Supremacy Games

Just to be extra safe, Felix entered one of the many caves on the mountain and closed the entrance by blowing it off.

Then, he walked as deep as his feet could take him.

"Here will do."

Felix beamed the preparation table for his concoction and a dozen of crystal bulbs. He affixed them on the cave's walls, turning the entire place as bright as daylight.

Then, he beamed other cooking tools and the required ingredients.

Knowing that heat was important to pull off the cooking recipes perfectly, Felix didn't start a fire with wood.

He beamed the circular oven used for his potion making since it allowed him to control fire by single degrees.

"So, what are you making, chef Felix?" Asna teased.

"Green Lavender Dragon Heart Stew." Felix replied, "If I want to survive the royal dragons' elemental attacks, I need to increase my fire resistance as high as possible."

Felix understood that being physically tough was one thing and being resistant to the elements was another.

One could be as strong and tough as an ox. Yet, end up dropping dead by a single poison drop.

The same applied to being burnt alive.

No matter how strong he gets, as long as his elemental resistances were low, he would suffer just like everyone else.

"That's the better decision." Thor supported, "You can't just focus on your physical strength and leave other weaknesses untapped."

Felix nodded in agreement while starting to cut down a weird looking spiky red cucumber into small pieces.

Almost all the ingredients in the recipe came from other civilizations, making it somewhat hard for Felix to work on them.

Thankfully, he had practiced plenty of time before his coma, when he was increasing his affinity rating.

In a short while, Felix had finished cutting all the ingredients and prepared them to the side.

Thud!

Without delay, he beamed the giant quarter of the dragon's heart and placed it on the preparation table.

'Here we go.'

Felix took a deep breath to calm his nerves and started to slice the heart in an artistic manner...He appeared like he was following a routine that he repeated for millions of times.

It was somewhat the right assumption as he had been training hard in the UVR on how to cut the dragon's heart properly to not lose out anything.

Since it was banned to do such a thing, he simply created a heart that was identical to the one he possessed and did his thing.

As long as he didn't request the Queen to scan his heart and replicate it or asked her to create one, he was out of trouble.

In a few minutes, Felix wiped his sweaty forehead and placed the butcher knife at the side of the table.

Even though he merely possessed a quarter of the heart, it was still able to provide him with a portion for an entire party to eat.

Still, Felix was nervous about the cooking process, knowing that he could not mess up too often.

He was told by Lady Sphinx that the first stew would give him the biggest benefit and what comes after depends on it.

In other phrasing, if he cooked the stew terribly, he would receive the worst boost to his fire resistance.

All the stews he drinks after it would always give him a much lower enhancement than the first time even if he cooked them as perfectly as the recipe.

Thus, it was more vital to cook the first stew without mistakes to not loss out on majority of the benefits.

"Boil clean water at 90 degrees for three minutes...Throw in five kilograms of the daisoki vegetable pieces first and leave it to get boiled for two minutes before following in with..."

Felix kept murmuring the exact steps in the recipe and following them rigidly.

Because of his potion mastery, he was extremely meticulous, making him avoid even the small mistakes.

After placing all the ingredients inside, Felix closed the pot led and picked four big portions of the heart's meat.

Then, he diced it until they were as small as meat balls...He waited ten minutes exactly before opening the lid and pushing them inside.

Next, he closed the lid shut and wiped his sweaty forehead.

"Now, we wait." 

Knowing that the duration to cook the dragon's heart was going to take four hours, Felix sat a bit further from the pot and started practicing his poison conversion technique in silence.

Before long, the four hours training session concluded and Felix returned to the pot with his eyebrows raised in surprise.

Even though the pot was closed shut, the fragrance it kept on releasing was truly mouth-watering.

"It's ready." Lady Sphinx informed casually.

As the creator of those recipes, Felix didn't dare to doubt her words. He swiftly picked up the pot from the oven and placed it on the table.

Without delay, he picked the lid and was met with a burst of fragrant steam, making him take it all in with an euphoric expression.

"Make sure to eat the whole thing as fast as possible." Lady Sphinx advised, "Your body will start heating rapidly until it becomes unbearable for you to even drink another spoon."

"Understood." Felix responded with a serious tone.

Eee Eee!

"I will give you the next." Felix promised Nimo after seeing him salivating while smelling such delicious fragrant.

Without further delay, Felix beamed all the remaining materials inside his spatial card and picked up the stew pot.

It was big enough to feed an entire camp of soldiers, making it seem impossible for Felix to handle the whole thing.

But Felix had a cheat code that enabled him to eat it entirely.

'Size X4!' 

His body started to grow bigger and bigger until he was at least seven meters tall!

Then, he opened his mouth widely and poured the whole stew inside his mouth, not bothering to even chew the vegetables or the meat!

He just kept gulping everything with his eyes closed shut tightly, feeling sicker and sicker.

No matter how delicious something was, as long as it didn't touch the tasting pads, it would be the same as eating an oatmeal.

Sure the stew soup was delicious, but he wasn't given time to even appreciate it.

In a few moments at best, Felix emptied the entire pot in his stomach and placed it back on the table.

"I feel like I have sinned." Felix sighed with a frustrated expression after he was hit with multiple amazing flavors in his mouth.

Before he could regret this barbaric approach, his body started to get heated up akin to a furnace.

Expecting this much, Felix swiftly sat on the ground and removed his stretched out nanobot clothes.

This freed his skin and made him see that he was indeed turning hotter and redder.

In less than ten seconds, Felix was sweating buckets all over his body, trying his best to cool himself.

Alas, those drops of sweat get turned into steam the moment they exit his pores, making him resemble Luffy in his second gear.

"So f*cking hot...Is this normal?" Felix frowned while toughening through the heat, feeling like he was sitting above a grill right on top of lava river.

"The hotter your body gets, the better your fire resistance will be boosted." Lady Sphinx replied, "So, you should pray for it to get even hotter."

Upon hearing so, Felix stopped b*tching around and began hoping for the heat to kick it up a notch.

Without needing to wish for it, the heat kept on raising and raising until steam filled up the entire cave...Because of Felix's current giant size, it was to be expected the quantity would increase.

He couldn't even reduce his size unless he wanted his stomach to literally explode on him.

After all, he had eaten ten times more than what his usual stomach was capable of.

'So hot...I feel like I am being cooked alive...'

Felix gritted his teeth and kept his eyes shut, knowing that they would get dried out the moment he opens them.

"Keep it up, the process will last for a mere couple of hours." Lady Sphinx informed.

If it were any other person, he would have been put into despair the moment he heard about the duration...But not Felix.

He had gone through so much pain in almost every opportunity he received to gain stronger.

If he still couldn't understand that in this universe, shortcuts were accompanied by a price that was hard for anyone to pay.

If Felix decided to increase his fire resistance the known and normal way, he would need to have fire affinity and start living in the hottest environments until the day he would be completely immune to fire or heat.

But this path wasn't taken by almost anyone even though it was common knowledge.

That's because it was hard and torturous.

The worst part? It would take a very, very long time to increase one's fire resistance in this manner. We are talking about centuries to a hundred thousand years if not more.

Not everyone was willing to sacrifice their entire lives for the sake of chasing an elemental immunity.

So, there was simply no way that the universe would allow anyone to increase his elemental resistance so high by simply eating a freaking stew and go unpunished.