Chapter 141: Trick or… Truck? (3) "You're really excited, aren't you?"
Hayward pointed a finger at Craid, then indicated the slightly upturned corner of his left lip.
"And that guy's excited too."
Julien floated beside the Mobile Cooking Facility on a broom, handing out candy to the children.
"Mister! Can I ride on the back of the broom?"
"M-me too!"
"You want to?"
He went a step further and let the children ride the broom as he flew around the Mobile Cooking Facility, drawing cheers from all around.
With the fierce costumes of those in the parade, the night should have felt eerie, filled only with ghosts and monsters. But the soft glow from the pumpkin Jack-o'-lanterns dispelled the chill, and a mysterious atmosphere settled over the streets.
"We look completely like villains, but no one's scared. That's kind of amazing."
Hayward chuckled, pointing at Craid, who was dressed as a monster through and through.
Being not the hero of a fairy tale or epic, but the villain roaming the streets—this was a fresh sensation none of them had experienced before.
"Ever since meeting Jinseo, it's been one amazing, exciting thing after another. Enjoying street food every day has become normal, we've gone to other continents and met different races, and…"
Standing atop the slowly moving Mobile Cooking Facility along Falstead Castle's road, Hayward juggled several candies before tossing them one by one to the tourists.
"And we even went to Korea."
"Can't leave that out. Come to think of it, I think only the three of us have been to Korea. I want to go again. The taste of bossam and makguksu we ate while playing GilXgear still lingers on my lips."
Hayward smacked his lips, recalling the perfect harmony of those two late-night dishes.
"Make way! It's urgent!"
At that shout from within the crowd, the parade spectators stepped aside.
Lawrence pushed through the people and approached the Mobile Cooking Facility, lifting his head toward Craid.
"Uncle Lawrence, what is it?"
"Well…"
When Lawrence hesitated, Craid reached down with both arms and pulled him up onto the truck.
"I just heard this myself. If you would lend me your ear…"
After glancing around cautiously, Lawrence whispered. As Craid listened, his brows twitched.
"What will you do?"
"I'll go."
Without a moment's hesitation, Craid bent down and leaned toward the driver's seat.
"Jinseo, I'm sorry. I have to go ahead."
"Did something urgent happen?"
"My father is in critical condition."
"What?"
Jinseo immediately stopped the Mobile Cooking Facility. The candy wagons behind them halted in sequence.
Everyone participating in the parade climbed down, and once they heard Craid's situation, the mood turned grave.
"Then you'll have to go to the Kingdom of Girvante. Isn't that quite far from here?"
"We'll need a mage capable of teleportation. I should go find Painfolt."
As he spoke with Jinseo, Craid looked at Julien.
"Ah… even the Headmaster would struggle to teleport all the way to the Kingdom of Girvante."
"Then we teleport as close as possible and find another mage from there."
Craid's expression remained steady, but he couldn't hide the beads of sweat sliding down his temples.
"Craid, why take the hard road when there's an easy one right above us?"
Hayward raised his hand and pointed at the massive dragon enthusiastically casting firework magic in the sky.
"Lady Charlotte!"
"Hm? Me?"
Circling above Falstead Castle in her true dragon form, Charlotte immediately reacted and swooped down toward the Mobile Cooking Facility.
"You called me?"
"Yes. You haven't forgotten your promise from the Go-Stop match, have you?"
"Promise? Ah, the one where I agreed to grant a wish? Of course not! It hasn't even been a few hundred years—how could I forget already?"
On the first day of Chuseok in the Francia Continent, Charlotte had come in last in the Go-Stop match.
She barely managed to finish ten bean-filled songpyeon, three servings of carrot-heavy curry rice, and three cans each of espresso canned coffee and SolX Eye as punishment—but she couldn't bring herself to eat the cup tteokbokki with Nuclear Fire Chicken sauce.
In exchange for being exempted from that final penalty, she agreed to grant Hayward one wish.
"So what's the wish?"
"Well…"
After hearing the explanation, Charlotte, still in dragon form, nodded.
"So I just take Craid to the Kingdom of Girvante?"
"Yes, please."
"Hey, that's hardly worth using your wish for. I'll just take him. We're not strangers. Giving you a ride is nothing to me."
"Then could you perhaps fetch some elixir?"
"There might be something useful in my lair. But if it's a recently emerged disease, it might not work. Every four hundred years or so, new illnesses appear that old medicines don't cure."
"Isn't there something like a panacea?"
"Well, I never get sick, so I've never taken interest in such things. Tch…"
As Charlotte scratched her head with the tip of her sharp claw, a scale the size of an adult man fell and embedded deeply into the ground.
"Oops! Watch out! Stay away from me! Anyway, I just need to take him to the Kingdom of Girvante, right?"
"Yes, as quickly as possible."
"Then I'll teleport us. That distance is easy—I could move about a hundred people at once. Anyone else going?"
"I'll go too!"
Fedora, still in her angel cosplay, raised her hand.
Charlotte lowered her head and blinked her large eyes at her.
"Ah, right. You're the Cardinal of the Heirem Order. Yes, you'll be more useful than some uncertain elixir."
Charlotte selected four: Craid, Hayward, Julien, and Fedora.
Lawrence, who had delivered the news, gave detailed directions to where Greg lived. Charlotte closed her eyes, meditating as she recalled the nearest teleportation point.
"Jinseo, please prepare tteokbokki with Nuclear Fire Chicken sauce."
"Just a moment!"
To forcibly activate a blessing, spicy tteokbokki was indispensable.
Jinseo dashed into the additional trailer and took ten servings of specially prepared tteokbokki from the subspace storage, placing them into a bag and handing it to Fedora.
"Then we're off!"
Flash.
With Charlotte's teleportation magic, the four and the enormous dragon vanished from sight, scattered mana sparkling in the darkness.
"Oh."
Jinseo suddenly realized something he had overlooked.
Amid the urgency, he had forgotten they were in the middle of a Halloween festival.
"They left without removing their costumes…"
In the pitch darkness, Greg stood alone, looking down at a young boy with his head bowed under a small light.
'I was… so hungry.'
Unable to control his appetite, his son had eaten food meant to feed the entire family for three days.
Back then, when the family was struggling, Greg had no choice but to scold him harshly. The ten-year-old boy then locked himself in his room for over three days without touching even a piece of bread.
Feeling sorry for his son, who forced himself to suppress his appetite afterward, Greg once returned home with more bread than usual.
But his son had already left.
'…Please accept this.'
Ten years later, his son returned—now taller than him—and set a pouch of gold coins on the table.
Seeing the massive greatsword slung across his back and the scars covering his body, Greg instantly knew his son had lived a harsh life.
He told him to come home and eat as much as he wished, to live together again. But his son shook his head and left.
The restaurant Greg started with that money prospered, gaining many regular customers and expanding into branches.
'…Please accept this.'
Another ten years passed, and his son returned, leaving behind a sum incomparably larger than before.
Greg didn't care about the money. He was simply overjoyed to see his son alive and even stronger than before.
He laid out food for him freely, urging him to eat without paying. But his son ate only a single portion, paid, and left.
Only later did a customer reveal that his son was a hero who had saved the kingdom.
The rumor that Greg was the hero's father spread throughout the Kingdom of Girvante. His restaurants flourished further, eventually exceeding one hundred branches. He gained influence and renown, even entering the royal palace frequently.
Yet he could not forget the harsh words he had once spoken to his son.
The only way to escape his guilt—that he had failed to feed his hungry child—was to live with him again.
He sent people across the continent to find him.
But his son sent only money in return.
Greg wanted to abandon everything and search for him himself, but as the owner of over a hundred establishments, responsibility outweighed freedom.
Now, in the darkness, he lay collapsed, clutching his chest.
He felt no pain.
His vision simply dimmed, and far away, the image of his son turning his back flickered and faded.
Flash.
Just before he closed his eyes, light descended from the sky, pushing away the darkness and enveloping both him and his distant son.
"Where is this…?"
"Greg! Can you hear me?"
"…Lawrence?"
"Yes! It's me!"
"I can hear you. But why am I lying down…?"
He was about to say he didn't know, when the memory returned.
Preparing to leave for the Doren Kingdom to see his son after a long time, he had collapsed from sudden chest pain.
"Father. It's me."
"Craid? Is that you?"
Greg slowly reached toward his son at the center of his clearing vision.
"...!"
The moment he saw his son's face, his eyes widened—and he fainted again.
"Father?"
Startled, Craid grabbed his shoulders and shook him.
"What happened? Did it relapse?"
"No. It's just…"
Fedora removed the angel halo from her head and set it on the bedside table, trailing off.
"The mood was too serious earlier to say this. But… have you looked in a mirror?"
At Charlotte's words—Chupa-Chups in her mouth—everyone in the room except Greg and Craid silently pointed at Craid's face.
"Ah… right."
He awkwardly touched his face, still in Frankenstein's Creature makeup.
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