I Cook Limitlessly In a Fantasy World

'These foxes…'

Ainen gulped.

[Glacier Starlight Fox]

Level: 150

Life rank: Adept

Innate Talent: ??? [System can only let you view the complete status of beings one Life rank above you. ]

Stats:

—> Vitality: Ⅲ 11 Ⅲ

—> Strength: Ⅲ 12 Ⅲ

—> Stamina: Ⅲ 8 Ⅲ

—> Agility: Ⅲ 9 Ⅲ

—> Cognition: Ⅲ 11 Ⅲ

—> Arcane: Ⅲ 18 Ⅲ

—> Mana: Ⅲ 19 Ⅲ

Skills: ???

Bloodline: ???

'So they are frigging super strong?'

Ainen blinked twice.

Am I seeing things, or are they growing?

As the foxes finished eating the slab, they were visibly a few centimeters bigger!

"Yipp!"

"Whisss!"

The foxes cried and whistled while looking at him.

Ainen cheerfully laughed. "Alright, let me whip up more for you."

'Why are they so so cute!'

'Hmm…these foxes are powerful and mystical! If I can make them like me, they would be my best companions.'

'Time to farm favorability points.' Ainen grinned as he took out the wolves and started preparing their meat.

The three foxes started playing with each other nearby, their cute sounds making the cooking more lively for Ainen.

One of the foxes suddenly jumped on his head. Ainen casually started gently using his hand, rubbing it, but after the fox jumped away, he froze in realization.

'Damn…if they want to, they can literally kill me in a blink.'

Because those foxes were level 100!

Those stats also looked abnormal.

The numbers were surrounded by Roman number three!

He was sure that these foxes were naturally controlling their powers.

When that fox jumped on him, if it was really at its true power, Ainen would have been squashed.

Looking at the cute foxes, Ainen smiled. 'Well, they won't hurt me as long as I don't harm them.'

'How can I harm these cute little fellas?' Ainen shook his head.

'Putting that aside, I want to try the effect of Cognition.' Ainen thought as he almost finished cooking the batch.

He put the food on the solid ground he created using intense flames.

"Yiipppp!"

The foxes soundly cheered and jumped on the meat as they happily began eating with their cute tails wagging in joy.

Ainen sat down, leaning against the tree, and opened his status.

[Chef Ainen]

Level: 24

Innate Talent:

—> I Cook Limitlessly.

Stats: 39

—> Vitality: 20

—> Strength: 25

—> Stamina: 20

—> Agility: 20

—> Cognition: 15

—> Arcane: 25

—> Mana: 20

Ainen felt that he was getting slower in improving his Fire Manipulation.

He did improve today when he killed that deer, but after that, in the whole two hours, he didn't improve much.

The proficiency only went to 75% from 71%.

'Alright, time to get a boost.'

Ainen distributed 20 points to Cognition, increasing it from 15 to 35!

For a moment, Ainen blanked out and saw a strange phenomenon of a mystical darkness filled with colorful stars.

But it was only for a moment.

'T-This…'

Ainen's eyes brightly glimmered.

Without hesitation, he started manipulating fire.

'Shape…'

He snapped his finger once.

The mass of flame separated into three parts before shaping into the exact shape of the three foxes.

Ainen continued to refine them, as they turned lifelike.

'Adjustment of temperature, and reaction of flames with natural environment's substances.'

'I can't see them, but I can feel them through these flames…'

Ainen was fully lost as he played with flames, and that too with minimal mana while expanding the new possibilities.

It felt like his mind upgraded several levels.

He hadn't studied much in science or anything except for general knowledge, but now, he was exploring and understanding those concepts quite easily when he explored them through the usage of his Fire Manipulation.

Without him knowing, his proficiency in Fire Manipulation quietly hit 100%.

The foxes finished eating after ten minutes and lay on the floor with their tummies in the open.

They looked at Ainen, who was absorbed in his craft, manipulating flames and creating a bunch of things made of flames as they floated around him.

'Well, well…it looks like I'll have to overhaul my arsenal of spells.'

Ainen grinned, clearly excited in his eyes. 'This will be fun.'

He could already tell that once he was done training, he was going to get more powerful.

The difference would be stark. To put it into perspective, the previous way of creating and executing his spells was like a teen who had just started practicing martial arts, while now, he was like a proper master with years of practice.

'So this is what 100% proficiency feels like… It's not me bending fire anymore—it's me understanding it.'

The system already wrote 100% proficiency, but Ainen had just started exploring it.

He closed his eyes.

The flames whispered.

Every ember was a note, every flicker a breath, every flare a heartbeat. He could hear the expansion of gases, the strain of oxygen, the vibration of heat itself.

A simple fireball appeared before him. But now, when he focused, he didn't just see a ball of flame—he saw the plasma core, a furious nucleus where matter tore itself apart, surrounded by outer layers of combustion that could be shaped, compressed, or released.

"Compression," Ainen muttered. He willed it.

The fireball shrank to the size of a marble, but the air around it warped, shimmered, and burned with unbearable intensity. A single pebble beneath it blackened, then crumbled into dust.

"Expansion."

The marble exploded into a dome of harmless sparks, illuminating the clearing like a burst of fireworks. The foxes yipped, startled at first, then curiously pawed at the harmless embers that danced before fading.

Ainen's grin widened.

'Flames are more than just burning. They're a reaction… a balance of fuel, air, and energy. If I guide them properly, I can create a variety of applications on how to make my flame behave.' Ainen's eyes glinted.

He reached out again. This time, the flames shaped into a thin blade of crimson light. When he swung it, it sliced cleanly through a nearby branch—yet the wood didn't char. The cut was surgical, clean, as though done with a razor.

'A flame that severs bonds…not by burning, but by vibrating at high frequencies.'

'Those faint cracks I felt…wait, not way, right?'

His heart pounded.

Ainen froze, staring at the cut branch.

'Everything in this world… every single thing… is held together by bonds. Bonds between particles, bonds between elements, bonds between what makes matter itself.'

His breath caught. The memory of fun knowledge videos he had seen flashed through his mind—chemistry diagrams, atomic models, talk of molecules.

'If what I faintly felt were those bonds….' Ainen frowned. 'I need a better perception of that.'

'I lack qualitative senses for it, but I can't be mistaken. I can indeed perceive the bonds through my own fire's structures in a focused state.'

…

Ainen was absorbed in exploring and honing the new applications of Fire Manipulation.

While he was absorbed in training, he didn't realize that those three foxes were keeping themselves very busy.

An hour of intense, focused training later, he finally had to take a break.

Then, as if a calm silence was broken, Ainen heard eager and enthusiastic barks of the foxes.

Ainen turned around, and his jaw dropped to the ground.

There was a roughly fifteen-meter-tall hill of dead monsters, both small and big.

"Yipppp!"

"Waauu! Wau!"

Ainen looked at the fellows and wryly smiled.

But then, realization hit him.

'Wait, there was complete silence until now. Did they…hunt this hour, stacking corpses here without making a single sound because I was focused on training?'

Ainen brightly smiled as he looked at them.

These fellows were too cute!

Looking at the hill of monsters, Ainen grinned. "You cute darlings gave me a great idea. Just wait, I'll whip up a grand feast for you with my new skills." Ainen made his armor disappear, becoming bare-chested. 'I'll need water too, but I'll get it later.'

'For now, let's try this and recover some Mana.'

Taking a deep breath, his eyes flickered as heat began spreading around him, forming a faint dome of ten meters radius.

He was merely at 23 Mana, but he used 20 in an instant.

'There is Mana in the atmosphere. I can feel it through the heat.'

'Mana…these strange bonds that are flexible flexible…is this Mana?'

Ainen couldn't see it, but he could feel it.

'Great.'

Within ten meters around him, Ainen captured Mana within heat pockets and reabsorbed his heat.

Ainen's eyes shone.

His Mana went from 3 to 67!

[Congratulations. You have learned a crude Mana Cultivation method on your own. You have transcended the normal progression limit. You have cooked.]

Ainen blinked. 'I cooked?'

[You were chosen because you could think of recipes no one could. Your food tasted like it was made in heaven. But your creativity, your supreme focus that allows you to progress in realms far higher than fellow chefs in that world, can reflect more than just in cooking. Hence, this Limitless Chef System is for you.]

[You are a chef who can cook limitlessly in everything. This is the belief of your patron.]

[For this cooking achievement, you are granted a chance at learning a proper Mana Cultivation method.]

[Mana Cultivation Tower ticket x 1]