Chapter 186

Chapter 186

I Became the Academy Mafia Chapter 186Just as we'd discussed beforehand, she lifted the panel she'd prepared in advance.

Perhaps she still wasn't convinced this was right, because despite her smile, her eyes were trembling.

“W-wow~ S-slime sauce sweet and sour pork. I've never heard of a dish like that before. Th-this is actually edible, right?”

Lee Se-ri turned her head and gave me a desperate look.

“Of course! I guarantee it'll definitely taste good. Now, shall we introduce the ingredients first?”

“Ah, yes! Here are the ingredients!”

Of course, we'd prepared those beforehand too.

“Slime bodily fluid and Kingdom Fire Ant acid. Aside from those two, everything else is surprisingly ordinary! Oh, and we're using store-bought sweet and sour pork!”

That's right. The only special ingredients needed were those used for the sauce.

The sweet and sour pork itself could be an ordinary premade product.

“May I ask why we're using store-bought sweet and sour pork, President Se-ri?”

“Ah, the reason is simple! There's no way a premade product developed by master's and doctoral graduates from prestigious universities after racking their brains could taste bad, right?”

As expected, Lee Se-ri followed the script we'd prepared beforehand.

As long as it was cooked properly, premade food was guaranteed to taste at least decent, so for a dish where the sauce was important, using a premade product was the safest choice.

“Most importantly, the key to this dish is the sauce.”

The name of the dish was ‘Slime Sauce Sweet and Sour Pork’ in the first place, so of course everything depended on the sauce.

“Now, shall we make the sauce first? First, add the slime bodily fluid to a glass bowl. We just got this from the Ranger Club, and we froze it as soon as we received it yesterday, so it's in excellent condition!”

The clearer slime bodily fluid was, the less fresh it was considered.

But the slime bodily fluid in the bowl right now was a vivid green.

It was a very high-quality product.

“But I heard slime bodily fluid is extremely alkaline, so it's basically poison, isn't it?”

At my question, she crossed her arms into an X and shook her head.

Right. Slightly exaggerated gestures like that made it easier for viewers to become immersed.

“Exactly. If you drank this as-is, you'd immediately be taken to the emergency room. An ordinary person might even die. But if we have this, the story changes!”

As she said that, she swirled a yellow liquid inside a beaker.

“Ahh! That's the Kingdom Fire Ant acid you mentioned earlier, right?”

“Correct! Did you know that when slime bodily fluid and Kingdom Fire Ant acid are mixed together, the acidity and alkalinity perfectly neutralize each other?”

As she said that and poured the acid into the slime bodily fluid, the green liquid gradually turned blue and began thickening.

“Most importantly, you can see the slime bodily fluid thickening like this. Now, with this, it's transformed into something edible.”

“I didn't know that. So you're making food by mixing poison with poison?”

“That's an accurate description!”

She smiled as she looked at the completely thickened blue liquid.

“Now, this is where things become important. It's already edible in its current state, but the taste still isn't anything to expect much from. That's why we need this.”

Saying that, she poured in the sugar she'd prepared beforehand, and I timed my reaction to act startled.

“Th-that much? That can't be good for your health...”

“Would someone concerned about health eat sweet and sour pork? They should eat salad. We're making this purely because we want it to taste good, so it doesn't matter!”

Exactly! Anyone worried about health should just eat chicken breast. Isn't that obvious?

“More importantly, this is actually healthier than you'd think. Mixing slime bodily fluid and acid has a slight stamina recovery effect.”

At last, the sweet and sour pork sauce was finished.

Lee Se-ri frowned at the sight of it.

Now that the completed sauce was actually in front of her, it seemed even she had gotten scared.

“For now, the sauce is c-complete. Uh... I followed the recipe exactly, but this really is right, isn't it?”

Hey, you're the one teaching the recipe. How can you say that!

But from the video's perspective, this was actually a pretty good editing point.

Because it was funny.

So I played along smoothly.

“Of course. Don't they say food that looks good tastes good too? Look at this brilliant color. Doesn't it look delicious to anyone?”

“Uh... Actually, I heard blue colors suppress appetite──”

“──Doesn't it look delicious?”

“Y-yes... It looks delicious! Haha!”

In the end, Lee Se-ri forced a smile and nodded.

“Then I guess we should eat it now. What do we do with the sauce...”

“President Lee Se-ri, are you a pour-the-sauce person or a dip-the-sauce person?”

“Huh? I'm obviously a dip──”

I poured the sauce over it.

“Hyuaaaak?! What! What are you doing!”

“That's one of the advantages of this sauce. The sauce can't penetrate the sweet and sour pork, so it stays crispy all the time. Even if you leave it like this for an hour, the sweet and sour pork should stay crispy. So don't worry and...”

Sticky

-“Open wide.”

I picked up a piece of sweet and sour pork covered in sauce and held it in front of her mouth.

Blue sauce dripped onto the table.

“A-ah?”

“Yes. If I tell you to eat it yourself, I feel like you'll hesitate and refuse. Now, ah.”

“Ah... Aaagh. Aaaaaaagh!”

The moment she hesitantly opened her mouth, I drew on the principles of Aura Style and quickly shoved the sweet and sour pork inside.

Lee Se-ri squeezed her eyes shut and made a strange noise.

“I can't chew...”

“Chew! You have to chew to taste it!”

“Ugh... sniff...

Mm...

Hm?”

She gradually raised her head and looked at me.

“I-it's good?”

“Right?”

“Yes! It's kind of tangy and sweet, but it also goes down smoothly...

It's good?!”

Perhaps gaining courage after taking one bite, she picked up a piece of sweet and sour pork with her own chopsticks and put it in her mouth again.

“Mmm...! It's delicious! It's really, really delicious!”

In the end, as though her terrified expression from moments ago had never existed, she began happily eating the sweet and sour pork.

“President Eugene, you should try some too!”

“Ah, I'm fine. I ate something before coming.”...

Actually.

I was still a little scared to eat it.

After all, this was just something I'd made according to how I remembered the recipe from the game.

I'd never actually eaten it myself...

How can a person eat food like this?

Ugh.

I still preferred ordinary sweet and sour pork.

“Now! Today, together with President Eugene, we made ‘Slime Bodily Fluid Sweet and Sour Pork’! I hope all our subscribers and viewers try making it at home too! The ingredients are easy to obtain, and most importantly, it's incredibly delicious!”

Perhaps deciding it was time to wrap things up, she began her closing remarks.

“The viewing fee is likes and comments! Subscribe! Thank you for watching! This has been Lee Se-ri, president of Seoul Hero Academy's Recipe Development Club!”

“And Han Eugene of Familia.”──Thank you!

______________

“Junior! Jackpot! It's a jackpot!!”

Early in the morning, someone nearly broke the classroom door open, and it turned out to be Lee Se-ri, breathing heavily.

I couldn't tell whether she was panting from excitement or because she'd run all the way here.

“Ah, Senior. Did the video upload properly?”

I hadn't been able to check because I had work to do as soon as I got home, but come to think of it, she would've uploaded it by now.

Just as I thought that.

“H-here, look at this!”

She showed me her phone screen while panting.

Hm?

This screen was the Recipe Development Club's WeTube homepage she'd shown me yesterday...

“150,000?”

“150,000!”

“No, how did you gain fifty thousand subscribers in one day?”

“Exactly!”

Wasn't this the kind of thing that only happened to influencers?

And that wasn't the end of it.

The subscriber count changed as I clicked into it.

As though blessed by God, it was still continuing to rise even now.

Even I was amazed enough to take out my phone and enter the Recipe Development Club's channel.

“...

You still hadn't subscribed?”

“...”

I quietly pressed subscribe.

The moment I entered the channel, under [Popular Videos]

there was a thumbnail prominently featuring both Lee Se-ri and me.

It had more than twice as many views as the other videos.

“That's fortunate. Looks like you broke through the wall you were talking about.”

“Yes! And now other people are even doing a challenge!”

“A challenge?”

Just as she'd said, related videos included ones titled Slime Sweet and Sour Pork Challenge.

Was this really content big enough to start a challenge?

I never dreamed it would cause this much of an impact...

“And that's not all! Did you know you've gotten a nickname too, President Eugene?”

“...

What is it now?”

I'm uneasy.

“Here, look at the comments!”[TuneRay: Are Academy students all that pretty and handsome normally? They're literally a beautiful couple T_T][GregoryJones: Sweet-and-Sour-Pork Guy is insanely handsome, what do I do T_T][Rose: I made it and it was seriously delicious! A new paradigm in the world of sweet and sour pork! Sweet-and-Sour-Pork Guy!][PouringIsRightForYou: We, contemporaries... have witnessed a new world, thank you. Sweet-and-Sour-Pork Guy, with this our victory...]...

What the hell is Sweet-and-Sour-Pork Guy supposed to be,“A nickname like this will disappear quickly. I don't think I need to care about it.”

It was common sense that a boring nickname like this wouldn't last long.

“Hehe. You helped us so much again this time, President Eugene. Thank you so much once again.”

When Senior Lee Se-ri bowed deeply to me, murmuring came from the front seats.‘Isn't that a senior?’‘Why is a senior bowing to the vice class president?’‘Even so, how can he make a senior...’So the Bad Boy image attached to me is still going strong.

“Please don't do that too much. Other people might look at me strangely.”

“Ah! I-is that so? S-sorry! Then I'll head off first.”

At that, she sprang upright in surprise.

“Yes. Make sure to contact me if anything happens.”

“Hehe. Yes! Then, see you later!”

Lee Se-ri disappeared again, and now that things had become quiet, I was thinking of putting my head down and resting...

Slide─ Bang!

“Yo~! Sweet-and-Sour-Pork Guy! Hehe. No, Boss. How does a person end up with the nickname Sweet-and-Sour-Pork Guy?”...

This damn Academy refuses to let me rest.

______________

“...

The villain we'll study today is a villain who was once infamous throughout the world, the Demon Contractor, Kurus.”First period was Villain Studies, a class taught by Instructor Park Yoon-ho.

“Before that... Jin-woo Vivald. What's wrong with your eye? It's bruised blue. Did you go to the infirmary?”

“I fell down the stairs. I'm fine.”

“...

Then that's fine.”

Jin-woo, whose eye had swollen after an unfortunate incident before morning homeroom, glanced at me resentfully...

“Honestly, Mr. Jin-woo did something worth getting hit for.”

“Agreed. I saw the video and kept my mouth shut too.”

The two people sitting in front whispered, dealing additional damage to Jin-woo.

“Sniff...”

Even he couldn't say anything, probably because he thought he'd deserved to get hit.

“Now, first let's talk about Kurus. Does anyone know about Kurus?”

Park Yoon-ho said that while looking around the classroom, but no one raised their hand yet.

That was how little was known about this villain.

“No one? Then──”

At that moment, a student sitting in the corner of the front row raised her hand.

It was Marie Nate, the Puppet Master.

“K-Kurus. He's a Demon Contractor and villain who made contracts with a total of thirty-three demons... Because of that, he was able to use a total of thirty-three abilities. The difference in level between those abilities was large, but I heard many heroes struggled because of his skill in using them in a variety of ways.”

At her slow, quiet explanation, Park Yoon-ho raised the corners of his mouth and nodded.

“Correct. You know your stuff, Marie Nate.”

“Th-thank you.”

“Now, let's see for ourselves how Kurus moved against the heroes back then. And how the heroes responded to Kurus.”

With one hand in his pants pocket, he snapped his fingers.

Waves of mana rippled outward from him and instantly transformed the scenery of the classroom.

“What you're about to see is the capture operation that took place in Beijing, China, twenty-three years ago. Since it was an operation to capture someone who was practically S-rank at the time, countless heroes participated.”

The place surrounding us was somewhere I'd seen several times before, and somewhere I'd even visited in person.

The Forbidden City in Beijing.

We were standing right in the middle of it.

“Now, we'll begin a simple test from here. I'll award bonus points to the student who can perfectly present a method to locate Lupus here and a method to capture him.”

Clap! With the sound of his hands coming together, another wave of dizziness washed over us with a ping.

Park Yoon-ho.

He had drawn us into an illusion to remove the limitations of physical space.

“You have thirty minutes. Discuss it, walk around and investigate, use whatever method you like. If you finish early, you'll get the remaining time as free time. Then... begin.”