Chương 10: Dancing With the Devil

Two days left. Chris's body had hit its limit. Days of high-intensity training and too little sleep had filled his eyes with red. But the wire in his mind was strung tighter than it had ever been. The dish — Triple-Flavor Potato Gratin — was locked in, the technical details polished close to done. What remained was the last and softest weak point. Stress tolerance. That D+ score sat branded on his data panel like a mark of shame. He knew that simply playing Vane's recording in the kitchen was no longer enough.

That degree of pressure was on an entirely different order from what he'd felt standing under the lights in person, facing the judges and a wall of cameras. He needed a more realistic simulation. He killed every light in the kitchen, leaving only one harsh desk lamp aimed straight at his face — to mimic the studio's spotlights. Then he propped his phone in front of him, the screen looping the clip that had eliminated him. He set himself a timer: forty-five minutes.

The standard length of Burning Kitchen's first round. Under these conditions, start to finish, he would reproduce his A- dish flawlessly.

"Start." He hit the timer, drew a deep breath, and picked up a potato and his peeler. The glare made it hard to keep his eyes open, and Vane's roar from the phone seemed to bore straight into his ears.

"Shut up!"

"I asked whether it's good enough, not where you went wrong!" His hand jerked, and the peeler cut a deep gouge into the potato. Damn it. He forced himself calm, threw out the flawed potato, and took up a fresh one. He worked to recall yesterday's feeling — burying the pressure under focus — and set his mind racing through every detail of the recipe. Milk temperature, the size of the onion mince, the amount of lemon juice… His hands steadied by degrees.

Slice, poach, build the sauce — everything proceeding in good order. And just as he slid the tray into the oven and let himself ease up a fraction, the video reached its most critical passage. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Vane took a step forward, the vein ticking at his temple, spit nearly flying off the screen.

"You can't manage the most basic — the most basic heat control, and you think you've earned the right to stand here?" Chris's heart seized. That line. That line was a knife, and it had run straight through every layer of pretense and guard he'd had that day. His breathing went ragged. He glanced at the oven, then at the timer. Fifteen minutes left. Plenty of time. He knew that as long as he held his curve, the dish could not possibly go wrong. But a nameless anxiety began to spread. What if?

What if the oven temperature was off again this time? What if the acid in the milk had curdled it? He began to doubt himself. He could barely stop himself from opening the oven door to check. No. The other voice in his head shouted it. Opening the door would crash the temperature, wreck the whole roasting rhythm — that would be the real disaster. He gripped the edge of the counter with both hands, knuckles whitening with the force. The two little figures in his head were brawling. One said: Trust the data.

Trust your judgment. The other said: You failed last time because you were too confident. Go look, or you'll ruin everything! [Stress Tolerance: D+ (52/100)] [System alert: host emotional state fluctuating violently; adrenaline rising sharply; judgment degrading…] Chris looked at the red alert flashing in his vision and clenched his jaw. He could not lose to this feeling again. He shut his eyes and forced himself not to look, not to listen.

He began reciting, in his head, the contents of the Heat-Perception Manual.

"Three modes of heat transfer: conduction, convection, radiation…"

"The optimal range for the Maillard reaction is 285 to 330°F…"

"… the difference in emulsion stability of creams at varying fat content under high heat…" He used this cold, rational knowledge to fight the beast inside him called fear. Slowly, his breathing settled. His pulse came back to normal. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze had cleared. He checked the timer — five minutes left. Exactly the window he'd set for the final temperature spike to crisp the surface. He went to the oven and set it precisely to Broil. He'd won. He'd beaten this round of self-doubt.

When the timer let out its beeping, he had just pulled on the oven mitts and opened the door. Perfect gold. Perfect aroma. He plated the dish and set it under that harsh desk lamp. Ding! [In high-intensity pressure-simulation training, you successfully maintained operational stability.] [Stress Tolerance: D+ (52/100) → C- (55/100)] [Reward: Arena Points ×2] Only three points, only D+ to C-. But it was the first time he'd earned a reward through non-culinary training.

More importantly, he'd found a way to dance with the devil in his own head. He slumped to the floor, sweat soaking the back of his shirt. This kind of training wore him out far more than a whole day of slicing potatoes. He glanced at his Arena Points balance. Ten from the starter quest, five spent on the manual, two just now from the pressure training. Seven total. Still couldn't afford a thing. But he didn't lean on the shop so hard anymore.

He'd realized the system's greatest function wasn't to hand him a cheat code — it was to act like the strictest of coaches, forcing him to practice, to think, to break through on his own. He rested ten minutes, then stood and dumped the perfect tray of gratin into the trash.

"Why?" he asked himself.

"Because this is only training. The real battlefield hasn't started yet." He shut off the video and turned the lights on. The kitchen returned to normal. He picked up his phone and opened the official Burning Kitchen website. One last piece of preparation remained. Analyze his enemy. And his judge.