Underworld Player

The inside of Gourmet House looked like a large kitchen and was equipped with a sizeable stove.

It had not been apparent from the outside, but once they walked in, they were greeted by a wave of an indescribably pungent odor.

If one absolutely had to describe it, it was like someone had… taken a can of fermented fish, mixed it with durian, set to stew for an hour, then mixed the whole thing with rotten meat and several tons of overripe banana.

The reason why Bai Zhi was able to describe it so specifically was because, in his younger days, that was the same recipe he had invented in his attempts to create a biochemical weapon. They said that if you had shit on a broom, you could be king of the world*—this was just like that. On the strength of that weapon of mass destruction, he had terrorized the village and become the de facto local boss.

The smell that suffused the room was not completely identical to the smell from his childhood, but for all intents and purposes, it was the same. It was especially bad when the pig-man opened his mouth—the smell of rancid meat attacked their nostrils and caused a violent surge of bile to rise in their throats. The foul, sour smells were bad enough, but the sickly-sweet note of overripe banana made it revolting, turning the stomach and inducing a relentless headache, as if the smell itself had sunk sharp claws into the brain.

Since Bai Zhi was well aware of the strength of his own biochemical weapon, he had been unconsciously holding his breath from the moment he stepped into the shop, and it barely seemed to bother him. Behind him, however, Lin He was a mess. His face was pale as he held a hand to his mouth and tried repeatedly not to gag. Bai Zhi grabbed a face mask from his Inventory and tossed it to Lin He, then raised his eyes to meet those of the towering pig-man.

"Where is your last customer?"

The sheer size of the creature only became more apparent the closer Bai Zhi got to it, and so did the intensity of the fetid miasma surrounding it.

"That fool who still doesn't recognize the reality of his situation? I've hung him up!"

The shopkeeper waved a meaty hand vaguely at a corner of the room and broke into a grin.

"Wanna save him? Ten Hell Dollars! I'll be happy to turn a profit, and you get your friend back for ten Hell Dollars. But! To do this, you have to agree to fight me in a contest of culinary expertise."

Bai Zhi raised an eyebrow as he squinted into the dim, shadowy corner.

"Scoring system?"

"Each of us will make three dishes, to be tasted by three judges of your choosing, dear guest. Based on the judges' scores, whoever scores the highest, wins."

The pig-man turned aside, revealing the well-equipped kitchen behind him.

"We have ingredients of all kinds here, which you can use freely. Well? Isn't that fair?"

"Do I get to pick any judge I like?"

Bai Zhi narrowed his eyes slightly, opting not to ask the redundant question of what would happen if he lost.

"Of course. So, please name your judges. I will summon them here to taste some delicious dishes," the pig-man rumbled.

Before Bai Zhi could say a word, Lin He sighed in relief. "Isn't this a guaranteed win for us? We have two people in our team, so just name us as the judges—with a 2:1 ratio, we're bound to win under any circumstances."

Bai Zhi fixed Lin He with a questioning look and tilted his head at the pig-man. "Would you dare eat something he made?"

Lin He was speechless.

Meanwhile, Bai Zhi declared, "I've made my picks. Begin."

A few minutes later, the paper doll from Art's Pawnshop, the ragdoll from the Riddle Room, and the clown from the Funhouse all showed up at Gourmet House.

Of the three judges Bai Zhi had chosen, only the paper doll didn't bear him any kind of grudge. The ragdoll and clown, however, glared coldly at Bai Zhi the whole time as they sat down at the table. Naturally, the target of their ire simply turned a blind eye.

Thus, there soon unfolded, inside a bizarre shop in a bizarre place, a cooking competition unlike any other. The pig-man moved busily around the stove, his every thunderous step causing tremors as his boots, caked all over with dried blood, stomped and thudded on the floorboards.

"...What are you even putting in there?"

As he watched Bai Zhi grabbing various strange tins and bottles from his Inventory and dumping their contents into a pot, Lin He, who was playing the part of assistant, could not help looking incredulous.

Despite the quality ingredients of every description laid out all around him, Bai Zhi not only showed no inclination to use them, he continued to add unusual things to the strange stew, each one clearly weirder than the last.

"Canned fermented fish, concentrated sulfuric acid, concentrated nitric acid, cyanide, weed killer... How can this stuff even be edible?"

"Don't let common sense hold you back—whether we'll be judged on the tastiest dish or the nastiest today, who can say? How do you know if those things share the same sense of taste that we do?" said Bai Zhi blandly as he scraped a pile of bananas into the bubbling pot, then added to that a large bag of dog feces.

"If it's normal cooking, I have little confidence that I can win, but if it's a question of who can make the worst-tasting food, I just might have the slightest fighting chance."

As the stew seethed away inside the pot, Lin He's face twisted itself into a multitude of strange expressions.

"...Why do you have so much weird stuff in your Inventory, anyway?"

"Meh, doesn't hurt to be prepared. After all, there are times when dumping a can of fermented fish or a sack of shit on someone does more harm than slicing them open with a knife."

Five minutes later, three bowls of Bai Zhi's inky-black, putrid-smelling stew were served up next to the pig-man's soy sauce pork knuckles, drawing attention to the stark differences between them.

"Could we have messed up? That guy's dishes look pretty normal to me..."

Lin He gulped as he watched the pig-man serving his bowls of rich, fragrant soy sauce pork knuckles, and turned to Bai Zhi in alarm.

Bai Zhi shook his head. "All that glitters is not gold."

Without even staying to watch the judges' reactions, he made a beeline for the hooks in the corner. There, looking haggard as he hung from a hook that pierced through his back, was Xu Feng. The only sign that he was alive was the weak rise and fall of his chest as he struggled to take shallow breaths.

Sighing softly as he looked over Xu Feng's tormented body, Bai Zhi muttered a cryptic phrase. "What a shame. The best end for you should have been on the way in..."

*An internet saying, as far as I know. The idea is that nobody wants to mess with anyone waving around a shit broom for fear of getting dirty.