Rina and Kim looked at each other and they were about to tell the man that they weren’t open for business yet, but Han suddenly opened the door where he was butchering the meat and walked out with a perfect plate of food.
“Rina, Kim, show him to a table. Lily, help me get a glass of cold water for him, and then you can help put the rest of the meat back there on the flames I set up. Please follow these two ladies sir, your meal is ready”
The man’s eyes lit up and all the girls looked back at Han in shock! When did he get the plate of food ready!?
Han eyed them all for a moment before he nodded his head to the side in a ‘get going’ gesture. Lily quickly moved away to do as she was told and Rina and Miss Kim both led the man to the table beside the window. Han took the food back to the counter where drinks were to be served and he made the man watch as he poured a small serving of alcohol over the meat and lit it on fire with a snap of his finger. The smell that wafted off the meat almost made the man’s heart stop and his mouth watered like a tap.
Once the fire died down, Han took the plate to the man and placed it in front of him. Han already knew that it was good practice to roast meat under wine since that would make the taste of the meat really pop out. It was one of the less important things he learned while he was back on earth, and he hoped it would also hold here.
Han stood beside the table and waited for the man to take the first bite of food. It was a slow process and for the first time in a long time, Han found his heart beating louder than normal in anticipation. Would he like it? Was it too much for his tastes? These thoughts ran through Han’s mind and brought a feeling of nostalgic nervousness. Han had already forgotten what it felt like to be nervous!
But once the man took the first bite, he stilled before he then let it the loudest sigh Han ever heard from another human being. The man put the fork back into the plate and Han blinked in shock as he grabbed his face and his shoulder started to shake.
Hold on, are you crying!? Was it that good!?
True to Han’s deduction, the man was literally crying tears of bliss. He had never tasted something so… Perfect in his life. He was someone who came to this Temple a long time ago and he already gave up on finding good food here since almost everybody was only interested in climbing the tower, and those who weren’t climbing the tower were not very good at making food like this.
It was like he was tasting heaven itself for the first time!
“Are you the one who cooked this meal?”
The man spoke to Han in a soft, kind tone and Han feared for a moment that the man would ask him to marry him. I don’t really swing that way, you know. But Han got rid of that thought and answered he was the one who cooked it. The gratitude which came out of the man’s mouth next was one of such emotional intensity that it made Han feel like he just saved a soul from damnation.
It was a simple ‘thank you’, but Han could tell that there was so much more said behind those words. All Han could do was smile and accept it.
“You’re welcome”
Behind Han, Miss Kim and Rina tried to fully understand what the man was going through to be speaking like that. They were not used to the constant fighting that the chosen have been going through for so long, so to them, it wasn’t something to cry about when you eat a good meal, but Han could understand perfectly.
The man finished his meal slowly and accepted the glass of water that Rina gave to him. Once he was finished, he dropped a gold coin on the table and Han’s eyes widened when he saw it.
“Hey! Are you sure? Isn’t this too much?”
Han already knew about the currency of this world. The gold coin was the largest currency, followed by the silver coins and the bronze coins. Ten silver coins would make one gold and ten bronze would make a silver. But the reason Han was so shocked was because of how valuable the gold coin was. The cost of all the tables and chairs in the restaurant was only three gold coins, so for this man to pay so much for just a plate of food… It was too much!
The man just smiled.
“If anybody pays any less for something of this quality, then they deserve to be punished. Take pride in how much value you’re giving people here. Since I’m the first customer, I’ll let you use me as a benchmark for all your other customers so you don’t get cheated!”
The man said this happily before leaving while waving back at them. Han looked down at the gold coin and smiled. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to come to this Temple.
…
For the next few days, the restaurant opened up properly. Han tried his hardest to teach Lily and Rina all he could about cooking the meat, but no matter how much he taught them, they could never meet up to his level.
Lily was learning at a very fast pace though and Han wondered if she developed a new passive skill for it, but he knew that she was incapable of creating new skills, so he got rid of such thoughts. Rina really shocked Han with how well she took to cooking again. She was already a good cook from the beginning, but now that he was teaching her, she was growing at an outstanding rate. Before even three days, she already learned all the basics of handling the meat and she already started to make some of the normal meals they would serve.
Han realized that his food might be a little… Too good for them to be serving it every day. So they all decided that they would make his food a special that people could order separately. The normal meals made by Rina and Lily were priced in the range of two to three silver coins and Han’s meals were a gold coin a plate.
Miss Kim took over the marketing of the restaurant and she was so good at it that Han couldn’t help but be impressed. The first thing she did was make friends with one woman who came to their restaurant. Han wondered why Miss Kim chose that woman specifically. The woman was a feline cheetah with yellow ears, hair, and eyes, but there was nothing really special about her other than that. Miss Kim didn’t say anything more than calling it a woman’s intuition and Han just left it like that. He was sure she wouldn’t do anything too dangerous, so he didn’t worry about her much.
It was a little surprise when the cheetah-woman came back the next day with five of her friends and they all asked for a meal. This continued for a while and every time they came Miss Kim made sure she always went to greet them all especially. Soon, one of those five friends brought her entire guild to eat at the restaurant and for the first time since they opened the restaurant, they had people who made this place a regular restaurant to eat in.
Han just laughed. He didn’t understand how women did it, but a woman’s intuition is really a scary thing.
…
Han left the restaurant in the care of Rina and Miss Kim a lot because he was usually not around. Since he already established the restaurant and it was now making quite a lot of money, Han decided he would start his conquest. Well, it was more like an adventure with how easy the monsters on the first to the ninth floor were, but Han likes to think of it as a conquest!
The floors above the first floor were interesting, to say the least. Each floor had two ends, on one end was a portal where you would appear, and on the other end was another portal which you could use to go to the next floor. In between these two portals is a hoard of monsters that you have to kill or escape from before you can leave this floor. The monsters were usually mutated versions of the wild beasts you would see on the first floor. Some of them were very large and others just had some form of modification like extra-long claws or sharper teeth.
The curious thing about the portals is that once you have been to a floor before you can easily go back or forward to that floor again. So if you are on the fifth floor and you want to go to the first floor, all you have to do is think about it and you will appear on the first-floor portal, and if you are on the first floor, but you want to go to the fifth floor where you have been before then it was easy to bypass all the other floor and simply appear there.
It was like an open-world RPG with various save points where people could appear!
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