My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!

The Jilted Lover's scream rattled the bunker walls, sending dust and grit cascading from the ceiling. The mimic guards pressed themselves against the stone, faces twisted with borrowed fear. Marron clutched the bone shard so tightly it burned into her palm, refusing to flinch.

"Enough," the Lieutenant commanded. His voice cut through the banshee's wail, sharp and precise as a blade. "Speak."

The Jilted Lover's form flickered, half-bride, half-corpse. Her veil fluttered like torn paper in a storm. She leveled her hollow gaze at the Lieutenant.

"That should have been mine," she hissed, pointing a skeletal finger at the empty plate on his desk. "The dish, the praise, your attention. I was with you long before this… plain little cook."

The mimics lining the room shifted uneasily. Marron's jaw clenched, but she stayed silent. This wasn't her fight—not yet.

The Lieutenant leaned forward, resting both elbows on the stone table. His scar pulled tight, eyes cold and piercing. "I know you."

The Jilted Lover's face brightened with desperate hope. "Then you remember—"

"I remember," he cut her off. "Your food. Half-cooked. Thin. Tasteless. Meals so poor they weakened my men instead of strengthening them." His voice sharpened, every syllable like iron striking stone. "If you'd spent half as much time cooking as you did staring at me, perhaps you would have been of use."

The banshee staggered back, flickering violently. "No… no. I loved you. I only wanted you. That should have been enough!"

Marron felt a pang—not sympathy, exactly, but recognition. The banshee wasn't lying. She truly believed that.

But the Lieutenant's expression didn't soften. It hardened, granite and ice.

"There is no room in my heart for love," he said flatly. "Only for the mission. The Captain will reach the dungeon's bottom. The chef who owns that food cart will descend. And when she does, we will be ready."

The Jilted Lover's shriek tore the air like a blade. Her form twisted, unraveling at the edges. Lace shredded into smoke, skin peeled into ash, beauty crumbling into dust.

Her final wail was half-love, half-curse. Then she was gone.

Silence rang in her place.

Ding![Quest Complete: Revenge Served Cold]Reward: Private Quarters Acquired.[System Notice: Lieutenant's Paranoia lowered. Guard toward you remains high.]

Marron exhaled slowly, shoulders aching from the tension she'd held. Relief bloomed—brief, fragile—before dread replaced it.

She turned her eyes toward the guards and froze.

They had changed. Their bodies were no longer gaunt and hollow. Muscles corded beneath their stolen armor, jaws set firm, eyes sharper. Even the Lieutenant seemed different—less brittle, more solid.

Her food was doing this. Strengthening them. Arming them for a mission that might run straight through Comfort & Crunch.

Her stomach twisted. How much trouble was she feeding into existence?

The Lieutenant leaned back, spoon still in hand. He studied her the way he might study a weapon, something sharp and dangerous but undeniably useful.

"Keep cooking," he said at last. "Your skill serves the mission. Nothing else matters. But I understand you were renting a room on the third floor?"

Marron nodded. "Yes."

"That changes tomorrow. You'll be moved into one of the fourth floor apartments. The guard will fetch you in the morning."

Marron dipped her head, hiding the dread crawling across her face. Her fingers brushed the key that had appeared in her apron pocket—the lodgings she'd been promised.

Just a little bit more, and I'll find you, Comfort & Crunch.

She had to tail the cart--before her food made these mimics unstoppable.

Once again, she mentally apologized for feeding the mimics delicious food, and hoped life wasn't too rough for the Adventurer's Guild, back in Whetvale.

+

The banshee's scream had barely faded when the silence crashed in, heavier than the stone ceiling above them.

Marron's fingers ached from clenching the bone shard. She forced herself to relax, to breathe, but her chest felt tight, hollow.

The Lieutenant's words still hung in the air, colder than any draft in the bunker.Awful. Weak. Worthless.

He hadn't been speaking to her, but the echo still cut too close. She swallowed hard, pushing down the sudden, unwelcome sting in her eyes.

The mimics along the walls shifted uneasily, their bodies twitching with hunger and energy both. Marron couldn't unsee it now—the way their frames had filled out, muscles pressing against stolen uniforms. Her food was changing them. Making them stronger.

And the Lieutenant had noticed.

He had devoured her dish with the kind of single-minded focus she'd only seen in chefs perfecting a recipe. But for him, it wasn't about taste. It was about power.

Food worth fighting for, he'd called it.

Marron's stomach twisted. Comfort & Crunch felt impossibly far away. Her cart had never been about power—it was about warmth, kindness, giving people something to carry them through the day. But down here, her cooking was being sharpened into a weapon.

And the Culinary Guild… gods. If they knew what she was doing, what her food was making of these mimics, she could already picture the tribunal. The accusations. The chains.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides. No—she couldn't think like that now. She had to press on. She had to get her cart back before it was too late, before the Guild could even find out.

But the Lieutenant's voice still haunted her.There is no room in my heart for love. Only the success of our mission.

Marron glanced at the empty plate, gleaming under the bunker's lights. The food was gone, devoured. What remained was the truth: she had just made herself indispensable to a monster with no capacity for warmth, no desire for anything but victory.

And the worst part was… he was right about the Jilted Lover.

Maybe if she hadn't wasted time, maybe if she'd been better… no. Marron shook her head hard, banishing the thought. That wasn't her fate. That wasn't her ending.

But the chill of his words clung to her like smoke.

She left the bunker with the mimics' hungry eyes following her, the bone shard heavy against her hip, and the weight of the Lieutenant's cold dismissal echoing in her chest.

I just have to focus on my food cart. It's waiting for me, and I'm not here to be a mimic's personal chef.

And she would do just that, in the privacy of her brand-new room.