We finally found a half decent tavern with a room for us. Sure, it only had two beds, but Sam was small enough to sleep with Anna and the demon princess didn’t need to sleep. I could let the nano-chatte take over my speaking while I was sleeping so it’d look like I wasn’t actually sleeping the demon princess. We didn’t go to our room immediately as Christian had a tavern to empty out.

“So… an endless flagon of ale for the big guy, sparkling water for the small one, a smoothie for the red-head and…” The waiter skipped over me since I already told her I wasn’t ordering a drink, and was waiting on the demon princess to say something.

“Another endless flagon!” The demoness said with unparalleled enthusiasm.

“Great. Just fantastic. If you aren’t drinking, you can skip straight to meal, knight.” The waiter turned to me as she said that. My armour did look like a standard paladin’s armour they wore to overcompensate for their lack of freedom thanks to their oh so holy law.

“Didn’t you hear me? He’s a robot. Robots don’t eat.” The demoness said, much to my annoyance. Everyone had figured out I was going along with her calling me a robot. I mean, I had been destroyed and remoulded so many times that most of my body was mechanical or a mechanical imitation of biology.

“We can eat. It’s just that other fuels are more efficient. Efficiency doesn’t matter when fuel is free.” The demon princess nods, pretending to understand what I just said. “I’ll take an order of fries.” I wasn’t particularly hungry, and just wanted something comforting to eat. I was a very basic man when I was younger, so my mind slowly became accustomed to plain food being comforting. The waiter nodded while Chrisitan looked at me with a confused expression.

“Just chips? Don’t you Americans put something on it?” Anna was angered by everything he just said.

“First, it’s not ‘chips’, it’s fries. You’re not in hoity-toity tea land anymore, and no, we don’t put random disgusting shit on our food.” Sam and the demon were confused about what they were even arguing about.

“Disgusting? What’s so disgusting about cheese on chips.” Anna scoffed at Christian’s defence.

“You don’t even melt it there! It’s just cold cheese on boiling hot fries. And don’t even get me started about the abomination that is curry and fries, or gravy and cheese on fries. At least melt the damn cheese!” Christian rubbed his face from bewilderment and then set his hands down solidly on the table.

“All those are delicious, you just don’t know what’s good. Have you even tried them?” The demoness pulled on my arm to get my attention.

“What’re they talking about? What are chips?” The demoness said before the argument continued.

“I don’t need to try them to know they’re bad! Have you tasted shit? No? So how do you know it’s bad?” Said Anna. I was already getting sick of their back and forth.

“That’s enough you two!” I slammed my fist on the table and the two of them stared at me. “Christian has the right to enjoy his objectively bad food and call fries whatever he wants to call them. I’m all here for the British slander, but you can’t say we do much better. The only good thing America does is let other people in that can cook good food. Everyone knows that Mexicans make the best food.” The two of them stopped before putting their hands in the air and leaning back into their chairs.

“Why do they still serve this type of food here? Hasn’t enough time passed for new world food to be sent here?” Said Sam.

“What food would you guys even have? Like, sure, you have all sorts of different monsters, and by proxy lots of different meats, but dragon meat is still the same as chicken meat but with a slightly different taste.” Sam tilted his head as soon as I mentioned dragon meat.

“How’d you know dragons taste like chicken?” Said Sam.

“Everything tastes like chicken. It’s either that or pork. Only in rare circumstances do things taste like beef, or even rarer yet mutton.” I said after remembering some random video I watched on why everything tastes like chicken.

“What other than pigs tastes like pork?” Said Christian, to which the demoness immediately responded.

“Humans.” Everyone went silent after she said that. We continued staying silent until the waiter arrived with our drinks and my food.

“Huh. That was quick.” I remarked as the waiter walked away. As soon as I saw Christian lock eyes with the demon princess and the flagon of ale with free refills in their hand, I knew I’d be in for a hard night.

“You’re way in over your head if you think you can beat me in a drinking game, demon lassie.” Christian said, already knowing the demoness’s intent.

“You’re way in over your head. Demons literally can’t get drunk.” Christian chuckled at the demon’s claim.

“Can’t, or haven’t tried hard enough to get drunk.” I sighed and looked down at my pathetic little fries before starting a game of chess with the nano-chatte in my mind.

“See! I was right. You humans are so weak that alcohol affects you this badly.” Thirty minutes had passed since the two began their challenge. Unlike the last contest Christian participated in, this one wasn’t a hard fought fight. This one was a one sided massacre.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Christian, come on, stop before you throw up.” Said Anna. Christian was incredibly red as he finished his hundredth flagon. He couldn’t even hold the flagon right anymore as his hand began moving even though he tried to stay perfectly still.

“O-One more… Just… One more and she’ll break.” In-between his attempts of talking clearly that could only be understood through heavy nano-chatte translation, he was coughing hard enough to rip his lungs, or so it felt as the entire table shook every time he started coughing. He couldn’t even stand up to get a refill, and no employee would even give him one.

“Chrisitan, we’re not getting you another cup. Accept defeat and go to our room. Anna, you carry him there.” It felt natural for me to command everyone at this point. I was the only one with a sense of direction and a clear goal. Anna was content with the amount of control she had, Christian didn’t have anything to worry about, and Sam was submissive enough to follow any order I gave him.

“Robot! Give me a fry.” She opened her mouth expectantly while Anna was carrying Christian away. I quickly took a fry and flung it in her mouth while cursing the nano-chatte for beating me again. “How do robots even eat?” I quickly reformed the nano-chatte so that my helmet would disappear.

“We can form human heads.” The demoness looked at me with a bewildered look. Her emotions were a lot more obvious than everyone else. I could read her like a book.

“Why a human one? Why not use a demon head?” I just had to hope she never found out about the fact I’m lying through my teeth.

“Humans are easier to imitate. They’re simpler.” I finally started eating my fries, making the nano-chatte change my tongue so they would actually taste like I wanted them to.

“Ha! Makes sense. Humans think they’re so smart when they’re just a bunch of meat bags. Robots are way cooler! You adapted faster than I did. That’s like… impossible!” Actual praise that wasn’t meant to be manipulative? What an unexpectedly pleasant surprise even though she complimented me at the expense of everyone else. Before I could say something back, I heard something that piqued my interest.

“Sorry, we don’t really need a healer anymore.” I turned back to see a party of five. One knight not wearing actual armour, three girls who very broadly fit the archetype of a mage, a priestess and a bruiser, and a thin boy with black hair on the other side of the table.

“W-What? You can’t just throw me aside like that! You know I’m trying hard.” Was he getting betrayed? Shit. I wasn’t about to let another person get duped into falling for the Revifier’s tricks after getting betrayed.

“The saint already does what you do but better. We never get hurt anyway.” Oh, I see what’s about to happen. After he gets kicked out, the Revifier will hook him up with power and the such, while the saint’s buffs and healing start behaving weirdly and turn the competent party who could recover after hiring another healer into incompetent buffoons who couldn’t even defeat goblins.

“Have my fries, I’ll go talk to those guys.” The demon was immediately distracted as I reformed my helmet and walked to the party’s table. “You five. What’s happening and why are you kicking him out?” Everyone except the knight looked at me weirdly until the knight stopped leaning back into his chair and extended my hand to shake it. I shook his hand and felt him use his secret skill on me. He was using ‘inspect’ on me. I immediately put the nano-chatte to work and made it block any information that he could use to his advantage by dampening my soul in a specific way. He only knew I was a knight who defeated a demon princess and had a talk with the Revifier.

“Welcome, knight. We’re just weeding out a useless member of our party.” We stopped shaking hands as I looked to my side to see the trembling boy.

“How is he useless? Don’t you know the difference between healers and saints?” The knight shook his head while the saintess sent me a scornful look. “Saintesses only heal you until the gods decide they shouldn’t, and the gods really care about your morals. Letting this boy out to dry like that would make the gods incredibly angry, and make your saintess all but useless.” The knight’s eyes widen as he looks at the saintess, but then back at me.

“So what? Are we supposed to keep dead weight around?” I sighed and looked right into the knight’s soul.

“Every class has a purpose, even if you don’t know it yet. The gods have crafted each and every single one of them to serve a distinct purpose. Faith is very brittle, so the high your saintess is feeling right now will faze away and leave you with nothing but empty blessings and failed healing.” The knight went to interrupt me, but then thought for a second.

“You… I guess an expert like you would know best. We’ll keep him around for now. Thank you for the advice, fellow knight.” I patted the small boy on the back before leaving the table, seeing that the demoness had bought another twenty orders of fries.

“How did you know to do that?” Said the nano-chatte.

“What do you mean?” I asked back.

“You know what I mean. I was about to tell you about them and how the kid would’ve become an enemy in our future if we wouldn’t do anything about his betrayal. How did you already know about that?” I didn’t know what the nano-chatte was talking about. I didn’t do it for some complex reason.

“I just did it because it was the right thing to do.”