ARIFURETA: Cooking to be the Strongest?

"That weird dream again," Shin muttered, jolting awake from a deep slumber.

Am I going crazy in this abyss? he mused. The dream was startlingly vivid: fragments, his soul, Outer Gods, Primordial Tools. He scoffed, half-believing he was just conjuring up a fantasy, like his friend Hajime, to escape the crushing loneliness—a feeling utterly foreign until now.

As if any of that was real. He swung his arm, intending to swat at empty air, but his hand closed around something solid.

Shin stared, dumbfounded, at the object in his grasp: a black, single-edged obsidian knife. He quickly checked his status plate, something he hadn't done in ages, but it still displayed the same unchanging information. He pinched himself, hard. No dream. The cool, solid weight of the knife confirmed it.

"You're kidding me," he muttered in shock, frozen for several minutes.

****

Shin finally snapped out of his stupor. He tried to call the other dormant tools, but only the knife remained, solid in his hand. He spent some time testing it, checking its capabilities.

But there was no knife like this in that dream, he thought, recalling the golden, rune-adorned blade that shimmered with life.

Yet, here was this obsidian one. Performance-wise, it was undeniably superior to his old daggers, possessing an unparalleled cutting power. He slid it across the wall behind him, and it sliced through like butter. Other materials yielded with equal ease.

"Urgh, why do I feel tired suddenly?" Shin felt a sudden drain and realized this amazing knife cost him. 

He noticed a significant drawback: every cut, especially against harder materials, sapped his stamina. This would be a problem if he carelessly overused it.

Another peculiar quality was its inability to harm him. He tried testing its sharpness on his finger, but the blade simply passed through his skin like an illusion, leaving no mark. 

He quickly realized it wasn't just impossibly sharp; it genuinely couldn't cut him. To confirm its cutting power against flesh, he tried it on the remaining head of the rabbit-like beast he'd hunted, and the blade bisected it with effortless ease.

"Seems like it can cut normally, I need to test it further," he concluded, his mind already racing with the implications of this mysterious new tool.

Shin rested for a bit, feeling a strange mix of calm and excitement about this new object that had somehow manifested.

********

Shin cautiously emerged from his hideout, carefully checking for any sign of that damned bear. He scouted a little, spotting two magic beasts he mentally dubbed "Kick Rabbits."

Perhaps fueled by the excitement of testing his newfound tool, Shin quickly and stealthily approached the two rabbits, a large one and a smaller one. Like last time, he threw a stone in the opposite direction, startling them.

"Pii?" the large rabbit mused, confused.

The larger one hopped off to investigate the sound, leaving the smaller one behind as a lookout.

When the large rabbit was distracted, Shin pounced, grabbing the smaller one. He slid his new knife. The smaller rabbit's body remained seemingly whole for a moment, then its vision changed, and it saw its own body standing headless before it. Shin dragged the headless corpse away and hid again.

The large rabbit returned to its companion's last known spot, only to find its kin's head missing its body.

"Pii?" it chirped, bewildered.

In that moment, the larger rabbit's fate mirrored its kin's—its own head danced in the air, offering a full, final view of its headless body before succumbing to an eternal slumber.

Shin abruptly returned to his cave after the hunt. His hands still trembled, not from fear but excitement. With the tool sapping only a tenth of his stamina, killing these two was a bargain—no, a good exchange.

"This is better than I expected," Shin mused.

******

Returning to his cave, Shin proceeded to process one of the hunted rabbits. Unlike his previous display of savagery, he now meticulously prepared them, bloodletting, removing organs, and slicing the meat into bite-sized pieces. Though the lack of fire still disappointed him, he had no room to be picky at the moment.

When he started eating, the taste was bad as always, but the gamey and beastly smell was gone. And the more he chewed, that taste went from bad to bland.

Shin looked at the obsidian knife, clean of blood, observing it. It seemed the knife was not only sharp but also improved the rabbit meat's quality.

He then began to butcher the other rabbit with his old dagger to confirm. Yep, the one he butchered with the dagger tasted the same as yesterday, and the smell was worse than the rabbit processed by the obsidian knife.

Though the knife drained a significant amount of stamina while using it for cooking, Shin figured he could manage and would treat it as a form of training. He decided that every piece of meat he encountered in the abyss would be processed by this knife.

**********

Three days passed. Shin, nourished by his new diet, regained his full strength. These past few days were spent testing the knife's other functions.

Shin discovered all of the proper ties of the obsidian knife and summarized it:

it possessed extreme sharpness, seemed unable to hurt a sentient being or a being with a soul (though this was not yet fully confirmed), enhanced any meat or ingredients cut by it, and would dematerialize if Shin released his grip. He also noted a stamina drain, finding that using the knife cost him stamina, with harder objects proving more draining to cut.

Shin tested many things, and that wasn't the only change. The voices from his dream were now gone, and his body was slowly changing. He felt much stronger, more agile, and could last longer while using the knife.

It seemed eating magic beast meat incrementally increased his strength, and he also felt an energy slowly accumulating within him. He checked his status plate again, but it still showed no changes, as if it were frozen.

With these preparations, Shin was now ready to tackle his main problem before looking for an exit: the damned white bear. With his strength returned, a new tool in his arsenal, and a slightly stronger constitution, he would now dare to challenge the bear, which seemed to be the apex and master of this place.

***********

Shin took five days to prepare. With a pouch fashioned from the hide of the rabbits he hunted, containing some of the ambrosia, two daggers, his improved constitution and the obsidian knife, Shin decided to confront the damned bear.

Shin stealthily crept out of his hideout. Instead of wasting energy looking for the bear, he decided to lure it using a fresh Kick Rabbit carcass.

With practiced movements, Shin located a lone Kick Rabbit and beheaded it as he had in his usual hunts. This time, he created a trail of blood from the rabbit's corpse and left it in a strategic spot while he hid, concealing his presence. Shin then waited for the bear.

The bear, four times larger than Shin, began to stride toward the carcass's location. With its keen senses, it followed the trail of blood.

"SNIFF, SNIFF," the bear sounded, its nose twitching.

 It moved confidently, knowing itself to be the apex predator of this place; it feared no one.

It reached the place where the carcass lay, but before it proceeded, the bear, deserving its title, displayed its keen senses, sharp instinct, and a glint of intelligence. It suspiciously and cautiously approached the Kick Rabbit's carcass.

"GRRR?" the bear rumbled questioningly.

Then, before it was within Shin's pouncing range, the bear noticed something off. It began to back off, and with paws glowing, it swiped the air. A slash of wind struck where Shin was hiding.

"Tch, this bear's instincts sure is sharp, as expected from the boss of this place," Shin clicked his tongue, acknowledging that this hunt would be more difficult than he expected. He dodged the attack, ending up revealing himself to the bear. Since the ambush didn't work, Shin confidently walked into the bear's sight.

The bear began growling, as if irritated. It looked at Shin, who was brazenly walking, unafraid of him.

"Hey Damned bear, You've been a pain in the ass during my stay here," Shin told the bear. "It's about time to take you out so that I can find my way back."

The bear, not understanding the words but understanding Shin's intention, began to growl at this foreign entity who had been elusive these past weeks and now dared to challenge him in his domain.