The restaurant was impressively large. The ground was so clean that it reflected me, and there were plenty of tables for a truly incredible number of patrons to eat at the same time… I certainly hadn’t expected such a massive place from just listening to the raccoon-man. This man was overly humble, speaking like he owned a small restaurant he ran by himself with his wife instead of… This.

  This was just the main dining area as well. The place was so damned big, there was a map of the layout put up on the wall, indicating that right down a wide hall on the far right of the room, there were several rooms for children to play, or listen to an entertainment automaton specifically designed to tell them a story or prompt them to play games.

  Clearly, considering that a place this big couldn’t have just popped out of nowhere–This restaurant was massively successful. If it doesn’t open when it is supposed to… People would instantly notice for certain. There were probably many parents who took this damned place as a daycare!

  …I’ll see what I can do once the cleaners are out of the picture.

  Just as I was walking through the main area, the curtains pulled themselves open on their own, revealing two entertainment automatons of styles which I would describe as… I didn’t really know how to describe them. It was a cat and a duck, but their appearance was unlike any catfolk or duckfolk I had ever seen. Their features did their best to simultaneously look as close to the animal they represented, while also trying to squeeze more human-like emotions, resulting in something rather uncanny.

  Knowing these damned spawnlings, this was probably exactly what they liked to see for some reasons no one sane could wrap their mind around… Not to mention, what sort of duo could a cat and duck make? There is no inherent dynamic between these two animals!

  …Anyway, why is this freaking curtain opening on its own?

  It would seem that there is a mechanism which detects movements and silhouettes. I suppose it makes it simpler as the curtains open and close by themselves based on whether customers are around or not

  This sounds needlessly automated. We are talking about a damned curtain. Anyone can open and close them! Did Leton’s mechanical prowess lead to people just coming up with anything and nothing in the domain?

  I guess everyone wants a piece of the pie… Though last I checked, my brother was still the top-dog in creating machines and the likes by a long shot. No one could replicate his creations, even when literally copying everything. They apparently couldn’t get anything nearly as refined as him.

  The proof was plastered on a wall right in this restaurant, as a matter of fact.

  ‘This establishment’s entertainment automatons were made by Leton Nebulo’

  His name alone was proof of quality–In fact, it had taken me a while to realise, but he actually owned a freakish amount of those restaurants and diners featuring robotic characters. If he had developed his skills to this extent thanks to the steel I stole from Harvey’s Diner, then he quite literally stole from a business to remake it better.

  …So these things were made by Leton? People probably believed that the automatons were just made by some employees of Leton, but I know the guy very well. If he says that he is going to make something himself, then you can be certain that he is one hundred per cent serious.

  Those two ugly things had been fully assembled by his own two hands, perhaps not the outer costumes. Even he had better aesthetic tastes than this.

  The cat seemed to power up, looking around with mechanical, yet impressively fluid motions. Its eyes soon locked onto me as its body fully turned.

  “The restaurant is in closing hours. You are not a registered employee. Leave, or authorities will be contacted”

  The duck powered up next, looking at me, and then at the cat several times.

  “Wah! Intruder-der-der-der…”

  The duck seemed to lose power staring at me, before springing to life so suddenly that I almost thought it was going to fall backwards.

  Both of the automatons stepped off the stage–Handling the small jump with surprising agility… Those things had certainly come a long way since Harvey’s Diner. This bastard Leton was definitely swimming in more money than one could ever need.

  I swear… Who was it that supported this limper all of his life? I don’t need money, but I'd better see some of it eventually. I’ll teach him respect and gratitude when I finally get my hands on him…

  The two ugly automatons were behaving weirdly now, however. They had dropped their props, which I hadn’t even bothered to register as existing until now, and were now moving like they wanted to fight me.

  Fight me… I am the heavier lump of steel here. What do they hope to do? Or do they machine brains not realise that I am not exactly the usual kind of intruder?

  “Protocol 32 Engaged”

  They both spoke in unison, their voices no longer that of the jolly characters, but cold and robotic. They leapt at me like they were no longer heavy machines.

  Protocol 32? Such nonsense has Leton’s name written all over it!

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  I grabbed the two mascots by the head before they could slam into me. Crushing them into the ground before biting down, feasting on their steel before they could make another sound.

  Did Leton put something in the machines he created to recognise me? I doubt he would purposefully design his own machines to use deadly force. Certainly not entertainment automatons, at least…

  Regardless, the sound of me crushing metal skulls–And shattering the ground in the process–Had attracted the attention of the cleaners, so I quickly tried to find a place to hide. I climbed onto the stage, and as I had hoped, there was a hidden pathway leading to a room filled with spare parts for the automatons.

  There weren’t many spares, actually. From what I understood, this place only had three automatons. The two I had just eaten, and a third one positioned in the children’s area of the restaurant, and the spare parts were only rather small components and some wires. There were no extra steel arms or the like.

  However… There was something interesting. Lying in a corner was a large, fabric costume meant to go over the skeletal body of an automaton. A nondescript, rotund, and white costume with a smiling face for a head.

  Inside the costume was actually an automaton larger than the two I had just devoured, but it seemed out of service, or it had been deactivated. My bet would be that this was the original entertainer of the restaurant, but that it had been replaced once the owners earned enough money and decided to replace him with automatons made by the man himself.

  I gobbled down the steel and slid into the costume. The jaw area, hands, and feet were a bit tight as mine were drastically oversized, but the fabric was stretchy enough not to give it away that what was inside the costume was no longer what it should be.

  Eventually, one of the cleaners appeared in the room, carefully looking around with a worried look on his face.

  “...Where did they go? They shouldn’t be allowed to roam right now…”

  The cleaner was muttering things in his moustache, unsuspecting as he got closer to me.

  I purposefully ran my finger against the fabric, making him jump in fright as he heard the sound. The fool hit himself on a table corner in his fright, but all of his attention was on me still.

  “H-Hello? If… If you got locked inside the restaurant, I’ll just let you out, you know? Ahah…”

  This man’s nervousness and anxiety were most succulent. I enjoy his fear.

  However, he was definitely going to make a run for it eventually, so…

  Behind him, Elowen phased out of the wall, grabbed a tool meant to tighten a bolt, and hit the man right over the back of the head, knocking him out cold on the spot. The redhead inspected the tool to make sure no blood had gotten on it before putting it back down and phasing back into the wall.

  I reached over, pulled the head portion of the costume up, and devoured the man’s body whole without even biting once. Just eating the still-living, breathing beastfolk like a snake. Normally, I wasn’t allowed to eat something alive like this, but it seemed that him being unconscious and shoved head-first down my maw was enough to consider him as already dead, even if he really wasn’t.

  Mmh… Beastfolks have that wild, feral edge of their flesh that I quite like. A nice mix between human and animal meat–Of course, the exact ratio depended on where on the beastfolk spectrum the individual was, but in general, it was something that I found quite nice.

  Once I was done, I pushed the headpiece back on and proceeded to play out the act of being a deactivated automaton still in its suit for a long while. I had a funny idea I wanted to try, and since my robotic pursuer should be far away. I decided that I could try and play a little bit…

  Not to mention that this city was far more difficult to enter than the previous one. Maybe I could even get SHLAD to be attacked by the locals by just staying here indefinitely… He would probably just wait outside for me, though. So I wasn’t going to extend my stay for too long.

  As I was waiting for people to realise that the owner and a cleaner had gone missing, I continued to look around the room, and… I could have sworn the image posted on the walls was different a second ago.

  Right now, it depicted a clown dressed in a green suit decorated with stars. I had seen a different clown just a moment prior… My sight was akin to that of an undead. I shouldn’t have just been able to mix up something so simple like this.

  Nara, check my memories, did I hallucinate something else?

  I see nothing but the current image in your memories…

  …How strange.

  Nothing else of note happened until guards searched the building. It does seem like the wife had noticed her husband’s absence very quickly. Naturally, apart from the unsorted barrels of salt, there was no evidence to be found.

  I had made my victims vanish. Though I supposed that I should be wary of the beastfolks, there were many of them with sharp noses, and I couldn’t erase the scent of my victims, so from the perspective of those bloodhounds, the two men had been somewhere at one point, and then just vanished.

  Still, no one bothered to check whether or not the costume I was in really contained what it was supposed to.

  The guards eventually left the area.

  Night fell, and as I was wondering how to proceed from there, I heard the sound of a door opening and closing in the distance. The noises echoed far into the empty restaurant.

  It would seem that, regardless of circumstances, someone had to work.

  It made sense. Night was the prime moment for someone to break in and attempt to steal an automaton, or at least parts out of them. Being made by my brother, their value was high in general, and basically treasures to other machine makers.

  Thus, the restaurant had someone watching over the place, just in case.

  A man paid a quick visit to every room, including the backstage area. Shining light from a lantern, probably to make sure no one was inside the place.

  “Gods… That thing is still as creepy as usual”

  We just met, and he is already insulting me. This isn’t going to be pretty.

  The man headed elsewhere in the building, and I could no longer hear the sound of his steps against the ground. So I presumed he settled down. As much as he claimed the costume to be creepy, he didn’t actually feel fear toward it.

  I couldn’t yet track him via this method.

  He is going to be scared soon.

  Be careful, Mara. The restaurant is equipped with ‘eyes’, as we encountered in a nightmare previously

  Oh, those things you called cameras? Good call. This is going to make this all even funnier.