Chapter 41: Breakfast with the Lackies

  I couldn’t tell if Leslie was upset or not that I was joining them for breakfast. She walked quietly at my side as we headed to a large table filled with Leila’s Lackeys.

  “Um, do you still have the slime ooze?” I asked. “Miss Aires wants to try using it for sauce.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, fishing through her pack for a small jar of the gooey blue stuff. “I keep forgetting to give it to you.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, stuffing it in my bag.

  The silence resumed even after we were seated at the table. I was relieved that Miss Kirk allowed us to sit together.

  “Oliver here is our guest,” Leila told the girls, taking a seat at the head of the table. “Treat him with all due respect. And Oliver, feel free to order whatever you like. It’s on me.”

  A waitress walked up and spoke directly to Leila. “Good morning, Madam Kirk. We have a unique dish prepared for breakfast today. It’s a special omelet that I think you’ll enjoy very much.”

  “Excellent,” Leila said, getting nods from multiple girls around the table. “We’ll have that.”

  “Actually, I’ll have the steak and eggs,” I announced, having had my eye on one since first coming to Miss Aires’s diner.

  Leslie elbowed me in the ribs while several of the girls glared.

  “Ollie!” she whispered, adopting the same nickname Grace did for me. “That’s very rude. Take the omelet like the rest of us.”

  “That’s quite alright,” Leila said, holding up a hand to quiet everyone. “I told him he can have whatever he wants. He’s our guest. Please be polite to him.”

  That shut everyone up, though they all stared at me as though that would make me back down.

  The waitress, however, was all business. “How would you like your egg, sir?”

  I grinned. “Anything but an omelet. Surprise me.”

  “Do you know something about the omelet that we don’t?” Leila asked when the waitress left.

  Leslie stifled a giggle. “He made it.”

  Leila didn’t take her eyes off me. “Is that true? Did you make a dish that Mishun saw fit to make a special out of?”

  Her gaze was so intense I couldn’t meet her eyes. “N…not exactly,” I stammered. “I just modified the eggs.”

  “Fascinating,” Leila said, placing her elbows on the table, a culinary sin in Miss Havasu’s books. “Would you like to tell me more?”

  I shook my head, growing a spine, even in front of all the girls. “No, but you promised to tell me about Miss Drips and Mr. Yu.”

  “Fair enough,” she chuckled. “Let’s see, how long have I known them? Must have been at least seventy years. Things were very different back then.”

  “Wasn’t that during the Civil War?” I asked, unable to wrap my head around how old she was.

  “Indeed, it was,” she smiled, surprising me. Most old people got offended when I referred to their age. “The world was a very different place back then. The American adventurer’s guild didn’t exist yet, and we all had to work together to accomplish anything. The awakened got a late start in America. It was the peasan…” She paused and looked at me. “…It was the unawakened that made the perilous journey across the Atlantic and found this land. Our ancestors only arrived after the revolution.”

  “Do awakened fight in wars?” I asked, wondering how we had never heard about it.

  Leila laughed. “We do fight, but in our own wars. The wars you’ve heard about, we largely stay out of.”

  The thought of powerful wizards standing by while half their countrymen died made me sick to my stomach.

  One of the girls was curious, however. “Have you ever fought in a war, Miss Leila?”

  Leila folded her arms. “I’m not going to talk about that, nor magic wars in general. All I can say is, pray you don’t live to see one. Wars of all kinds are bad.”

  While I agreed, it felt counterproductive that the magic community had the power to prevent wars but opted to abstain. I didn’t say anything. Fortunately, the waitress chose that moment to return with breakfast.

  Everyone oohed and aahed when the plates of glowing golden eggs came out. Leslie glanced at me and whispered. “Your dish didn’t look like that.”

  “That isn’t my dish,” I whispered back. “I modified mine.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course, you did.”

  I looked at the plate in front of me while everyone else tried their dishes. The steak looked amazing, just like it did in an ad I once saw. My mouth watered as the aroma of well-seasoned steak dazzled my senses. I was about to try a bite when the table erupted in excitement.

  “This is amazing,” one of the girls said through a mouthful of food.

  Several others grunted their agreement. Leslie, on the other hand, set her fork down and whispered in my ear. “This doesn’t taste as good as the one we tried in the kitchen.’

  I grinned. “I know. I infused that one after it was done.”

  “Infused?” she asked.

  “Watch,” I replied.

  I made sure to taste the steak, chewing for several long moments to savor it. Then I got to work infusing it. Like the completed omelet dish, it was significantly easier to infuse the finished product than something as fragile as an egg. I made sure to stop well short of the exploding point, as I didn’t have backup steaks in case of failure.

  As with the omelet, it didn’t shine or stick out in any way. The only way to tell what I’d done was to inspect it.

  Grilled Sirloin - Evans Style

  Magic Food

  Grade: C

  Condition: 120

  Effect: +20 Strength (4 hours)

  Owner: Evans

  There were some pros and cons to the steak over my namesake omelet. It was a lower grade and had fewer stats overall, but I was positive that twenty strength would appeal to somebody, probably Leila, from the looks of her. I took a bite, and an explosion of flavor flooded my mouth. While it hadn’t been tough exactly before, l didn’t need to chew the infused steak at all. To top it off, the seasoning popped in a whole new way, as though I’d somehow discovered magic ingredients and added them to Mishun’s blend. Leslie looked at me intently, and I slid the plate across to her so she could try a bite.

  No sooner had the food entered her mouth than she swooned again, speaking far too loudly with a mouth full of food. “Oliver, this is amazing. No wonder you wanted the steak.”

  Conversation died again as everyone turned to look at us. Leslie was more interested in my steak than she was in the omelet she ordered, so I duplicated the dish and offered her the copy. That got Leila’s attention.

  “What did you just do?” she asked. “Was that sleight of hand, or did you make another steak out of thin air. Is it edible?”

  “It’s edible,” I said. “Go on, Leslie, try it.”

  Trusting me implicitly, Leslie sawed off a slice of steak and plopped it in her mouth. She gave confirmation right after she swallowed. “It’s just as good as the original.”

  “The omelet you’re eating is also a duplicate,” I pointed out.

  Leila looked down at her plate. “When I met you in the dungeon, I didn’t take you for a cook.”

  “I also cook,” I shot back.

  She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “I’d love to see what else you can do. Perhaps, you’d consider accompanying Leslie when we go adventuring one day?”

  “But he’s a boy?” one of the girls gasped.

  Leila laughed. “Just because women typically join my party doesn’t mean I don’t accept men. That Bob guy just gets to them first is all.”

  “I heard he lures them in with booze and cigars,” one of the girls said conspiratorially.

  The table erupted into a fit of giggles. I was about to take another bite when Leila stopped me. “Would you mind making me a copy of that dish? I’d like to try it.”

  “Okay, I guess,” I replied, wondering if she was still hungry. “I already had some, though.”

  “That’s quite alright,” she replied. “I’m intrigued by these skills of yours.”

  “It’s nothing fancy,” I said, getting a feeling she wanted to use me, too. “I’m just a Craftsman.”

  She held up her half-eaten plate of omelet. “These girls may not recognize it, but this food gives a buff. That’s not exactly a common thing. Normally, you have to use exotic ingredients, but Mishun specializes in inexpensive cuisine, so I don’t think that’s the case. It appears you did something to the food to make it magical.”

  I wanted to hide from all the attention I was getting.

  “Just tell them,” Leslie urged. “Leila is a good person.”

  I sighed, resigned to yet another person knowing some of my secrets. “Mr. Yu taught me how to infuse items with mana. I decided to try it on food and it worked.”

  “Interesting,” Leila replied. “Have you told Chen you did that?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Do you think he’ll mind?”

  Leila chuckled. “No, not at all. I think he will find it amusing. The idea of tinkering with food probably never crossed his mind. You’re probably more of a tinkerer than he is.”

  “I’m definitely not going to tell him that,” I laughed. “The last time I upset him, he made me charge a lightbulb for hours.”

  “The old methods really are the best,” Leila said. “I’m training your girlfriend the same way.”

  “She is not my girlfriend!” I shouted at the same time Leslie objected.

  Everyone laughed.

  After that, Leila told us stories about Mr. Yu and what it was like during the Civil War. “Like I said before, magic folk don’t fight in non-magic wars, and they don’t fight in ours. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some overlap. Awakened on both sides did what they could to help the wounded. Alchemists offered healing potions, but more often than not, they were called conmen selling miracle water. We even defended innocent women and children when rogue soldiers tried to harm them.”

  “Did they give them weapons?” I asked, wondering why I’d never heard of magic canons.

  “Absolutely not,” Leila replied. “That is against our laws. It’s one thing to protect the unawakened, and quite another to arm them.”

  That ruled out giving Sam a magic slingshot to deal with Gordon.

  Leila went on. “Back then, we were still new to this country, and far less organized than we are now. That’s where I met Chen, and Beverly, your Grandmother, for that matter, Leslie. Back then, crafters worked hand in hand with adventurers. We procured monster parts, and they made us weapons and armor. Now, with the guild, everything is handled through auctions. Even services like having a sword made go to the lowest bidder. It’s getting harder and harder to put a face to an item. We get items from the guild with naught but a last name etched into the blade.”

  “Well, I’m going to make all of Leslie’s gear,” I announced, giving her a look of conviction for good measure. “And it’s going to be better than anything you can get from a guild auction.”

  How I knew that, I wasn’t sure, but I was determined to fight and make Leslie one thousand times better, so any black marks on her record would just be an afterthought. Leslie blushed and busied herself with her steak, looking down at her plate and refusing to make eye contact.

  Leila, however, only had eyes for me, staring me down with a sinister smile on her face. “You know, Oliver, I’m quite looking forward to seeing your creations. Just a word of advice, but you might want to try your infusion skill on her armor. I’ve never heard of it being done before, but you did do it with food. Perhaps it will have a surprising effect.”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to do at all. I wanted to make new things, not enhance other people’s creations. It would certainly feel better if I was infusing something I made. Not Miss Aires’ omelets or anonymously made armor. Still, Miss Kirk had a point. I was honor-bound to do anything I could to make Leslie’s life easier.

  “I’ll do it,” I sighed, resigned to another round of infusion.

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