My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!

The Captain's smile turned predatory as the Lieutenant's question hung in the air. "Everything I've told you has been calculated for the greater good," he said, his ordinary face taking on an almost religious fervor. "Every lie, every manipulation, every sacrifice—all necessary steps toward evolution. You think small, Lieutenant. You think in terms of individual lives when I think in terms of species advancement."

Elena pressed her hands to her temples, her face crumpling. "My memories of the Guild... making bread with Sera in the morning shift... laughing with Marcus about his burnt soufflés..." Her voice broke. "Are any of them real?"

"Real enough," the Captain said dismissively. "Memory imprints work best when they have emotional resonance. Of course they feel authentic—that was the point."

"They are authentic!" Elena's voice cracked with desperate conviction. "I remember the smell of yeast and flour. I remember being tired after eighteen-hour shifts. I remember missing my sister's birthday because we had a catering order—" She looked at Marron with pleading eyes. "Those feelings, that pain... mimics don't invent pain, do they?"

Marron stared at Elena, her heart breaking. She looked at the Lieutenant, whose pale face had gone even whiter as the scope of the Captain's deception became clear. She looked at the dungeon core, still burning patiently in its furnace, waiting to be fed.

Elena caught her gaze and mouthed silently: "It's okay."

But it wasn't okay. Nothing about this was okay.

They were deep in this dungeon—deeper than Marron had ever imagined possible. Even if they could stop the Captain's failsafe, even if they could calm the core, how would they ever make it back to the surface? The corridors were a maze, the patrols were everywhere, and now the very structure might be compromised.

Marron's hand drifted toward her knives. Maybe if she was fast enough, if she aimed for the Captain's eye before he could activate whatever device he was holding—

The air above them split open like fabric tearing.

A portal bloomed in the marble chamber, crackling with silver-blue energy, and three figures dropped through it in rapid succession.

Mokko landed first, his massive frame hitting the marble with a sound like a boulder striking stone. His usually cheerful face was grim with purpose, and the wooden spoon in his hand crackled with battle-magic.

Lucy touched down beside him with feline grace, her twin daggers already drawn, her sharp eyes taking in the scene with predatory calculation.

And finally, Guildmaster Halloway descended like a storm given form, his ceremonial robes billowing around him as raw magical energy danced across his fingertips. His weathered face was carved with fury.

"Marron Louvel," he said, his voice carrying the authority of decades. "We've been looking for you."

The Captain took a step backward, his device still clutched in his hand. "Impossible. The dungeon's defenses should have—"

"Should have what?" Halloway's eyes blazed. "Kept us from tracking our own people? Did you really think we wouldn't notice when our chefs started disappearing? When their carts went silent?"

Mokko hefted his spoon like a war hammer. "The cart called to us," he rumbled. "Comfort and Crunch was screaming for help through every magical channel the Guild monitors."

Lucy's gaze flicked between Elena and Marron. "Two chefs. One cart. Someone wants to explain why Elena Vasquez is supposed to be manning the northern supply route right now?"

The Lieutenant stepped forward, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender or explanation. "I can—"

"You can shut up," Lucy snapped, then looked at Marron. "What's the situation?"

Marron felt the bone shard pulse warm against her hip—not frantically now, but steadily, like a heartbeat returning to normal rhythm. She looked at Elena, who was staring at the newcomers with a mixture of hope and confusion, still questioning her own reality.

She looked at the Lieutenant, who had chosen to protect them despite everything.

She looked at the Captain, whose grand scheme was crumbling around him.

And finally, she looked at her fellow Guild members—her friends, her family, who had somehow found her in the deepest dark.

"It's complicated," she said.

Halloway's stern expression softened just slightly. "It always is. But you're alive, and that's what matters." His eyes hardened again as they fixed on the Captain. "Now, who exactly are you, and why are you threatening my chefs?"

The Captain's face cycled through rage, desperation, and finally something approaching madness. His ordinary features twisted as he raised the failsafe device above his head like a weapon.

"If I can't have proper evolution," he snarled, "then we all die together!"

He hurled the device toward the dungeon core with all his strength.

Everyone held their breath as the mechanical contraption arced through the air and disappeared into the white flames.

There was a moment of perfect silence.

Then: crunch.

The furnace flickered slightly brighter, like someone had just tossed it a particularly satisfying snack. A small, contented rumble echoed from its depths—not the violent explosion the Captain had expected, but something that sounded almost like a satisfied burp.

The white fire continued to burn, steady and unmoved, as if nothing had happened at all.

Dead silence filled the marble chamber. Even the Captain stared at the core in complete bewilderment.

"Well," Halloway said dryly, breaking the silence. "That was dramatic. Did you just... feed your own weapon to the thing you were trying to destroy?"

The dungeon core pulsed warmly, as if to say thanks for the appetizer, now where's the main course?

The Captain's mouth opened and closed wordlessly. His grand gesture, his final card, his dramatic sacrifice—all of it digested like any other piece of magical scrap metal.

The Lieutenant stepped forward, cracking his knuckles with deliberate slowness. The sound echoed off the marble walls like small bones breaking.

"Well," he said, his pale eyes fixed on the Captain with cold calculation, "I think the dungeon can still have its fresh meat, according to the Captain's recipe."

The Captain's face went white as he finally understood that he had no cards left to play.

Marron watched the scene unfold and felt... nothing. No surge of protectiveness for the Captain, no moral qualms about letting justice—or revenge—take its course. The System had taught her many lessons during her time in this dungeon, and one of them echoed now: sometimes it didn't matter how the sausage got made.

The Captain had been willing to butcher Elena for his twisted vision. Had manipulated everyone around him with lies. Had turned cooking—her art, her passion, her way of bringing comfort to the world—into an instrument of cruelty.

Let him face his own philosophy.

She crossed her arms and stepped back, giving the Lieutenant room to work.

"All right," she said quietly, her voice carrying no emotion at all. "Then I'll feed the dungeon." She paused, meeting the Lieutenant's pale eyes. "But you know this will seal it, right?"

The Lieutenant's hands stilled for just a moment. "Seal it?"

"A dungeon that's been properly fed goes dormant. That's how they're supposed to work—they eat, they sleep, they stop being a threat." Marron glanced toward the furnace, still burning with patient hunger. "Feed it what it actually wants, and it won't need to send out patrols. Won't need to lure people in. It'll just... rest."

She looked around the marble chamber at her fellow Guild members, at Elena still trembling with questions about her own existence, at the Lieutenant who had chosen the right side when it mattered.

"No more victims. No more schemes. Just a sleeping dungeon and whatever's left of us walking out of here."