Chapter 109
After entering the kitchen, Hong Man-gi opened the refrigerator and stood still for a moment.
Cool air brushed against his face, but he could still feel the terrifying pressure and heat coming from Bellok behind him.
'What should I make...?'
Hong Man-gi closed his eyes and activated the Eye of Insight, an ability of the Gourmet Alchemist.
His consciousness extended beyond the kitchen wall, allowing him to see straight through Bellok's soul as he sat in the dining area.
Bellok's enormous body was writhing as he clutched his ruined abdomen.
On the surface, all that could be seen was his insatiable gluttony and hunger. But through Hong Man-gi's activated skill, his true nature appeared very different.
What had become entangled within his evil spirit's aura was not simple hunger.
'Something is missing...'
Bellok had spent his entire life being called Gluttonous Bellok.
To become stronger, he had chewed up and swallowed hideous monsters that others would never have dared to eat.
The regenerating flesh of trolls, the poisonous livers of wyverns, and the tough muscles of ogres.
What he devoured was not food. It was strength, fragments of monsters.
People feared and respected his power, but at the same time, they despised him.
They whispered that someone who greedily devoured monsters like that was neither a Hunter nor a human, but a monster himself.
Bellok had pretended to enjoy the way people looked at him, but in reality, his soul had been slowly withering away.
'He... was tired of being treated like a monster.'
Hong Man-gi finally understood.
He understood the true nature of the terrible emptiness Bellok had felt at the moment of his death.
It was not his stomach that was empty.
It was his life as a human being, before he was ever a Hunter.
A warm dinner table, food prepared with care, and the warmth of people sharing a meal together.
Having lived like a beast, tearing into the raw flesh of monsters, what Bellok had unconsciously longed for more than anything was to be treated like a human being.
Perhaps he had spent his life forgetting and burying the most basic things in order to protect his strength, his title, and his position.
"A monster might deserve to be fed monster meat, but..."
Hong Man-gi ignored the highest-grade monster ingredients filling his inventory.
Neither the leftover Hellfire Boar meat nor the Snowfield Wolf's liver was the right answer now.
He searched deep inside the refrigerator and took out a plain black plastic bag.
Inside were perfectly ordinary pork ribs, with a little blood still seeping from the meat.
"A human being deserves to eat human food."
Hong Man-gi placed the pork ribs on the cutting board.
It was not a glamorous dish, nor did it require expensive ingredients.
But it was a flavor that any ordinary person would remember somewhere deep in their heart.
A rustic and simple dish, with the touch of a mother's hands and the depth of passing years absorbed into its red seasoning.
'Aged Kimchi Braised Pork Ribs.'
That was the answer Hong Man-gi had chosen.
It was a dish that would satisfy Bellok's love of tearing meat from the bone while using the deep flavor of aged kimchi to embrace his troubled soul.
"With this... I should be able to fill that hole in your heart."
Hong Man-gi picked up his knife with a determined expression.
He quietly examined the pork ribs lying on the cutting board.
They were fresh, with a good balance of bright red lean meat and white fat, but small amounts of blood and unpleasant odors were hidden between the bones and flesh.
With an ordinary cooking method, he would have soaked the ribs in cold water for a long time to remove the blood, then briefly boiled them in water containing bay leaves or doenjang.
But he did not have time for that.
Bellok was running out of patience outside, and every second was precious.
More importantly, ordinary cooking methods would never satisfy that enormous soul, which was on the verge of becoming an evil spirit.
Hong Man-gi placed both hands over the ribs.
[Skill Activated: Material Reconstruction, Circulation and Infusion]
"Purify."
Golden mana emerged from his fingertips like threads and wrapped around the pork ribs.
[Hummmmm.]
The mana penetrated the spaces between the meat's muscle fibers.
The blood hidden inside the bones and the impurities responsible for the unpleasant smell were pushed out by waves of mana.
Red blood rose into the air and evaporated, leaving the meat a clean, bright red color, as though it had just been freshly butchered.
But that alone was not enough.
Bellok had been a Hunter with powerful jaws, capable of immediately tearing apart and eating almost anything.
But now, he was an exhausted soul.
What he needed was not meat that required vigorous chewing, but tenderness that would melt in his mouth like snow.
"Become tender."
Hong Man-gi transformed the power of his alchemy.
This time, he used warmth.
It was not simply heat.
He infused the meat with the energy of the warm feelings that had melted Kang Min-hyuk's soul, along with the gentle moonlight energy contained within Full Moon.
[Sizzle.]
The structure of the pork ribs began to change.
The tightly packed muscle fibers responded to the warmth of the mana and gradually loosened.
The collagen in the connective tissue relaxed until it was on the verge of turning into gelatin.
The meat was still attached to the bones, but it had reached the perfect state of tenderness, as though it would fall off with the lightest touch of a pair of chopsticks.
Hong Man-gi had used alchemy to achieve, in only a few seconds, the tenderness that would normally require more than half a day of slow cooking.
"Good. The meat is ready."
Hong Man-gi looked at the prepared ribs with satisfaction.
Now it was time to give the meat a soul.
Hong Man-gi opened the earthenware jar he kept in one corner of the kitchen.
It contained seed soy sauce, the precious soy sauce that had been aged for decades and passed down to him by Master Im Jeong-sik not long ago.
