The day after Artemis had assigned me the dual tasks.
“Priest! Priest! Please take a look at this!”
One of the female priestesses who had been on early morning duty approached me holding a small flask, showing me its contents.
When she opened the lid, a strong aroma of liquor pierced my nose.
Today, though, that scent was incredibly welcome.
“Dionysus kept his promise.”
“Yes! The curse is lifted. It’s such a relief!”
“Indeed. Anyway, aren’t you about to finish your shift? I’ll draft an official notice about the curse being lifted, and you can take it back to Luna and deliver it to the Citizens’ Pension Agency, alright?”
“I understand!”
The female priestess left the office, overjoyed at the end of the curse.
Right.
It’s good news for the citizens of Luna.
However, for me, it’s the start of a task.
“Alright. Let’s get to it.”
I strengthened my resolve and headed toward the kitchen.
I soon spread out all the ingredients I would need to make the beverage on the sink.
The drink I was making was sikhye.
Making sikhye is easier than you might think.
Once you’ve tried making it, any Korean would likely find it easy to master using their own cooking skills.
The number of ingredients — just four or five — also makes it a light task.
After confirming the ingredients laid out in the kitchen, I placed a large bowl in front of me.
“Hmm… first, two liters of water and three handfuls of barley malt.”
I poured the water into the bowl and added the barley malt.
When I was a child, I once thought that barley malt was some kind of liquid like cooking oil because my grandmother had poured it in.
But what she actually had was sprouted barley.
In other words, barley malt isn’t oil at all.
It’s used in whiskey production, so you can easily buy it in places where alcoholic beverages are developed.
“Next, next.”
I mixed the barley malt well by hand and squeezed it a few times, repeating this process 3-4 times to make the water opaque with barley extract.
Then, I added a bowl of steamed white rice, let it warm to a proper temperature, added sugar for sweetness, and boiled it.
Lastly, after letting it cool and adding ice, the task was finished!
How does that sound? Quite easy, isn’t it?
A few hours later, I went back to the icebox to check on the sikhye.
When I opened the lid, the distinct sweetness of sikhye hit my nose, and the sight of floating slivers of ice made it look perfect.
“Of course, floating slivers of ice in sikhye are better than crushed.”
I took a spoonful for a taste, confident that this sikhye would definitely do the trick.
I immediately took the sikhye container to the administration chamber.
As soon as I entered the room, Artemis, seated at a high-quality lacquered executive desk, caught my eye.
She was yawning widely, looking bored as if she had nothing to do, and I could even see the inside of her mouth from a distance.
She met my eyes with a questioning look and beckoned me over with a finger.
“Did you make it already after just a few hours?”
“Yeah, give it a try. It’s going to be something!”
“You say it’s something special… except for nectar, all beverages are the same… what?”
She reached out for the sikhye without much expectation, but her expression turned pale and she froze, then suddenly jumped out of her seat.
“What… what is this?! Are those floating larvae!?!?”
“La… larvae? That’s rude.”
“Well, then what’s the white stuff settled at the bottom?”
“It’s rice.”
Even after being told the answer, Artemis still wore a skeptical expression as she awkwardly sat back down, leaning forward to inspect the sikhye. She fished out one of the floating rice grains with her fingernail and pressed on it.
“Is this really rice?”
“Yeah. Why would I put larvae in your drink?”
Certainly, seeing rice and larvae for the first time in sikhye, given their similar size and color, it might be easy to confuse them.
Still.
How could anyone think larvae could be in a drink?
“Hey, Ark.”
“Yeah?”
“How do you drink this thing?”
“You can sip it normally or eat the rice first… it’s your choice.”
“Pass me a spoon.”
Artemis, still not completely comfortable with the unfamiliar beverage, told me to fetch one from the dining hall.
“There’s no need; I’ve already prepared a small spoon just in case.”
I handed her a spoon I’d brought beforehand. The first time I drank sikhye, I used a spoon to eat the rice.
“Wow… you’re pretty well-prepared, huh? You should reclass as a butler instead of a priest.”
“I’m multitasking right now.”
“Hahahaha! That’s true.”
A delighted Artemis stirred the sikhye with her spoon and gathered up a mouthful of rice.
She then opened her mouth wide, dumped the mouthful of sikhye and rice inside, and began chewing slowly.
“Eh, how is it?”
“…”
I asked her eagerly, tense about how she’d evaluate it.
But she didn’t respond, instead scooping up another mouthful of rice and beginning to sip the drink.
Throughout, her head was tilted back, keeping the position until the cup was empty.
“How was it?”
“…It’s good.”
“What? Really?”
She praised it, and I beamed.
But her expression didn’t look like someone merely offering compliments.
“Yeah. It’s refreshing and sweet. Now I understand why there’s rice in it — it adds that nutty grain flavor. And there’s more to the sweetness than just the sugar… Hmm… this sweetness, I feel like I’ve tasted it before… ”
Artemis frowned and furrowed her brows as if she was about to sneeze but couldn’t, repeatedly scrunching and smoothing them. She lightly drummed her clenched fist on the desk, then picked up the empty cup and stared at it.
After scraping the last bits of rice from the bottom of the cup and eating them, she snapped her eyes open and nodded.
“Ah-ha! It’s the maltose in the barley malt! Maltose!”
“Uh… that’s correct.”
Impressive.
She’s truly impressive.
Figuring out the ingredients already borders on miraculous, but identifying the sweetness of barley malt separately from the sweetness of sugar — that’s beyond impressive.
Artemis,
Why are you here as a goddess?
You should go to the modern era and become a food researcher for a company. You’d definitely make a fortune.
Anyway, she had passed the taste test.
“Good! With this, the fifth task is complete. Now for the next one —”
“Tsk tsk!”
Just as I clenched my fists and prepared myself for the next task after the initial success,
Artemis extended the now-empty cup toward me, clicking her tongue and flicking her fingers.
She reclined her chair, crossed her legs, and looked at me with an expression of disdain.
“Why are you being like this? You said the sikhye was delicious, didn’t you?”
“Indeed, sikhye is sweet and refreshing. Eating the rice grains as a side is quite flavorful.”
“But if you like it, the other gods will like it too.”
“Maybe. But in my opinion, if we go with this for the celebration banquet, I might be the only one asking for more sikhye.”
Although she approved its taste, she kept finding fault, making me skeptical.
An uncomfortable feeling of unease began to rise again, and I lightly protested to her, feeling partly like a tantrum.
From hamburgers, to tteokbokki, to fish cakes, to fried foods…
Every modern food I’ve made has been devoured, yet she’s spent all the temple’s resources on food. Why does she think the other gods won’t like it?
“Artemis, I don’t think so, but are you intentionally rejecting it because you secretly want to monopolize the food I make just for you?”
“Y-You idiot! ”
Her face blushed slightly as she sprang up and delivered a gentle blow to my stomach.
Before I could even yell out in pain, I leaned forward, and she firmly grabbed the back of my neck, dragging me somewhere.
“Yikes! Wh-where are we going?”
“To the restaurant supply storage.”
Artemis pulled me firmly toward the storeroom.
As the freezing air escaped from the storeroom when she yanked the door open, the cold wafted out.
The water from the River Cocytus is icy but never freezes.
With just one bucket of this water placed on the floor, the small storeroom serves as a refrigerator effectively — another of my inventions to slow the decay of food.
Wearing a turtleneck tank top, Artemis crossed her arms, rubbing her goosebumped skin as she ventured inside.
She came out with her hands full of items, which she placed on the dining table.
Then, she unscrewed the cork of a small oak barrel on the right and poured a yellow liquid into a cup, handing it to me.
“Drink it.”
“What is it? It’s not pee, is it?”
“Are you saying something disgusting in front of a goddess!? How dare you make such a vulgar comment…”
“Hahaha, same old grudges and squabbles!”
“Urrgh! Just drink it!”
She slapped my back in disgust.
I stuck out my tongue briefly and immediately raised the cup, swallowing the yellow liquid in one gulp.
At first, I licked my lips slowly, before finishing the cup due to its sweet, refreshing taste.
What she had given me was orange juice.
“Ah, it’s good but… isn’t this just something you can buy in the store? Just sugar and blended oranges… Oh!”
As I listed off the ordinary qualities of the orange juice and its simple preparation, I suddenly realized why.
I understood why Artemis had handed me the orange juice.
And also why sikhye didn’t qualify as the answer for this task.
“The orange pieces aren’t finely blended, so you can chew them.”
“True. Sikhye is indeed delicious but it isn’t the answer to the task’s theme for a new beverage.”
She continued, adding an explanation:
“Sikhye is a drink they haven’t tried, true. However, a sweet drink with residue isn’t exactly original.”
d*mn it.
I thought that using my sikhye trick would be enough to breeze through one mission…
“What, Ark. Are you already getting discouraged after just one failure?”
“Is that possible? In fact, I haven’t even used half my strength.”
Next to nothing, really, but I puffed my chest out a bit to avoid seeming weak in front of my girlfriend.
Isn’t that the right of a boyfriend too?
It’s fine, Ark.
Let this be a learning moment to break the arrogance of thinking I’m the sole keeper of modern knowledge.
With a renewed sense of challenge, I’ll do it again.
And with a renewed sense of excitement, I’ll start over from the beginning.
