Chapter 84: That Was Far Too Big to Be Called a Customer (4) "No… still, to dare try to enter a dragon's lair. I can't believe it. Even I, who've lived a long life in my own way, have never once had such a thought..."
Painfolt spoke as he watched Charlotte shake the last drop of cola left in the plastic bottle into her mouth.
"Of course you'd think that. No matter how bold someone is, it's hard to do that. While the dragon is sleeping, monsters sometimes come in and settle there, too. Still, people can't help but hold onto the expectation that they might discover unknown treasures in a dragon's lair. There are even recorded cases of that happening."
"Hah… I still can't accept it. How could anyone, in a place with such a gigantic dragon..."
"They probably thought that the dragon would keep sleeping anyway, and that as long as they didn't deliberately wake it by going all the way into the lair's core, nothing would happen. In fact, until today, wasn't it asleep for centuries?"
Julien said, watching Charlotte mix the seaweed-roll fritters into the tteokbokki broth she had scraped clean.
"Only Marquis Horus himself would know, but maybe he felt his situation was urgent enough to take that kind of risk. Of course, in my view, it wasn't necessary, but if it's a human who's lost their reason, what wouldn't they do?"
"True. No one would go in expecting that a dragon that had slept for so long… and that it would wake up precisely when they invaded its lair."
As Julien's explanation continued, Painfolt stopped arguing and accepted his words.
"But if they had seen and experienced firsthand just how gigantic and powerful a dragon is, they wouldn't have even gone near the lair's entrance."
Julien, who arrived late, hadn't seen Charlotte in her dragon form himself.
But from the eyewitness accounts, the enormous magic circle far larger than a soccer field, and the cracks scattered across the ground, he could guess what kind of being it was.
"Going in hoping to find treasure, only to have the dragon—who should be asleep—stare at you with its eyes wide open? …Just imagining it makes me dizzy."
"Huh? But wait. Could it be that you, Julien, also..."
Listening quietly, Jinseo noticed something that didn't sit right.
Rather than sounding like he heard it from someone else, Julien's tone carried traces of firsthand experience.
"If Charlotte hears this, she might get angry, so keep it secret. No one would like hearing that their lair kept getting looted while they slept—no, not anyone. A dragon."
Julien cut Jinseo off mid-sentence and dodged the answer.
"Now that you mention it, back when Brother was at the mage tower, for a while you were away..."
"In any case, we'll stop that story here. What's more important is something else."
Julien even cut off Fedora now, calmly changing the subject.
"I heard Charlotte say she tracked Marquis Horus's remaining traces of mana and came here. Why would that man flee by passing through Falstead Castle, which is in the exact opposite direction from his own territory?"
At Julien's question, the others fell into thought for a moment.
"Ah, wait—!"
Jinseo's expression hardened as he realized the answer, and the others also seemed to reach the same conclusion as the atmosphere turned icy in an instant.
If it became known that he woke a sleeping dragon, the kingdom wouldn't leave him alone.
He wouldn't even have time to run straight back to his territory and gather his wealth before being punished, so there was no reason to take a long detour through Falstead Castle.
Unless his intent was to drag everyone down with him.
"The more I think about it, the more truly vile he is."
Oswald gritted his teeth at Marquis Horus's behavior—plotting to ruin him even while fleeing the dragon's pursuit.
"I don't think it was like this from the start. In the end, it ruins him too. More precisely, I'd say he decided that since he was already ruined, he'd drag me in with him."
Jinseo couldn't wrap his head around Marquis Horus's scheme, swinging between extremes—going from putting bugs in food to suddenly waking a dragon.
"Hey, boss! One more serving each of kimchi dumplings and meat dumplings!"
"Yes!"
But right now, the urgent priority was supplying bunsik to the dragon whose anger had only just been calmed.
At Charlotte's voice calling him, Jinseo responded immediately and returned to the food truck.
"Here you go."
"And one more can of cola."
"Yes, here it is."
Unlike the glutton Craid, Charlotte didn't chug it all at once, enjoying it one can at a time.
After downing her cola, she dipped a dumpling in soy sauce and popped it into her mouth, her body shivering.
"Uhoo… delicious!"
"Thank you for enjoying it."
"No, I'm the one who should be grateful for getting to taste such delicacies! If you keep making food like this in the future, you can take as much as you want from my lair!"
"I appreciate the sentiment. Instead, if you could provide even a little compensation for the damage you caused unintentionally when you came here..."
"Of course I'll compensate you! I have so many treasures—did you think I'd be stingy and just let it slide? Anyway, what do you want? As long as it's not on the level of bringing the dead back to life or turning back time, I'll grant anything!"
She spoke an outrageous offer so casually that it made the ears of everyone nearby perk up.
But Jinseo only gave a light smile.
"Just pay for the bunsik you ate. Honestly, what you've had so far isn't that expensive."
"To me, it was cooking worth a high price!"
Charlotte answered with a serious expression as she chewed her kimchi dumpling thoroughly.
Even so, Jinseo's reaction remained calm.
"And even if you paid beyond the original value, I wouldn't be able to use it anyway."
"Why not?"
"Think of it as a restriction I placed on myself to make and sell these foods."
"A curse you received in exchange for gaining power?"
"Yes."
"I've never heard of such a curse... Perhaps someone created a new curse while I was asleep."
Charlotte folded her arms and sank into thought.
With the tip of a fork stained with tteokbokki broth between her lips.
"But you offered up your treasures far too easily, didn't you? If you kept them in your lair for such a long time, they must be things you cherished deeply."
"Well… when I was young, I was absorbed in collecting treasures."
Charlotte crossed her legs and stared into the distance.
"Living as a dragon is, you know… more boring than you'd think. So as a hobby, I collected all sorts of things. But once I actually collected them, I lost interest. Still, it felt wrong to just give them away, and it felt even worse to let others steal them."
"Ah, I think I understand the feeling."
When Jinseo served in the military, one of his juniors said he was obsessed with collecting figures.
But he was truly absorbed in the act of collecting itself, and once he had them, he didn't feel like doing anything with them.
He didn't even display them, which was the original purpose. Imagining boxes piling up in a corner of a room, still unopened...
He could roughly understand how the dragon before his eyes felt.
He said he eventually sold them all, didn't he?
The important point was that he sold them himself, rather than someone taking them by force.
While Jinseo and Charlotte talked, someone strode up toward the two of them.
With a large beer barrel slung over his shoulder.
"I greet the supreme being, Dragon Charlotte."
"Hm? A dwarf? There shouldn't be any dwarves on the Francia Continent."
"Compared to Charlotte, it is utterly insufficient, but by using the magical knowledge I possess, I was able to come here."
"So even among dwarves, you can use magic fairly well, huh? But..."
Charlotte swept her gaze from his head to his toes, making an expression of surprise.
"For a dwarf, you're rather tall."
"Oh! As expected, you recognized it at a glance! Such astonishing insight, truly worthy of the supreme being!"
Geshtain was far happier that she noticed his height than any praise about his magic.
That was tall?
Jinseo looked down at Geshtain.
But unlike her, no matter how he looked, it was hard to tell whether he was tall or not.
"But did you come to eat bunsik too?"
Charlotte patted the seat beside her, inviting him to sit.
"No. How could I sit in the same place as the supreme being?"
"Well, if it makes you uncomfortable, it can't be helped."
"In truth, I brought a small tribute. As an offering to commemorate Charlotte's awakening, achieved after hundreds of years, I humbly ask that you accept it."
"A tribute. That's a word I haven't heard in a long time. It's what you're carrying on your shoulder, right? Take it out."
Geshtain carefully opened the lid, then slowly filled a beer glass with beer.
Then he knelt on one knee and lifted the beer glass, supporting it from below with both hands.
"Oh, this is..."
After she drained about half the glass and looked satisfied, Geshtain grew excited as well.
"Dwarven beer… I'm tasting this for the first time in two thousand years. It's not as good as cola, but it is excellent."
Confirming her reaction was good, Geshtain decided to move to the next step.
"Jinseo, it's time to bring that out."
"Ah, Half-and-Half MuMani?"
"If you serve pizza together, I believe she'll like it even more."
While Charlotte sipped her beer and nibbled on bunsik, Jinseo quickly made chicken and pizza.
And the effect appeared immediately, unmistakably.
"To only discover something this delicious now… It feels like I've been losing out for four thousand years!"
The dragon who had been furious over having her centuries-long sleep disturbed was no longer here.
Only the red-haired dragon, enchanted by the food truck's bunsik and bar snacks, smiled in happiness.
News that Charlotte—a dragon who had slept for hundreds of years—had awakened quickly spread throughout the Doren Kingdom.
After receiving the report that an enraged dragon attacked Falstead Castle, Philip III nearly fainted. But when he received the additional report that Jinseo's bunsik had soothed the dragon's rage, he finally breathed in relief.
Then, the moment he received Oswald's report stating that the incident was caused by Marquis Horus invading the lair, he flew into a rage.
Philip III issued an arrest order on the spot, along with a strict command to capture and imprison everyone involved.
In any case, the chaos caused by Charlotte's appearance was resolved far more peacefully than expected.
The only problem was...
"Aaaah! A d-dragon!"
"I-it's coming this way! Everyone run!"
Once a week, Charlotte flew to Falstead Castle.
And she did it in her huge dragon form.
"Oh, it's Charlotte. She's majestic no matter how many times you see her."
"I never thought I'd see a dragon in real life with my own eyes, but I never imagined I'd fulfill that dream by coming to the humans' continent."
"And it's so strange. We're eating the same bunsik she's eating, right?"
Amid the mixed reactions of customers seeing a dragon for the first time, regulars who had gotten used to it after seeing her several times, and the dwarves, Charlotte slowly descended onto her own dedicated clearing.
As she landed with a flap of wings, Charlotte—turning into a human woman—flicked up her hair with the hand she had placed behind her neck, her hair swishing.
"Charlotte, I told you to polymorph into a human before coming here, then walk in from far away."
"Sorry, sorry. I forgot."
"You said that last time too, I think..."
"Try to understand. I'm over four thousand years old—wouldn't it be stranger if my memory had no problems?"
Charlotte brushed Jinseo's words off lightly.
Maybe because she had fallen in love with bunsik, the two spoke far more comfortably than they did when they first met.
"And I flew here as exercise. If I just pop in with teleportation magic, there's no exercise at all, right? And I came wearing workout clothes, so I should exercise, shouldn't I?"
She wasn't wearing a red dress, but clothes Jinseo had given her.
The previous dress exposed too much, and at Jinseo's complaint that it made it hard to know where to look, she reluctantly agreed to change into something else.
Then, since she was changing anyway, she requested women's clothing from another continent, so Jinseo brought fashion magazines.
But unlike his expectations, Charlotte read the magazines with a bored expression, then got hooked on the outfit of a woman in a drama airing on TV.
As a result, Charlotte's outfit became something far from ordinary to people of the Francia Continent.
A short-sleeved T-shirt was fine, but the black leggings with a brand name printed long down her left leg couldn't go unnoticed.
On top of that, with a hair roller clipped to her bangs and wearing three-striped slippers... in Jinseo's eyes, she looked like a "successful noona" out for a casual errand, with her red hair standing out especially.
"Enough. Full-course tteok-twi-sun-ra-gim."
"Yes."
"No eggs in the ramen. The broth gets cloudy, and I don't like it. And make the gimbap tuna mayo."
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