Dog Girl

Deep within the Forest of Tartalia, inside the hidden realm's House of Food, beneath dim yellow light, stood a black-haired, black-eyed young man. An exquisite Kitchen Utensil Bag and an Earthen Pot painted with Primitives hung from his waist, completing the outfit of a wilderness chef that had once sparked a trend throughout the Federation.

At that moment, the young man walked toward the stone table ahead with an obsessed expression, his gaze fixed firmly on one of the dishes.

Enticing colors intertwined with a hallucinatory aura. Golden sauce gave off phosphorescence that made one's appetite impossible to control... as though no one could resist this delicacy, cooked from the tongue of some unknown creature.

The gaunt man serving as host wore a strange smile. His face was close as he muttered without pause.

Behind him, the contestants standing in the shadows—whether grotesquely shaped fiends or human chefs—all wore the same expression. Their heads had turned to the same angle as they looked toward Tang Qi.

From the judges seated behind the long table at the end of the House of Food came ceaseless murmurs, echoing through the stone house.

As Tang Qi was about to touch the dish with both hands, they seemed already to see what would happen next: this human chef, like a starving vagrant, would lift a piece of meat and tear into it madly, desperate to stuff it into his stomach as quickly as possible.

He might even choke, his eyes bulging as saliva sprayed from his mouth.

And soon, he would become one of them.

Just as Alfred was thinking this, he suddenly met a pair of eyes blazing with Golden Flame and ultimate crimson.

He froze on the spot, then watched the Earthen Pot at the young man's waist float upward. Looking inside,