Isekai Restaurant
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 23: Judging a Cooking Contest
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- Silas -
I sat on a chair and watched the group cheering Milim and Fafnir on in a one vs one Street Fighter match.
We were having a tournament for Street Fighter games today and surprisingly, it was Milim and Fafnir in the semi-finals. On the other side were Rimuru and Ainz.
Saitama had lost earlier and was currently sitting beside me, sipping juice as he watched the game.
Milim finished off the match with an uppercut of her character.
"Uwahahahaha, I have won again. Just wait for me, my double chocolate fudge cake. I will get you soon." She laughed looking at the reward for the tournament, kept on the corner of the Restaurant.
The loser however wasn't interested in the reward that much as he was depressed after losing the game.
Fafnir was a no-nonsense gamer. He enjoyed the food in the Restaurant as much as any other customer but his main focus was always games.
Milim, on the other hand, liked food better than most customers who visited the Restaurant. In fact, she was third in the list after Irene-san and Mana-san.
I found out the reason for her obsession with food too and unlike the previous two… it was hilarious.
Apparently, she had a whole kingdom she ran and the people of the kingdom worshiped her. Her title as the Destroyer was not for show or something which she used to brag about either. It was real.
Her worshippers are called the Dragon Faithful and they took care of her daily needs, food, cleaning and all that.
These guys however… were a believer of eating raw food or something as that was all they served her. She didn't like it much but didn't alway reject it so as to keep them from feeling hurt.
But due to this, she rarely had good food.
…what stupidity…
I had the urge to facepalm at the whole thing.
We took a drinks break before the finals.
"Has everything been prepared?" Ainz asked, having finished his match too. "The Comiket is very important for the whole publishing house. We have to make the best impression."
"Oh… so what are you guys planning to do?" I asked, interested in the topic.
"Cosplay." Came the joint answer from both of them. "We are doing cosplay."
"...isn't that something you were going to do either way?" I asked with a deadpan.
"Yes and?" Rimuru asked, confused.
"Hmph, you are still green, Silas. Obviously we are going to cosplay the characters from the manga we launch. In fact, not just us, several others will be doing the same. In fact you should do the same."
"Eh… I am not sure about that." I denied.
"Oh come on, it will be fun!" Rimuru said, looking excited.
"Fun! What fun are you guys talking about?" Milim jumped in the conversation too.
And the conversation started about which character they were going to cosplay as. It was during this time that the door to the Restaurant opened and a couple of new faces entered.
It was a group of four people.
The first was a boy. He had brown hair and green eyes. He wore a gold-trimmed green mantle, white shirt, pants, and leather boots. The oddest thing was the short sword he was wearing on his belt. With him were three girls. One had blue coloured hair and eyes. The other was a blonde woman wearing armour and the last one was wearing a wizard costume… with an eyepatch.
"A Restaurant. I didn't know there would be a Restaurant outside the city. Great, I am tired after today's quest. Order some beer for me, Kazuma…" her words stopped as her gaze stuck on Ainz. "Undead?"
The other two girls froze a bit at her words and then quickly went into a defensive position as they caught a glimpse of Ainz. Today, Ainz was not in the private room due to the game tournament and he wasn't even wearing the mask as he was drinking juice so his bony face was clear for everyone to see.
I was about to stop them and explain the situation to them when I noticed something odd. The boy… He was gazing towards our group… no, more specifically, he was gazing at Fafnir or rather the console in his hands.
"That's… a Gameboy Advance!"
"Hah! Kazuma! Look there, it's an undead. Eh, a demon, a dragon and what is a slime doing there. What kind of dungeon is this?"
"A dungeon made to look like a Restaurant to lure innocent adventurers into a trap, how insidious." The blonde girl said as she started breathing heavily, her face flushing red.
…was she sick?
"Oi, is that really a Gameboy Advance? And there, is that a DS? Does this dungeon drop video games?" The boy drew his sword and looked ready to start fighting while my eyes twitched.
Fafnir looked like he was getting annoyed too so I decided to intervene before these guys were cursed to death.
"This is not a dungeon." I said stepping up.
"Lies. Do you think I will believe the lies of a demon? Hmph, I am a real goddess, not a fool." The blue haired girl puffed her chest as she interrupted my words.
"A Goddess…"
"Aqua, this is not the time for your jokes. We need to get out of here. There are too many high level monsters in this dungeon. It would be very bad if they were to invade Axel. They would destroy the town and kill all the men and capture the women and hah hah…" The blonde woman was breathing harder and harder, her face flushing deep red.
Seriously, what kind of crazy thoughts was she having?
Thankfully, Sakura stepped up to clear the situation.
"Umm, this place is really not a dungeon."
"A Gameboy drop!" The boy however jumped directly towards Fafnir, his sword drawn before Sakura could complete her words.
I sighed and snapped my fingers, halting his jump in the middle. Even the three girls' powers were dispelled.
"Wha!"
"How did you?"
"I… I can't move. What did you do, demon?" The blonde girl questioned. "I… you may have defeated me but I will never give up. Even if you t-torture me, I will never betray my faith. You can break my body… hah hah… but you will never break my heart."
…
…
…
…
I looked at the girl with an open mouth.
Oi oi, what is going on in that head of yours?
And even if something crazy is going on in there, keep it to yourself. Why are you saying it out loud?
Her words, especially when matched with her laboured breaths and flushed red face made the whole scene look really bad.
If anyone didn't know the whole situation, they would totally think we were some kind of disgusting villains. Hell, I hadn't even said a single bad thing let alone do something and yet, I was feeling awkward.
Even Rimuru and Saitama looked at me oddly for a moment… why are you two looking at me like that? I didn't do anything, ya know. You all saw what was going on…
Thankfully, before things could get any worse, Sakura-chan saved the day.
She calmly explained the whole situation to the group.
In that time, Tohru had come out of the kitchen too and verified that the blue haired girl was indeed a goddess… or at least she felt like one.
"So… you people… are reincarnated humans?" the boy, now introduced as Kazuma Satou, asked and he held a console lovingly in his hands. Ainz had given the guy the console after he told us about how he had been working in the other world and hadn't seen or played any video games in months, almost a year.
He even had tears in his eyes and looked so pitiful that Ainz gave him an extra console and Rimuru added some games.
We found out that Kazuma was also a reincarnated human who was sent to a different world after death.
Huh… my Restaurant was really becoming a stop for Isekai characters.
"Yes." Ainz nodded.
"All of you?"
"No, only Rimuru and Ainz. There is another one but she is not here right now." I replied.
"Then how did you become a lich and a slime? Oi Aqua, did you just throw them into other worlds?" Kazuma shouted towards the blue haired Goddess who was shoving every bit of food in her mouth and looked more like a blue haired squirrel than a goddess she was.
…
They had calmed down quite a bit after talking to Sakura.
We found out their names.
The Goddess was called Aqua. The weird blonde warrior was Darkness. The magician was called Megumin and looked like she was a chunni… but that was more or less a norm in the Restaurant so she didn't look out of place.
Huh… was it just me or was I getting used to some really weird stuff lately?
Those two girls looked around the place curiously. In fact, it turns out that they didn't even know that Aqua was a Goddess either. This was obviously not due to the lack of her claiming to be one… but rather her unreliability.
I know now why I didn't feel that she was a Goddess when I first saw her. It was because this girl… she was really just… useless.
"What do you mean by throwing us in other worlds?" Ainz asked, his eyes shining red.
"What else? Aqua was the one incharge of assigning people to different worlds and giving them their cheats before I brought her with myself. Was she skipping work or did you two just get screwed over by another Goddess?" He asked.
These words caused both the slime and the lich to look at the Goddess with a dead look on their faces.
…oh boy.
I had seen that look.
"Oh… is she now?" Rimuru asked, his voice a deadpan. "Come to think of it, I did hear a female voice when I was about to die…"
"Yes yes. She reincarnated me… more like tricked me until I turned it around and claimed her as my cheat… dammit, I shouldn't have done that. A bad decision… I would have been much better off choosing some cool weapon or Skill like that bastard Kyoya. Anyways, she is totally the Goddess incharge of reincarnating humans, at least from Japan."
"Well… I didn't hear anything so I will hold my opinions for now." Ainz backed off, but his gaze didn't leave the Goddess.
"Hmm, not to mention there are so many different versions of Japan in the multiverse. Who knows if you were all from the same world or not." I added, to calm Rimuru down.
Thankfully, Rimuru had learned to not make any assumptions after accidentally devouring that zombie God-thing… from Tanya's world.
"Eh… reincarnating you as a slime? No, I don't remember anything like that. We normally just pick up normal human shut-ins with dreams of isekai and throw them into other worlds with a cheat but they need to get their agreement from them too or we are not allowed to reincarnate them. Obviously, that would mean meeting them face to face. Anyways, I have been with Kazuma for a long time now so maybe it was someone else who slacked off their duties? Who is taking care of my department nowadays? Hmm, is it a tenshi or maybe Iris?"
…
So it was another dud…
Rimuru looked pacified… or at least he was till the girl opened her mouth again.
"But still, you two were suckered really bad, weren't you? A slime and an elder lich hahahaha. Normally otakus like you keep yapping about harems when they talk about isekai but you became a slime and a lich… You don't even have a dick hahahaha."
…
I had to physically stop Rimuru from jumping at the Goddess and biting her head off.
"Hmph, big words from a useless Goddess. What kind of Goddess gets eaten by frogs?" Kazuma jumped in suddenly. "And what is wrong with being otakus, huh? Didn't you get tricked by me to become my cheat item?"
…
Ouch…
This intervention also prevented the Goddess from being targeted by the angry lich and slime. But seriously… this woman had no filters at all.
"I am sorry about her words, Ainz-san, Rimuru-san." Kazuma apologised.
The apology worked, calming the situation.
Really, this girl was nothing like a Goddess.
All that awe after seeing Lucoa-san was gone.
Kazuma seemed to like the Restaurant a lot and was getting along surprisingly well with both Ainz and Rimuru.
I guess him jumping to his fellow otaku's defense earned him a lot of goodwill from the two who had inadvertently been roasted by the goddess.
The atmosphere calmed down soon. It seems that our resistance to crazy has been boosted recently.
Milim won the tournament.
It was more like Ainz threw the game when Milim used her cute dragon eyes attack.
That had to be some kind of magic or skill by itself.
She was however more interested in the cake than winning the game itself, something she finished off by herself.
Rimuru took her away as no one wanted to deal with Milim on a sugar high.
It was when the shop was about to be closed that something unexpected happened.