Chapter 107: D-Town? K-Town? (1) A week after the Raven Mercenary Corps joined Dwarf Town, Geshtain declared the official opening of Dwarf Town.
Even during the completion ceremony, a lot of people had gathered, but a large portion were citizens of Falstead Castle nearby, and the rest were nobles or merchants who came to interact with the dwarves.
However, after the official opening, people of many different classes and age groups began to flock in.
Just visiting a village designed and built by dwarves, then stopping by the food truck to enjoy street food that they had only heard about in rumors, became an excellent form of sightseeing all on its own.
As a result, the number of people moving through the streets increased drastically, and they needed manpower to live in Dwarf Town full-time and guard the dwarves.
Up until then, the knights and soldiers of Falstead Castle had temporarily handled security, but their primary duty was, in the end, to protect Falstead Castle.
The Raven Mercenary Corps was hired to fill in the gaps.
But from the moment Geshtain handed them a soccer ball, the mercenaries were deployed to various tasks instead of stopping at simple guard duty, and they began living a daily life in Dwarf Town that was different from what they had expected.
Vroooom.
After finishing the morning sales, Jinseo drove the food truck into Dwarf Town's northern entrance.
As he entered after receiving the greeting of the mercenary on guard, his view filled with soccer fields of green grass.
The reason Jinseo visited Dwarf Town today was to provide the Raven Mercenary Corps with their once-a-week special meal.
Because he had to provide many mercenaries with a variety of street food within a fixed mealtime, Jason joined, and Aston joined as well.
Since they were at it, they decided to go around and check every part of Dwarf Town, and the first place Jinseo stopped was the three soccer fields in the north of Dwarf Town.
"Oh! Jinseo!"
"Mr. Jinseo! Looks like today is that day. The mercenaries will love it!"
The dwarves and humans running hard on the field spotted the food truck and waved happily.
Jinseo nodded and returned a smile, then refilled the sports drink inside the cooler box installed right beside the field.
"I restocked GeXray, PaXwade, and PoXly Sweat."
"We'll drink well!"
"Our drinks ran out, so I was about to go buy some. This is perfect. I'll stop by later for street food!"
Circling the soccer field once, Jinseo carefully checked the auxiliary facilities to see if anything was damaged.
After refilling drinks and inspecting the other two soccer fields the same way, Jinseo got back into the food truck.
The next destination, as the food truck crawled along the road the dwarves had made, was the embassy in the center of Dwarf Town.
"...The building you are looking at now was constructed according to the dwarves' architectural style, preserved for one thousand years. It lets you glimpse the dwarves' way of thinking, which cherishes tradition, while also allowing you to feel its delicate beauty…"
Those who came to Dwarf Town alone, or as couples or friends, or with family, listened to a travel guide's explanation while looking over the buildings and reacted with fascination.
The food truck tour that Jinseo started to compete with Marquis Horus had been suspended for various reasons despite the enthusiastic response.
The travel guides who had been resting thanks to an unintended long vacation began moving busily again after Dwarf Town opened.
"Ah, everyone, please look over there."
The travel guide, continuing their explanation with energy, extended their right hand toward the food truck slowly passing beside the tourists.
"Some of you may have already stopped by, but this is the food truck recognized by the Hairem Order as a holy relic! It's famous for the street food of the foreign chef who created street food, Mr. Lee Jinseo! Before you finish your trip, you must visit! I'm planning to go eat street food myself after I finish guiding!"
Hearing the guide's strong recommendation, Jinseo silently smiled, while Jason, riding in the passenger seat, stuck both arms out the window and waved vigorously.
"Oh my, it's so pretty..."
"Give me this. And that too. No, just give me one of everything!"
Meanwhile, the tourists gathered at the souvenir shop were captivated by the crafted goods laid out on the stalls.
Since they were items made directly by dwarf artisans, they were naturally popular.
And since Falstead Castle citizens were hired as shopkeepers and were selling hard, there were no issues with sales either.
Watching the street crowded with tourists as he drove, Jinseo parked the food truck in Jinseo's dedicated parking spot beside the embassy.
Carrying plastic bags packed with street food, he headed toward the embassy, and the two guards standing on both sides of the entrance recognized him and greeted him.
The two men wore the same suit and dress shoes Jinseo had worn when he had an audience with Philip III, and even sunglasses, instantly drawing the attention of passing tourists.
So they had long since become another famous attraction of Dwarf Town.
It was the result of Fedora's suggestion—copied exactly—that suits might look good even on mercenaries guarding the embassy, like the bodyguards seen in dramas.
On top of that, the mages of the Doren Mage Tower cast magic on the suits to give them durability as well, turning them into outfits that had both style and practicality.
"You're working hard."
"Not at all. Compared to the other guys, it's nothing."
"Did you come to deliver street food to the ambassador?"
"Yes. I'm here while coming to make the special meal. I brought plenty for you too, so eat together later."
After exchanging greetings with the guards, Jinseo went up to the second floor.
With the door to the ambassador's office left wide open as he was approving documents, Geshtain saw Jinseo, smiled in greeting, then immediately let out a long sigh.
"It's already almost lunchtime?"
After looking at the tall desk clock in the corner of the desk, Geshtain pressed both temples firmly with his fingertips.
"You look very busy."
"Don't even start. I knew it would be like this, so I tried to dump some work on my disciple, but he showed up and immediately took off, so what can I do… Still, I have plenty of time to eat your street food."
Geshtain opened the window and looked down at the guards who were watching the entrance.
"Hey! Come up and eat street food!"
"Yes! Understood!"
"What's today's menu?"
"Tteok-twig-sun! Hurry up before it gets cold!"
At Geshtain's urging, the guard came up the stairs as if he had been waiting, arriving on the second floor in a rush.
In the meantime, Jinseo spread newspapers over the table used for receiving guests.
"All the street food you make is delicious, but sometimes, like today, I crave tteok-twig-sun in particular."
"That's why you ordered tteok-twig-sun today. I get that way sometimes too."
Jinseo took the containers of street food out of the plastic bags one by one and placed them on the table.
Then the guards began scraping at the edges of the wrap-sealed containers with their wooden chopsticks.
Last, Jinseo set a 1.5 L plastic bottle filled with udon broth on the table and left the ambassador's office.
South of the embassy, the base of the Raven Mercenary Corps was given the name Raven Lair.
At Captain Malcolm's request to give it a fitting name, Jinseo, after pondering like he had when naming Dwarf Town, decided on Raven Lair, meaning the nest where birds of prey stayed.
At the center of Raven Lair was a drill ground, and behind it were the lodgings and a PX named "Jinseo Club."
It was the result of unanimous agreement among all mercenary members: since the official name of a PX in Korea's army was Chungseong Club, and since most of the goods sold were supplies airlifted from the food truck, Jinseo's name absolutely had to be included.
"Oh, Jason, you're here? Big brother and Sir Aston are here too!"
Foltan, who would be working as the clerk of Jinseo Club this time, hurried out from the counter after seeing the three men get off the food truck.
"What? For someone who always says you're busy and exhausted, there aren't any customers."
"It's rest time right now. After a bit, it'll be chaos. So we should receive the goods now."
Foltan went into the trailer in a hurry to restock before the mercenaries' buying line began.
The four men, including Foltan, carried cardboard boxes filled with snacks and food from the extra trailer and began arranging them by type on the stalls.
"Foltan, is that everything?"
"Ah, next time, please add more BiXgo dumplings."
"They're already sold out? Even though I doubled the amount last week?"
"Yes. We're at the point where we can't sell because we don't have any."
From the moment it first appeared, the item that began gaining new popularity after they started selling various foods through Jinseo Club—threatening the throne of the explosively popular Choco Pie—was frozen food.
Among them, BiXgo dumplings, in particular, had become an indispensable snack and late-night food in the mercenaries' daily life.
Unfortunately, Jinseo Club did not have a microwave, but even if you just pan-grilled or cooked them simply in the kitchen behind the lodgings, the popularity of BiXgo dumplings only kept soaring.
"Hahaha, alright. Just a moment."
After taking out an extra box of BiXgo dumplings and handing it to Foltan, before preparing the special meal, Jinseo went inside the lodgings to check how the mercenaries were doing.
"..."
Walking down the hallway and looking around, Jinseo felt something strange.
The mercenary members, after hearing Jinseo's stories about the Korean military, all criticized Korea's army, yet they couldn't hide their curiosity about what it was actually like.
The dwarves were the same, so before building Raven Lair, they told Jinseo that if they were going to build it anyway, they would make it in a different style than before.
What they requested was none other than Korean military-related dramas and variety shows.
After carefully watching those videos on a large TV, the dwarves used them as reference and built a barracks room.
From the outside, it was a building with the dwarves' beautiful architectural style, but once you went inside, a hybrid was born—one that took the form of a K-military barracks room that would trigger PTSD in a veteran.
"...This kind of feels like I reenlisted."
With a face tangled in complicated emotions, Jinseo casually glanced at the laundry drying rack placed in the hallway.
On the towels hanging in bunches from the drying rack Jinseo had brought over from Korea...
"Dwarf Town completion ceremony commemoration (Congrats)"
…those words were printed in Hangul.
It was fine up to the point where Jinseo, looking for something appropriate as a completion ceremony gift, thought towels would be good and placed a bulk order in Korea.
The problem started after he mindlessly said the phrase in response to the question, "What message would you like printed?"
The moment he brought the towel boxes to the Francia Continent and opened them, the dwarves held up the towels with Hangul on them and stared at Jinseo with faces that said they had no idea what it meant.
The dwarves praised it, saying the bizarre shape of Hangul was distinctive and fascinating, but every time Jinseo saw the towels, the embarrassment from then came back.
Scratching the back of his head as he kept walking down the hallway, Jinseo carefully approached from behind the mercenaries gathered in front of the noticeboard.
"This week's special meal: Cheese tteokbokki, boneless fried chicken, pork cutlet, jjolmyeon, kraken rice bowl"
"Man, it's nothing but rice thieves again, as always."
"But what does 'rice police' even mean, like Mr. Jinseo said?"
"I asked the captain, and he said before we met the food truck, what we always ate was 'rice police.'"
"Really? Did the word 'police' have that meaning?"
Hearing the mercenaries' conversation, Jinseo gave a bitter smile and quietly backed away.
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