Chương 8: Trial By Fire: One

Cassia gave Caleb a small, encouraging nod.

"Yes. I'll leave him with you." She offered her husband a look that was part warning, part plea, before slipping out of the kitchen and pulling the door shut. The latch clicked with finality, leaving Caleb alone in the simmering heat with the imposing man. Gareth studied him with a look that missed nothing: he felt like a specimen under glass, utterly exposed and found wanting.

The kitchen staff continued their frenzied dance around them, but the space between Caleb and Gareth seemed to exist in its own bubble of held breath. Steam rose from pots to create a hazy curtain, while the air was thick with the smell of roasting meat. Gareth turned away without a word. In a shadowed corner, barrels and sacks lined the wall in a squat row. Moving with purpose, the chef hoisted a burlap sack to his shoulder, the fabric straining, and walked back to upend it on a nearby butcher's block.

A cascade of onions tumbled out, their papery skins rustling like autumn leaves. They rolled across the workbench and cutting board, piling high, easily fifty pounds of the pungent vegetables. The mountain of produce seemed to mock Caleb's slight frame. Gareth selected a worn blade with a cracked handle from the wall, its edge dull and lightless. He placed it on the block, then pointed a thick finger at the pile.

"Diced small." He returned to his own station, picked up his cleaver, and the steady thump-thump-thump resumed. The sound drove a relentless beat, marking time Caleb didn't have. The other kitchen staff glanced over. He saw pity on a few faces, but most wore the hard satisfaction of survivors. He had been dismissed, relegated to grunt work while the real cooking happened around him. The test was clear.

Caleb approached the block on legs that felt disconnected from his body, the knife laying there in direct challenge. He picked it up, and his confidence immediately dropped. The balance was completely wrong, the blade so much heavier than the handle as the thing wanted to pull out of his grip. He grabbed an onion. Its skin flaked under his fingers, releasing that distinctive biting scent that promised tears, as he peeled off the outer layers.

When he was finished peeling he set it on the scarred wood and positioned the knife, finally pressing down. The blade skidded sideways. The onion rolled, mocking him. He trapped it with his free hand and tried again, forcing the dull edge through. It stuttered, crushing more than cutting. Half the onion collapsed into a mangled mess, an acrid fume billowing directly into his face. He blinked through the burn, tears blurring his vision as he could barely breathe. Crumb, I'm failing already.

Sweat prickled across his back. This was his one chance, his only lifeline in this world, and he was destroying it with every pathetic attempt. Through stinging eyes, he saw another cook glance over and smirk. Wiping his eyes with his sleeve, Caleb grabbed another onion. The knife slipped again, jumping toward his thumb this time. He jerked back, but not fast enough. The dull edge scraped his skin, promising worse injury if he kept fumbling.

As the blade wobbled in his grasp, something shifted in his mind as he remembered his Impartments, and a door opened. He stood in his old house, laptop propped on the counter, watching a YouTube channel he'd discovered during one of Katie's "Dad, we need to eat healthier" phases. The memory replayed, clear in each detail. Every pixel of the video, and every inflection in the chef's words. The memory perfectly preserved each action. A cheerful man with a neat goatee held up an onion like it was a precious gem.

"Listen up, home cooks! A dull knife is a dangerous knife." The man's words rang clear as if he stood beside Caleb.

"It slips and crushes. It requires more pressure, which means less control. You want a clean cut? You need a keen edge. Let me show you something that'll change your kitchen game forever." Caleb shook his head sardonically. The ghost of a YouTuber from another world is about to save my job. If I survive this, I owe that guy a 'like' and a 'subscribe'. The chef produced a long steel, demonstrating the precise angle of fifteen degrees.

"This is called honing, folks. It's a process that realigns the edge on your knife. Think of it as straightening the metal, putting the microscopic point back to true. Blades don't tend to need sharpening that often to cut good. Instead, honing them before each use really lets you properly enjoy the edge. Watch the motion, now: smooth and consistent, like you're painting the steel with the blade. Make sure to keep the angle consistent on every stroke, alternating between both sides of the blade."

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. A path forward had been presented, and Caleb eagerly searched the kitchen walls until he spotted what he needed: a honing steel hanging with some other tools. Nobody else was using it. Of course not. They all have excellent knives already. He crossed to it in quick strides and pulled it free, then returned to his station. The steel had a nice heft. He raised his dull knife and slowly drew it down and across the rod.

The angle felt wrong at first, Thal's old muscle memory fighting the motion. But the video memory held the key. He adjusted and kept trying. Shing. Better. He did it again, finding the pattern. Shing-shing-shing. The metallic song added to the kitchen's cacophony. A few heads turned. The smirking cook stared, smug certainty giving way to confusion. Caleb ran his thumb carefully parallel to the blade's length. Where before it had grabbed and skipped, now it slid with smooth potential.

A translucent blue box appeared in his peripheral vision: [New Skill Gained: Blade Honing (F) - Novice] Look at me go. The wry thought and accompanying grin were automatic, but something deeper stirred beneath them. He recalled Meriel's words from Thal's memory: " It can leave a mark on you when you achieve something, like a footprint in the mud." This was it. This achievement felt more substantial than any line on a PowerPoint; it was a permanent mark on the World's Soul acknowledging his effort.

The feeling hit harder than expected, making him giddy and almost dizzy. He craved more. He returned the steel to where it'd hung, then selected a fresh onion back at the block. Following the chef's memory, he sliced off the top and root. A shallow score down its side allowed him to more easily peel away the papery outer layers, leaving a clean orb. The knife then bit deep, parting the flesh like water as the halves fell apart to reveal their concentric rings.

"Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, people. Focus on precision first. The speed will come." Caleb laid one half flat on the block, then made the horizontal cuts with the blade parallel to the board, followed by vertical cuts that segregated the layers into neat rows. A final cross cut finished the process, his knuckles guiding the blade in a rocking motion. The chunks that fell away were identical. [New Skill Gained: Dicing (F) - Novice] He moved with increasing confidence. Three onions in, something clicked.

The motion became more natural, the next cut being executed by his hands before his mind could say so. [Savant of the Body] flared to life, the sensation flowing through his fingers, each cut easily finding its mark. This is impossible, a small part of his mind whispered, but the thought was drowned out by the sheer joy of his progress. It was like that summer with Grandpa Foster, learning to split wood at the cabin. In the first week, every swing of the axe had been awkward, clumsy and wrong.

His hands had blistered while his forearms ached, and half his strokes had glanced off, causing insult to injury. But by the end of three months he could sink the blade into the identical spot twice in a row with his eyes closed. Repetition had carved the muscle memory into every fiber of the motion. This felt like the first week of that summer compressed into mere minutes. [Your proficiency with Dicing (F) has increased to Practiced] The knife had become an extension of his thoughts. The work was relentless.

A phantom ache stirred in his lower back, a ghost of the soreness from a life spent in office chairs and the rare weekend project. He braced for grinding stiffness, but his body just shrugged it off. The pain he got was different: the acute surface fire of his muscles burning from fresh exertion. There was a surprising resilience to it, a well of adolescent energy he could draw from even as he cursed the effort. Oh, to be young again. He reached for another onion and found empty air. The pile was gone.

In its place stood a mound of diced alliums. By his internal clock, honed by decades of adulting, he had been working for close to two hours. A knife stilled at a nearby station and Caleb glanced up. The wiry line cook who had been grinning at his early mistakes stood mid-chop, staring incredulously at Caleb's handiwork.

"Spirits." The cook groaned over the kitchen din.

"Took me a month of bloody fingers to move that good. You ain't no farm boy, are ye?" A heavy thud pulled Caleb's attention back to his workstation. A burlap sack sat on his block, carrots spilling from its mouth, dirt still clinging to their orange skin. He glanced toward Gareth's receding back, but the message was clear. Caleb got to work. He adjusted his grip for the longer vegetables, already drawing on the influencer-chef's lessons.

The carrots required a different approach: peeling, then cutting into even rounds. He fell into it immediately. [New Skill Gained: Chopping (F) - Practiced] The sack emptied and another appeared. Potatoes this time, their irregular shapes demanding adaptation. He quartered them for roasting, keeping the pieces uniform for even cooking, then knuckled his lower back and got back to work. Next came mushrooms.

There were three varieties he couldn't place, yet Thal's memories supplied the information: crown caps for the stew, woodear for the stir-fry, and toxic-if-raw crimson gills that needed paper-thin slicing. Each variety demanded different techniques. His knife danced between them all. [New Skill Gained: Slicing (F) - Practiced] Then the dinner rush descended like a summer storm.