Chương 33: The Hidden Quest Sharpens

"Third ticket! Table four, two burgers! One no onion!"

"Fourth ticket! Table six, one salmon, one Buffalo wings, wings extra hot!"

"Fifth ticket! Table two add-on, one lava cake!" The ticket printer lolled its tongue like mad, as if mocking the Blue Team's chaos. The mood in the kitchen had reached a critical point; everyone felt they were drowning, dragged toward the abyss by ticket after ticket.

"Chris! Are the patties ready? My buns are toasted over here!" Sarah shouted anxiously.

"Sauce! The black pepper's almost gone!" Jack roared at the grill.

"Cake! The table-two cake ticket! Mia, did you hear?" Jessica was near collapse too. Chris stood at the pass, his brain like a CPU about to burn out. Countless streams of information poured in, and he had to process, analyze, and issue the most precise order in an instant.

"Sarah, sear the patty thirty more seconds! Owen, refill Jack's black pepper now! Mia, the table-two cake is an add-on, lower priority! Fire the table-nine cake first — that table's already waited forty minutes!" He forced himself calm, his voice gone a little rough from intense focus. He knew he was the captain of this leaking ship now; the moment he panicked, the ship would sink at once. And just then, the system panel in his mind suddenly flashed a red warning light. [Warning! Team pressure exceeds critical threshold! Service success rate projection has dropped to 75%! Hidden quest "Blue Team's Victory" is about to fail!] Chris's heart sank hard. A 75% success rate meant they were already set to lose. The penalty of a month's dormancy hung over his head like a sword of Damocles. No. He absolutely could not lose. He drew a deep breath, trying to find one thread that could break the deadlock in the chaos. Suddenly he noticed a detail.

The runners shuttled back and forth between the kitchen and the floor, but their routes were utterly chaotic. Once, a runner carrying hot soup, dodging Owen coming out of the cooler, nearly crashed into Sarah frying wings — scalding oil splashed out and almost caused a burn. The kitchen flow lines. Chris realized at once: his earlier station restructure had solved only the internal production flow, and ignored the interaction flow with the floor.

The runners' chaotic routes not only cut efficiency but created a huge safety hazard. [Ding! Critical breakthrough point detected.] [Hidden quest "Blue Team's Victory" sharpened. Phased sub-quests generated.] Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. The chime lifted Chris's spirit. [Sub-quest 1: Flow-line correction. Within five minutes, correct at least three fatal flow-line defects in the kitchen, raising runner efficiency by 20%.] [Sub-quest 2: Crisis intervention. In the service to come, by your own ability, prevent one major service error that would cause a severe (one-star) bad review.] [Sub-quest 3: Win their hearts. Before service ends, make at least two teammates (besides the already-won-over Sarah) accept your command from the bottom of their hearts and coordinate of their own accord.] [Complete all of the above to earn a special reward: the one-time skill "Absolute Heat Control (Short Duration)" — perfect heat command over a chosen target within thirty seconds, ignoring all external interference.] Absolute Heat Control! Chris's eyes lit instantly. This skill was practically a god-tier ability born to handle kitchen emergencies. Imagine using it on a steak about to char, or on a pot of sauce about to set… it could turn around a disaster in an instant. The reward was almost unbearably tempting.

And the three sub-quests gave Chris a clear plan of action. He didn't hesitate, and moved at once.

"Owen!" he shouted.

"From now on, every raw material from the cooler goes out the kitchen's back door and around to the prep station! No more cutting across the whole hot line!" The first flow-line fix. Separate the prep "logistics" from the service "foot traffic" completely.

"Sarah! Move your fryer a meter to the left! Leave a safety lane no less than a meter and a half wide for the runners! All your output goes on the counter to your left, and the runners take it from there!" The second flow-line fix. Establish a clear service buffer zone to avoid crossing and collisions.

"Runners, listen!" Chris called into the radio.

"From now on, every runner enters by the right door and exits by the left! Make it a one-way loop! No going against the flow!" The third, and most important, flow-line fix. It would completely solve the runners' chaotic crisscrossing through the kitchen. His orders were clear, decisive, unquestionable. The Blue Team didn't understand why he cared about these "small things" at such a tense moment, but out of the trust built earlier, they followed instinctively. A miracle happened.

Once the new flow rules were in place, the whole kitchen's throughput improved visibly. Runners no longer collided; picking up and delivering food became orderly. The tension in the kitchen seemed even to ease a fraction. [Ding! Sub-quest 1: Flow-line correction complete. Team coordination efficiency +5%, service success rate projection revised to 78%.] It worked. A flare of joy. But Chris knew it was nowhere near enough. A 78% rate was still far from the 90% target.

He had to complete the next quest: crisis intervention. Like radar, he scanned every corner of the kitchen, hunting for a possible "major error." And just then, the manager's sharpest roar yet came through the radio.

"Blue Team! Table seven! VIP guests! They ordered four strip steaks, all Pittsburgh Rare! They've waited twenty minutes! If this ticket goes wrong, you're dead!" Pittsburgh Rare steak! At the words, Jack's face went white in an instant. It was an extraordinarily tricky preparation — the steak's exterior charred in an instant under extreme heat to form a thin shell, while the interior stayed nearly raw.

It demanded the highest level of grill temperature and a chef's heat control; the slightest slip turned it into a "cooked" piece of meat, black outside and merely warm within — a huge insult to a VIP guest.

"I… I can't do it!" Jack's voice trembled with fear.

"My grill maxes out around 570 degrees — nowhere near enough for an instant char!" This was the detonation point Chris had been waiting for — the "major service error." If this ticket failed, a one-star review from VIP guests would be enough to drop the Blue Team's success rate below freezing. Chris looked at the white-faced Jack, then at the tempting reward on the system panel — Absolute Heat Control. He knew it was his turn to step onto the line himself.

"Jack, move aside." Chris's voice wasn't loud, but it cracked through the Blue Team kitchen like a thunderbolt. He untied the apron at his waist, threw it on the pass counter, and strode toward the grill that would decide their fate.