Chapter 1: Randomize Everything, Regret Nothing
The first thing Liam felt was the taste of blood.
It was copper and familiar, and he rolled it across his tongue the way a sommelier might assess a cheap wine, present and sharp and slightly metallic. A 7 out of 10. His father was getting sloppy.
"Second."
His father’s voice was the kind of quiet that was worse than shouting. One hand had Liam’s collar, and the other was already straightening the cufflink it had just used.
Five feet away, his mother stared at the Exit sign like it owed her money. She didn’t move hell, she never did.
"Second place." His father’s lip curled. "Elizabeth Kim didn’t waste her nights crouched over a stove like a servant. She soared, and you? You humiliated me."
I missed those questions on purpose, Liam thought.
He didn’t say it. He hadn’t said anything in three years because silence was the only armour that didn’t eventually get used against you.
"She is a fortress," his father whispered, grip tightening. "A wall no one can climb, and you? You’re just a target."
The word landed and sat there.
Target.
Liam thought about the kitchens he’d worked, the back-alley bistros where his last name meant nothing, and the only thing that mattered was whether the sauce had depth. He’d learned early that the sharpest knives were always the first to break.
His father wanted him to be a weapon.
Fine, Liam thought, but I’ll be the one holding it.
Ten minutes earlier.
The applause hit him in the chest before it reached his ears, hollow and rhythmic, vibrating up through the stage floor and into his teeth. "Second place, Liam... Yoo."
He walked forward.
At 6’6", he moved through spaces the way water moves around stone, not forcing anything and just making everything else adjust. Silver-white hair, red eyes, a face that looked like it had never once been surprised by anything. The rows of parents watched him cross the stage with the particular stillness of people trying to decide if something was dangerous.
The principal shook his hand and said something about potential and the future of the nation. Liam filed it under noise and walked off.
Behind him, the room shifted.
"First place, Elizabeth Kim!"
The applause stopped being polite and started being hungry. Liam glanced back.
Elizabeth walked up as she’d rehearsed it, pink hair swaying, each step carrying a rhythm that had no business being that distracting. She smiled at the crowd the way people smile when they’ve already won, and the cameras loved her for it.
She caught his eye for exactly one second as she passed.
He looked away first, not because she made him nervous but because she was observant and he had a plan to protect.
The plan was this: Liam Yoo had missed exactly three questions on purpose. Score too high, and his father would drag him into the Ministry of Finance as a puppet forever. Score too low, and it was military school, non-negotiable. Second place was the Dead Zone, the one position where expectations cancelled each other out and left just enough silence to breathe. He’d calculated it in twelve minutes, answered the rest in forty, and spent the remaining time thinking about stock reductions.
Liam Yoo wasn’t losing; Liam Yoo was cooking.
The Yoo house had the energy of a showroom, furniture wrapped in plastic and surfaces that existed to be seen and not touched.
Liam ate alone, chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli, the same rotation for three years, then carried his plate to his room and locked the door.
The click of the bolt was the best part of his day.
He reached under his desk and pulled out a matte-black VR headset from a hidden cardboard box, paid for with six months of late-night shifts busing tables and learning from chefs who didn’t care about his name or his eyes or the fact that he showed up every night smelling like someone else’s kitchen he slid it on.
"Welcome to Aero Online. All sensory systems are active. Please proceed with character initialisation."
The ceiling disappeared, and the world went white.
[SELECT CLASS]
War Mage, Shadow Striker, Berserker, everyone chasing the same thing, flashy and offensive and top of the damage charts.
His finger hovered over [Vanguard].
The forums called it the Mascot Class, slow with no burst damage, the class where you stood at the front and absorbed everything so the real players behind you could win. What the forums hadn’t done was read the patch notes carefully.
Thirty seconds of total invincibility, double HP scaling, and a defence cap at 200 before gear. In a game where death cost premium currency, the player who couldn’t be moved controlled every fight he clicked.
[LIFE SKILLS: Cooking and Live Streaming.]
POV camera, voice changer, ghost in the machine, earn gold, and
stay invisible.
[CHARACTER CREATION: RANDOMISE?]
In real life, Liam walked into rooms and rooms rearranged themselves around him, 6’6" with silver hair and red eyes and visible the way landmarks were visible. He was exhausted by it.
"Confirm," he said.
His centre of gravity dropped two feet, and he looked down at his hands, small and pale and thin-wristed. He found his reflection in a loading panel.
A girl, silver-haired and red-eyed and roughly the height of a fire hydrant, with a face that belonged on a plush toy. A slow, low chuckle came out of him, deep and resonant and completely wrong for the body it came from.
Nobody looks at a doll and thinks predator.
[ENTER NAME: Little Liam]
[ENTER]
Cobblestones, and then woodsmoke and lavender and horse manure and something frying nearby that made his brain immediately clock oil temperature. It smelled more real than his father’s house. He opened his status and skimmed until he hit the bottom, a footnote in small text, the kind developers bury when they haven’t decided if something is a bug or a feature yet.
[LEGENDARY SKILL UNLOCKED: Absorption]
Effect: Consuming monster parts grants unique Recipes.User Multiplier: All buffs increased by 10,000x for 24 hours, Time increases with level. He read it once, closed the panel, opened it, and read it again.
Nearby, a group of Mages were celebrating a passive that gave them +2% Mana Regeneration, and one of them was literally jumping.
Liam did the math.
A basic Tier 1 meal gave +1 to a stat, the kind of number that made cooking a footnote, something you picked if you wanted to roleplay a chef and weren’t serious about the game.
+1, times 10,000.
His base Defence was 20 one meal, and it wouldn’t be 20 anymore. They hadn’t balanced this; they didn’t know they needed to.
A cold, quiet thing settled in his chest, not excitement but something older, recognition.
He’d felt it before, standing at a kitchen sink watching a head chef who thought he ran the room while Liam quietly clocked every inefficiency. He’d felt it in the exam hall with three questions wrong and the entire system bending around one patient decision.
He allocated his stats without hesitating.
[Defence: 20 → 35]
[Attack: 15 → 30]
A wall that couldn’t hit back was just a punching bag.
Around him, a thousand players screamed toward the city gates. Liam spotted an NPC herb vendor being completely ignored at the edge of the plaza and started walking toward her.
Then the world froze, colours bled to grey and sound died, and a flame appeared a foot from his face, gold and ancient, the kind that made the air taste like woodsmoke and something older than language.
["The Hearth Goddess Hestia gazes upon you she smiles, use her blessing well, little wolf."]
Warmth filled his chest, not a system buff but the warmth of a kitchen at closing time when the chaos was over, and the last flame was still going, and something had been made from nothing.
For the first time in a long time, Liam felt full.
[Divine Subscriber detected!]
[Hestia: "I’m hungry, little wolf, show me something the Heavens have never tasted."]
The world snapped back, and the vendor blinked at him patiently.
A goddess, subscribed before he’d cooked a single thing.
He thought about it the way he thought about most things, practically and without noise. A patron was a patron, didn’t matter if it was a Tuesday regular or an Olympian, and what mattered was that she was hungry.
Liam knew how to feed hungry people "What’s fresh?" he asked.
The vendor lit up like he had been waiting his entire existence for that question.
Behind him, a thousand players chased glory toward the gates.
Liam was already reading the ingredient list and no reason to stand out.
...Yet.