But Scrae’s emissary friend was having none of it, and she let a bit of her malice seep through. Unfortunately, I was the first victim to feel its effects since I was closest. Even though I hadn’t done anything, I felt my stomach and nads tighten, which felt pretty awful. I wished she could contain these effects in a specific direction.
Scrael pumped the brakes and said to her, “Stop.”
“But...” protested the emissary, yet Scrae shook her head.
“They’re just words. You’ll have to endure it,” I agreed.
“But I can’t stand Scrae getting disrespected like that,” said the emissary.
“I get that, but still,” I said.
I couldn’t blame her for getting upset, but there’d be no end to it if we’d gotten violent over such a minor issue. Not to mention, constantly beating people up for saying rude things would negatively affect one’s rankings too.
“Divers need to know restraint,” said Scrae.
“Fine...” The emissary relented.
I looked at the Divers and said, “They must feel real superior seeing someone with a higher rank eating such plain food.”
To be honest, seeing their smirking faces as they showed off their grilled meat and purposely talked about how delicious their food was did annoy me too. It wasn’t as if their meal was particularly lavish either. I wanted to tell them that they should bring something from the high-end restaurant upstairs if they were gonna brag.
Suddenly, Scrae rose from her seat.
“Actually, I’m gonna punch a hole through them,” she said.
She’d reached her limit. That was way quicker than I’d thought.
“Now, hold on,” I said.
“Don’t stop me, Akira,” said Scrae.
“We don’t want to cause bloodshed over this,” I insisted.
“Long-Ears are a prideful race. There are times when we just can’t back down.”
Over food?
“What happened to having restraint?” I asked.
“I’ve reached my limit.”
“Hold it in. Restrain yourself,” I said calmly.
“Grrr...” Scrae puffed out her cheeks.
She looked adorable, but that was beside the point. Those two idiots were on the verge of eating an Efflux Wave or some crazy martial arts move and ending up as corpses with holes through them.
What do I do? Do I just let this play out?
It wasn’t my problem if those Divers got what was coming to them, but I couldn’t have Scrael causing trouble over something so meaningless. I had to do something.
“Yeah, I’m gonna impale them,” affirmed Scrae.
“One hit, one kill. Destroy their bodies. Extinguish their souls,” said the emissary, also rising from her seat.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa...” I said.
That sounded pretty scary. This was no joke. Bloodlust exuded from the two members of the powerful Do-Meltan warrior race, and the bystanders subtly moved further away to avoid getting dragged into trouble.
As for the two Divers who’d started all of this, they were completely oblivious to what was going on. In the Divers Guild, stupid people were weak without exception. I mean, there was no way any human who mocked and antagonized Long-Ears would be strong.
As Scrae and her friend stepped forward to reduce the two dummies into pools of bloody pulp, I called out, “Come on, you should think this over.”
“No. I can’t hold it in anymore,” said Scrae.
“They need to apologize,” her friend said.
Okay then, how about this?
“Well, that’s too bad. If you refrained from attacking them, I was gonna give you two the ultimate soy sauce dish,” I said out loud.
Scrae’s ears twitched, and the emissary’s hood shifted as she came to a sudden halt.
I continued, “Since you can’t hold back, I guess I’ll have to eat it by myself. I have no other choice, really.”
“Actually, I was just thinking of stopping,” said Scrae.
“Kudo Akira is a god,” said the emissary.
They both spun on their heels and ran to me. They were so easy. What happened to the pride of the Long-Ears? Apparently, it was so fragile that it vanished with a little soy sauce. And was that all it took for the emissary to consider me a god? That could probably be considered heresy.
The two immediately returned to their seats and inhaled their porridge, leaving their bowls empty. They writhed around for a moment from the awful taste, but it was clearly a small price to pay for food with soy sauce in it. Long-Ears had guts, I had to give them that. They chugged some water to cleanse their palates, then stared at me expectantly. It wouldn’t take a psychic to predict what would’ve happened if I’d told them I lied about the ultimate dish. They’d surely go berserk—those Divers who’d mocked them earlier would be ripped to shreds, then I’d be strung up as a punishment.
I pulled out a cassette stove from my Dimension Bag along with a small frying pan. I also took out some soy sauce, butter, and the main ingredient: an extrabig 1,850-gram can of a certain food.
As I laid everything out on the table, Scrae asked, “What’s in the can?”
“Corn,” I replied.
“Never heard of it. Have you?” she asked her friend, but the emissary shook her head.
Come to think of it, I’d never seen corn in this world. Even the steak I’d had a while back had only come with mushrooms and potatoes. Maybe it just wasn’t in Freida but existed somewhere else in Do-Melta.
“Remember corn soup? This is what it’s made of,” I said.
“Oh! I like corn soup. This is gonna be good,” said Scrae, the excitement in her eyes growing stronger. She seemed to have finally remembered the god Knorr.
Seeing her reaction, the emissary’s excitement visibly grew too.
“Cone soup! Cone soup!” chanted Scrae with anticipation, but I noticed her pronunciation was a bit off.
“It’s actually ‘corn soup,’” I corrected her.
“That’s what I said,” she said.
“Hmm... You try saying it, Mei,” I said—Mei was the emissary’s name, by the way.
“Cone soup?” she said with the same pronunciation as Scrae.
“Whaaat?”
Maybe Long-Ears were afflicted with a curse that prevented them from saying certain words correctly. They could speak fine otherwise, so why did they have difficulty with “soy sauce” and “corn soup”?
“So, what are you making?” asked Scrae.
“This is corn with butter and soy sauce,” I replied.
“Butter and soy sauce...” she repeated.
“Cone...” said her friend.
I heated the frying pan and threw the butter on it.
“The butter smells good,” noted Scrae, and Mei nodded repeatedly.
As the butter melted, I tossed the corn in and added even more butter. An appetizing aroma filled the air, but I wasn’t done yet.
“Don’t tell me...you’re adding shoy sauce now?” asked Scrae.
“Yep.”
Scrae had already tasted butter and soy sauce with steak, so she knew what was up.
I poured soy sauce in a circle over the frying pan, enhancing the fragrance even further.
“Wooow!”
“This is bliss...”
Scrae and the emissary were displaying dreamy looks as if they’d been transported into another world. I just hoped that world wasn’t Valhalla.
The two girls’ eyes were glued to the sizzling frying pan, and drool came out of the corners of their mouths. Their eyes and heads followed as I moved the cassette stove left and right. They were acting pretty cute and funny.
I quickly tossed the contents in the frying pan, filling our entire corner of the hall with the smell of heated soy sauce, butter, and charred corn. Soon enough, people around us were starting to stare at us as they smelled the aroma.
“Whoa, what is that? I don’t remember that being sold here.”