Bath Break – Mew Mew Quest

“This kitchen knife is sharper than Father’s.”

“What did you say just meow...?”

It all started from Crissa’s one remark...

Let’s go back to when the ketolts requested to sleep inside the Unlimited Bath one night before setting off on their journey.

That in itself wasn’t a problem. They needed to be prepared, so they conducted a test night inside the Bath. However, a series of events was triggered after Pardoe heard his daughter’s idle murmur from the kitchen.

She had a kitchen knife from the Unlimited Bath in her paws. Just like the soap in the bath, it was formed from the Hero of the Goddess, Touya’s, MP. Crissa wasn’t a blacksmith, but she could discern the quality of a kitchen knife after having used them quite often. Pardoe couldn’t ignore his own daughter’s words, so he took the knife into his own paws and inspected it himself.

“Murrr... Indeed...”

The blade was thinner and lighter compared to the ones Pardoe made. He tried cutting some vegetables and also confirmed that it cut much more smoothly than his blades did.

“Wh-what is this knife...?”

Then Shakova and Mark entered the kitchen, peering at the knife in Pardoe’s paws.

“What a purrfectly constructed blade...” Shakova rarely ever made or used cookware, but he regretted missing out on this particular one until now. The blade had a beautiful sheen, but the handle helped give it an even more refined look.

“...So what’s this knife made of?” Mark muttered, poking the side of the blade with a claw.

Pardoe and Shakova inspected the knife one more time, but they couldn’t figure out what material it was made from. They tried appraising it with magic, but only learned that it was imbued with the Goddess’ power and that it possessed an ability that made it an excellent kitchen knife.

“It’s a metal I’ve never seen before...”

“It’s stronger than steel... Crissa, are there any other knives in there?”

“There are plenty more in here, meow.” Crissa opened a drawer under the sink. Inside were about a dozen knives in a variety of shapes and sizes.

“...Why are there so many?”

“Sir Touya said that they have different uses based on what they’re made to cut. See? This one is used to slice bread.” Crissa took out a knife with a strange wavy pattern lining its edge.

“Murrr...”

A cleaver, fillet knife, chef’s knife, and paring knife were among the collection of Eastern and Western kitchen knives, according to Touya. There was even a gigantic one called a whaling knife that they doubted should even belong in a kitchen.

As Pardoe and Shakova stared at the glimmering knives all lined up in a row, they got the idea to try and use this material for their smithing. They begged Touya to spare them a few, and he surprisingly said yes without hesitation. The knives were a part of his gift, so his MP would simply replenish any missing ones.

Once they gathered a whole set together, the knives lost the Goddess’ power, but were unchanged besides that. Pardoe and Shakova dragged Mark over and immediately activated the fire altar.

“Meow?! The heat does nothing to it...!!”

However, the knives remained unchanged even when applying heat from the fire altar to them. This was an unexpected development.

“Mark, generate more heat!”

“I-Is that okay?”

“It’s fine, just do it!”

“Don’t blame me if anything goes wrong!” Mark increased the altar’s output as he was told.

The fire altar and fire stone glowed with the brightest light they had ever seen, and Mark grimaced when he felt the heat catching bits of his whiskers as he applied the heat to the knives. Steel would have melted long ago at this temperature.

“No good, the knife’s not mewtating at all...!”

“We can’t say that for sure... let’s try hitting it meow!!”

Shakova used tongs to transport the knife to an anvil, then Pardoe swung down on it with all his might using his hammer. And then with an unexpectedly high-pitched ring, the knife split right in two.

“...What?”

The three of them opened their eyes wide, stopped channeling their MP, and stood there frozen until Crissa came by to tell them dinner was ready.

“It’s heat resistant, but breaks when you hit it... oh, maybe because they’re ceramic knives?” After dinner, Touya revealed the secret behind the knives to them. Since they were formed from his gift, he could tell what they were made from just like how he knew how to use his gift.

“If you had told me you wanted to try melting them, I could have let you know that they were similar to porcelain.”

“Th-that was porcelain...?”

No wonder they hadn’t seen anything like it before. It wasn’t even metal in the first place.

“They’re light, incredibly sharp, don’t rust, and don’t impart the taste of metal, but in exchange they’re really brittle and break as soon as you try to bend them.”

The broken knife ended up disappearing, too. The MP-generated soap would also vanish without a trace after it was used, so it operated on the same idea.

“And here I thought we could make an amazing weapon by melting up a bunch of these knives...”

“I thought I could put some detailed touches on it...”

“Well, there’s a catch to everything.”

At that, Pardoe and Shakova fell to the ground. Their quest had unfortunately ended in failure.

Afterwards, they gifted a full set of regenerated knives to the Hephaestus royal family. Of course, they also included warnings about using them.

The royal family was overjoyed since the knives had been formed from the Goddess of Fire’s blessing. They distributed the knives between the fire temple, the twelve ketolt families, and notable human blacksmith families as ritual tools. This helped cement Touya’s relationship with Hephaestus even more, but that was a story for another day.