Victory Cooking Club: Unpaid Labor Opportunities Available Now! #1
I hung the Emperor Ant’s horn on the wide wall of the club room. It looked stylish, like a piece of decorative armor. I liked it. The decorative effect I had discovered was also quite useful.
Increases the amount of Rene acquired from hunting and gathering by 1%.
One percent. It might not sound like much, but it was a pretty solid effect. Combined with the Rene acquisition boost from the four-leaf clover Rose gave me, the future facility fee reduction from the completed Christmas tree, and everything else, the earnings would be enormous.
Anyway, Sunday morning flew by as I decorated the club room and brought in furniture. Sunday. It might be a day of rest for others, but for those paying off debts, it was no different from Monday. My life was all Mondays—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Monday, Monday, Monday. A dog’s life of constant work. Still, the money was good, so the mood was good. The truly horrible days were the ones with massive debt and no work at all.
In that sense, I had wanted to head back to the Tropical Jungle I visited yesterday. But neither Victorica nor Enio responded to my messages. They both seemed busy.
“Strange.”
The people who used to visit the club room so often it was annoying were nowhere to be found when I actually needed them. I stopped by Melvin and Diarmuid’s dormitory, wondering if they could fill out a party, but all I heard was, “Those guys said they were heading to some dungeon…”
Therefore, since I could not gather a four-person party, I had to skip today’s dungeon run. Unable to work because I had no friends. Nike said, “Victor, you got hurt so badly yesterday. You should rest today!” and actually seemed pleased about the situation. My injuries from yesterday had fully recovered by today, though. Self-recovery with 83 stamina was truly impressive.
So today was all about reorganizing things in the club room.
Woof woof!
Bzzz, bzzz.
“Good. Well done.”
“……”
I watched what Nike was doing in the club room. She held a large bee in one hand and a spider in the other, shaking them around or stroking them. Were they being tamed properly? How much time would it take before they could harvest spider silk or Vespid honey?
While thinking about that, I checked our stock.
“The spice grass is only coming in at half the usual amount. We should have enough for forty servings by now. Nike, do you know what happened?”
“Hmm… Maybe the spice grass didn’t grow much today.”
Was that even possible? Or had we overharvested so much that the supply was drying up?
“……”
It was entirely possible. Honestly, we had been harvesting it like crazy lately. We had picked so much that it would not be strange if the spice grass went extinct in the Mysterious Forest. Had human selfishness destroyed nature…?
If we could no longer obtain spice grass, I decided to make plans for what to do next. You could never have too many plans.
“There are quite a few substitutes.”
Materials with transcendent performance on the level of Spice Grass would only appear in the latter half of the episodes, but I could think of several items that could serve as decent replacements. One had to constantly come up with new ways to survive.
“I need to focus harder on developing new menu items. In that sense, Nike, try to tame those creatures as quickly as possible.”
“Got it! Give me a few days! I’ll definitely make myself useful!”
Wasn’t Nike already being plenty useful? During the Emperor Ant fight, she had stopped the creature from flying upward, which made catching it much easier. It was a shame Victorica and Enio had not seen Nike’s impressive performance. Nike herself had actually felt relieved, saying it was fortunate they had not witnessed it.
Still, having watched the entire process, I decided to raise Nike’s self-esteem a little.
“Nike, you are already being very helpful. Meeting you was lucky for me.”
“R-really? Hearing you say that makes me feel so sorry. It feels like I haven’t done anything special…”
Without Nike, we would never have been able to extract the honey from the spice grass. Come to think of it, encountering Nike in the forest had been a total cheat. If I had not met her then, what would I be doing right now?
Of course, “what ifs” were useless thoughts for me now. I did not want to waste imagination on things that had never happened. Imagination could run dry like grass, after all. My imagination was already fully booked just thinking about the future ahead.
My future was a prosperous life filled with the sound of golden Rene jingling. To achieve that, there was something I had to do first.
“Then I will step out for a while. I have somewhere to go.”
I had heard that place was now open. It was the perfect spot for acquiring new ingredients. It would cost some money, but it could not be helped.
Underground Market.
Anyone who had played RPGs would immediately picture something from that name. Hanging tarps everywhere. Shouting merchants and suspicious customers. Extremely dubious goods. Strange plants and animals of unknown origin on sale. The Thieves’ Guild that ruled and lurked in the shadows. The game Dungeon & Academy had not deviated from this classic formula at all.
A dungeon, prison, or empty lot located beneath Ludens. In one of the wide, safe areas, civilians had gathered in small groups to form a market. The things traded there varied wildly.
“Can you smack the restaurant owner Vance for me? Just one hit to the back of the head and run. If I hear you succeeded, I’ll give you fifty thousand Rene. Don’t ask why.”
“Could you get me some handkerchiefs from Ludens female students…? One hundred thousand Rene each…”
That was the general atmosphere. It was a place where strange things were bought and sold, yet there were surprisingly many ordinary shops as well.
“Strawberries for sale.”
“Rice balls for sale. Eat them here!”
Apparently many merchants who could not afford the rent above ground had been pushed down here where sunlight never reached. The underground market in reality was larger than what I had experienced in the game—about one and a half times bigger. Since the real Ludens was more destitute than the game version, it made sense that more people had been driven underground.
“Gek, isn’t that Victor? Did he come to crack down on us?”
“Nah, he’s not an enforcer anymore.”
I heard someone whisper my name. When I turned my head, several students with hoods pulled low over their faces flinched and fled into a corner.
“Hiding one’s identity like that is probably the norm.”
If a rumor spread that “Victor bought some suspicious books at the underground market,” how could I show my face above ground? Of course, I did not bother hiding my face. I was not going to do anything illegal, so why should I conceal myself?
“Do you have any socks?”
“Cough! Hack!”
The shopkeeper wearing a turban coughed violently, as if my question had startled him. When I asked if he was all right, he steadied his breathing and answered calmly.
“…Well, you’re the first student I’ve seen ordering something like that with your face uncovered. This is indeed a sock shop. But you do know it’s a bit different from a regular sock store, right?”
“I know.”
I needed to buy socks to hang on the Christmas tree. Just having them would save money in the long run. It was no exaggeration to say it could save tens of millions of Rene. Unlike sociable Luke, unsociable Victor had no friends, so collecting socks from ten different people would be extremely difficult. I did not know if this method would work, but there was no harm in checking the merchandise.
“Show me what you have.”
“This is a white sock from the female instructor Domina that arrived recently. It wasn’t easy to obtain. I’ll let it go for fifty thousand Rene.”
“Expensive.”
“There are items that cost more—up to five hundred thousand Rene. For example, the sock from Ornia here. This one was truly difficult to acquire. She came and sold it herself, so the authenticity is guaranteed.”
“Ornia is the twenty-third student in second-year Class A, correct?”
“Hehe, as expected of a young master student, you know your stuff. Since she removed it right in front of me, the product is genuinely authentic.”
If she had taken it off in front of him, that meant it was used. Who on earth would buy something like that? I needed new socks. New socks that someone had transferred over.
Suddenly I became curious.
“Do you have any socks from Victorica or Enio?”
“You mean the two young ladies? There is no way I could obtain anything like that. I would lose my head…!”
“I see. Then I will come another time.”
The Christmas tree was not urgent yet, so I would handle that slowly. For now, I decided to accomplish the real reason I had come to the underground market.
Items sold only in this underground market: Tofu. Noodles. Ham. Sausage. Rice Cake.
I would buy them from the wandering merchants who appeared randomly…!
For someone who had memorized every random movement point, it was as easy as drinking cold porridge. While wandering the underground market with that mindset, I heard an unfamiliar voice.
“Luke, are you sure this is the right path?”
It was an unfamiliar voice. But the name spoken by that slender tone was not unfamiliar at all. Reflexively turning my head, I saw a woman and a man walking together through the underground market in the distance.
The man was Luke Merciless, the protagonist of D&A. And the woman was…
…Who was she?
She was someone I had never seen before. Before I realized it, I was already walking toward them and speaking.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“You’re Victor. Nice to meet you. You’re carrying two rather impressive swords, aren’t you?”
Luke greeted me more openly than I had expected. However, the woman standing beside him did not hide her wary gaze as she looked at me.
“You’re Victor…! D-don’t tell me you came here to hurt Luke with that sword…!?”
She had orange hair in a long braid and wore a headband-like band around her forehead. What she wore under her skirt looked like tights—full-body tights? Since she was wearing a school uniform, she was clearly a Ludens student. This was the first time I had seen someone like her.
“Who are you?”
To my question, Luke answered.
“This is Yumi from Class C. She’s my childhood friend.”
Childhood friend? I had never heard of that setting. Was it added in a DLC? A new heroine? A childhood-friend heroine was far too classic.
“Childhood friend, you say. What village did you grow up in? How did you meet? Are the two of you dating, by any chance?”
“That’s…”
When Luke tried to speak, the female student named Yumi abruptly clapped her palm over his mouth.
“I have nothing to tell you! And no obligation to, either! Besides, we’re wearing our uniforms properly and haven’t done anything wrong, okay?”
I had only asked out of curiosity. Why was she so wary of me? There were many more things I wanted to ask, but it seemed better to leave. I could not interrupt their date. I was not that oblivious.
More importantly, Luke had a childhood friend. He was walking a route I knew nothing about. Could it be the additional DLC route I had suspected? Watching to see what kind of route it was might be interesting. Hehe.
“L-Luke, the way that guy is looking at me is suspicious…!”
“Suspicious…? He looks normal to me…?”
With that sort of atmosphere, I roughly finished my shopping at the underground market. I had spent nearly five hundred thousand Rene on ingredients, but when I considered the potential earnings, it was a manageable expense.
Now I could make them. Tteokbokki. Rabokki. Budae Jjigae. Developing three menus at once would not be easy. But if the order volume for Spice Soup decreased, this much preparation was necessary.
“It would be nice if we had more helping hands.”
It had already been over two weeks since the new semester began, approaching a full month. I did not understand why no freshmen or current students were applying to the club. I had been too busy to pay attention until now, but perhaps there was a special reason.
Honestly, our club had been quite active in many ways, had it not? It would not be strange to have at least one or two juniors saying, “Wow, I want to join too!” But there were none. At this rate, we would have to hire part-timers. How much would we have to pay them? Labor costs were no joke.
Thinking such things, I stood in front of the club room.
“Nike, I’m back.”
When I opened the club room door, I felt a surprisingly lively atmosphere inside. Wondering if Victorica or Enio had come to bother me again, I opened the door with a lukewarm feeling.
“It is most excellent-it-is…! This Arnoi has spent eight years in this Ludens, but this is the first time seeing such a magnificent spider-it-is…!”
Woof woof!
It was a strange voice. The person soon turned her head toward me and narrowed her orange eyes.
“Why have you only arrived now? To make this Arnoi wait when you are merely an ordinary student is an unforgivable act-it-is…!”
She was an extremely noisy person.
“This nymph-hating behavior should originally receive proper reprimand, but this Arnoi can especially overlook it in exchange for eating that thing called ‘fruit shaved ice’-it-is…!”
So she had simply come to eat fruit shaved ice.
I answered calmly.
“Fruit shaved ice is thirty thousand Rene per bowl.”
It was a three-person serving. However, the strange orange-haired eighth-year student who had introduced herself as Arnoi visibly drooped.
“…E-expensive-it-is…. This Arnoi’s allowance is not enough-it-is….”
She was a delegate but did not have much money? Well, having attended Ludens for eight years, it made sense that tuition had drained her funds.
“Plain shaved ice is ten thousand Rene per bowl. Order that if you like.”
“I-if that is the case, then that one….”
I prepared one bowl of Shaved Ice and set it before Arnoi. She examined the bowl that looked as if pure white snow had fallen upon it from every angle, then seemed deeply moved, saying, “Indeed, this is…!”
Soon Arnoi began devouring it vigorously.
“—Nymph Secret Technique, Shaved Ice Devouring!”
What was she even saying? She was truly an odd one.
“T-this is…. This flavor is something even this Arnoi is tasting for the first time-it-is…! So this is shaved ice…! Then I cannot even imagine how delicious the fruit shaved ice—no, that honey candy—would be-it-is…!”
Still, Arnoi seemed unable to stop marveling at how delicious my cooking was. The way her body trembled did not appear to be an act.
“If one joins this cooking club, can one eat desserts like this every day…?”
That was not the case. We rarely ate the food we sold ourselves. But inside me, thoughts of labor costs and extra hands for new menu development surged wildly.
“Not every day, but you might get to eat them occasionally. We have decided that every Friday will be club dinner night.”
This was not a lie.
“Then quickly allow this Arnoi to join the Victory Cooking Club-it-is…!”
“……”
Really? Would that be all right? She probably would not receive much pay.
When I did not answer right away, Arnoi spoke as if growing impatient.
“Ordinary student Victor! If it were not for this Arnoi, the weapon permit might never have been issued-it-is…! Therefore, repay that favor-it-is…!”
“From what I heard from Victorica, you were the only one who opposed it.”
“T-that only appeared that way. In truth, this Arnoi persuaded the other delegates from behind-it-is…!”
“I see. Then I understand.”
In this manner, ‘Arnoi of the eighth year’ became the fourth member of the club. She was a person with many strange and bizarre aspects, but having her was better than not.