RUSTLE, RUSTLE, RUSTLE...
Under the thick veil of night, the fierce sea wind had stopped, but at so point, a light rain had begun to fall silently.
With more than half the crew gone, the ship’s sleeping quarters were much more spacious than before.
Thanks to his status as cook, Byron had an entire kitchen to himself. He didn’t need to endure the pirates’ stench or share the lower decks’ hammocks with them.
Around two in the morning, when everyone on the ship was in their deepest sleep.
Lying in the small bed in the corner of the kitchen, Byron suddenly opened his eyes and leaped to his feet, landing on the floor without a sound.
After Anchoring his Spiritual Radiance with the ’Silver Law,’ his biological clock was more precise than the world’s most accurate marine chronoter.
After making sure all the doors and windows were tightly closed, he lit a Whale Oil Lamp on the table before sitting back down on the bed and taking out ’Bloody Mary’s Gourt Cookbook.’
The ’Sailing Logbook’ was right. No sooner had I set foot on the Man-Eating Shark, this pirate ship, than ’Hidden: Captain Salman’s Unspeakable Secret’ began to erupt. With a historical influence of 4%, it concerns the life and death of everyone on board! It seems that both the Man-Eater Sharks in the sea and those pirates who drank Blood Brew are part of this crisis. The source is this cookbook that contains ’Forbidden Knowledge.’
Byron gently caressed the cookbook’s cover. Its texture resembled human skin, yet inexplicably induced a fierce appetite as he recalled knowledge about Miracles.
In this world, there is a wide variety of Miracles, most of which are ticulously crafted by the Artisans of the Tower Sequence. A small portion are naturally ford due to so unknown principle. These include sinister, negative-leaning ’Cursed Objects’ associated with large-scale casualties, and positive-leaning ’Holy Relics’ imbued with significant historical events or heroic deeds. Naturally ford Miracles are often more powerful than crafted ones. The Hethings Strait Fleet possessed a very famous Holy Relic: ’The World’s First Matchlock Gun.’ Imbued with the power of a weapons revolution from the currents of history, it was even more formidable than a Third Order Transcendent of the Middle Sequence.
However, not only are they scarce, but most also possess a self-concealing nature. One can only harness their power under certain conditions. Naturally ford ’Holy Relics’ are rare and can be set aside for now. Ordinary Miracles, once crafted, are given their ’Decisive Inscription’ by the Artisan or their first owner. The simplest thod is to recite this inscription.
With the Sailing Logbook’s help, Byron, who excelled at uncovering secrets, was confident he could turn the tables on the mad captain, ensuring his sche would cost him dearly.
He casually flipped open the thick book. Each page contained a recipe written in the common tongue.
The first page: Stuffed Dormouse.
Fill the dormouse with a stuffing of pork and minced dormouse at. Crush pepper, nuts, and herbs, then mix with broth and marinate.
Place the marinated dormouse into a clay baking jar, bake in the oven, and then transfer to a soup pot to stew.
Flipping further, he saw the already familiar porpoise pudding, along with others like pickled auk, canned herring, pig’s blood chocolate, and Hákarl...
The recipes hailed from all over, with no fixed cuisine, as if compiled from dozens of different chefs.
All in all, it was a recipe book whose descriptions were so vivid they seed to carry their own slls. Just by looking at the text, I feel unclean.
But I know these recipes are all superficial; text in the common tongue couldn’t possibly hold ’Forbidden Knowledge.’
He took a deep breath and actively triggered ’Echoes of History’ on this Miracle.
A spiritual light blossod in his deep blue eyes, profound as the ocean, rippling over the entire cookbook like water.
BUZZ—!
With a faint hum, Byron felt his ’Spirituality’ rapidly drain, an emptiness spreading within him.
After a mont of discomfort, he shook his slightly dizzy head.
Using the ancient transcendental language, Runic, he recited word for word the prompt that appeared on the ’Sailing Logbook’:
"Praise the Gluttonous Overlord."
This was also the ’Decisive Inscription’ to activate ’Bloody Mary’s Gourt Cookbook’!
This book-shaped Miracle emanated a blood-colored spiritual light from within. Its material, which already resembled human skin, now truly revealed its original appearance.
It really was a book made of human skin.
Besides the title, a line of embossed golden inscriptions—Gluttonous Overlord—appeared at the bottom right corner of the cover, resembling ferocious claws.
The common tongue text originally on the pages gradually disappeared, replaced by a sea of Runic text and illustrations.
At the sa ti, the Sailing Logbook finally displayed so information about this Miracle.
[Bloody Mary’s Gourt Cookbook
Ability: When a devout pursuer of culinary arts reads the recipes and acquires the corresponding knowledge, the cookbook also synchronously reads the recipes from the reader’s mory.
Once all the gourt knowledge in the reader’s mory is drained, they themselves will beco fodder to enrich the cookbook, brewing into the magically potent "Blood Brew."
The more outstanding the chef, the slower the cookbook will drain them, but the brewed Blood Brew will be more delicious and more potent!
Without knowing the Decisive Inscription, one can only read the ordinary recipes. Only by reciting the Decisive Inscription can one access the Forbidden Knowledge.
Note: Transcendent individuals below the Middle Sequence are not immune to this effect.
But! Great Captain, for you, what difference does this make from getting it all for free?]
I’ve finally understood why those chefs disappeared. Salman’s idea when sending out the cookbook was exactly this—to constantly feed chefs to the cookbook to brew Blood Brew!
Byron’s gaze rely swept over the Sailing Logbook before fixing upon the Runic text in the cookbook.
Compared to the cookbook’s abilities, this Forbidden Knowledge recorded within is the real treasure.
With his knowledge, Byron easily discerned that the text described a series of forbidden recipes using Transcendent blood and various ingredients to create concoctions: Blood Brew.
It could also be translated as Arcane Spirits.
If one learned the Forbidden Knowledge in this book, they could concoct up to a hundred different types of these ’Arcane Spirits’ themselves.
This was unlike Bloody Eye Salman, who, being clueless about the true thod, could only rely on the cookbook’s inherent ability to turn chefs into a single type of concoction.
Byron casually thought of a recipe for ’seaweed egg drop soup,’ and in return, the cookbook offered him a locked recipe—Blood of tamorphosis.
Raw Materials: The flesh and soul of a Wisdom Species.
Effect: Homogeneous tamorphosis; different ingredients lead to different transformative outcos.
Byron imdiately connected all the strange occurrences he had witnessed on the ship:
’tamorphosis’ can be translated as transformation or succession. This ans if this substance is used on ’Gourt’ Salman himself, it can serve as a powerful supplent, a kind of ’main course’ of his own kind. If used on others, it can transform them, body and soul, into one’s own form. The controlled Man-Eater Sharks and the pirates dreaming of becoming Transcendent are examples of this! That whole ’Battle Blood’ claim is a lie. Ultimately, Salman only needs to perform one more ritual to ignore all the prohibitions against humans in the ’Silver Law,’ thereby ceasing to be...
Suddenly, his ears twitched; he heard strange noises from above.
It was the sound of short cries for help and... the struggles of soone dying!
Sothing’s wrong!
Byron reflexively grabbed his Bastard Sword, about to rush out of the kitchen.
But then he rembered Shipwright Old Hans’s warning to never break the rules, and he stopped in his tracks.
Among the Pirate’s Ten Commandnts was one: ’Commandnt Three: It is strictly forbidden to go on deck between two and four in the morning.’
More importantly, Byron, who only a few hours earlier had administered a massive purine bomb to a gout sufferer, understood this best.
Typically, the most severe gout attacks happen between two and four in the morning!
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