Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 117. Expensive Dinner.

“Did you wait long?” Laien asked wryly, seeing as the four men all turned to look at them with varying degree of worry and amusement painted all over their faces.

“You know how long we…” Richt began saying angrily but bit his tongue halfway through and decided to say something else. “Forget it. More importantly, how bad is the damage to the bath?” he asked with an apparent note of frustration present in his voice. Elder Samuel loved to take a long relaxing bath each time he accomplished something of great importance, so if the destruction those boys caused was beyond what one of his earth-element subordinates could handle, then it would be terrible. Elder Samuel was always overworking himself and they all could see it, so if he lost that little bit of pleasant and leisurely time he still had, then he might as well collapse from exhaustion.

“Well.” Laien chuckled with a smile. “You might as well go and see yourself,” he said carefreely, looking to be unconcerned in the slightest.

This completely dismissive attitude of Laien’s was truly giving Richt a headache, but when he thought back to the duel he had witnessed around two hours ago, he could only force himself to shut up. Worst case scenario Elder Samuel would be forced to use a different bath; it would still arguably be better than annoying someone who they wanted to become a valuable ally in the future.

As such, Richt approached the door while sighing silently and reluctantly opened them, expecting to see a true scene of carnage. However, as he kept looking around the bath worriedly, he merely found a few displaced wooden stools and some mess amongst the soaps and oils; nothing worth fussing about. “How come there’s nothing wrong? There clearly were sounds of marble breaking… can it be the bottom of the actual bath?” he asked himself silently, seriously considering going into the water to check and make sure.

“Such a worrywart,” Laien said with a chuckle. “We fixed what we damaged, so you don’t need to worry. You can go ahead and check everything out yourself if you don’t believe me though,” he added, the corner of his lips curving upwards in a sarcastic smile.

“…” Despite feeling quite angry with Laien, Richt merely sighed and shook his head. He was already used to bickering with someone who made much worse remarks with a much worse attitude almost every time the two of them saw each other, so he could deal with some cocky attitude from a twelve-year-old. “I’m fine. So, where do you guys want to go next?” he asked neutrally and politely, betraying no sign of particular emotions in his voice.

“To eat something, dunno where to though,” Laien joined his hands behind his head and replied casually, much to Richt’s surprise.

“I can suggest a place then,” Richt mentioned after a second, all the while feeling confused about Laien’s attitude towards him. Did Laien dislike him or want to make him angry, or was being sarcastic towards people he wasn’t particularly friendly with simply a part of his nature? He wasn’t really sure yet, but he would find out sooner or later either way. “We’ve got our own chefs here who take care of the meals. Preparing something for the five of you shouldn’t be a problem for them since there’s still time before dinner, so how about we take you to our canteen?” he proposed casually.

“Sounds good.” Laien nodded and looked at the others. Judging by their expressions, they had nothing against the idea, so it was settled. “Mm, lead the way then,” he said with a smile after returning his gaze to Richt.

“Very well,” Richt said half-formally and started walking towards the canteen. He glanced briefly over his shoulder to see if the boys were following him, then after confirming that they were, he continued onwards.

“We might as well get a little snack too,” Jugal mused with a slight smile and yawned ostentatiously. The noise towards the end was amusing, but overall he had gotten quite bored waiting for this bunch to finish playing around in the bath. However, he was already satisfied enough thanks to the fight those kids had shown him, so he didn’t even slide into the mood to grumble.

A few moments later, their whole group of nine arrived by the kitchen, where the group of chefs and their assistants appeared to be preparing the ingredients for the dinner.

“So, food for nine?” the head chef asked leisurely. He and his team were regularly preparing food for nearly one thousand people living in the quarters of Elder Samuel’s faction, what included around five hundred experts in the Realm of Heroes. Compared to that, a meal for such a little group wouldn’t even be enough to put a dent in their schedule. Thankfully though, the vast majority of experts present only ate one very big meal per week, else they would have never been able to cook enough food for those gluttonous marital and spiritual masters.

“I guess so?” Laien said and glanced at the four guards of theirs. Were they in the mood for eating too or would they just stand on the side?

“Yeah, why not.”

“Naturally.”

Richt and Jugal said simultaneously, then exchanged an annoyed glance. Oh, just why did Elder Samuel need to assign both of them to this task?

“Any special wishes?” the head chef inquired politely. He was aware who those five youths in front of him were and he knew that two of the men accompanying them were lieutenants of Elder Samuel’s private army. Naturally, he would provide people with such a high status with an appropriate treatment.

“Hm,” Laien thought for a second, then answered with a smile. “I’d like a big serving without any fat meat and some good sweet wine to that.”

“Anything’s fine for me,” Yin said right afterwards. He wasn’t a picky eater, so he could enjoy eating just about anything.

“As long as it’s not gooey, anything will be okay,” Arslan said in turn. He still remembered how his father gave him some clams to taste and they were absolutely terrible. Ever since then, he couldn’t handle eating food that was too jelly.

“I’d like the Beef Course,” Mikaela made an order eagerly. Unlike Laien, Yin, and Arslan, he was used to eating high-class cuisine in various restaurants, so he knew exactly what to order for himself.

“The same and a bottle of le Grande for me,” Raphael said with a meaningful smile, causing the head chef to first raise his eyebrows, then laugh heartily.

“I’m to understand that the bill is entirely on Elder Samuel?” the head chef asked rhetorically and smiled back at Raphael, who shrugged his shoulders, pretending to be oblivious to the fact that he had ordered a bottle of famous wine from the Banxi Kingdom that was no longer produced. They did have quite a few of them saved in stock, but one bottle went for as much as two hundred platinum coins on the free market. This order of Raphael’s truly was rather extravagant.

“Go ahead and seat yourselves somewhere in the Elder’s Dining Room. Your orders will be brought to you in fifteen minutes,” the head chef said with a clear laugh. “And you four, any special wishes?” he asked the adults after sending the five youths off and quickly received their orders. “As with the young masters, your food will also come in fifteen minutes. Well, now fourteen,” he said and turned around unceremoniously, disappearing into the kitchen and getting to work with his staff.

“Ooh, pretty comfy,” Laien said happily as they entered the medium-sized dining room connected to the main canteen. Although the place wasn’t in the far-western type which he came to greatly enjoy, the simple large table and the three rows of soft, bench-like seats that went along the walls served for a fairly nice arrangement. There appeared to be a basin with water by the entrance too, just so one could wash his hands if he wished to; it really was quite convenient.

“We’ll be outside,” Richt informed from a few steps back. The portions ordered by their four were large enough for it to be troublesome to place them all on that one table, so it was more practical for them to eat at the spacious canteen instead of crowding in the Elder’s Dining Room.

“Kaay,” Laien responded half-heartedly and waved his hand without turning around. Had this been Richt’s first encounter with Laien, he would have been surprised by Laien’s lack of manners, but by now, he no longer paid it that much attention.

A few breath’s worth of time later, the five youths seated themselves around the corner of the room. There had been some trouble though, as both Arslan and Mikaela wanted to sit beside Laien while only one free spot was available. However, they managed to resolve their conflict peacefully; since they all chose to sit at the corner, Arslan ended up being to Laien’s left, right next to him, while Mikaela seated himself just nearby, at the other side of the corner. As for Yin and Raphael, they each respectively took the free spots next to Laien and Mikaela without joining the fuss.

And just as the five of team seated themselves, a waiter entered the room with two bottles of wine in both of his hands. “Le Grande and Mon Amour, two of the best wines known to man,” the waiter said with a polite smile and placed the two bottles on the table, without approaching the spot the five boys were sitting at. “The cherry or the grape, which do you wish to taste first?” he inquired with a calm smile and took out five crystal glasses from his interspatial ring.

“Le Grande for me, please,” Raphael said without a second thought, his gaze glued to the red bottle of sweet, cherry wine.

“Mon Amour was it? That one,” Laien said eagerly, wondering how would the taste of this grape wine compare to the one he had gotten from Cran before leaving the Sarkcente Kingdom.

“I will have the cherry one,’ Yin said with a smile. He had been having mostly grape wine for the past months, so it was the highest time for a change of pace.

“I’m good,” Mikaela said when the water’s gaze moved to him. He did try drinking wine before, but he didn’t like it that much, so he preferred to abstain.

“I’d rather have something else,” Arslan said as the last one, unconsciously using a half-formal tone with the waiter as his father usually spoke to the servants he wasn’t familiar with in the same way.

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“Understood,” the waiter used a small amount of spiritual energy and carefully, transformed it into wind with which he uncorked the two exquisite bottles of wine. Then, he poured three glasses by hand; two of Le Grande and one of Mon Amour, and finally, used magic to send both the two bottles and the five glasses along the table in a very smooth and practiced manner.

“A spiritual master of the second rank,” the five youths, including Arslan, who had gained the rudimentary insights into the Aspect of Awareness a few hours ago, noticed instantly. To think that a spiritual master of the second rank would serve as a waiter! It looked like Elder Samuel valued the comfort of his taste buds highly; and his subordinates surely were grateful to him for that, too.

“Here’s the standard drinking set,” he said with a smile and extended his hand, causing a few dozen of bottles with various drinks, from whiskey, through wines and ending at various juices, to appear on the table along fifteen cup-like glasses. Just like previously, he sent the whole set towards the five boys, sending five of the glasses towards them and leaving the other ten further away. “If you should happen to want something more, please pull by the by one of the red strings that hang behind your seats. I shall come immediately,” he informed and after waiting for exactly three more seconds to see if one of the youths didn’t wish to speak up, he bowed and left.

“Let’s see, let’s see,” Laien picked the glass with grape wine up and after savoring how good it looked, he took a sip of it. “Hoh, it’s definitely a different taste,” he said with a smile. “It’s different than our southern grape wine. It’s great, maybe even a little better than ours,” he praised contentedly, not knowing that the bottle that just the one hundred milliliters glass of ‘Mon Amour’ which he had in his hand was worth fifty platinum coins; more than twice as much as the already pricey Le Grande which Raphael ordered.

“This one’s really great,” Yin mentioned after trying the cherry Le Grande. Out of all the cherry wines he had had so far, this one was absolutely the best. It was so good that he took another generous sip before putting it down and glancing at Laien. “Want to try this one?” he asked, though he already knew the answer before the question left his mouth. Chuckling, he exchanged the glasses with Laien and gave a try to the grape Mon Amour, while Laien tasted the cherry Le Grande.

“Oh!” The two of them exclaimed at the same time and exchanged a surprised look. Tastes really were a personal matter, after all! In Laien’s case, he only liked the grape wine from here a little better than the one he already had, but Yin found it to be incredibly delicious, even more so than the cherry one he had praised so highly. And on the other hand, contrary to his expectations Laien discovered that he liked the cherry wine from this place even better than his favorite grape wines from the past two and a half months. As a result, both of them were very pleasantly surprised.

“Don’t get too used to drinking those things,” Raphael said with a laugh while sipping his own glass of cherry Le Grande. “The cherry one goes for two hundred platinum coins, while the grape one is the most expensive wine available in our country; it costs five hundred per bottle,” he mentioned, expecting Laien and Yin to be at least a little surprised… but the two of them only showed expressions that were akin to ‘Ah, is that so?’ in response.

It only made sense though. Not only were Laien and Yin mostly unconcerned about the matters regarding money, their total net worth, excluding the items that were so valuable they couldn’t be priced, exceeded one hundred thousand platinum coins. It was an amount of wealth unimaginable to even the very majority of the nobles in the world! A few hundred platinum coins would still sting a little if they needed to part with it, but it would by no means make them feel all that concerned.

“Should we buy three of each?” Laien wondered aloud, causing Raphael to choke on the sip of wine he had just taken. Three of each?! That amounted to two thousand one hundred platinum coins! Could those two really spend so much money with a light hand?

It wasn’t only Raphael who was surprised, however. Both Mikaela and Arslan were looking at Laien with wide eyes; they already knew that his talent was beyond extraordinary, but to think he also had a deep enough background to carry around so much money! Even the two of them, as the children of powerful houses, each ruling one country, received a pocket money of a few dozen diamond or platinum coins each month. To accumulate over two thousands of them and spend them at once… it was something that caused them to shiver from nervousness just due to imagining it.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Yin agreed straightforwardly. Having something to reward themselves with was very good for keeping a healthy mental state, so in one way or another, buying this wine would aid their training. Still… that was just a little excuse they were making to themselves, but after all, they didn’t really have any real way to spend their money in a productive way, so they didn’t regret using a portion of it for to satisfy their desire for something tasty to drink.

“Haha,” Raphael shook his head a little, opting not to make any comment about what just happened. He felt like he didn’t want to know how much wealth Laien and Yin had actually accumulated; it would only make him feel that his own hard-earned savings were far too insignificant in comparison.

“Say,” Mikaela spoke up with a half-intentional cute and pleading look on his face. “If I asked you to buy me something too, would you?”

“Depends what,” Laien replied with a laugh. If it was something of no practical use, then he wouldn’t agree easily

“A spear!” Mikaela responded almost without delay, stunning the other four boys with his eagerness.

“Don’t you already have your sword?” Raphael asked, wondering why would Mikaela want to start using a spear all of the sudden.

“I mean, I do but…” Mikaela began saying, then scratched his cheek with his finger, his face reddening slightly. “You and Laien both use spears… and when I saw you fighting, I thought it would be great if I could learn to wield the spear the same way,” he said shyly, only now realizing that his thoughts were a bit embarrassing when actually voiced with proper words.

Hearing Mikaela say something like that, Laien and Raphael couldn’t help but smile in a very genuine, warm manner. Still, Raphael was more or less aware that he was only included there as an addition; what likely inspired Mikaela were the water-element spear arts of Laien’s. Considering how similar the two of them had already proved to be, it could almost be expected that Mikaela would also come to wield the spear skillfully, but was it really so?

“Mika,” Raphael began saying in a gentle tone. “Didn’t you try learning how to use all weapons before settling with the sword? I get that you want to be more like Laien, but you shouldn’t just follow him in every little aspect,” he reminded, worrying that Mikaela would go too far in trying to imitate everything about Laien’s skillset. He had seen Mikaela using a spear and the two of them even fought using spears for fun in the past, but as he saw it, Mikaela really wasn’t suite to this kind of a weapon; he couldn’t naturally grasp the way to wield and fight with a spear, so even if he forced himself to master it at a decent level, he would be only wasting his own potential.

Alas, as honest as Raphael’s intentions and as true as his words were, Mikaela didn’t like to hear them at all. He pursed his lips slightly and looked down at the table, not sure what to say. He felt that he had become a little closer to being amazing in terms of his magic and insights thanks to Laien, so he wanted to do the same with his weapons wielding skills. He remembered well that he didn’t show any particular talent in spearmanship… eh, maybe he did get ahead of himself by making an unnecessary request of Laien without thinking it through first, after all.

Seeing Mikaela sulk with an adorable expression on his face, Laien laughed quietly and spoke up with a smile. “You know, it’s perfectly normal to imitate others when we learn new things. With time, you will make your own smaller or bigger adjustments and make all the skills you have your own, but to do that, you will first need to copy and mimic others,” he explained calmly and in the meanwhile, he was able to see how Mikaela’s expression slowly brightened.

“With that being said, I don’t trust your teachers all that much,” he added wryly and gave Mikaela a meaningful smile. “I don’t mind helping you get a spear, but how about we try it out first? We can spar tomorrow morning and see which type of a weapon you do best with,” he proposed, thinking that it would be the best solution. If Mikaela proved to have a hidden talent with the spear, then he would gladly buy him a spear to train with. After all, comparatively speaking, the best of the spears would cost as much if not less as those six bottles of wine he and Yin were getting. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal to gift Mikaela with one.

“Kay!” Mikaela said happily and nodded very eagerly. He did come to the conclusion that his request was a bit silly, but now he didn’t worry about it any longer. Instead, he was looking forward to tomorrow even more than before, if that was even possible. He really was enjoying himself greatly today and he wished to be able to spend as much time with Raphael and Laien in the next days, weeks, and even months, too!

“We’ve got that settled then,” Laien said with a laugh and grabbed his, or to be exact, Yin’s glass of wine and took another sip. Damn, this cherry wine really was amazing!

“Haa,” Raphael sighed secretly but smiled regardless. “He really handles Mika really well. It does make me a bit jealous,” he thought a bit helplessly, but chose not to worry about this matter too much. If Mika ended up liking Laien better than him, then so be it. He wouldn’t be shallow enough to try and undermine their friendship just because he was being jealous about his childhood friend being ‘stolen’ from him… though it didn’t mean that he was planning to back off and merely watch as the two of them interacted without also joining into the fun.

“The food should come soon, I hope,” Laien thought aloud, his stomach growling quietly, reminding him to hurry up and fill it up with some concrete nutrition.

“In a few more minutes,” Raphael mentioned casually. “Around five I think?” he added with a fair degree of confidence. He had always had a good grasp of how much time passed, as relatively useless of an ability as it was. And by the looks of it, five minutes of random chatting later, his gut feeling proved to be right as the waiter entered the room and placed five huge, steaming hot dinner courses onto the table.

Each of those courses consisted of as much food as ten average non-cultivating adult males would be able to eat if they stuffed themselves to the very limits and looked and smelled absolutely delicious, causing the five of them to salivate uncontrollably. The quality of the food here truly appeared to be beyond great!

As such, after quickly telling the waiter that they wanted to buy six bottles of wine, Laien and Yin joined the other three in feasting and devouring the masses of delicious food. The waiter himself, however, was dumbstruck enough that he forgot about his job for a moment. Those kids wanted to pay up around two thousand platinum coins to buy wine? He would need to consult that with the head chef… but forget that! Just how starved were those five for them to be stuffing themselves so quickly?! Yes, the food here was good, but taking no time to savor it was such a waste!

“Head chef already had extra big portions made for them… but they might still ask for seconds,” the waiter thought a bit resignedly. It was their policy to be prepared to deliver seconds without much time delay at all, so he needed to inform the head chef of this as soon as possible. And yeah, he also needed to mention those six bottles of wine the boys wanted to buy off of them.

A moment later, when he told the head chef about those two things, he was met with a reaction he expected to see.

“Haaah?” the head chef frowned, appearing to be confused and conflicted. “I’m glad that they enjoy my food, but to think they are eating it so fast, what a pity!” he said with a heavy sigh, causing the waiter to react in a ‘That’s what you were concerned about?!’ kind of a manner.

However, the head chef instructed coolly without taking notice of his water’s reaction, “Go and ask them properly if they are going to want more food instead of guessing. You can guess in the canteen, but not with truly important guests. Also, make sure to ask what they liked the best and if they have any feedback, too! Anyway, here you go, three bottles of Le Grand and three bottles of Mon Amour. Take one thousand platinum coins from them, that will be enough.”

The waiter almost choked on his own tongue but managed to keep a neutral look on his face before nodding and walking off. Good Heavens! This way an over fifty percent discount! When Elder Samuel would learn of the expenses this one dinner issued, including all the rare and hard-to-obtain ingredients that were used to make those five courses for those young masters, he would probably collapse mentally. Over one thousand coins of a discount, five hundred coins for the mere ingredients used up and another seven hundred for those two bottles they had given away for free. All in all, it was well over two thousand platinum coins spent in under half an hour.

“Ahaha… It’s a good thing I’m only a waiter here. It’s not my responsibility,” he mused with a smile and focused on his job once again.