by Yuu Tanaka
I wouldn’t exactly consider our line short, though. How bad were the other food carts? I wouldn’t have wanted to queue here. The whole thing reminded me of my past life. I once heard of a store that sold amazing pancakes, so I decided to go after work. But after seeing the line loop twice around the block, I gave up and had some ramen with gyoza at the neighboring stall.
“Come to the Black Tail for food that’s good and good for you! Spice enough to make you sweat and clear your pores, and it’s great for your insides, too!”
Colbert advertised the Cure Turmeric we used in our cooking. The magic plant was considered a luxury, so it was quite the selling point.
Then someone finally came to wreck our parade.
“What’s all this then?! You selling some dog crap?!”
“Your bread sure looks like it’s filled with it!”
Our aggressors looked like they came from the apocalypse. They had mohawks and wore spiked leather jackets. So here were our thugs, then. Our competition must’ve sent them over.
Checking their stats, I found them to be awfully weak. While their menacing looks might intimidate the average person, they were only as strong as novice adventurers. I guess you didn’t need to go all out when dealing with cooks.
“Go on, get outta here!”
“Your food probably tastes like crap anyway! Ugh, just looking at it makes me wanna puke!”
“Here, we’ll help you clear out your shop…permanently!”
The thugs took out their clubs, and our customers screamed in terror.
Fran, who was supposed to be manning the stove, warped right in front of them. The insult to curry bread fueled her speed.
She used Lighting Magic to paralyze the three thugs.
I wanted to get back to business and get some information while I was at it.
Fran, I’ll take over from here. You go back to the cart.
Got it.
Jet, carry them for me.
“Woof.”
Jet dragged the three thugs to an alleyway behind our food cart. Leaving them out in the open would scare away our customers and just generally be a terrible business decision.
I created a clone of myself to follow Jet and cast Stone Wall around us for some privacy. Then I used Silence so their screams wouldn’t bother the neighbors. Whatever happened within these walls wouldn’t leave it.
No matter what… Heh heh.
Despite my thoughts of terrible torture, the interrogation ended without bloodshed. They were all terrified of the giant direwolf. My slightest scowl was enough to give them the shakes. With the clone representing me, I proceeded to ask them questions.
“Tell me what I want to know, and I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“Y-yes! Anything!”
“Just get that monster away from us!”
The thugs sobbed, which made me feel like the bad guy. It ticked me off to the point that I wanted to hit them, but information was more important.
“Good. Let’s start with…”
The interrogation went smoothly after that. They answered all my questions honestly. Our thugs were underage boys, not brave or strong enough to become adventurers and mercenaries. Instead, they took shakedown jobs from folks who needed dumb intimidation. What shocked me was their age. Their attire made them all look over twenty.
“And why are you kids bothering Black Tail? You need pocket money, is that it?”
“S-someone hired us out of nowhere!”
A strange man hired them just the night before. They would each receive ten thousand gold for their services.
The job order was simple: harass and destroy certain target food carts. Apparently, there were several delinquent groups hired to run this racket. Our intimidators usually ran in a group of six, but they’d split up into threes to finish the job faster. The food carts they were told to target were Black Tail and the Bulbola Orphanage.
“Look.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“I’m going to hand you over to the town guards now. Tell them everything you know.”
“W-we will!”
“But do not, under any circumstances, tell them anything about me. Don’t even mention me. I’ll kill you if you do.”
The boys turned blue and nodded.
“W-we won’t say a word!”
“We promise!”
I knew delinquents, and I knew their tendency to make promises in the heat of the moment that they would forget a second later. Fortunately, these guys also had the IQ of a chimpanzee. I just needed to assert my dominance. I focused mana on my finger to make it glow and waved it menacingly.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“I’ve cast a curse on you. If you say anything about me, I will know.”
“Eek!”
Not that I knew of such a spell. It was all a magic show, but the boys seemed eager to believe it.
“You boys better clean up your act. Next time I catch you do anything stupid like this, I’ll sic my direwolf on you. It took a while to wean him off human flesh…”
“We’ll turn over a new leaf!”
“We won’t do anything bad ever again!”
“Spare us, please!”
I left. Not long after, Colbert came with the city guard to arrest them.
Colbert wondered why the boys looked scared out of their skin, but he decided not to pursue the matter. He didn’t want to know what Fran had done to them. In this world, retaliation and vengeance were common. Enacting retribution on thugs who had disturbed the peace was just the right thing to do.
Fran, the orphanage is in trouble.
Fran nodded gravely, and I wasted no time in telling her what I had learned.
You have to go, Teacher.
Me?
I have to stay here. It has to be you.
Fran was responsible for our food cart. Although she signed up for the competition under my name, she was my representative. With the supervisor overlooking our operations, we had no choice.
I had reservations about leaving Fran by herself, but she was clearly more worried about the orphanage. I originally planned to send Jet over there to make sure things were okay…
All right. Come on, Jet. Are you sure you can do this, Fran?
Yeah! You can leave the shop to me.
Time to go save some orphans.
Colbert’s around if you need backup, I told her.
I know.
Take us away, Jet.
“Arf!”
Jet took me into the shadows with him. At times like this, I appreciated being a sword. Jet could stow me away because I was an inanimate object, but I still got a clear view of what was happening outside.
“Bark, bark!”
Jet ran as fast as he could without attracting attention. All the same, he caught the eye of some city guards who tried to chase him down, but no human legs could ever catch a direwolf. Jet’s conspicuously equipped familiar collar helped too, I figured that was ultimately why the guards gave up on their chase. Still, the direwolf couldn’t help but scare some of the more tender boys and girls of Bulbola. I silently apologized for making them cry.
There it is.
“Woof.”
The orphanage’s food cart was in fine shape considering the amount of people lining up to get a piece. There must’ve been over three hundred people. Jet Air Hopped over the crowd and landed on the orphanage grounds. The kids gathered around him.
“Hey, it’s Jet!”
“Jet!”
“What are you doing here, buddy?”
Despite only meeting Jet yesterday, they recognized him immediately.
Shouldn’t these kids be helping Io with the food cart? I looked past the children and saw that the older kids were helping, leaving the younger ones with the enviable task of making merry.
Jet looked delighted as the kids fluffed his head. He didn’t usually get this kind of treatment, given most people were terrified of him. But the kids recognized him as Fran’s pet dog and liked him
just as much as they liked his owner.
Things were looking too calm. Where were the thugs?
Since Jet was enjoying himself, I decided to wait, hoping for an uneventful time. And then our guests arrived.
“What the hell?! What are these leftovers in this soup?! I paid good money for this!”
“I-I’m so sorry, sir.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it! Maybe I’ll forgive you if you close up shop!”
“B-but…”
“Is that a no?”
“Uuh…”
It was deja vu. The thugs who surrounded Io and the kids looked exactly like the ones who had attacked us.
“Please, forgive me.”
“Waaah!”
“Shut the hell up!”
“You better get on your knees for pissing us off!” the thugs threatened.
Io and the children turned pale with fear. The sight was abominable.
Jet.
“Grrr.”
Jet leaped in front of the thugs. I thought that soiled underwear was punishment enough for this lot, but things didn’t go as I expected.
“What’s with the dog?”
“You growling at me, puppy?”
They were terrified, but stubborn pride got in the way of their escape. The thugs struck the ground with their bats to intimidate Jet. Maybe I should’ve told him to revert to his original size. Then again, things might degenerate into an all-out panic if the crowd found a giant Darkness Wolf in their midst. We’d scare off the thugs, but also the orphanage’s customers.
Oh, well. Go for it, boy.
“We’ll kill y—oof!”
On my mark, Jet tackled one of the thugs. The biggest of the delinquents flew a good ten meters, landed, and stopped moving. He had twisted his leg but was otherwise unhurt. Good enough. The remaining two were knocked away when Jet got close to them. His sheer mass and speed sent the thugs flying.
“Awooo!”
“You did it, Jet!”
“That was so cool!”
“Bark, bark!”
Jet dragged the scattered thugs and dumped them together in a pile. Then, he climbed on top of that pile to let out a howl of victory as the kids cheered him on. I was glad to have averted what was potentially a traumatic scenario.
One of the kids had informed the city guard, and they came to take the thugs away. Things would’ve been a lot worse if we hadn’t been around. The dirty tricks some people would resort to just to win a competition. It astounded me.
Well, what now?
Another shakedown party might come along when we left, but I was worried about leaving Fran alone with the food cart. As I contemplated my next move, a familiar face approached.
“Are you guys okay?!”
“Charlotte!”
“Jet came and saved us!”
Charlotte was here now. Being an adventurer, she would have no problem dealing with five or even ten of those petty hooligans. She had been called to make a statement about the Ythra Trade Association’s fraud over the orphanage. It seemed Marquis Christon really had launched an investigation.
“I’m so glad you’re all right. Oh, I wish they wouldn’t call me in during the busiest time of the year,” Charlotte said, frowning.
I felt guilty since we were partly to blame for her being called. But now that she was here, the orphanage was in safe hands.
There were some guards accompanying her, too. They should be enough to deter further future shakedowns. We returned to our food cart and waited for the day to reach its uneventful end.
Let’s go back to the Chefs’ Guild.
“Hm.”
With the first day wrapped up, we returned our cart to the guild. Tomorrow, we would start all over again.
Colbert asked the other shops if they had any trouble with thugs today. Dragonhead and Noble Dish joined Black Tail and Bulbola Orphanage on the list of shakedown victims. Black Tail was personally endorsed by Meckam, and the other three shops were in the running to win.
“How’d they end up?”
“Dragonhead’s all right. The owner’s a former A-Rank Adventurer, after all.”
“That strong?”
“A couple of thugs wouldn’t make him break a sweat, even now. He used to procure the dragon meat for his dishes by himself, you know.”
A former A-Rank adventurer, and a dragon killer at that. I Identified the owner of the Dragonhead as he talked to a guild official.
Excuse me, he’s sixty?
The man didn’t look a day over forty. He sure knew how to dress. His fighting stats had decreased over time, but he was still strong. Numbers wise, he was about even with Colbert. He might even be stronger than Black Wing Valuza, the Flash Knight we fought during the Seedrun Conflict. If there was anyone in this guild hall I didn’t want to fight, it’d be this guy. He had the battle experience that came with age and the stats to back it up. In a way, he was even deadlier than someone with stronger stats. We would do well to stay on his good side.
The representative of the Noble Dish, however, was accompanied by a posse, looking smug. The posse of chefs surrounded the man himself—the Count’s youngest son. This was the chef of the family that Rhodus had mentioned. Unlike his brother Phillip, he had no fighting capability. So how did he fend off the thugs that came to shake up his store? I thought about it and came to the conclusion that he probably hired some guards. He was still a son of the Count, after all.
But that didn’t turn out to be the case.
“He got on his knees and begged them to spare his beloved customers. Touched by his act of humility, the robbers let him off for today.”
The moving tale had circulated all around Bulbola. Noble Dish was going to get a lot of customers tomorrow.
In the end, that meant only four shops were attacked today.
As the day drew to an end, we gave Colbert the food we promised for his trouble. It was nothing special, just a basket filled with some meat stew.
“Here’s dinner.”
“You packed it up in a basket, too? Thanks!”
“Try not to fight over it this time.”
“Of course.”
“We’ll all share it together.”
They seemed set on repeating the lunchtime conflict, but maybe that was just their way of enjoying themselves.
“See you tomorrow.”
“Take care of yourself!”
We left Colbert and the others, returned to our leased restaurant, and got right back to work. We sold more than I expected and needed to make a lot more so we didn’t run out tomorrow.
Jet, Fran, you two can help yourselves to dinner.
“Sure.”
“Woof!”
I had curry bread to fry, and lots of it. I checked the temperature of the oil as I thought about the shakedowns.
The thugs were sent by the competition, no doubt about it. But with twenty contestants, not to mention their friends and sponsors, the list of suspects numbered over a hundred. The only ones who were free of suspicion were the four carts that were attacked.
Hang on. Something isn’t right, here.
Colbert said that the attackers left Noble Dish alone after the owner got on his knees. I saw Io apologize to those thugs, and they still threatened to shut her down.
Jet?
“Woof.”
Do you have the scent of the Count’s youngest?
“Arf.”
All right, I want you to keep watch over him, starting tonight.
“Woof!”
Jet was going to be my special helper for this mission. I was stuck frying bread, and Fran was a growing girl who needed her sleep. Plus, she needed to man the food cart tomorrow.
I’m counting on you, Jet.
“Arf!”
The Black Tail was inundated the following day. Rumors of the delicious curry bread spread, and over two hundred people were standing in line for it. Making more than necessary last night was the right call.
Unfortunately, Fran was dressed
in her normal gear rather than her maid outfit. We might still get attacked, so we had decided to prioritize mobility over adorability. Oh, maid outfit, I barely knew ye.
In the end, no thugs came to harass us, and the day went surprisingly well. Not that I wanted something bad to happen.
Noble Dish had hired some adventurers to be their guards today. It was a sudden employment, based on the events of the day before. Rumors were going around about how the owner of the establishment really cared about his customers.
In fact, there was a guy talking about the Noble Dish in our line right now. Very loudly, in fact. I Identified the overeager fan and discovered…
Lie, Acting, and Threaten.
The man was a paid shill of the worst kind. His stats and skills marked him as a thug. I couldn’t imagine him paying someone an honest compliment if he tried. I was getting more suspicious now. I really wished Jet would come back soon so we could set the record straight.
Just then, a quarrel broke out in the line. A man who was trying to cut in got rowdy with the people around him. Colbert and Fran rushed to control the situation.
When they got there, the man was already pinned down, having had the misfortune of trying to cut into a line of adventurers.
He was acting strangely though. Despite being held to the ground, he continued to scream utter gibberish. Was he on some kind of drug?
I Identified him and discovered he was under the Possessed status effect. What kind of status ailment was that? Did it mean that this guy wasn’t necessarily a bad person? My crazy drug hypothesis was gaining ground fast.
As the man flailed about, Fran stuffed a curry bread into his mouth. It should cure him of his status ailment, if that was the root cause. Indeed, his status went back to normal right away, and he seemed to regain his senses.
Colbert asked him why he was going crazy, but the man didn’t seem to know. He didn’t remember anything after drinking at one of the pubs in the slums. Maybe his drug of choice was just plain old alcohol.
“Thank you for your continued cooperation.”
“Sure thing. All yours, buddy.”
“Yes, sir. Come on, let’s get going.”