Having completely emptied his bowl, Caelus had apparently relaxed, falling fast asleep.
At first, I worried he might suffocate because he had rolled himself so tightly inside the blanket, but before long, his small head poked out slily.
‘Cute.’
The cheek pressed flat against the pillow was especially so.
He was considerably thin, but perhaps because he was still a child, there was at least a bit of flesh on his cheeks.
Watching the protagonist sleep as he let out soft, rhythmic breaths, I exhaled a quiet sigh.
‘I changed the events of Day 1 of the kidnapping.’
And I was still alive.
[Having surpassed the 9th round, you are faintly liberated from the binding force of the story.]
‘Is this what the system meant by a faint liberation?’
In truth, I had once met death precisely because of the story’s shackles.
It happened in the very last round.
Having regained my memories on the final day of the kidnapping, I had blindly taken Caelus and left the abandoned research lab.
Knowing that getting caught here meant a guaranteed execution, I had acted recklessly in hopes of turning myself in beforehand.
However, the moment I stepped out of the laboratory—
[This action is not permitted for ‘Enoch’.]
[You have exceeded the allowable scope of the story.]
A system window flashed before my eyes, and I died right then and there.
That was why this time, instead of blindly sending him back, I had moved in a direction that allowed me to build up favorability while we were together.
If it hadn’t worked, I would have died this time too, but since I had acted with the mindset of conducting an experiment from the start—
“An event that is bound to happen must happen. I still cannot twist that.”
Ultimately, it meant I had to stay with Caelus until the moment I was caught.
However, the one difference was that how I utilized that time was entirely up to me.
Of course, I didn’t know if there might be some kind of standard or condition here as well.
‘If I die doing that, then I die. Whatever.’
I could just regress again and start over from the beginning.
The problem was—
‘I need to know if my eventual capture and death is something ‘that must happen’ as dictated by the story.’
If the story had decreed that Enoch, Caelus’s kidnapper, absolutely had to die by execution, changing that would be incredibly difficult.
Yet, I had a corner of my mind I relied on.
If Enoch were truly a character who absolutely had to die, there would be no reason to make him repeat regressions like this.
‘There is something that Enoch absolutely must change.’
Whether that was something regarding the protagonist, or Enoch’s own fate.
Once I roughly sorted out my thoughts, my cluttered mind felt clear.
Just as I stood up to find something to eat to satisfy the hunger that was hitting me late—
[The actions of ‘Enoch’ have changed positively. A small wind of change has begun to blow through the story!]
A system window I had never seen before popped up.
It appeared my actions had fulfilled the system’s intentions to some extent.
And it only took a whopping nine rounds…
With my arms crossed, I silently stared at the system window still floating in midair.
In truth, there wasn’t much I could glean from the content itself.
Only that deciding to treat Caelus kindly was the correct answer.
‘Is there anything else?’
As if reading my mind, another system window appeared.
[Certain conditions have been met, unlocking the ‘Quest’ function.]
“Cr—!”
I almost cursed out loud but caught myself, clamping both hands over my mouth.
“Mmm…”
Sure enough, Caelus, who had been sound asleep, whimpered slightly in his sleep.
The sound hadn’t been that loud… but he seemed to be on the sensitive side.
Staring at his deeply furrowed brow, I approached him carefully.
After I patted his back a few times, his expression quickly smoothed out.
‘Whew…’
Exhaling a sigh of relief internally, I crept back toward the table.
After sitting down, I bit into the bread I had brought for my share.
The bread was hard and tough.
However, I couldn’t care less about that right now.
‘If there are quests, then what I need to do will become clear too.’
It wouldn’t just tell me what to do immediately; it would also let me understand what the system wanted.
Realizing my jaw was going to ache if I kept chewing the bread dry, I tore off pieces, soaked them in the remaining soup, and put them in my mouth.
A moment later, the long-awaited quest manifested.
[Quest | Feed Caelus until he is full and satisfied.
– Feed Caelus at least three meals
– Receive the review “Delicious” from Caelus
Reward: 3 types of cooking recipes, 1 fragment of the story’s key
While this quest is in progress, ‘Enoch’ is permitted to go outside to procure better ingredients.]
‘Hmm…’
Could the thing Enoch was supposed to do actually be childcare for the protagonist?
As I mentioned before, Caelus was small and thin compared to others his age.
The system seemed to want Caelus to put on some weight while he was with me…
‘But with ingredients like this, what kind of amazing thing am I supposed to make?’
There were ingredients prepared by the Grand Duke in the abandoned lab.
However, the quality and quantity were quite literally at a level just enough to keep someone from starving to death.
‘The time Enoch and Caelus spend together here is at least one month.’
My memory wasn’t precise so I couldn’t say for sure, but it was at least a month.
To survive that duration with the ingredients in sight, we would have to eat only one meal a day.
And with this, I was supposed to feed Caelus, an Imperial Prince, until he was full and satisfied…
‘It’s not like I’m particularly good at cooking either.’
Before, I had to make whatever I could to survive, so it wasn’t that I couldn’t cook at all.
I had lived on my own for a fairly long time, too.
But because I didn’t particularly enjoy cooking, it amounted to nothing more than throwing things together roughly to suit my own tastes.
Furthermore, this was inside a Western-style fantasy novel…
‘There’s really nothing better than mixing rice with gochujang.’
Regrettably, there was no gochujang here.
There was rice, but it wasn’t the Korean rice I used to eat.
It had a crumbly, dry texture.
It didn’t seem like it would taste very good on its own.
Therefore, I decided on curry for tonight’s dinner.
It was a menu chosen because curry powder happened to be among the ingredients, and despite the different packaging, it carried a remarkably familiar scent.
A passing doubt occurred to me as to whether curry powder even existed in this era, but I simply buried the thought.
Staring at the bumpy, peeled potatoes for a moment, I cut them into bite-sized pieces.
‘Is this a bit too big for a kid to eat?’
It’s not like I knew what size perfectly suited a twelve-year-old’s mouth.
Still, these looked a bit large, so cutting them a few more times left them quite small.
…Well, smaller is better than too large, right?
After stir-frying the finely chopped carrots, potatoes, and meat, I made the curry.
The curry bubbled and hissed inside the round pot.
The condition of the ingredients wasn’t the greatest, but perhaps because curry was such a versatile dish, just smelling it made my mouth water.
Extinguishing the magically summoned fire, I scooped rice into a bowl and poured the curry over it.
‘Just to cook this rice, I don’t know how many pots I burned…’
I desperately missed electric rice cookers.
I also arranged some bread cut into easy-to-eat pieces around the bowl.
Just in case the rice didn’t suit his palate, he could eat the bread instead.
‘Now I have to take the food over, but…’
The memory of the hallway covered in thick dust flashed through my mind.
Thinking I couldn’t just carry the food over uncovered, I looked around, found something resembling a lid, and placed it over the bowl.
‘Inconvenient, so inconvenient.’
I wondered if I really had to go this far. But for the quest, haaa… because I had to do the quest.
Likewise, I placed the food onto a trolley that had been rolling around the storage room.
Once that was done, I felt a strange sense of pride over something so minor.
‘Is this what a parent’s heart feels like?’
Not that… I particularly wanted to know.
Still, since I had gone through the trouble of making it, I hoped Caelus would enjoy it.
I was also curious to see what the ‘fragment of the story’s key’ from the quest reward was.
‘With this much effort, he’ll at least give me a polite “It’s delicious” out of courtesy.’
He had seemed surprisingly gentle-natured.
Yes.
At that very moment, I was inwardly taking this quest quite lightly.
