Chapter 73: Kitchen Nightmares (Swamp Edition)

Ren skidded into the scullery, her puffer coat swishing. The harem girls were already there. The Coral Snake had secured a medium-sized clay pot that looked suspiciously like a burial urn, and the Albino Snake was struggling to stack a pile of dry, silver-bark wood.

“Move it, move it, move it!” Ren barked, her voice cracking with the ghost of a high-stress British chef.

The heavy wooden door creaked under an immense weight. Viper slithered in, dragging a carcass behind him. It was a scaled, muscular nightmare with a snout full of serrated teeth and a tail that could probably level a small hut. It was at least ten feet long and thick as a tree trunk.

Ren froze, her jaw dropping. “Viper! I said a small one! That thing is a dinosaur!”

Viper wiped slime from his brow, looking genuinely confused. “It is small. It is a hatchling. It was still crying for its mother when I found it. I had to wrestle it away from its siblings.”

Ren stared at the “baby” and felt a cold shiver run down her spine. If this ten-foot-long murder-log was a toddler, she didn’t even want to imagine the mother. She pictured a creature the size of a submarine with eyes like dinner plates and a temper to match.

“Crikey,” Ren whispered, her eyes wide with horrified awe. “I’d pay good money to see Steve Irwin try to wrestle the mother of this thing. God rest his soul, he’d be out here calling this dragon a ’gorgeous little lady’.”

Ding!

[System Notification: Kitchen Nightmare Protocol] [Time until Kael wakes up: 45 Minutes.] [Chef Status: Blood Pressure Rising.]

“Right! Focus!” Ren clapped her hands, her eyes turning into sharp flint. “Viper! Cleaver! Now! Chop the tail! I need the white meat, and I need it diced into one-inch cubes! Uniformity is key, Viper! If the pieces are different sizes, they cook unevenly, and I will lose my mind!”

Viper grabbed the heavy iron cleaver Ren summoned from her inventory. He swung with all his might. Clang. The blade bounced off the scales like he’d hit a steel vault.

“It is too thick!” Viper grunted, his scales pale with effort.

“Useless! Absolutely useless!” Ren screamed, snatching the cleaver from him. “Out of the way! Your tail is touching the prep station! CROSS-CONTAMINATION! That is a health code violation! Do you want the Tiger King to have salmonella? Because that’s how you get salmonella!”

She lunged at the crocodile. With a practiced, rhythmic violence, she found the soft chink in the scales near the undertail. Thwack. Slide. Thwack. In a blur of motion, she peeled back the hide, revealing the glistening, translucent white meat beneath. She worked with a surgical precision that left the harem girls gasping.

Ding!

[Time remaining: 35 Minutes.]

“You! Striped one! Wash your hands!” Ren pointed a bloody cleaver at the Coral Snake. “I see dirt under those claws! If I see one speck of swamp muck in my pot, I will stir you into the base! WASH THEM!”

The snake woman scrambled toward a water basin. Ren’s heart hammered. She had no spices, no salt, and no spoon. She grabbed a sturdy branch of silver-wood, scrubbing it furiously in a basin of water until the bark was gone and the wood was smooth and white.

“Albino! The fire! It needs to be a steady, licking flame! Stoke it!”

Ren stood over the clay pot, her arm moving the wooden stick in a steady, hypnotic circle. She threw in a handful of fish fat and the flour from her inventory. The sizzle was immediate. She began the grueling process of the roux. She couldn’t look away. If the roux burned, the gumbo was dead.

Ding!

[Time remaining: 25 Minutes.]

“Faster! More wood!” Ren reached into her inventory for the plants she’d gathered in the garden. She began crushing the “Garlic-Chives” and the peppery “Swamp Kale” between two flat stones, creating a pungent, spicy green paste. The aroma was sharp, earthy, and carried a hit of natural heat that cleared her sinuses.

She tossed the paste into the flour and fat. The smell was explosive. It was the “Holy Trinity” of the swamp hitting the pan. Next came the closest she could get to okra, sliced into thin coins. As they hit the heat, they released their sticky sap, beginning the thickening process that would turn the watery broth into a velvety, rib-sticking stew.

Ding!

[Time remaining: 15 Minutes. Pacing: Sub-par. Hurry up, Chef!]

Ren was sweating now. The puffer coat was a portable sauna, her skin moist under the nylon, but she didn’t dare stop. She was doing everything now—chopping the crocodile meat into perfect cubes because Viper’s cuts were “ragged and offensive to the eyes,” and stirring the pot with the silver-wood branch.

To taste, she used a clean, hollow reed as a pipette, drawing up a small amount of liquid and dropping it onto her wrist to cool before sampling.

“Reduce, damn you! Reduce!” Ren muttered, her eyes fixed on the bubbling surface. The flavor was wild—the swamp plants provided a natural, fierce heat that mimicked cayenne, while the crocodile meat added a richness that was halfway between chicken and swordfish.

Ding!

[Time remaining: 8 Minutes. ’Kael’ is twitching!]

The adrenaline made her move faster. She was a blur of red nylon and flying silver-wood. She tossed in the last of the crushed herbs, the scent of the gumbo now so powerful it filled the entire scullery, masking the smell of damp stone and snake musk. The crocodile tail meat simmered until it began to pull apart into succulent, melt-in-the-mouth threads.

Ding!

[Time remaining: 5 Minutes. GO! GO! GO!]

Ren was panting, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her hair was falling out of its pin, damp curls sticking to her forehead. She looked at the pot. It was glossy, dark, and humming with a heat that could wake the dead.

“Everyone out of the way!” she roared, her voice echoing off the stone walls.

She grabbed the long, puffy sleeves of her red coat, pulling them down over her hands to act as makeshift, padded oven mitts. She heaved the hot, heavy clay pot off the fire. The weight strained her tired arms, and her body was slick with sweat, but she didn’t flinch.

She stood in the center of the smoky scullery, holding the pot like a holy relic, the steam rising in a fragrant plume around her head.

“The fate of the world,” Ren wheezed, as she looked at her useless team, “rests in this gumbo.”

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