The Butler Whose Only Answer Is "No"
Perhaps word of my display of strength the previous day had gotten around, because not a single soul came forward to challenge me to an arm-wrestling match.
“Ugh. How long do we have to wait like this?”
When I was training, time at least felt like it was moving. Standing around in the cold doing nothing was pure torture.
“Oho, is this some little noble lady’s idea of amusement?”
“Ah, a challenger… has… wait, huh…?”
I tilted my head back. And back. And back further still, until my neck threatened to snap. Smirking down at me was an enormous, hairy mountain of a creature. A massive ape beastman, easily standing two meters and thirty centimeters tall, grinned through a face covered in coarse fur.
“Hey there, little lady. How about a round with me? You don’t even have to put up any coin. In fact, if you manage to beat me, I’ll hand over a whole gold coin.”
“Lalalala, can’t hear you, I can’t hear a thing!”
I scurried straight behind my butler’s back. Seeing me duck away, the previous day’s disgruntled challengers whose spots had been delayed immediately started booing.
“Booo!”
“Coward!”
“Accept the challenge, Herculean girl!”
Seriously, what was wrong with these people? What kind of monster yells at a frail, sickly little girl who sometimes drops her own spoons and teacups?
Jona stepped forward, wearing a look that said are you out of your mind?
“I must apologize, but the difference in physique between you and the young lady is simply far too great.”
“I heard that little lady of yours was slamming opponents left and right despite her size.”
“What number is your waiting ticket?”
“Did you not hear me say I’d put up the gold myself?”
“We have no shortage of coin,” Jona replied smoothly. “Why would a noble lady accompanied by both a butler and a maid ever find herself strapped for funds?”
Disappointed, the monkey beastman clicked his tongue and sauntered off toward the very front of the queue. Wondering what he was up to, I watched as he produced a gold coin, hid it in one fist, and began rapidly shuffling both hands back and forth at blinding speed.
The examinee holding the first-priority spot stared with wide, bewildered eyes before hesitantly pointing to the left fist. The coin, of course, was in the right.
“Your training is lacking, young fellow! Hahaha!”
The ape beastman let out a hearty guffaw and delivered what he probably considered a light pat on the fellow’s back. The force sent the poor guy sprawling right out of the queue. He had evidently wagered his spot against a gold coin—and failed miserably.
Watching the monkey beastman stroll triumphantly into the inn, an idea struck me like a thunderbolt.
“Excuse me,” I called out to the man ahead of us. “Would you like to make a bet with me?”
“Herculean girl? I’m not arm wrestling you.”
“Not arm wrestling—guess the coin! Even a blind guess gives you a fifty-fifty shot. Isn’t that worth a try?”
“Mmh…”
“What, are you scared you’ll lose to a little girl?”
The swordsman with a blade strapped to his hip shook his head resolutely.
“Blinded by a single gold coin, losing my place and failing the exam—that would be putting the cart before the horse.”
Surprisingly disciplined, wasn’t he?
Instead, a rough-looking man in his twenties standing right behind him waved his hand to catch my attention.
“I’m only in line to grab a ticket and flip it for cash anyway. Let’s do it, little lady.”
A ticket hunter. They were essentially scalpers who lined up purely to gouge desperate exam takers. In the game, players only relied on these guys when their schedule was so tight they couldn’t afford the ticket exam, or when their starting stats were absolute garbage. But buying from them was always a gamble; there was a fixed probability the ticket was a forgery, resulting in an instant boot right at the academy’s front gates.
“Aaaand, wrong guess~!”
“Haha. Well, I’ll be damned. Missed it clean.”
Watching the exchange from the side, the swordsman clicked his tongue, clearly relieved he had declined.
“She’s not just strong, her hands are lightning fast. If I’d jumped in without knowing better, I’d have made a proper fool of myself.”
“Still, I’m slower than that giant beastman from earlier,” I remarked innocently.
One look at the ape’s muscle mass had told me everything. That monster had already cleared forty points in Strength, at the bare minimum. The only puzzling part was that I had never seen a beastman like him at the academy in the game. Did he fail the entrance test every single time? Or had he run up against the age limit? Recalling his brutish, simple-minded demeanor, it was entirely likely he had shown up to take the exam without even realizing there was a cutoff age.
“A large group is checking out!” the innkeeper’s voice boomed from the doorway. “We can take five more! Come on in!”
“Finally!”
What I thought would take a full week had taken only two days.
The moment we stepped inside, the blast of warm air and the relaxed ambiance melted the tension right out of my shoulders.
“Well now, look who it is! If it isn’t our little Herculean lady!”
“Just give us a room, please.”
“We’ve got two four-person rooms and two singles left. Which would you prefer?”
“A four-person room.”
I had money, so there was no reason to pinch pennies. We promptly claimed a table on the ground floor, and I snatched up the menu immediately.
“It appears everyone is waiting for the high-ranking examiner,” Jona observed.
“Never mind that. I need to fill my stomach first.”
“Prioritizing food above all else is certainly very like you, milady.”
I didn’t even blink at my butler’s dry reprimand. Hey, a girl’s gotta eat to survive!
Scanning the menu, I spotted an item nearly impossible to find anywhere else and ordered three bowls of apple-walnut oatmeal.
“Is there a particular reason you insist on this specific dish?” Jona asked.
“Because once we leave here, I’ll never get to eat it again.”
Throughout the entire game, this inn was the solitary establishment that sold apple-walnut oatmeal. For some reason, Jona began wearing an expression that suggested if only I let him cook for me, he would gladly boil oatmeal for seven straight days. But that was a regular occurrence by now. I smoothly ignored it.
Diligent, steady food collection was the key to permanent stat boosts. Of course, scarfing down two bowls wouldn’t grant double the compendium completion bonus, which was why one bowl was mine and the other two belonged to Jona and Leaf.
“You truly possess a deep fondness for trying new dishes, milady,” Leaf remarked gently.
“I’ve had more than my fill of eating the exact same meal over and over,” I replied.
“Even so, it is an exceedingly dangerous habit,” Jona cut in.
Leaf always offered pleasant, validating words, but Jona never hesitated to administer bitter medicine. The stark difference between maid and butler was on full display.
“When partaking of unfamiliar cuisine in foreign territories, it is virtually impossible to discern at a glance whether harmful foreign substances have been introduced into the preparation.”
“Things like that don’t happen that easily, you know.”
Seriously, what was he going on about in an academy fantasy game? Anyone listening would think we were trying to enroll in an assassin village.
Besides, trying to grind by eating the same food in bulk is terribly inefficient.
Eating a new dish just once triggered the compendium collection effect. But to get anything out of the same food, you had to consume it a staggering one thousand times. That was how you earned fanatic titles, like Apple Pie Maniac or Strawberry Bingsu Maniac. Unlike the milestone rewards gained from completing ten or twenty entries in the encyclopedia, these specialized titles granted their unique effects right away.
What did Bingsu Maniac give again? One percent ice resistance and brain-freeze immunity, right?
It sounded totally useless, but every title had its niche. If shaved ice came up during the summer festival’s big-eater competition, holding that title meant you could inhale an entire basin of bingsu without your pace slowing down for a second. Granted, preventing brain freeze had nothing to do with whether your stomach burst, but still.
Unless you were targeting a very specific title for an exploit, eating the same thing was a colossal waste of time. Rather than choking down a thousand bowls of one meal, eating a thousand distinct dishes was a hundred times more efficient.
There’s a reason players had a running joke that anyone who never eats the same meal twice is definitely the protagonist.
Normal people were hesitant to try unfamiliar foods, but players actively sought out weird new dishes. Occasionally, that resulted in suffering through culinary monstrosities like bioluminescent fried chicken or twisted dried pollack, but this apple-walnut oatmeal was far from a failure.
“Mmm, num-num.”
“Look at that little tot eat. Makes it look downright delicious.”
“Hmm. Should we order a bowl too?”
The ground floor, which doubled as a tavern and dining hall, was packed with guests. One by one, they succumbed to the savory, sweet aroma drifting from our oatmeal and began ordering the morning special. The delighted innkeeper, thrilled by the sudden surge in sales, brought over three complimentary glasses of freshly pressed apple juice for our table.
“Why’s the portion so stingy?” the monkey beastman boomed two tables down, making a scene. “Just fill this whole helmet to the brim and bring it over!”
He was being obnoxious, but the moment he promised to pay extra for the volume, the innkeeper beamed and happily hauled off the massive steel helmet. Sanitation aside, the guy certainly had an exuberant personality.
“You may not,” Jona stated flatly.
“…I didn’t even say anything!”
“Under no circumstances.”
My butler’s hyper-vigilance showed zero signs of waning today. Here was the unexpected downside of a noble playthrough: player freedom was abysmally low.
Sluuurp.
Sip, sip.
The soothing sweetness of the apple juice pacified my grumbling, and I was happily draining the very last drops when someone lightly rapped their knuckles against the edge of our wooden table.
“Well, look who it is! If it isn’t my fellow travelers?”
“Mister Bard!”
It was an entirely unexpected face. He hadn't looked particularly strong like the ape beastman, so how on earth had he made it inside already?
“When did you get in, mister?”
“Haha. Yesterday, the second I knocked on the door. Not as a paying guest, of course, but as an entertainer.”
There was a path like that?!
In the game, I used to wonder what kind of lunatic would ever play such garbage-tier classes as a bard. But now that it was real life, I was violently envious of him.
“You may not,” Jona declared instantly.
“Hmph. I didn’t even open my mouth, and it’s always ‘no, no, no.’”
I was starting to harbor a tiny grudge against my butler.
“The three of you came for the ticket exam, correct?” the bard asked, leaning down and lowering his voice so the neighboring tables couldn't overhear. “From six in the morning until six in the evening, exactly once every hour, an examiner descends to the first floor. When they do, make sure you listen very closely to what they say.”
“Why are you sharing such information with us?” Jona asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Last time, I caused quite a bit of offense to you, sir butler, and I feared I had frightened the young lady terribly. Consider this information an apology offered in good faith.”
Jona’s stern expression softened by an imperceptible fraction.
Wait, is this my chance? An angle for a Bard class change?!
I stole a quick glance at him.
The answer arrived with the precision of a guillotine blade.
“You may not.”
A girl couldn't even breathe around here without permission.