CHAPTER 1475: HIGH LIFE BLUES

"Wait a minute... Zhen Xing, Zhen Tai. What are you guys going to be doing? Are you going to be joining Alice in faking to be mercenaries, joining us at the restaurant or helping out with all of the forging?"

"Probably the lattermost option," Zhen Xing answered for himself and Zhen Tai. "I think Smoking Mirror knows what we look like and would probably try to take us out on sight, and...no offense, seeing you being an entirely different person is kind of freaking me out on a conceptual level."

"Understandable, have fun with the forging...keep your eyeballs open so that no one tries to do anything funny to the forge."

"Of course."

"Wait, isn’t that what the zakos are for?"

...Meanwhile, at the Library of Nowhere...

Alright, so the chances of our lord being exposed as being a woman by Alain is being calculated at...sixty percent chance?

=Sixty-three percent chance; make sure to add variance.=

Right.

As Zhen Liu and his allies executed their plans, Logos and Pathos were busy looking over the plans that Zhen Liu had cooked up with the kaijin and determining the fault points that could occur, ranking them from the least likely to happen to the most likely to happen.

Normally, such an action would be down in the name of frivolity and/or as a mental exercise. This time however, given what they’ve been dealing with Zhen Liu lately, they couldn’t help but to actually start planning for this stuff on a serious level.

Alright, so our most likely scenarios in these next few moments is...nothing happens, Alice manages to convince Smoking Mirror that she’s a legit mercenary military instructor and our "lady" manages to copy the manual with no issues, Pathos noted with utter seriousness.

=Yes.=

Our secondary most likely scenarios include...an attack occurs because it turns out our friend Axer was actually working with some really shady motherfuckers who don’t want money, but outright own him; Smoking Mirror sniffs out Alice and she ends up being used as a sacrificial ritual; and our "lady" gets caught by Alain and that becomes a whole thing.

=Yup.=

And our least likely scenario is...a sudden plague? Why a plague?

=Meteor seems unrealistic and the fault lines around here are too stable for volcanic eruptions.=

... yeah, that tracks.

After they had finished making the list, Logos and Pathos were silent as they realized what they were doing was...kind of dumb.

They could plan for every possibility, every little factor, and every little thing... but they couldn’t actually plan for everything.

After all, [Chaos] was wild, unpredictable, and downright impossible to calculate... just like life itself.

The only thing they could do was just...go along for the ride.

Of course, they weren’t used to being the ones take for a ride.

=Either something happens, or nothing happens. We can only hope for the best.=

...Now back to Rainbowden...

^Welcome to the Seven-Colored Star, mademoiselles. May I see your invitation token?^

^Of course,^ Ren Jia (Jinju Ren) said with the grace and manner befitting a princess as she handed over the seven-colored token to the hostess.

Rainbowden was the city of artisans, and not all artisans made tools and weapons.

Some of them made food.

The Seven-Colored Star was one of the finest restaurants, not just in the city, but on the entire Dozing Salamander continent for two reasons.

First, thanks to the restaurant’s location, it was insanely easy for the chefs and staff of the restaurant to get their hands on the finest cutlery, utensils, and cooking tools that the world had ever seen.

A good knife and a cheap knife may both be able to cut through slices of beef, but the former is able to do so with greater ease in comparison.

Granted, this was also a world where a good knife could be made from metal that could retain heat equivalent to a volcanic eruption or release cold that could rival glaciers, so chefs in this world had to work extra hard to make sure nothing went wrong.

Second, the Seven-Colored Star didn’t have a head chef or a regular team. Instead, the owners of the establishment would regularly have guest head chefs that would use the venue as an opportunity to show off their skills to a wide audience of nobles, wealthy merchants, or powerful warriors looking to relax and enjoy a moment of fine dining.

The fact that some of these wandering chefs just so happened to make dishes made with aether-rich ingredients was also a bonus and possibly the whole reason why people showed up and paid through the nose in the first place.

Thankfully for Ren Jia (Jinju Ren), Mei Yue (Zhen Liu), and Hermit Zhong Wei, who was acting like their bodyguard, they were able to get in with no problem thanks to the invitation token that Alain had gifted her.

Conveniently, it was one of those royal package deals since most royalty never travelled alone anyways.

"You know, under different circumstances, this would’ve been a lovely place for us to have a date," Ren Jia whispered to Mei Yue via an aether channel that blocked out other listeners. "You think once all of this blows over, we can come back and visit? I know the menu will probably be different, but still..."

"I mean..."

While Ren Jia was asking this question, Mei Yue had released some of their spectral zakos to scout around the venue as quickly and quietly as possible.

Thanks to the power of [Chaos] none of the restaurant’s security aether arrays were able to touch them, and none of the guests were able to even notice them. Well, none of the guests that Mei Yue could see.

She still hadn’t spotted Alain in all of this mess, but she was able to use the zako to take a peek at the menu.

To put it as delicately as possible, if Zhen Liu was using the bank account he had while still Thomas Lee in his old life, it would’ve been objectively cheaper to remove his kidney and prepare that for dinner than to order a single dish from this menu.

"On the one hand, that sounds lovely. On the other, I’m like...eighty percent certain I can probably make a dish that can rival any of these high tiered chefs," Mei Yue quietly declared.

"Oh ho? Is that your way of offering to cook me breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of our lives?"

"I’d make you a soup so good, you’d think it’s nectar."

"Pfft!"

^Madam Ren Jia, your token has been authenticated," the hostess stated after she had finish inspecting the piece of Seven-Colors Marble. ^Please follow the attendant, as they will escort you to the Ochre Private Dining Room.^

^Oh?^

^This way, ma’am.^

’Holy-!’

The attendant in question was a six foot Dragon-Bull Bloodliner that looked strong enough to crush Mei Yue’s skull like a grape.

Of course, she made sure to hide this reaction by pretending to be demure about the presence of an unknown man in her vicinity.

This wasn’t that hard of an emotion to fake, Mei Yue just had to channel the feelings of romantic embarrassment Zhen Liu felt whenever the girls decided to aggressively flirt.

"Why does this expression seem more natural on you now than when you’re in your usual state?" Jinju Ren asked, fully knowing the answer.

"Oh hush."

The trio was escorted through the main hall of the restaurant, where they were given a chance to see the full scope of the layout and see that the central portion of the restaurant was a cook pit where the guest chef for the evening and their staff were able to fully display their skills for all to watch.

Tonight’s chef was an Octopus Bloodliner who knew how to handle six swords simultaneously as if they were delicate kitchen knives.

Taking in the sight, Mei Yue briefly imagined creating a chef-based kaijin with the same amount of skill. Alas, she did not dare to try and condense any [Cores] this evening in fear of attracting unwanted attention.

[If it helps, milady, I have been looking into using my flames for other means,] Blazejudicator commented as the thought crossed her mind.

’Huh...I wonder if the food would taste better or worse when cooked with the [Flames of Gluttony],’ Mei Yue mildly mused.

It only took a few moments, but the group eventually arrived at a series of private rooms and was stopped in front of one that had an ochre-colored door. Looking down the hall, Mei Yue noticed that each of the other colored doors had a bodyguard standing in front of them. All of whom were wearing wildly different styles of clothing and armor.

^Apologies, madam, but bodyguards are to remain outside of the private dining rooms,^ the attendant rumbled like a human thunderstorm. ^We wouldn’t our guests to feel uncomfortable, after all.^

There was no small sense of classism in this statement, but he wasn’t entirely wrong either.

Either way, this just meant that Hermit Zhong Wei was forced to wait outside.