This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 323: High Tower · "Chaos Kitchen" (SS-Level)

After familiarizing herself with the environment, Rita released Nivalis and had her disguise as a small snake, hanging from her ear.

Lidian had a specific recipe, and every time Rita cooked for her, she secretly made an extra portion for Nivalis. Today’s dish was something like tempura, but it featured fruit and vegetable slices. What made it special was the crispy coating made from a blend of dozens of dried fruit powders and spices. It was a recipe Pine Bloom had specially sought out for Lidian, which Sizzle Master spent years perfecting with ingredients from the Forest Sea.

When Rita heard about this from Sizzle Master, she couldn’t help but feel guilty and avoided looking at Nivalis.

Rita asked, "Is there something different about it?"

Nivalis chewed thoughtfully and said, "It’s a bit different. I can’t really pinpoint it, but it’s... delicious? It’s like when you love spicy food, but you eat something that’s not spicy, but still tastes great. Something’s just a little off."

The problem was likely due to their attributes. Lidian was a fire-type dragon, while Nivalis was ice-type. This recipe, specifically tailored for fire dragons, might be good for Nivalis, but her ice attributes made it less perfect.

Rita was lost in thought, wondering how she could adjust the ingredients when Nivalis sighed. "It’s okay. You don’t need to make a special recipe for me. I’m not like Lidian; I’m not so picky or delicate. You could just give me leftovers and I’d be happy... No! I’m not choking up, you misheard me! I... I definitely didn’t complain or feel sad..."

Rita: "..."

Since Nivalis had said that, Rita couldn’t just neglect her. She decided to focus entirely on cooking dragon cuisine in the little kitchen.

Sizzle Master, seeing Rita dedicated to learning dragon cuisine, began to trust her more. He slowly started teaching her Lidian’s recipes. After observing her for two years, he entrusted Rita with cooking all of Lidian’s meals.

At the end of each month, Rita would slip out for some assassination practice, targeting various foreign races while also stealing Moon Sand.

As Nivalis grew bolder after figuring out Sizzle Master’s daily routine, she started playing games in the kitchen or messing with a Mahjong machine. She even became obsessed with engineering and vowed to build a Mahjong machine that would never suffer from the dreaded "three players missing" problem!

Rita never went to find Shadow.Q or the others, but she vaguely heard that many Oak Owls had defected, splitting into two factions and forming their own organizations. It was all quite lively...

Two months before the war ended, Rita killed Sizzle Master, stole his treasured recipes, and defected once again.

When she woke up in the next cycle, her identity was once again unremarkable, and her Divine Gift and luck weren’t great either. This time, she found herself in the territory of Maple Syrup. After spending some time gathering intel, she "borrowed" some good equipment to smooth over connections and managed to insert herself into the small kitchen run by the Owl Commander.

She had thought about working in the kitchen that specialized in cooking for Maple Syrup, but after some investigation, she found that Maple Syrup didn’t have a dedicated kitchen. She only ate food made by her daughter.

From her previous experience with Sizzle Master, Rita realized that Oak Owls were highly skilled in cooking, and their ingredients were often quite unique. Sometimes, their cooking methods even resembled potion-making, full of artistic flair.

Rita settled into the kitchen and began practicing the recipes she had forcibly memorized from her previous cycle. She continued learning the culinary arts from the chefs there.

Over the years, she occasionally took Nivalis to the battlefield for training, but whenever she felt something was wrong, she’d defect again, retreating to hide with Nivalis. Every time a cycle was nearing its end, she would steal something significant — a treasure from a vault or a recipe from the kitchen.

Each time she went to the battlefield, she tried her best to acquire a skill similar to "Battle Review" to boost her abilities, swapping it for "Moment of Reversal" whenever possible.

Rita had long lost count of how many cycles she had gone through. She only knew that the Moon Sand in her Wrathful Moon had accumulated to 18,800g. Each time she added Moon Sand to Wrathful Moon, she gained 5 points in her Mystical Power, and now, she had accumulated 12,882 points in her Mystical Power! Enjoy new chapters from novelbuddy

Nivalis’s Mystical Power had reached 3,067 points. If Rita didn’t use her Mystical Power for Nivalis to use an Expert-level skill, the data could have doubled. But despite Rita asking many times, Nivalis stubbornly refused to change.

Unfortunately, starting last month, Rita couldn’t steal any more Moon Sand. It was unclear whether her "Fate Out of Sync" skill had been exhausted or if the Oak Owls had protected it, but the Wrathful Moon had been showing the "Upgrading" suffix for a while now. The time was unreadable, but fortunately, the skill still worked.

The 18,800g of Moon Sand was after the required 10,000g for upgrading had been deducted. Rita could still take it out at any time, but as long as it remained in Wrathful Moon, it was the only way she could carry it over in each cycle.

Sitting under a large tree, Rita used the Master of Laziness skill for the first time to check the time. She sighed, "We’ve been here for 277 years."

She hadn’t used the translator in a long time. The common tongue of the Oak Owls had become so familiar to her that it felt like her second native language.

During their time in hiding, Rita had also taught Nivalis Chinese, and Nivalis taught her Dragonian, so now they could chat without relying on a translator. Rita could even write some common Dragonian characters and a few Dragonian magic runes.

Over the years, Rita’s alchemy skills hadn’t advanced much. After all, this was the Forest Sea, and the origin of alchemical knowledge was in Lania Kaia. Great alchemists never fought on the battlefield. Rita had studied Hecipah’s notes endlessly, and now she could craft both "Gold-Class Assassin" and "Spring Not Late" with her eyes closed.

Her culinary skills, however, had made great progress. She not only became an expert in dragon cuisine, but she had also learned over 5,000 recipes during her time in the High Tower. More importantly, she could now create dishes with ratings above 95 points, and 100 of those dishes had ratings over 97 points!

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Despite her focus on culinary mastery for at least 150 years, she still couldn’t surpass Eleanor, who had consistently made dishes with scores above 98. Rita had reached the limits of her cooking talent, which was a painful realization.

Although Rita didn’t steal many skills, each cycle still brought her some rewards. The one skill she cherished the most was the "Chaos Kitchen" (SS-level), which she had stolen from the Pine Bloom treasure vault. She wasn’t even sure how she got her hands on it, but during that cycle, when Lidian was blasted out of the kitchen, Nivalis had to turn back into her original form to help them escape using the Face Fruit.

Chaos Kitchen (SS-level): When activated, it creates a culinary god’s domain. In this kitchen domain, while cooking, a completely unskilled being will constantly disrupt your work, unlocking your full potential. The resulting dishes will be your best work. The domain lasts for 6 hours, with a cooldown of 3 natural days.

With this skill, plus her many years of experience in the High Tower, Rita’s long-suppressed culinary god skill could finally be used.

Over these years, Rita had discovered that if she didn’t drastically change her personality after a cycle and accepted the social relationships of her new identity, she could often acquire great things from others. The Oak Owls were particularly generous to their family and close friends... Even if her differences were eventually noticed, she hadn’t encountered any real danger yet.

Nivalis, engrossed in her self-made engineering Mahjong game, which could even play with three missing players, suddenly heard Rita’s sigh and asked, "Does that mean we’re about to leave soon?"

Rita replied, "Yes, in 23 years."