Chapter 613 - 609 – THE FIRST CUSTOMER AT THE STALL, A FLIRT AIMED AT THE WRONG PERSON, AND THE LONG LINE IN THE CULINARY BLOCK

A few minutes passed after the mana-crystal grill stove was lit and the pieces of mutated fowl were laid on the non-stick iron surface. The savory sizzle, blended with the sharp aroma of spices, spread wide through the air at once. It drifted past the boundary of Block C of Nocture’s Culinary District and caught the attention of passersby.

In front of the little stall that stood neatly thanks to Stacia’s magic orb, a young man in light armor, with a Hunter Guild badge on his chest, was walking more and more slowly. His eyes drifted toward the stall, but the main reason he had stopped was not the smell of the food. It was the figure behind the display counter.

Sylvia was using disguise magic at the moment to change her hair to a soft blue, her eyes to a clear emerald green, and her ears to the long points of an Elf. Even so, the natural beauty radiating from her was still on the edge of the extraordinary. Even with a disguise that showed only about eighty percent of her true charm, the girl still looked far more captivating than any woman in that commercial district.

The young man grinned broadly, stepped out of the flow of pedestrians, and walked up to the stall table with a put-on air of familiarity. He leaned one hand on the glass display and stared into Sylvia’s face with a smile he had made as charming as he could.

"Hey, pretty elf miss," the young man greeted her in a voice he deliberately made smooth. "I walk around this district often, but I’ve never seen a face as beautiful as yours. Are you new to Nocture?"

Sylvia did not lift her head at all. She stayed focused on turning the pieces of meat on the grill with a pair of tongs, ignoring the young man completely as if she were speaking to the passing wind.

Feeling ignored, the young man chuckled softly and took the cold manner as the usual playing hard to get of a beautiful girl. He leaned his face a little closer. "By the way, what kind of chicken are you grilling there? It smells good, but the taste couldn’t possibly match the beauty of its owner. How much for a portion? I’ll buy it, as long as you’ll keep me company for tea at the café across the way afterward."

With a calm motion, Sylvia lifted a perfectly cooked piece of meat and set it on a bamboo plate. She glanced at the young man for a moment with a flat, emotionless gaze.

"Two silver," Sylvia answered shortly, coldly, and flatly.

"Ha-ha! Two silver? That’s cheap for street food," the young man replied, reaching into his waist pouch and tossing two silver pieces onto the table. He deliberately stretched his hand closer, trying to touch the back of Sylvia’s hand, which was holding the tongs. "And a sweet smile from you as a bonus, how about it?"

Before the young man’s fingers could touch her skin, Sylvia drew her hand back gracefully. She did not rise to the bait, did not get angry, and did not waste energy on a physical threat. Instead, her left hand reached into her cloak pocket and took out a small black metal plate inlaid with an emergency communication rune, a device for summoning the nearest military patrol, linked directly to the Nocture garrison’s watch post.

Sylvia set the metal plate right beside the serving plate, then pressed the small button on its surface once.

BEEP.

A short wave of magical signal went out into the air, sending military coordinates directly to the detectors of the law enforcement patrol soldiers on duty in that block.

The young man was stunned for a moment, staring at the metal plate on the table with a furrowed brow. He was no fool. The little badge and the military rune pattern on the device showed that it was a direct line of communication to Nocture’s official guard troops or the Death Legion. The moment he realized that the beautiful girl before him was not some weak girl who could be teased carelessly, his face suddenly went pale. Cold sweat dripped at his temples.

Sylvia’s cold, empty emerald gaze fixed right on his eyes, giving off an invisible pressure that made the young man’s knees shake badly.

"A-Ah... t-two silver, right?" the young man stammered, pulling his hand away from the display in a frantic scramble. His nerve had suddenly shrunk to nothing. He swallowed with difficulty and said in a trembling voice, "G-Give me one portion... the spicy one! Yes, the spiciest!"

Sylvia did not answer. Deftly, she took a piece of hot grilled chicken, coated it evenly with the Deadly Spicy Sauce made from blood-red mutated chilies that she had blended the night before, wrapped it in a magic bamboo-fiber container, and pushed it across to the young man.

Without daring to say anything more, the young man snatched up the food package, left his two silver pieces on the table, and ran off in a panic from Block C as if an Abyssal monster were chasing his back.

Sol, who had been sitting politely on watch at a corner of the table as a golden-furred dog, snorted softly through telepathy. ’People these days really have no standards of decency when it comes to flirting. And my golden fur is far more beautiful than his face.’

"Focus on your guard duty, Sol," Sylvia replied flatly through telepathy, going back to turning the chicken on the grill.

That little incident did not leave Sylvia’s stall short of customers. On the contrary. Pedestrians and other merchants around Block C who had seen the armored young man run off in fear now grew curious. On top of that, the strong wind carried the rich, savory, mouthwatering aroma of the grilled spices through the whole district.

In less than ten minutes, a few people began to approach the stall.

"Hey, is the food here really that good? I just saw one of the Hunter Guild’s boys run off in a panic after smelling it," asked a curious middle-aged dwarf.

"Try one portion," Sylvia replied calmly, offering a package of honey-butter grilled chicken to the next customer.

The dwarf bought a portion, bit into a piece of the chicken right there, and his eyes instantly went wide. The texture of the mutated fowl was very tender inside and crispy outside, blending perfectly with the sweetness of the crystal honey and the savory richness of the magic butter melting on the tongue.

"By the sacred stone of my ancestors...!" the dwarf cried with his mouth full. "What flavor is this?! The meat is so tender, and the seasoning goes all the way to the bone!"

News of the deliciousness of the grilled chicken at stall Number 14 spread at lightning speed, like a wildfire in the dry season. Within half an hour, a long line began to form in front of Sylvia’s stall. Hundreds of citizens of every race-elves, beastkin, refugee humans, and adventurers just back from a hunt, flocked to queue, the line snaking past the border of the next block.

Some people whispered, asking where the elf girl had gotten such high-quality fowl meat. It should be noted that after the apocalypse and the fusion of dimensions, wild fowl in the wilderness had become very rare and hard to catch, because they had mutated into deadly aerial predators.

But what the customers did not know was that the ingredients Sylvia used were not just any chickens hunted in the wild in an ordinary forest. The mutated fowl she used were leftovers from the carcasses of high-level monsters, such as the Level 6 Iron-Winged Thunder Eagle and the Peak Level 7 Alpha that had once attacked her VIP jet in the skies at the border, kept in her System Storage.

That virtual storage space, with its absolute time stasis, kept the meat’s freshness at one hundred percent with no loss of quality for even a second. Clearly, the quality and the fiber density of the meat of those high-level mutated thunder birds far surpassed any commercial meat standard ever sold in Nocture’s public markets.

"Line up in an orderly way, no pushing," Sylvia said in a calm but authoritative tone, her hands moving very fast as she flipped dozens of pieces of chicken on the mana-crystal grill.

Beside her, Sol helped in his own way. He sat upright, wearing an adorable expression to calm the line, which was beginning to grow impatient, while Noir kept watch in the shadows on the ground to make sure no pickpocket dared to make trouble around the Queen of Death’s stall.

As the day went on, the aroma of grilling from stall number 14 kept drawing hundreds of new customers. The first day of the secret grilled-chicken stall turned into a great success that rocked the entire culinary district of the Metropolis of Nocture City.