He was really starting to worry now. It was one thing when he thought the partnership that he was entering was with an intelligent but unwise creature just bumbling through life. It was another thing entirely when said monster revealed that the combined efforts of the city’s most powerful warriors couldn’t even scratch it. Not that their attacks never connected, but that they literally couldn’t harm the thing.

He had been concerned and a little overwhelmed before. This, however, was completely ridiculous.

Why does the prison common room look like a restaurant?

People were eating and chatting with smiles on everyone’s faces. Sandwiches seemed to be the primary course, but he saw some people with more interesting looking meals, all of which seemed to have been pan fried and smelled better than almost every meal he’d ever tasted.

Almost.

That little fucker.

A smile tugged at Nerick’s lips, but it remained overtaken by concern. If it could even warp the prison system to such an extent so quickly, just what else could it do?

Wait, what was that?

“Hey, you.”

The guard ignored him until a firm hand grabbed his shoulder.

“What are you eating?”

“Hmm? Oh this?”

The man spoke between bites, unwilling to stop eating just to entertain a stranger.

“It’s called a kebab. Fried meat and veggies on a stick. Gave him the idea and he gave me one for free!”

The city was large enough that, despite them all being guards, he only knew a handful of the people in the room. Becoming a gate guard was a lot of work and, more often than not, resulted in not enough time for socializing with their peers. This overly excited one was just one of the many he didn’t recognize in the room, and he had been paying close attention to all of the goblin’s customers. At least, he had prior to the arrest.

Nerick narrowed his eyes at the man. This kebab he was eating, like everything else here, was street food. That wasn’t the problem.

“Buddy?”

Ah, he’d been standing around silently again.

“And who gave him the sharpened sticks?”

Suddenly, eating became so important that his interrogation victim could no longer spare a moment to answer the question. Nerick sighed as someone else chimed in.

“Lighten up. With all of us here we could handle one goblin armed with tiny wooden sticks. Levels aren’t everything, greenhorn.”

It was an older man with an unidentifiable level still below the hundreds that responded to his question. While his exact level was unknown to Nerick, the man’s level range and identity were not. The short gray hair and eye patch weren’t the most uncommon sight, but he knew that the later was only being worn because people were eating. The captain of the city guard normally preferred to show the world the brutality he had to endure in his quest for power. A mostly empty eye socket tended to illustrate the point quite well, but the grotesque display did little for most people’s appetites.

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“True enough.”

Nerick lied easily to his captain, which would have been harder to do under normal circumstances; but currently, everyone was a bit preoccupied. Speaking of which.

“So… where do I get one of those kebabs?”

The man suddenly found his voice and was just as quickly filled with pride.

“You either have to be lucky enough to work a shift with the goblin or you gotta pay a guard assigned to him. No way they’d be smuggling them out for free with the risks involved.”

The risks couldn’t be too high if even their captain was happily eating smuggled food in the middle of their common area, but Nerick wasn’t trying to start any fights. The real truth of the situation was obvious. The goblin’s food was so good that anyone would happily pay money and break the law just for a bite, even those charged with upholding the laws they were breaking. But he wasn’t here to pretend that he had the moral high ground. It had been four days since goblin chef’s arrest and that could only mean one thing.

“So, what does a kebab cost?”

He needed some more of that divine food.

“Two large copper.”

“Fuck.”

Sadly for him, these people knew what that food was worth, unlike the one actually cooking it.

“What about a sandwich?”

“Those are only six small coppers, but they tend to go up every day. Demand keeps rising and the guards can only smuggle so fast.”

Four days and the goblin had already corrupted their entire policing force to this degree. What would happen if the order came down tomorrow to perform the execution? Would these men really kill the creature that was feeding them and, for some of them, paying them more than the baron giving the orders?

Just what have I gotten myself into?

Not for the first time, Nerick began to worry that he might have bitten off more than he could chew.

“Alright, who do I have to talk to about getting a sandwich?”

But, if he was going to be stuck in the shit anyway, he might test just how much he could get out of it first.

----------------------------------------

“Alright, that’s another sixteen sandwiches and three kebabs.”

The guard read to him from what they called an order sheet. Chef couldn’t know this, but the situation he’d created here was not all that different from a diner kitchen just with way less room. At his request, the guards had even removed the bed so he’d have more space to work. That suited Chef just fine. After all, he didn’t really need to sleep so long as he meditated every so often.

The goblin reached out his hand to receive eight big copper coins and two small ones before making them vanish into his Breadbox. This experience had certainly taught him at least one thing, well two if the kebab could be counted, but that felt like cheating. The only new part of the kebab was the presentation.

Regardless, he learned that his Breadbox had gotten bigger with his recent level ups and skill increases! That was pretty handy!

Oh, he also learned that he had been hilariously undercharging for his food. When challenged on why he should make them so much food, the men that hung out in front of his cell eventually admitted to being paid to bring his food to other guards. Apparently, they sometimes swapped out who was ‘guarding’ him, though Chef never paid enough attention to any of them to tell them apart. Regardless, some of the guys that had been guarding him on a different shift wanted to eat his meals while off the clock and were willing to pay for the privilege.

Chef, of course, demanded half. When they tried to scam him, he slapped them on the wrist and repeated himself. He also learned that he could hit harder than he thought based off the welt the man got. The lies stopped shortly after.

After negotiations finished, he gifted the injured man an extra sandwich as a show of good faith. It was amazing how willing people would be to withstand physical abuse if food was involved. In retrospect, there might not have been that many differences between these people and goblins. At the very least, humans had a good understanding of the important things in life.

Number one was food. Number two was life. Number three was irrelevant. Who the fuck cared so long as they had food and could keep living?

“Coming right up, mister guard man.”

And if he had his this thing working for him down here, he might as well try to get more out of it.

“Say, neither of you happen to know how to make butter do you?”

A casual question accompanied by the summoning of two large copper coins.

“Because I know a guy willing to pay for a recipe.”

If he was going to be here for a while, he might as well milk it for all he could.