Recipe for the Apocalypse: I Cooked an S-Rank Monster

Chapter 2: Dry-Brine and Blood

"Dead. Dead. DEAD!"

Dash twisted the cleaver in the Ashback Jackal's neck with every last ounce of strength left in his arm. Not a chop. Not a swing. A twist. Like separating a chicken thigh from the body. The joint. He was looking for the joint.

His brain wasn't thinking like a fighter. His brain was thinking like a cook who had cut meat off the bone ten thousand times. Right here. Between the third and fourth vertebra. There's a gap. There's always a gap.

The cleaver crunched. Cartilage snapped.

The Ashback Jackal let out one final howl, a sound like a saw biting through green timber, and its whole body convulsed. Its hind legs clawed at the tile. Then it dropped. Its side slammed into the spice rack. Bottles shattered. Hot ash burst from its back like embers doused with water.

Then silence.

Dash collapsed to the floor. His back hit the steel counter. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, like someone just hauled out of deep water. His left arm, from elbow to wrist, was blistering red on top of the old burn scar that had been shiny for years. His skin throbbed. The smell of cooking flesh filled his nose. His own flesh.

"Damn it," he hissed. His voice was hoarse. Cracked. "Damn it, damn it, damn it."

He stared at the cleaver still locked in his right hand. The blade was dark with monster blood. Not red. Blackish. Thick as motor oil. On the floor, the Ashback Jackal wasn't moving anymore. Its yellow eyes were slowly going cloudy. Dead.

From the ceiling speakers, Commander Aldric's flat voice came through again. "Sector Seven breach has been secured. Perimeter sealed. All units return to post. CIV-7 personnel, return to your assigned sectors."

Secured. Dash almost laughed. They secured the hole. Not what came through it. Because what came through it was right here, sprawled on the floor of The Rusty Skillet's kitchen, with his father's cleaver still buried in its neck.

No one knew. No one would ever know. Dash was supposed to report it. He was supposed to hit the emergency button on the wall, call in a cleanup crew, let them burn the carcass per protocol. Don't eat it. Burn the body. First rule. The rule painted on every wall in Ironway for the past three years.

He knew that.

He knew.

But his stomach growled.

Loud. Pathetic. Like a kid whining for dinner. Dash hadn't eaten since morning. Half a can of beans, split with Wren, the scavenger girl who sometimes slept in the kitchen vent. His rations had run out two days ago. The next shipment still hadn't come. And right in front of him, sprawled across a floor slick with black blood and shattered spices, lay sixty kilograms of meat.

Dash swallowed.

The marbling is good.

The thought came uninvited. His brain, his cook's brain, the brain that could never stop reading ingredients, scanned the carcass and saw no threat. No poison. Just material. Thick subcutaneous fat, evenly distributed. Dense muscle fibers, but not tough. The color of the meat beneath the ash: dark red, almost purple. Like beef dry-aged for two weeks.

"I'm losing my mind," Dash whispered. He turned his face away. Stared at the ceiling. Stared at the flickering neon light. "I'm losing my mind. That's a monster. That's poison."

But his stomach growled again.

And the forty liters of broth on the back burner, the canned beef bone broth he'd been simmering for fourteen hours, suddenly its aroma felt like not enough. Felt like colored water. Felt like a lie.

Dash stared at the carcass again. For a long time.

"Cut a small piece," he said to himself. His voice was barely a whisper. "One piece. If it tastes like poison, I spit it out. If it doesn't..."

He didn't finish the sentence.

Twenty minutes later, the kitchen of The Rusty Skillet smelled like something that had no business existing in the world after the Convergence.

Dash worked with shaking hands, but he didn't stop. He filleted the back leg, just two kilograms, and covered the rest with a cloth. Coarse salt from the stock under the counter, rubbed across every surface of the meat. Dry-brine. His father's technique. Salt draws moisture to the surface, dries out the fibers, concentrates the flavor.

Or so he thought. He didn't know that what got drawn to the surface wasn't just water.

Twenty minutes. He waited. Sitting on the floor, his back against the counter, his blistered left arm cradled against his chest. The pain was still there. Sharp. Deep.

Then: a cast-iron skillet over low heat. Not high heat. Not frying. Not boiling. Slow render. Flame as low as it would go. Meat laid on the dry surface, no oil. The Ashback Jackal's fat began to melt, slow and quiet, a soft hiss filling the kitchen with a smell that made Dash forget to breathe.

Thin smoke curled upward. The aroma...

Dash blinked.

It smelled like wagyu smoked over mesquite wood. With an undertow of roasted paprika. And something else. Something that had not existed in the world before the Convergence. Like a spice he had never encountered, but his brain instantly recognized as delicious.

Forty-five minutes. Dash flipped the meat three times. Each time, the outside changed: from dark red to a deep brown, a perfect caramelization, crisp at the edges but tender in the center. The rendered fat pooled at the bottom of the skillet, golden.

He lifted one thin slice. Blew on it. Hesitated.

"One bite," he whispered. "If it's off, I spit it out."

He bit down.

Flavor exploded across his tongue like fireworks delayed by three years. Savory. Deep. A heat that wasn't spice but warmth, spreading from his tongue down his throat into his stomach and out to his fingertips. Dash closed his eyes. He had never, not once in his life, eaten anything this good. Not at his father's restaurant. Not in culinary school. Not anywhere.

Then the pain in his left arm stopped.

Not eased. Stopped. Like someone yanked a nail buried deep in the muscle. Dash opened his eyes. Looked down at his arm. The burn, the one that had been blistering red and throbbing just moments ago...

At the edge of his vision, faint, like a reflection caught in glass: [+15% Stamina | 00:29:47]

Dash blinked. The text vanished.

"Hallucination," he said. "Shock. I'm in shock."

He ate again. Second bite. Third. Fourth. With every bite, the warmth grew stronger. His body felt light. His legs felt like they could run without ever tiring. His head was clear, clearer than it had been at any point before the Convergence.

He ate until the skillet was half empty.

Then he sat back. Stared at his hands. Stared at the skillet. And for the first time in three years, he didn't feel like a corpse that just happened to still be walking.

The kitchen door creaked open.

"I need a beer. Griggs needs..."

Griggs stopped in the doorway. His eyes moved from Dash, to the floor still wet with black blood, to the half-filleted Ashback Jackal draped over the counter, to the skillet full of browned meat still sending up wisps of steam.

His face went pale.

"You," Griggs said. His voice wasn't mocking anymore. Wasn't drunk. "You ate that?"

Dash didn't answer. He was still holding a slice of meat between his fingers.

"You're insane." Griggs took a step back. "That's a monster. That's poison. You'll be dead in six hours. You know that, right? You know that?"

"I..."

"You need to get to medical. Right now. I'll call..." Griggs stopped mid-sentence. His eyes narrowed. He was staring at Dash's left arm. Staring at the burn. The burn that had been there before the alarm, when Griggs had walked into the kitchen and started riding Dash at the counter. Blistered. Red. Griggs had seen it with his own eyes.

Now the skin was smooth. Whole. Like it had never been touched by hot ash.

Griggs stepped back again. This time he wasn't backing away from a dead monster. He was backing away from Dash.

"You're not human," he whispered.

"Griggs, listen..."

"You have to be reported to the Commander." Griggs was already at the door. His voice was shaking. Not angry. Scared. "I don't know what you are. But you have to be reported."

"Griggs, wait..."

But Griggs's footsteps were already fading down the corridor. The door swung shut.

Dash stood alone in the kitchen. At the bottom of the skillet, there was still meat. Still steaming. Still smelling like something that shouldn't be possible.

He looked at the door Griggs had just walked through. Then at the skillet. Then at his own hands, left and right, as if he were seeing them for the very first time.

"If this is real," he whispered to the smoke rising from the skillet, to the black blood drying on the tile, to the carcass staring up at him with cloudy eyes, "why has no one else ever done it?"

No answer.

Just the hum of the neon light. And his stomach, which for the first time in three years, had gone quiet.