Chapter 176. You’d Survive on Sheer Willpower and Scare the Ingredients Being Edible
With a frustrated exhale, she scooped out a portion of flour that seemed vaguely reasonable by her own estimation and dumped it into the mixing bowl with significantly more force than strictly necessary.
The impact sent a small, powdery cloud of white dust puffing up around her wrist, coating her expensive sleeve in fine white powder. Catherine blinked at it, her eyes narrowing as if the flour had personally insulted her.
"That felt... aggressive, Vice Headmaster," Ellie said, letting out a genuine laugh that brightened the dim kitchen.
She was trying to maintain the proper respect due to her superior, but seeing the academy’s second in command defeated by a bag of wheat was too tempting.
"I don’t know how to do anything gently in a kitchen, apparently," Catherine muttered, brushing the flour off her sleeve with jerky, irritated motions. "It’s infuriating."
"I can disarm three armed attackers simultaneously without breaking a sweat or having to think about it, yet I cannot figure out how much flour constitutes a basic loaf of bread."
’This is absurd...’ Catherine thought. ’Why does the texture matter this much?’
’If the bread is hard, you simply chew harder.’
’Why must it be light? Why must it be ’fluffy’? It’s an inefficient use of resources.’
Ellie wiped her hands on her apron, watching Catherine with fond amusement. "To be fair, Vice Headmaster, nobody has ever actually taught you."
"It’s not exactly standard curriculum... I don’t think ’Advanced Pastry Arts’ is covered in the basic combat training modules."
"You’d think basic survival would include it, Ellie," Catherine countered, picking up a whisk as if she intended to use it as a weapon. "What happens if I’m ever stranded in enemy territory, surrounded by hostile forces, with nothing but raw ingredients and no idea how to properly process them into sustenance?"
"I’d be helpless."
"With all due respect, Vice Headmaster, you wouldn’t be helpless," Ellie teased, stepping closer to help stabilize the bowl. "You’d probably just eat the raw ingredients."
"You’d survive on sheer willpower and probably scare the ingredients into being edible."
Catherine shot her a dry, unimpressed look, though the tension in her shoulders eased slightly at the girl’s company. "That is a ridiculous suggestion."
"It’s not! Last week when you were stressed about the budget reports, I saw you reach for a raw carrot like it was a snack bar," Ellie pointed out with a grin. "Which, side note, and I say this as your student who cares about your health, please don’t do that with the eggs."
"They need to actually cook first... Raw eggs are not a substitute for a proper breakfast, no matter how busy you are."
"I am well aware of food safety, Ellie," Catherine said, though she couldn’t quite hide the small, reluctant twitch at the corner of her mouth. "I am simply... adjusting to a different kind of discipline."
"Just think of it as tactical preparation," Ellie suggested warmly, reaching for the eggs. "We’re not just making cake."
"We’re mastering a new form of battlefield resource management!"
"Now, let’s try this again, gently this time, Vice Headmaster."
Catherine froze mid-motion, her hand hovering inches from her face. An egg was already halfway toward her mouth, an absentminded gesture born from years of eating on the move during her active knight days, where survival meant consuming calories wherever and however possible.
For a heartbeat, she simply stared at the shell, caught between instinct and the sudden, mortifying realization of what she was doing.
Slowly, with the stiff, exaggerated movements of someone trying to reclaim their shattered composure, she set the egg back down on the counter with the flustered dignity of a high-ranking official caught in a deeply undignified scandal.
"I wasn’t going to eat it raw," Catherine declared, her voice snapping back to its usual commanding register, though it lacked its customary conviction.
Ellie didn’t miss a beat. She leaned back against the flower-dusted table, crossing her arms with a grin that was equal parts mischief and genuine amusement.
"You were absolutely about to eat it raw, Vice Headmaster... I saw the teeth angle, and you had the whole thing planned out."
Catherine straightened her spine, adjusting an imaginary crease in her uniform. "I was testing its freshness."
"It is a standard field procedure... One must ensure the contents are not compromised before committing to a full culinary preparation."
"With your mouth?" Ellie asked, raising a single eyebrow in disbelief. "That’s your new tactical assessment method?"
"Licking the shell to check for spoilage?"
"That is how you check things in the field, Ellie!" Catherine snapped back, but the crimson flush creeping up her neck and spreading across her cheekbones somewhat undermined the effect. "When you’re three days deep into a reconnaissance mission with nothing but leather straps and dried rations, you don’t have time for elaborate sensory analysis."
"You assess the situation immediately."
’By the gods,’ Catherine thought bitterly, feeling the heat in her face intensify, ’I am a decorated veteran of three border campaigns...’
’I have stared down wyverns without flinching...’
’I have commanded legions through snowstorms...’
’And here I am, being interrogated by my student about my questionable egg-tasting techniques.’
"Right, of course," Ellie said, clearly not believing a word of it, though her tone remained warm and fond. "My apologies, Vice Headmaster..."
"I forgot that the Academy’s kitchen is basically just an extension of the front lines for you."
Catherine let out a frustrated noise that was somewhere between a growl and a sigh, grabbing the whisk again as if she could physically beat the embarrassment out of the air. "Just... proceed with the recipe."
"And if you mention this to anyone, especially Instructor Wade... I will personally see to it that your next week of training consists entirely of cleaning the stables with a toothbrush."
"My lips are sealed," Ellie promised, though the sparkle in her eyes suggested that her lips were, in fact, very much ready to speak. "Now, let’s get back to the mission at hand: not eating raw eggs and actually making something edible."
They continued their culinary campaign in fits and starts, a process that felt less like baking and more like a tense siege operation.
Catherine approached every measurement with an overcorrected, almost neurotic precision that swung violently between excessive caution and reckless abandon. One moment she was weighing flour as if it were powdered gold; the next she was dumping sugar with the aggressive certainty of someone pouring sand into a trench.
Ellie, meanwhile, handled the actual technique with a practiced confidence that was performative at best; she moved with a swagger she hadn’t quite earned, though beneath the bravado, her hands still betrayed a slight tremor whenever Catherine turned her back.
The kitchen gradually filled with the warm, comforting aroma of yeast and melting butter, but the domestic peace was constantly undercut by sharp, acrid stabs of burnt smell whenever one of them left a spoon too close to the stove’s licking flames for a heartbeat too long.
"Precision, Ellie! The recipe demands precision, not... whatever that theatrical display was," Catherine commanded, though her own flour-dusted apron made her look more like a battlefield medic than a vice headmaster.
"It’s called flair, Vice Headmaster," Ellie shot back with a grin, though she was internally panicking. ;Okay, okay, just fold, don’t smash...!’
’Gentle motions... Like you’re handling a wounded bird, not a claymore!’
"S-see? You have to incorporate the air... It’s all about—"
It was during one of these moments of overcompensation that disaster struck. Ellie attempted to demonstrate a folding technique with far more enthusiasm than the delicate motion required.
Her arm swung upward in an exaggerated arc of ’proper technique,’ and her elbow connected squarely with a small ceramic dish of oil perched dangerously close to the stove’s edge.
The world seemed to slow down. The dish tipped with agonizing deliberation.
The amber liquid splashed across the hot iron surface, and for one terrifying, heart-stopping second, a column of fire roared upward. The flame didn’t just flicker; it screamed, leaping higher than either of them had anticipated in a brilliant, hungry orange burst.
"Aah!" Ellie let out a startled, undignified yelp, her reflexes betraying her as she stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet and crashing directly into Catherine’s solid frame.
"Ellie! Stand your ground!" Catherine barked, though she instinctively reached out to steady the girl, her own heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.