Chapter 57 – It’s Over, I Messed Up

Mo Lan headed out with her basket, brimming with confidence, ready to collect extra ingredients and show off her skills by making some Earth cuisine.

She planned to invite Vasida, Sylph, and Lilith over for a dinner gathering.

After all, food shared together tasted twice as good.

Mo Lan had watched her mother cook with Culinary Magic before—it was incredibly effortless.

A nice, relaxing evening with her friends was just what they needed before facing a new week of academic challenges!

And yet…

“Moira? Do you have mischief imps in your dorm?”

Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph had come at Mo Lan’s invitation for dinner. Before they even knocked, they heard a series of crashes and bangs, and the half-closed door swung open right before their eyes.

Inside was pure chaos—pots, pans, knives, forks, meat, eggs, and vegetables scattered everywhere.

Mo Lan stood with her back to them, just outside the stove area.

Her silhouette looked utterly desolate and lost.

“Where’s the imp? If you don’t catch those things quickly, you’ll never have a moment’s peace! The dorm doesn’t have a magic circle—I knew it was only a matter of time before mischief imps showed up!”

Lilith marched in with her wand at the ready, looking fierce: “Do you have any sugar? Mischief imps love sugar. The moment they come out, I’ll turn them into actual potatoes.”

Mischief imps were creatures that looked like little potatoes. They liked to sneak into homes to steal sugar, and if the sugar jar was locked, they’d bounce around in a rage, trashing the entire place.

When mischief imps invaded your home, there were only two solutions.

The first was to leave sugar in a corner or open the sugar jar to bribe the imps. Once they’d eaten their fill, they would quietly leave.

Before departing, they’d leave a mark that only mischief imps could recognize.

For a while, a household that had hosted mischief imps wouldn’t be visited by others. However, the imps that had been treated might return someday in the future—and not only would they eat your sugar, they’d also toss little stones, twigs, and dead leaves around your home.

Compared to that approach, using sugar to lure the imp out and killing it when it appeared was far more permanent.

A dead mischief imp would turn into an actual potato. Smearing the potato’s juices in every nook and cranny of the house could frighten away other mischief imps and effectively prevent future visits.

The more potato juice applied, the better it worked at deterring them.

Some poor families had tried catching mischief imps to kill and eat, but unfortunately, the imps never visited homes that had no sugar.

Mischief imps in Valen were as impossible to fully eradicate as cockroaches on Earth.

Seeing that Lilith and the others had already started searching for the imp, Mo Lan slowly turned her head: “It was me…”

Embarrassing as it was… she couldn’t let a mischief imp take the blame for her mess!

“What?” Lilith froze.

“I just… tried Culinary Magic? And the result… well, you can see for yourselves…” Mo Lan said, on the verge of tears.

A few minutes earlier, she had stood outside the kitchen, full of confidence, channeling her Magic Power and using her mind to direct the ingredients and utensils.

The ingredients and utensils had indeed moved—only not in the orderly, self-processing manner she’d envisioned. Instead, they had erupted into chaos and collisions.

And then… it ended up like this.

“…” Lilith pressed her hand to her forehead. “How many ingredients and utensils were you trying to control all at once?! You can’t rush Culinary Magic—rushing it only leads to disaster.

“It may be the first magic that young witches learn, but its difficulty is anything but low. It requires not only skilled cooking technique but also very strong control.

“Multitasking—controlling that many ingredients and utensils while cooking several dishes simultaneously—that’s something only an Advanced Culinary Witch can pull off!”

Mo Lan looked as if she might cry: “I’m sorry, I messed everything up…”

Now she finally understood why *Culinary Magic from Scratch* only taught, at most, how to use Culinary Magic to make bread, vegetable soup, and pan-fried meat patties individually. And even those three dishes contained nothing extra whatsoever—from the tools and ingredients used to the preparation steps, everything was stripped down to the absolute minimum.

She had originally assumed this was because the book was aimed at young witches with no cooking experience, so everything was kept at the most basic level.

She had cooking fundamentals, so she figured she didn’t need to follow the progression step by step, starting from those three dishes.

What she hadn’t anticipated was that those three dishes were chosen precisely because their steps were simple, their ingredients few, and they were easier to control with magic.

“Moira, it’s your first time—this is totally normal!”

“None of these ingredients have gone bad. Just pick them up, give them a wash, and they’re still perfectly fine to eat.”

Vasida and Sylph offered their reassurance.

Lilith waved her wand, and the items on the floor hopped back one by one into the basket or onto the counter.

Mo Lan noticed it clearly—one by one. Each item returned to its place before the next one moved.

Not all of them moving at once.

“Let me cook today!” Lilith declared. “I’ll show you what Apprentice-level Culinary Magic actually looks like!”

Mo Lan nodded: “Thank you, Lilith!”

She had come to realize that she had severely underestimated the level of Shana’s mother’s Culinary Magic, which had led her to form a completely wrong impression of the craft.

Shana’s mother always said that Psychic Magic was her first specialty and Culinary Magic only her second, and she never called herself a Culinary Witch.

But in reality, her Culinary Magic had definitely reached Advanced level—she absolutely deserved the title of Culinary Witch.

Mo Lan needed to see what low-level Culinary Magic actually looked like.

Vasida’s household had a zombie father who taught zombie chefs to cook, and Sylph mostly ate bread and soup made by her witch mother, along with fruit picked by her father.

All three of them were quite curious.

Under the expectant gazes of her three juniors, Lilith tucked her wand at her waist and instead picked up the basket of ingredients:

“Let’s go! To my place! If I switch kitchens, my Culinary Magic won’t work as smoothly.”

Mo Lan and the other two: “???”

“Aren’t all the dormitory kitchens identical? Culinary Magic is picky about location?”

Lilith led her three little ducklings back to her own dormitory:

“That’s right! Utensils you use regularly—especially ones that have been steeped in your own Magic Power—are much easier to control.

“If you could precisely command and direct absolutely anything, then Culinary Magic and Household Magic would be the ultimate combat magic!”

Mo Lan thought it over carefully, and it was true.

From controlling kitchen utensils to controlling weapons—a whole arsenal of weapons attacking an enemy, each following its own coordinated pattern without any confusion—if that wasn’t combat magic, what was?

Her failed attempt today really wasn’t surprising at all. There were far too many things she had overlooked.

Now that she had the chance to learn from her senior, she focused with every fiber of her being and began to observe.

After Lilith set the basket on the counter, she sat down on a tall stool placed just outside the kitchen, right next to the stove:

“When you’re first learning, you absolutely must have a clear view of everything happening in the kitchen!”