Song-dae had always lived at the very bottom of society. He was an ordinary South Korean citizen, the kind of guy who felt this world was simply too hard a place to survive in. To escape that exhausting situation, he liked to imagine what he would be like after joining the army — a true super soldier, cheered on proudly by so many people. Then harsh reality dragged him awake after a minor car crash.
Right now, Song-dae was just a private who had only recently enlisted, with nothing standing out about him at all. The very first place he was sent was the aptitude assessment office of the enlistment zone. All he had to do was answer the questions on the screen as honestly as possible. Don't hide anything, they said. Not even how many pairs of underwear you have in your closet.
Being a fresh-faced young guy, Song-dae followed the orders perfectly. But the questions about family on the screen made him freeze for a few beats. His family's monthly income wasn't more than eighteen million. Not to mention that before enlisting, Song-dae seemed to show signs of mild depression, and there it was on the screen, a question asking whether he was depressed.
Suddenly a system sound rang out inside Song-dae's head, and he thought somebody had called him. So he stood up and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Private Song-dae, at your command!"
The two older guys in the room were completely weirded out, thinking this kid must be high on meth like Mu-rae. But everyone's attention quickly shifted to the assessment sheet coming out of the printer. Seeing the assessment sheet, the captain was stunned, because the rating reached all the way to rank S.
Song-dae thought he was the dark horse of the enlistment zone. He had no idea the sheet was actually showing an extremely high risk level. S-rank depression symptoms. S-rank gaming. A captain from the unit, hearing there was a new recruit worth looking at, came by to check on him as well. Except upon hearing about the S-rank risk assessment, his face went blank, because he knew this little bro wasn't just unusual. He was totally mental.
Song-dae was immediately called into the truth room under the captain's orders. The captain started interrogating him about his entire family tree. He honestly confessed that his mom was just a street vendor, and that his dad had passed away not long ago, sometime about two months back. At this point the captain finally understood why the new recruit was so quiet, and why the assessment sheet said S-rank depression.
He blamed himself for being a bit too hasty, so he sent the kid a smiley face sticker and comforted him.
"Everyone has weak moments on the road of life. Just don't let this discourage you. That's all."
After the interrogation, the captain led Song-dae to meet the outpost commander and report in. The outpost commander was an incredibly beautiful female lieutenant.
Song-dae confidently walked up to greet her, only to notice a mirror behind her showing an interface scanning his face. The words came right up to his mouth, and then he just kept stuttering. What he had seen was a notification panel popping up, showing the personal information of an ordinary soldier named Song-dae, twenty-two years old, 1.73 meters tall, and fifty-nine kilograms.
Asked what he was looking at, Song-dae quickly apologized for glancing around at random. He probably thought he was just having a little hallucination.
Speaking of the training camp's overview, there was a chef here who was extremely passionate about cooking and had earned the nickname Kitchen Demon King. Whenever he cooked a dish, flies would surely buzz all over it. Not to mention the mashed potatoes, which came out looking like some mushy lump that was hard to describe.
Everyone in the post was unsatisfied. The tough part was that the only chef bro they had was a gym rat. If you criticized his cooking, you paid for it right away. According to the brothers' rumors, this older guy had enlisted just so he could hit the gym. His family didn't have enough money to buy meat for extra protein, so he had volunteered to be the chef.
Meanwhile, Song-dae didn't know yet that he was about to become the person who would change all the chaos in this kitchen. Like everyone else, he took out his food tray and went to get his meal. The Demon King bro looked at Song-dae, thought he looked kind of dumb, and just ignored him.
In the training area, an older guy noticed the new recruit, called him over, and asked for his name and age. Song-dae yelled it out loud like a machine, which made the older guys standing with him so embarrassed they didn't know what to say. Actually, this guy had been planning to teach the new recruit a lesson. Luckily, before he could bully the little bro, the Kitchen Demon King came out.
"What are you trying to do to the new kid? If you've got free time, come into the kitchen and peel onions for me."
Knowing the Demon King was tough to mess with, the guy who wanted to bully Song-dae had to back down immediately. So Song-dae instantly got a pretty good impression of the Demon King bro, even though the older guy didn't look entirely normal himself.
When Song-dae took his very first bite of rice, a severe headache hit him. Then his teammate asked if the food was too hard to swallow. This was the exact situation of the kitchen right now, but you couldn't fight back at all, because fighting back or calling the food bad meant you were dead meat to that Demon King.
Song-dae tried his best to swallow another spoonful of tofu soup. As a result he felt so nauseous that he ran away in a hurry, only to get tripped and fall flat. In that dazed state, Song-dae felt like he could swim in the bowl of soup that tasted like the Demon King bro's vomit, wishing he could just throw it all up immediately.
"Somebody save me!"
The sight of him screaming like a kid was seen by everyone. Asked what was wrong with him, he blurted out that the soup was a bit salty.
Well, that was over. He was totally about to eat dirt this time.
A snitch bro called out at once. "Sergeant Dong-hoon, did you hear that? The new kid said your food is bad and insulted you. As a brilliant chef, what do you think about this?"
Dong-hoon shouted angrily. "If you don't like it, go in and cook it yourself!"
Because the system hadn't been activated yet, Song-dae could only run away first.
After leaving the dining hall, Song-dae went to the office of Seok-ho, a bro who had countless certificates and awards stuck all over his cabinet. This person must hold a pretty high rank in the military zone too. Knowing that this new recruit little bro was a bit depressed and not used to the army yet, Seok-ho started asking about his family to see how he was living. Seok-ho noted that his mom was a street food vendor.
Seok-ho immediately ordered Song-dae's higher-ranking master sergeant to let this kid be a chef. Who knows? Maybe the kid had inherited his mom's cooking skills, and he could improve the meals for the brothers in the military zone at the same time.
Thanks to that statement, an activation notice rang out in front of Song-dae. The legendary super chef system.
From this moment on, your journey to becoming a legendary chef will begin.
While the system's voice was still echoing in his head, Seok-ho was already saying how much he looked forward to working with Song-dae during his enlistment here.