Chapter 17

Chapter 17. The Greatest Chinese Cuisine Martial Arts Tournament (1)

Early in the evening, Restaurant Shelley was unusually noisy because of unexpected visitors.

“I’m asking why a restaurant is serving Chinese food!”

“That’s right! Even if this is a back alley, this is going too far!”

Two middle-aged men were busy confronting Yukgap inside the restaurant.

“All right, all right! Calm down! You’re going to scare away all the customers!”

Yukgap was already exhausted from dealing with them.

Victoria came over after hearing the commotion.

“What’s going on, Yukgap?”

“They’re the owners of Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant and Seonpunggak across the street. Apparently, they came here to complain about us serving Chinese food.”

They seemed to be the owners of two nearby Chinese restaurants.

The moment they saw Victoria, the owner, they immediately confronted her.

“We heard everything. You served mapo tofu here?”

“And in a restaurant, of all places!”

Yukgap awkwardly answered.

“Our policy is to cook whatever the customer orders, as long as we can.”

Restaurant Shelley’s basic rule was to sincerely prepare whatever dish the customer requested.

Not long ago, a customer had ordered Chinese-style mapo tofu.

Yukgap had cooked it.

Apparently, that had offended the nearby restaurant owners.

“But there are still rules between businesses! Serving Chinese food like mapo tofu in a Western restaurant is going too far!”

“That’s right! If you’re a restaurant, serve Western food!”

The two owners spoke as though they had rehearsed together.

Victoria looked confused.

“What do we do, Yukgap?”

“Good question.”

Yukgap had no obvious answer either.

Then Robert stepped forward.

[Leave it to me, lumps of flesh.]

A blade quietly slid out from his hand.

He spoke in a low voice.

[I will dispose of them, turn them into dumplings, and sell them. Nobody will ever know.]

“What kind of outdated horror movie nonsense is that? What are we supposed to do if that causes an even bigger problem later?”

Yukgap stopped Robert’s plan and tried to calm the angry restaurant owners.

“Anyway, we didn’t do anything wrong. We simply cooked what a customer ordered.”

But his words only made things worse.

“What? So you’re saying you did nothing wrong?”

“You people have no shame!”

The two became even angrier.

Robert interrupted.

[The logic of lumps of flesh is incomprehensible. A restaurant may sell whatever food it wishes. Why are you complaining?]

“Of course we’re complaining!”

“Ever since this restaurant opened, our customers have disappeared!”

Victoria quietly asked Yukgap,

“Really?”

“I didn’t know anything about that.”

Yukgap had no idea their business had been hurting other restaurants.

He was already busy enough running his own kitchen.

When would he have time to investigate other stores?

[According to my superior calculations, the reason is that your food tastes bad. Therefore, selling bad food is your own fault.]

Robert answered decisively.

The two owners looked ready to explode.

“What did you say?!”

“This is going too far!”

Finally, Victoria stepped in.

“All right. Calm down.”

Then she calmly considered Robert’s argument.

“Anyway, Robert does have a point. We simply served what our customer ordered. It’s not like there’s a law saying only Chinese restaurants can cook Chinese food.”

The two owners stared at her in disbelief.

“Oh, then I guess we can open a Western restaurant too?”

“Well said. If we start serving Western food too, all three of us can starve together. How about that?”

Victoria did not even blink at the threat.

“I’m not scared. If one plate of mapo tofu is enough to make you panic like this, I’m guessing the rest of your food isn’t very good either.”

The two owners were too stunned to speak.

“W-What?”

“Did you seriously just say that?!”

Feeling the anger rising from them, Yukgap quietly warned Victoria.

“Victoria, even if it’s true, saying it that directly is rude. Imagine how hurt they must be.”

“Really?”

Victoria did not seem concerned at all.

Realizing that continuing this conversation would only make things worse, the two owners gave a final warning.

“From today onward, don’t serve Chinese food in this restaurant! Understand?”

“If you do, it means war!”

At the word ‘war,’ red lights appeared in Robert’s eyes.

Several gun barrels emerged from his body.

[War detected. Switching to battle mode. Exterminate the enemy.]

“Whoa, whoa. Not that kind of war. Calm down.”

Yukgap hurriedly stopped him.

Otherwise, Robert probably would have opened fire without hesitation.

“What strange people. Why does it matter what another restaurant serves?”

Victoria still did not understand them.

Yukgap answered lazily.

“Maybe there are complicated circumstances we don’t know about.”

“So are you going to stop cooking Chinese food?”

Yukgap shrugged.

“Why would I? I never said I would.”

He grinned.

Victoria immediately understood the meaning behind his smile and giggled.

“As expected of Yukgap.”

“If they want war, let them try. Who do they think they’re threatening with that word?”

He gripped the monomolecular cutter he always carried.

Yukgap had survived countless battlefields.

There was no chance he would be frightened by threats from two back-alley restaurant owners.

“Ugh! What is that smell?”

The next day, Yukgap covered his nose because of the terrible odor outside the restaurant.

Victoria urgently called him over.

“Yukgap, look! Someone dumped food waste in front of the restaurant!”

Just as she said, all kinds of food scraps had been scattered in front of Restaurant Shelley.

The smell was overwhelming.

“There aren’t many people who’d do something like this to our restaurant.”

Yukgap headed straight toward Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant at the other end of the alley.

“Hey! Owner!”

The restaurant owner greeted him with an innocent expression.

“What is it?”

“Isn’t this going too far? You run a food business, and you dumped food waste in front of our place!”

Yukgap immediately confronted him.

The owner remained perfectly calm.

“Oh, that? The wind suddenly knocked over some food waste and blew it over there. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t lie! There’s no way the wind carried that much food waste! If it was your fault, then clean it up!”

Yukgap could not believe the man’s shameless attitude.

But the owner continued pretending not to know anything.

“I’m busy running my restaurant. That’ll be difficult.”

“So that’s how you want to play this? Don’t complain if alchemy waste suddenly appears in front of your restaurant one day.”

Yukgap practically declared war.

The owner immediately shouted back.

“I already told you it was an accident! Young people these days have no flexibility!”

“That isn’t flexibility! You’re openly picking a fight! Did you throw basic business ethics in the trash?”

Their voices gradually grew louder.

Then Victoria, who had followed Yukgap, calmly spoke.

“Yukgap, stop. The owner isn’t necessarily wrong. Food waste could be knocked over by the wind.”

Victoria seemed strangely willing to accept the excuse.

The restaurant owner looked at her cautiously.

“You’re not actually planning to dump alchemy waste here, are you? That would be the same as killing everyone in the area.”

“Of course not! That would contaminate the whole neighborhood with heavy metals. As a restaurant owner, I could never allow that.”

Victoria smiled pleasantly.

“However, I think I should deploy some ‘special personnel’ to prevent such accidents from happening again. You can understand that much, right?”

“So what exactly are you planning?”

Yukgap looked at Victoria with suspicion.

After the confrontation with the restaurant owner ended, Victoria returned to the alchemy workshop.

She skillfully adjusted several alchemical devices.

“Trust me. When have I ever disappointed you?”

“You’ve never disappointed me. You’ve only terrified and horrified me.”

Yukgap answered flatly.

It was true.

Victoria’s alchemy had never merely disappointed him.

It always went far beyond disappointment into pure horror.

“Anyway, trust me this time too!”

Victoria sounded confident.

Yukgap continued watching her suspiciously.

“What are you making?”

“This is exactly why alchemy exists.”

“That sounds ominous.”

Ignoring his concern, Victoria operated the device.

Then she pulled down a large lever.

Blue lightning crashed across the area.

With the flashes of electricity behind her, Victoria’s sinister laughter echoed through the room.

“Now awaken! Destroy our enemies! Muahahahahaha!”

[Screeeeeech! Gweeeeegh!]

A horribly twisted cry filled the alley.

A grotesque monster about the size of a small car crawled around in regular patterns.

It looked like a giant mass of meat.

Numerous insect legs and antennae hung from its body.

Eyes of different sizes covered it like tumors, making it unbearably grotesque.

“W-What the hell is that?!”

The owner of Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant screamed when he saw the monster.

The owner of Seonpunggak hurried over from across the street.

“This is terrible! Those monsters suddenly appeared and chased away all our customers!”

“Of course they did! Look at that disgusting thing walking around the alley!”

Just looking at the creature was enough to make anyone feel sick.

There was no chance customers would approach while something like that wandered nearby.

The two owners put their heads together.

“That looks like some crude chimera. Who would make something like that?”

“In this neighborhood, there’s only one person capable of doing something this insane.”

The owner of Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant glared toward Restaurant Shelley.

There was no doubt.

There was only one person who would do this.

“Hey! Owner! Come out here!”

Their suspicion quickly became certainty.

The two immediately ran to Restaurant Shelley and pounded on the door.

Victoria appeared wearing pajamas and yawning widely.

“Yaaawn... what is it? We stay open until dawn, so we sleep during the day.”

The two owners angrily pointed toward the grotesque monster wandering around outside.

“You released something like that into the alley and you can still sleep peacefully?”

“This is going too far! How can you release that horrifying thing near other people’s restaurants?!”

Victoria answered in an intentionally sad tone.

“Aww. Calling my carefully made Pretty Cutie Angel horrifying makes me a little sad.”