Chapter 126: The Delivery Race (1)
Chapter 126: The Delivery Race (1)
One week after Princess Angelica Crudian’s coming-of-age ceremony ended, a modest send-off for the allied delegation was held.
Unlike the coming-of-age ceremony, which many had attended, the send-off was kept small, centered around the delegation members and the Centaur royal family. Still, just like before, the various dishes delighted everyone present.
However, today, Lee Jinseo was not cooking.
Instead, he was on the receiving end.
And not just eating and enjoying—he had to eat while judging strictly.
“……”
A total of ten Centaur chefs held their breath as they watched Lee Jinseo.
He sampled each of the ten plates of curry rice laid out on a long table, carefully checking whether it had been cooked properly and whether anything tasted off.
Watching Lee Jinseo keep silent and only taste, more and more of them grew anxious and started tapping the floor with their hooves.
“S-so… how is it?”
When one of the palace chefs worked up the courage to speak, Lee Jinseo smiled and nodded.
“If you can maintain this taste as it is, there won’t be any problems. You all worked hard.”
“Thank goodness!”
“We did it!”
After receiving the methods for cooking various bunsik from Lee Jinseo—and finally completing the handover for curry as well—the chefs rejoiced and let out relieved sighs.
So that the Centaurs could keep enjoying curry even after he left, Lee Jinseo taught the recipe to local chefs.
Even if he expanded the number of Food Truck branches, opening branches on other continents was not feasible due to circumstances.
So for other continents, Lee Jinseo judged it far better to share part of the bunsik recipes and receive support for the Food Truck business in a different way. With that in mind, he taught them how to make curry.
He handed over most of the curry powder stored in the Interspatial Storage, and promised to resupply it regularly before it ran out.
It was a shame they had no white rice, but he recommended eating it with bread instead.
“Dipping bread in curry is delicious, too.”
“I asked Mr. Lee Jinseo earlier, and he said eating it like this is actually closer to the original.”
“It’s fascinating how you can eat such a thick dish without hesitation. Maybe it’s my age, but it’s impossible for me.”
The twin brothers, Crown Prince Shane and Second Prince Dane, ate at the same table as Painfolt Artran, chatting.
The topic briefly shifted to curry, but the main subject that kept coming up in their conversation was Rainfolt—Painfolt Artran’s twin younger brother.
“In fact, back then, Rainfolt said he was going to just pass us by without caring, didn’t he?”
Shane, the elder twin, recalled Rainfolt’s flat tone from more than ten years ago.
“He said that?”
Painfolt Artran initially reacted as if he could not believe it, but considering the way his younger brother had grown cynical after the deaths of their nephew and his wife, it was plausible.
“But he said we looked like twin brothers, trembling while surrounded by monsters, so he couldn’t just leave us.”
Dane, the younger twin, flailed both arms as he described how incredible Rainfolt’s magic had been—sweating as he reenacted it.
“An unbelievably powerful gale suddenly whipped up! The monsters got swept up and couldn’t control themselves! We almost got caught in it too, but he protected us!”
“And even after using magic that grand, he said, all casual, ‘I hate bothersome things.’”
“Right, right.”
To the two brothers—who were still young boys at the time—the first magic they had ever seen had left such an intense impression that they could still recall it vividly.
“If it was a monster strong enough to corner the two of Your Highnesses, it must have been quite strong.”
“Haha, well… unlike Angelica, when we were children, we were unusually frail.”
“After that, we ran and trained endlessly to protect ourselves, and we ended up like this.”
“After that, Rainfolt stayed on the Crudian Continent for only about a month before leaving elsewhere. We begged him to stay longer, but he said he had no choice, because he needed to take back the people precious to him.”
“Precious people… I see.”
Painfolt Artran recalled the last image of Rainfolt he still carried.
On a day when rain poured down, he could never forget his younger brother’s back as he sobbed before the nephew couple’s tombstone.
“So, Painfolt-nim, please speak comfortably with us.”
“If not for your younger brother, we wouldn’t even be here.”
“…I see. All right.”
Painfolt Artran stroked his beard and turned his head to the side.
His gaze, fixed on the distance, was searching for his younger brother’s back—somewhere out there.
Even though he could not see him now, he held onto the certainty that they would meet someday.
Once Princess Angelica Crudian’s study abroad was decided, Lloyd V selected fifty Centaurs from among his subordinates as her attendants.
Among them were the three boy couriers who had guided the allied delegation to the capital.
Painfolt Artran stayed behind on the Crudian Continent to search for more traces of his younger brother, while Princess Angelica Crudian and the Centaurs arrived on the Francia Continent through the magic of the allied delegation’s other mages.
Then, via spatial transfer magic, Princess Angelica Crudian moved straight to Colses, the capital city of the Doren Kingdom, and had an audience with King Philip III.
Just like when the dwarves first visited, crowds surged into Colses to see the Centaurs.
After finishing her packed schedule—including meetings with foreign ambassadors—Princess Angelica Crudian decided not to stay in Colses, but in Falstead Castle instead.
The reason was simple: she could not give up Lee Jinseo’s Food Truck, just like the dwarves.
To help her, Stella—the only daughter of Karl, Marquis of the Hasrak Marquisate—came along.
Why Stella was chosen was perfectly clear.
{This curry is even more delicious because it has these carrots in it!}
{Is that so? So here we have a human who truly understands curry flavor!}
Because she was the only human in Colses who had eaten the curry made with Crudian Continent carrots and found it delicious.
When Princess Angelica Crudian and the fifty Centaurs arrived at Falstead Castle, they borrowed land from Lee Jinseo and stayed there, like the dwarves had.
At first, they tried to stay in buildings within Dwarf Town, but because their body structure differed from humans, there were many difficulties living in existing buildings.
The dwarves began constructing buildings that Centaurs could live in comfortably, and until then, they stayed in temporary barracks set up on open ground.
Starting life on a new continent, they threw themselves into work that made the best use of their specialty.
That work was…
“Twenty suits of armor for Count Wilson’s knight order are all loaded!”
“Brown rice green tea, buckwheat tea, Solomon’s seal tea, corn silk tea—teabag set—and ten boxes of Choco Pie, confirmed!”
“Even the accessories for Count Wilson’s household are packed—nothing missing… good. Move out!”
A huge wagon piled high with goods rolled forward, pulled not by horses, but by two Centaurs.
At the entrance to Dwarf Town, two wagons were already waiting. When a third joined them, the three wagons departed side by side.
Clop-clop-clop.
At the sound of Centaur hooves racing down the road, diners turned their eyes toward the three wagons.
“Wow. No matter how many times I see it, they’re really fast. If I had four legs too, could I be that fast?”
Jason, busy selling bunsik at the Food Truck, stared in admiration at the wagons that had already grown distant in the blink of an eye.
Before coming to Falstead Castle, the two-week schedule spent inside the royal palace at Colses had felt stifling to the Centaurs, who were used to running across vast plains every single day without rest.
So the dwarves of Dwarf Town offered them new work.
They would deliver various goods produced by dwarves, taking orders from the Doren Kingdom and other nations—along with drinks and bunsik Lee Jinseo had brought from Korea.
The dwarves handed it over thinking the Centaurs’ fast legs might help with deliveries, but the results far exceeded everyone’s expectations.
Thanks to Centaurs rapidly transporting heavily loaded wagons without horses or drivers, delivery speeds multiplied, and the volume of orders they could handle increased drastically.
The dwarves even built a warehouse in the forge district to serve as a logistics center, and because standard wagons could not withstand Centaur speed, they ended up having to reinforce and upgrade the wagons themselves.
Meanwhile, the Centaurs got to savor the joy of running across new land—so different from the mostly flat Crudian Continent.
With both makers and deliverers satisfied, the forge district filled with energy.
“Fast! Accurate! And…”
“And the next one?”
“So, um… that is…”
But not every Centaur could work in transport.
For those still too young to haul heavy wagons over long distances, different roles were assigned.
Lee Jinseo was currently asking the three boy couriers about the three most important elements for that other role and confirming them.
“You forgot the most important one. Safety. You’ve heard it to the point you’re sick of it, and you’ll keep hearing it, but safety matters more than the first two. Not only your safety, but you must absolutely avoid accidents with humans you might encounter while traveling. It could even become a diplomatic problem.”
“Yes!”
“We’ll never forget!”
Just as he had emphasized cleanliness nonstop while teaching bunsik, Lee Jinseo hammered safety into the three who had become deliverymen.
“Then we’ll be off!”
The three boy deliverymen answered in unison, then headed toward Falstead Castle.
At first, they dashed off excitedly, then remembered the “safety” Lee Jinseo had drilled into them until it practically rang in their ears, and lowered their speed to something reasonable.
For Centaurs—whose joy in life was running—they could not feel settled unless they ran at least a certain distance every day.
Since they were going to run anyway, the three couriers volunteered to deliver bunsik while helping the Food Truck, and they became the Food Truck’s dedicated delivery team.
They’d better come back safely again.
Even though they were not human, Lee Jinseo could not help worrying every time the boys went out on delivery.
Of course, this was not modern Korea—there was no chance of traffic accidents like that.
But letting down your guard was dangerous.
So Lee Jinseo provided the deliverymen with motorcycle helmets and encouraged them to wear them—and unexpectedly, the Centaurs loved them.
In particular, the black visor completely blocked the wind and also looked cool, and the reactions were so strong that some even said they wanted to spread them back in their homeland.
Whooosh.
Seeing someone racing in from near the horizon, kicking up a sandstorm, Lee Jinseo lightly rested his left hand on the Food Truck’s cash box.
Your Highness, you’re almost here.
I arrived a bit earlier than planned.
The one speaking with Lee Jinseo through Owl’s new ability—long-distance communication—was none other than…
{Mobile Cooking Facility’s fourth helper: Princess Angelica Crudian (18, female, Centaur)}
{Helper’s job category: Princess (subject to change later)}
{Helper’s physical grade: A-}
{Helper’s cooking skill: Curry Rice (A+)}
{Helper’s delivery skill: Speed (S-), Load Capacity (S-), Endurance (S-)}
{Helper’s abilities: Spearmanship (A+), Rapid Acceleration (S), Hard Braking (S)…}
Princess Angelica Crudian, returning after completing snack delivery faster and more accurately than anyone else.