#411 - Minezaki, whose strength has skyrocketed, heads to the world of gourmet food!

After a pleasant picnic and camping trip, Seiya and Minezaki didn't rush into the Gourmet World. Instead, they began gathering information at the campsite.

When venturing into unknown territories, information and preparation are essential. During two days of information gathering, Seiya and his companion learned that rare ingredients indeed possess the ability to enhance physical attributes.

The higher the grade of the rare ingredient, the greater the improvement to the body. Furthermore, the extent of this improvement is also related to the skill level of the chef preparing the ingredient.

The more delicious the dish cooked with rare ingredients, the greater the improvement the rare ingredient provides to the body.

Because rare ingredients only have an enhancing effect upon first consumption, skilled chefs are highly sought after in the Gourmet World.

Besides the enhancement to physical attributes from the first consumption of a rare ingredient, some ingredients themselves can grant temporary buff states after being eaten.

Just like how Minezaki gained temporary Herculean strength after eating the Elephant Bear meat, in gaming terms, it would be called a buff.

The reason Gourmet Hunters are able to hunt in the dangerous Gourmet World is because their bodies have long been strengthened far beyond ordinary people through various rare ingredients.

According to them, strengthening one's physical attributes and abilities through rare ingredients is due to absorbing the Gourmet Cells within the ingredients. (I'm aware of the Gourmet Cell setting in Toriko, but this is a secondary setting here. I won't be writing any plot or characters from Toriko, just borrowing some of its settings.)

During these two days, besides gathering information and preparing for their journey to the Gourmet World, Seiya and Minezaki spent almost all their remaining time eating.

Now that they knew rare ingredients were not only delicious but also had the effect of improving physical attributes and enhancing combat power, they naturally had to strengthen themselves before venturing into the adventure.

The Gourmet Hunters gathered at this campsite were all small fries with ordinary strength. The rare ingredients they caught rarely exceeded the capture level of the Woolly Mammoth Bear.

But even a mosquito's leg is still meat. Although these low-level rare ingredients didn't provide much enhancement to Seiya, they were a significant boost for Minezaki, who was originally just an ordinary person!

Elephant Bear increased strength, Swift Rabbit increased speed, Bat Snake increased perception. After eating all sorts of rare ingredients over two days, Minezaki personally experienced what it meant to rise to prominence in a single bound!

Putting aside combat skills and experience, Minezaki's physical attributes alone now surpassed those of 90% of the Gourmet Hunters in this campsite.

And the reason for this cheat-like improvement was naturally due to Seiya.

Seiya's excellent cooking skills maximized the enhancement effect of the rare ingredients every time.

With their meager resources, they wouldn't have been able to eat all the types of rare ingredients in the campsite. But while cooking dishes for Minezaki, Seiya also started working as a chef in the campsite.

As a processing fee, Seiya would symbolically collect some rare ingredients from them as payment.

And because of this, in just two short days, Seiya and Minezaki had even gained a certain reputation in this campsite.

What Seiya found a little regrettable was that he had tasted almost every type of rare ingredient in the entire campsite while Minezaki was eating them. But Minezaki had taken off like a rocket, while Seiya's improvement could only be described as negligible.

There was no helping it. His original strength was too high. These low-level rare ingredients might allow Minezaki, who was originally an ordinary person, to transform, but for him, the effect was really not significant.

Seiya estimated that, in order to feel a tangible improvement in his strength, he would need rare ingredients with a capture level of at least 50... no, maybe even 80 or higher.

"Brother Seiya, will you guys come back to the campsite later?"

"Yeah, it's too rare to have a skilled chef in this kind of place. Don't die in the Gourmet World."

When they first arrived, Seiya and Minezaki, as newbies, were even treated as fat sheep to be fleeced.

But after only a few days, as the two prepared to leave the campsite and head to the Gourmet World, they were so popular that most of the people here saw them off.

"Are you really planning to go to the Gourmet World with me? You need to know that it's an unknown territory that even I haven't set foot in. If we encounter any danger, I might not be able to protect you."

"With your current strength, it wouldn't be a problem for you to return alone. There's really no need to follow me to such a place to take risks."

Before heading to the Gourmet World, Seiya looked at Minezaki beside him and asked one last time.

The reason he brought Minezaki before was because he had no choice. In this kind of lawless place, a beautiful and curvy mature woman like Minezaki was practically a fat sheep.

But after being fed so many rare ingredients, Minezaki now had the power to protect herself.

So, in that case, she could naturally return to the city on her own and didn't need to follow him to the Gourmet World to take risks.

"What nonsense are you talking about? Of course, I'm going with you. It's one thing if I was a weakling before and got looked down upon."

"Now, few of the Gourmet Hunters in the campsite can beat me, and you're still thinking of abandoning me."

"Or are you planning to head to the Gourmet World alone because, besides capturing rare ingredients, you have some other unspeakable secret? Like encountering some beautiful female Gourmet Hunter or something?"

Hearing Minezaki's words, Seiya really wanted to say that you are still a weakling in my eyes, but Minezaki insisted on following him, and Seiya had no choice but to compromise in the end.

Just as Minezaki said, she now had a certain amount of self-protection ability at least.

Moreover, Seiya didn't plan to go too deep on his first trip to the Gourmet World, so he probably wouldn't encounter too much danger.

Seiya didn't have anyone with spatial powers, so he couldn't do spatial storage. Bringing Minezaki along as an extra human pack mule to bring back more spoils was also a good thing.

After leaving the campsite, Seiya and the others quickly arrived at the depths of a forest according to the map in their hands.

And according to the map, the entrance to the Gourmet World was in the cave in front of them.

As long as they walked into the cave, they could leave the current Human World and arrive at the so-called Gourmet World.

The Gourmet World has multiple entrances in the Human World, and this is just one of them. Humans from the Human World can enter the Gourmet World, but the ferocious beasts of the Gourmet World cannot come out from it.