanwhile, walked over to the mimic.

The creature was already sliding rapidly across the stone floor in an attempt to escape.

Haruto had no intention of letting it get away.

He placed one hand firmly on the lid.

No matter how violently the mimic struggled, it could not move even an inch.

With the creature restrained, Haruto began examining it.

In this world, monsters disintegrated into ash after death.

Occasionally, certain parts such as claws, fangs, or horns could remain behind, but those were rarely useful as ingredients.

If he could somehow preserve a monster’s flesh after killing it, however, there was no reason it could not be cooked.

The problem was figuring out how.

And before he could solve that problem, he first needed to understand how monsters in this world were actually constructed.

This mimic was the first complete, living monster Haruto had encountered.

Naturally, he intended to study it thoroughly.

Under the puzzled gazes of Frieren, Fern, and Sense, Haruto first examined it directly with his hands.

To his surprise, the mimic’s outer chest felt almost exactly like real wood.

Even the flesh inside seemed no different from ordinary organic tissue.

That only made Haruto more curious.

With a thought, the Gourmet Restaurant began connecting to reality.

A faint, nearly invisible transparent field spread outward from his palm and enveloped the entire mimic.

Then the Gourmet Restaurant’s Ingredient Deconstruction ability went to work like an impossibly precise scalpel.

The creature’s mana, physical composition, and internal energy pathways were broken down and analyzed layer by layer.

Countless streams of minute information poured continuously into Haruto’s mind.

The mimic’s body was reduced to its most fundamental structure, every detail laid bare before him.

The more Haruto learned, the greater the surprise in his eyes became.

Eventually, that surprise turned into undisguised excitement.

More than half of the mimic’s body was composed of mana.

But that mana did not exist as loose energy.

Instead, it had perfectly fused with the remaining physical matter to form an exceptionally stable biological structure.

The mimic’s outer chest was made from mana integrated with woody fibers, producing a dense, hardened material whose properties were almost indistinguishable from genuine wood.

Its teeth consisted of mana fused with calcium into extremely dense bone-like structures.

And the interior of the chest was flesh created through the integration of mana with organic matter.

In other words, a mimic could reasonably be considered a semi-mana life-form.

Haruto also discovered that the mana making up its body could not simply be extracted and used like ordinary mana.

The same was probably true for most monsters in this world.

Once he understood the mimic’s structure, Haruto could easily infer why monsters turned to ash after death.

Their bodies were essentially aggregates of physical matter anchored and stabilized by mana.

The moment the monster died, the mana at the core of that structure collapsed.

Once its ability to anchor the physical matter disappeared, the material that had been held together by that mana was instantly torn apart by the escaping energy.

The result was ash that dispersed into the air.

It was not that monsters lacked physical bodies.

Their physical stability simply depended completely on the continued existence of their mana.

"This is... incredible."

Haruto stared at the mimic still struggling beneath his hand.

"What a perfect ingredient."

His Gourmet Cells were capable of consuming mana.

That had already been proven in the Delicious in Dungeon world.

The mana of that world was not exactly the same as the mana here, but Haruto was certain his Gourmet Cells would still be able to absorb it.

And if more than half of a monster’s body consisted of mana...

Then monsters had extraordinarily high nutritional value.

After all, mana was energy his Gourmet Cells could absorb directly without even needing to digest it first.

Haruto swallowed unconsciously.

He was already eager to find out what monsters in this world tasted like.

But first, he needed to discover a way to kill one while preserving the mana structure at its core, preventing the body from collapsing and turning to ash.

Possible methods began racing through his mind.

Haruto had rarely felt more motivated.

By then, Fern had finished wiping the mimic saliva from Frieren’s body.

Frieren stood up and stared at Haruto with obvious confusion.

Even while half of her body had been trapped inside the mimic and she had been close to tears from the darkness, she had never stopped using detection magic.

They were inside a dangerous dungeon, after all.

Letting down her guard would have been foolish.

Yet Haruto’s arrival had completely escaped her notice.

There had been no fluctuation of mana.

It was as if he had simply appeared from nowhere.

One moment, that spot had been empty.

The next, Haruto had been standing there.

Frieren had never encountered anything like it.

And now this mysterious stranger was staring at a mimic with the excitement of someone who had discovered a legendary treasure, muttering words like "incredible" and "ingredient" that made absolutely no sense in context.

Even stranger was the energy within Haruto himself.

Frieren’s detection magic could sense an enormous and completely unfamiliar power inside him.

It possessed an extremely aggressive nature, yet its fluctuations were entirely unlike mana.

Frieren’s fingers shifted slightly.

She quietly used several different detection spells.

The more she examined him, however, the more puzzled she became.

Because under her observation, the strange energy within Haruto—which had originally been completely distinct from mana—began changing.

Almost as though it were adapting to the surrounding environment, its fluctuations rapidly adjusted until it started resembling mana.

If Frieren had not noticed the difference from the very beginning, she might never have realized anything was unusual.

"What exactly are you?"

Frieren finally asked.

Her question immediately drew the attention of Fern and Sense as well.

Haruto’s thoughts were interrupted.

He pressed down a little harder on the still-struggling mimic, then looked toward Frieren.

"Me?"

Haruto pointed at himself.

"I’m Haruto, a Super Chef."

He paused briefly.

"And I also work as a Gourmet Hunter."

Frieren, Fern, and Sense all stared at him with complicated expressions.

"A Super Chef... and a Gourmet Hunter?"

The first title was easy enough to understand.

If he was called a Super Chef, then presumably he was simply an exceptionally skilled cook.

As for "Gourmet Hunter," none of them had ever heard of such a profession, but the meaning was obvious enough from the words themselves.

Still...

Why would a chef who hunted gourmet ingredients be wandering around inside a dungeon?

Surely he had not entered the Ruins of the King’s Tomb looking for monsters to turn into food.

Frieren blinked twice and stared at Haruto for another moment before deciding not to ask.

She had already confirmed that he was unquestionably human.

There was not the slightest trace of a demon about him, nor did he harbor any hostility toward them.

As far as Frieren was concerned, if he was neither a demon nor an enemy, then whether he called himself a chef or a hunter did not matter much.

She was still curious about the strange energy inside him.

But Frieren seriously doubted Haruto would casually reveal his personal secrets to someone he had just met.

There was no point wasting words asking.

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