“With that much of a reason... it’s worth taking a shot, at least once.”

Saying that, the man pushed himself up.

Watching him, Luca broke into a cold sweat.

“U-Commander....”

Luca had done an emergency rush job on the healing, but healing wasn’t omnipotent.

After accepting the death of the god it had served, the healing power born from faith had weakened as well.

The man’s treatment still wasn’t finished.

No—rather than “not finished”...

Drip, drip....

“...In that state....”

He was barely half a step away from a skeleton.

He’d managed to regenerate his brain and eyes somehow, but—

not just skin. Even his bones weren’t done regenerating.

The hastily rebuilt heart hadn’t been fully filled out either, so the heart pounding inside was visible as it throbbed.

It was only because of the vitality in the blood flowing through his body that he’d regenerated this much.

If not for that, he would’ve looked even worse than he did now.

That was why—

Luca had no choice but to be horrified.

“How can you even move?”

“.......”

“What are you even doing this for...?”

In his condition, there was no way he didn’t understand his own state.

If he were an ordinary person, he wouldn’t even be able to move—he’d be lying there, waiting for someone to treat him.

“What do you mean what, you idiot....” 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

But.

He still took the risk and forced himself upright.

What he meant to do, looking no different from a corpse, was—

“Cooking.”

Nothing else.

Cooking.

***

“Hoo—!”

My whole body hurt. It felt heavy.

Even breathing wasn’t easy.

But I still managed to get myself up, and I looked at Luca.

“Start treatment on your end too, Luca.”

“Treatment...?”

“Me, and... those guys.”

Where my finger pointed—

vampires who’d had their hearts blown out minutes ago were already sprawled on the ground.

“...Why?”

At the finger pointing at them, Luca spoke like it genuinely couldn’t understand.

“This isn’t even a situation where you have enough room to think about your own life, Commander. So why.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to do annoying work either.”

At Luca’s words, I scratched my head as I answered.

Blood smeared onto my hand.

“I already promised.”

“A promise?”

“A promise that if they followed my orders, I’d pay them.”

Unfortunately—

when I took them in as knights, I ended up making a contract with them.

They gave me their lives.

And I...

“Gave them a future.”

Seriously.

We’d only had one life-or-death fight, and I was already in a situation where I had to pay up.

A deal where anyone could see I was losing out, and they were the ones benefiting.

“But I can’t break a promise either. If someone who’s the commander breaks promises, nobody will follow me for real.”

“.......”

“They’re lucky as hell.”

At my words, Luca’s lips moved like it had something it wanted to say.

Then—

“...All right.”

As if it had given up, it swallowed whatever it was going to say and dropped to one knee on the ground.

One hand pointed toward me.

The other pressed to the floor.

And in a small voice, it began murmuring something.

Then—

Paaaah....

Power surged out from there and wrapped around my body—

and I could see it wrapping around the bodies of the ones who’d fallen as well.

“Still a ridiculous amount of power.”

Unlike last time, their wounds weren’t from sunlight.

Wounds from sunlight—even Luca, that absurdly powerful healer, couldn’t properly heal.

But ordinary wounds were different.

Shhhh....

Changes began in their bodies.

After confirming that, I turned and started to cook.

That was when—

Stagger....

“...Hng.”

As I pulled cooking tools out of the shadows, I tried to lift out a large wok—

and the weight made my body wobble.

Considering an awakened body, it was ridiculous.

But I’d been a corpse just a moment ago too.

Looks like I couldn’t control my body well yet.

“This cook’s going to be rough....”

And yet.

While I was breaking into a cold sweat at the thought—

“Here, Commander.”

“Huh?”

Someone stepped up beside me, took the wok from my hands, and spoke.

“This goes here, right?”

A member of the royal guard unit.

From what we’d talked about not long ago—

this was the man who’d said he’d lost comrades to ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) Ariella’s vampires.

“I’ll crank the heat all the way and coat it with oil.”

“Huh? Uh—yeah....”

He moved the wok onto the burner plate, lit the fire with practiced ease, and splashed oil into the heating wok.

And that wasn’t all.

“I’ll support you, Commander. This way....”

“Do we prep the ingredients you set out? How do you want them cut?”

“We’ll help, so just give us orders.”

The unit members approached—

and started helping with my cooking.

“...Just so you know.”

I stared at them blankly for a second, then let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

“Cooking isn’t easy.”

“We know.”

“There isn’t a single person in our unit who doesn’t.”

My body was in the worst possible state anyway.

Some time had passed, and my mana had refilled a little—

but I needed to conserve it.

I couldn’t use [Assistant Chef].

In that case—

“I’ll handle the delicate parts. You guys....”

Using the unit members as my arms and legs  wasn’t a bad option.

“It’ll be slower than if I did it myself, though.”

Well, obviously.

I’m a cook, and they’re people specialized in covert work and reconnaissance.

Even if I gave orders left and right, understanding them would be work in itself, and there was no way they’d pull it off prop—

“Huh?”

—erly.

That’s what I thought, but—

“...Why are you guys good at this?”

“Haha.”

Contrary to what I’d expected, the unit members helping me not only understood what I said easily—

they moved fast, sharp, and efficient.

“What is this? Even Junhyeok, my rookie, wasn’t this good at the start.”

It felt like there wasn’t even a huge gap compared to when I used [Assistant Chef].

That’s how smoothly they helped.

“We’ve always been watching you, Commander.”

And.

The reason was simpler than I’d expected.

“We’ve seen you cook a lot.... That’s all.”

“Ah.”

“You know the saying—if you watch long enough, you pick it up. It hasn’t been three years or anything, but... I guess we’re a little better than dogs.”

They’d watched me cook for a long time, so they’d naturally come to understand how a kitchen worked.

And, well.

Even I, a cook, can fight to some extent.

So there’s no rule that says combat types can’t cook.

“Thanks to that....”

The cooking moved along at a blistering pace.

And.

Without stopping my hands, I looked at the unit members and said,

“You’ve probably got a rough idea what this dish is for.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“You guys... are you fine with this?”

From what I’d heard the last time we saved Ariella, some of them had lost comrades to vampires.

“For now, those guys are monsters—vampires.”

Unlike Ariella, it was unclear whether saving them would benefit the Legion at all.

If Ariella had time, she could restore them too.

“And Legion members can be a little cold to people outside the Legion.”

They weren’t Legion comrades.

So I was curious—

what did they think of what I was doing, to decide to help me cook like this?

“That’s true, but... they’re also people who decided to follow you, Commander.”

Even while they kept working, they answered.

“If you decided to take them in, then from that moment on, they’re comrades.”

“Huh?”

“If that’s the case, then we do what we can.”

And.

Only after hearing that did I realize it.

“I thought Legion members only accepted and recognized other Legion members as comrades.”

But that wasn’t it.

If you thought about it, Ariella wasn’t officially part of the guild either.

And yet these were the same people who’d tried to save Ariella’s life.

It wasn’t just because Ariella was needed as combat power.

“What binds the Legion together is comradeship.”

And—

“The standard for who counts as a comrade isn’t whether they joined the guild.”

If I thought about it, it was the same with the avengers of the sunken city Dasmur.

And the monk of the cat spirit medium too.

I didn’t know the exact standard they used for who they considered comrades—

but unlike my vague assumption that it only applied to guild members, maybe that range had widened a lot without me even noticing.

And—

“...I used to prioritize only human survival at the beginning.”

That mattered to me too.

“After that, I started prioritizing the Legion’s survival... has my standard been shifting little by little?”

At first, only human survival mattered.

Then non-humans joined the Legion.

After the Legion grew larger, there were important allies outside the Legion as well.

And at some point—

I’d started seeing them as people I needed to save too.

“At first, it was only humans... but as time passed, there were more and more who weren’t human....”

And the moment that thought brushed past my mind—

my body kept cooking, but my head filled up with other thoughts.

Not long ago, what I learned from taking in Luca was the realization that “we have to do this together.”

And what took over my mind now was—

“How far does ‘together’ go?”

I couldn’t decide that standard right now.

But—

there was one thing I could know immediately.

“These guys.”

People who became ghouls regardless of their own will.

Among them were humans—and also vicious monsters that had originally hunted and eaten humans.

There were too many mixed species to bind them under a single neat standard.

And yet, there was one shared trait.

“They’re the ones who’ll be with us.”

They fought alongside me.

And I found myself wanting to save them.

[The form of "divine power"....]

And—

[It begins to take a more concrete shape!]

For now, that was enough.

***

“...I’m sorry, Commander.”

While pouring everything it had into that healing aura, Luca bowed its head and forced out the words.

“It really is impossible to save them.”

Sweating heavily, Luca spoke with an apologetic expression.

“They’re ones whose hearts have already burst. Even if I manage to repair those hearts somehow, their entire bodies are already ruined.”

“.......”

“With my ability, I don’t think I can save them. I’m really, truly sorry... Commander.”

But then.

At those words—

“...Commander?”

“.......”

There was no reply from the commander.

So Luca, still forcing out healing power with difficulty, lifted its head in confusion and looked to where the commander was.

And—

“Huh?”

At the scene in front of it, it could only gape blankly.

“Luca.”

Then.

The one who spoke to Luca wasn’t Shin Youngjun.

“It’s my understanding you decided to follow your benefactor.”

“...That’s true, but.”

“Then there’s something you should know.”

Jeong Sua kept her hands moving as she helped the commander cook, and looked at Luca, who was firing off that light.

“Like you said, saving them is practically impossible. But... did you know this?”

“What are you talking about.”

“To be honest, I thought there would never be a day when I could see the world this clearly again.”

Before we knew it, the cooking—using the unit members—had entered its final phase.

“You probably chose to serve the commander because you went through something similar.”

“......That’s right.”

Answering Jeong Sua, Luca stared at the commander with a vacant look.

And it wasn’t hard to see why.

[Concretized divine power surges explosively!]

From Shin Youngjun’s body, in the middle of cooking, a tremendous mass of ash-gray radiance was pouring out.

“So you should get used to it quickly.”

In the very center of that radiance, Shin Youngjun cooked as if he’d reached some kind of realization, staring into empty space with hollow eyes.

“How your benefactor turns the impossible into the possible.”

And then—

“How your benefactor performs miracles!”

Shin Youngjun reached a hand out over the finished dish and murmured in a small voice.

“Healthy meal.”

[26 divine power makes the impossible possible!]

The brilliant light pouring out wrapped the dish in warmth.

***

[Healthy Meal]

Brilliant light wrapped the dish in warmth.

[Five Loaves and Two Fish]

The dishes surrounded by that light split, over and over, countless times—

and appeared on top of the bodies of those who’d been collapsed on the ground.

And.

[Force-Feeding]

The dishes that touched their bodies soaked into them through their skin.

“.......”

Luca stared at the sight in shock.

It wasn’t because the food split and then absorbed itself.

Luca was an outstanding healer.

When it came to reading a patient’s condition, Luca was better than anyone.

And.

One of a doctor’s authorities was declaring whether a patient was dead.

“They were people who couldn’t be saved.”

To Luca’s eyes, those knights were all in a state of death.

And yet—

“Kh....”

The ones that the outstanding healer had been certain were dead—

“Kghk...!”

coughed up blood, and their bodies began to jerk.