Come on, Let's Start Cooking! (Infinite)

Everyone else who entered the horror game got incredibly cool skills.

Shi Yu got a kitchen knife. It was plain, ordinary, and pretty pathetic.

The others with their cool skills breezed through the levels like they were chopping vegetables.

Their level-up rewards included all kinds of resurrection items, healing items, and rare bonus items.

Shi Tinglan, with nothing but a lousy kitchen knife, nearly died even in a low-level instance.

After finally managing to level up, his reward was a cutting board, an earthen stove, a spatula, and a ladle.

Shi Yu gritted his teeth and took a gamble, using everything he had to sneak into an A-rank instance. He barely made it through and finally leveled up!

After three days of praying at the temple, Shi Tingyu opened his reward.

[Cutting board: Can be used together with a kitchen knife, earthen stove, spatula, ladle, cookware, and other items to form a set!]

[All these items have been detected. Automatically combining them now.]

[Combination complete! Let's start cooking!]

Shi Yu finally broke down. "What the hell am I supposed to cook in a horror instance?!"

[Detected: the equipment owner wants to make a ghost dish.]

[Hint: To make a ghost dish, you must first have a ghost.]

[Hint: To make a ghost dish, you must first have a ghost.]

[Hint: ...]

Half believing it would work, Shi Yu found a ghost.

Thirty seconds later...

A steaming lion's head meatball came out of the pot.

He stared at the endless list of buff effects beneath the meatball and finally burst into tears.

"Whose horror game protagonist has cooking as their skill?!"

-

Shi Tinglan's skill was so bizarre that he had never dared to find a regular team. Unable to bear the loneliness any longer, he found a dying little octopus in the Ghost River and adopted it as a pet.

Then, to his delight, he discovered that the little octopus wasn't picky at all, and had a very healthy appetite!

The little octopus devoured the dishes he made, even the ones he himself found disgusting, one plate after another!

It was adorable, too. Its body usually glowed a deep blue, but after a kiss, it turned pale pink.

Every now and then, it would curl a tentacle toward his mouth, asking for a kiss.

Shi Yu loved it to bits and even took it to bed with him.

It was a shame that no matter how much it ate, the little octopus never grew. It stayed tiny, about the size of a fist.

That was, until Shi Yu's special skill was exposed, and people with ulterior motives hunted him down until he was cornered.

Despair showed in Shi Yu's eyes.

But then he realized that his pursuers all looked as if they'd seen a ghost.

Shi Yu turned around. A body radiating deep blue light towered behind him, blotting out the sky. Thousands of soft tentacles spread across the ground like streams of light, each one carrying deadly venom.

Someone who recognized it cried out in despair, "Why is an SSS-rank instance boss from another dimension here?!"

Theme: Love life! Love food! Love pets!