Chapter 130: Let's Start by Grilling the Back First (1) King Lanster II of the Girvante Kingdom looked down at the dish he was seeing for the first time in his life with an intrigued gaze.
"So this is the dish made by a foreign chef, and delivered by the princess of another race."
Rice cakes and fish cakes stained red by the broth, along with a boiled egg.
Sundae that looked like sausage on the outside, but was packed full of glass noodles.
Three kinds of fried food made with no attempt to economize on oil.
Before tasting it, he drew a breath through his nose, taking in the bunsik aroma spreading around him.
"Hm. Certainly… just smelling it is enough to stir up the appetite."
Gulp.
The guards, who were turned away from the king's table and staring forward as they focused on protection, kept swallowing their saliva, unable to endure the scent drifting into their noses.
"But how am I supposed to eat this?"
At King Lanster II's question, the food-service professional who had brought the tteok-twig-sun set and canned drink explained in detail what kind of taste and texture it had, and how to eat it to make it even better.
Including that you had to split the wooden chopsticks in two, then put them between your palms and rub them together.
"I see. Then, let's see…"
King Lanster II tried to pick up tteokbokki with the chopsticks, but there was no way his first-ever attempt at using chopsticks would go well.
In the end, he gave up on the chopsticks and instead used toothpicks, slowly savoring each kind from the tteok-twig-sun.
"Hoo, hoo. Ho—this kind of taste… hoo, hoo!"
He blew on the steaming-hot bunsik and took bite after bite.
Even if he had been told what it tasted like, the taste that reached his tongue was bound to be different.
Lanster II had encountered all sorts of cuisines since ascending the throne, but bunsik was a whole new world.
Without caring at all about the eyes around him, he started wolfing it down, quickly finishing the single serving and popping open the can of carbonated drink.
Pssst.
As the sharp carbonation and sweetness washed away the greasiness, he looked around with a satisfied expression.
Not only his vassals, but even the guards couldn't take their eyes off the sight of him enjoying bunsik.
"To boast such superb flavor and such generous portions, yet cost only that much… I can hardly believe it."
Not just the taste—compared to the lavish meals he usually ate, the tteok-twig-sun was revolutionary in price as well.
"Eating such delicious food alone makes me feel strangely guilty. If possible, I'd like to share this taste with all my people. But the distance to the Doren Kingdom is far too great, so delivery would be impossible, and we can only learn this taste ourselves…"
The bunsik set placed before him was only one serving of tteok-twig-sun, but the process of delivering it to the royal palace had not been smooth.
While touring the Doren Kingdom through the skies, Charlotte flew in an instant all the way to the Girvante Kingdom in the east of the continent, wanting to show Angelica somewhere even farther away.
"Try it! It'll give you a bliss beyond comparison with anything you've eaten so far!"
The moment Charlotte arrived in the kingdom, she handed out bunsik sets packed in black plastic bags to the people of Girvante who gathered around her.
No one readily accepted bunsik offered by a dragon who had suddenly appeared, transformed into a human, and held it out. As everyone hesitated, a food-service professional who happened to be at a nearby restaurant braved his fear and tried it.
The moment he tasted it, the food-service professional shuddered. Then, under the sense of mission that he absolutely had to let the king know this taste, he took one more bag and sent it to the royal palace at once.
To keep the bunsik from spoiling on the way, he hired a mage, placed it in Interspatial Storage, then used teleportation magic to travel as close to the palace as possible.
After that, he loaded the utterly exhausted mage—mana depleted—into a carriage and entered the royal palace. Only after the maids finished their poison test could the tteok-twig-sun set finally be placed before Lanster II.
The reason he could enter the palace at all just to deliver a single dish was, unexpectedly, simple.
In the Girvante Kingdom, there was a culture that valued "food" the most among clothing, food, and shelter.
His solid network of connections helped greatly, but because of that culture, simply bringing a dish the king had not yet tasted was enough to enter the palace. That was the kind of place the Girvante Kingdom was.
"If I'd known the bunsik that man spoke of was this kind of dish, I would've gotten it and tasted it long ago. What a pity. He was trying to deceive me, yet of all things, he told the truth only about bunsik…"
Lanster II first heard about bunsik long before now, when Marquis Horus of the Doren Kingdom requested asylum.
Because Lanster II couldn't understand why he had fled all the way from the Doren Kingdom to the far-off Girvante Kingdom, he didn't accept the asylum request and kept it on hold.
Then, once he learned Horus had fled because he had incurred the wrath of the dragon Charlotte, Lanster II moved to arrest him immediately—but Horus had already fled again.
All that remained was curiosity about the unknown dish Horus had mentioned: bunsik.
But the Doren Kingdom was far too distant to send people to verify, and he assumed bunsik itself was likely Horus's lie, so he didn't bother checking.
"So Philip has been enjoying such delicious food all this time… It's infuriating, and yet I envy him."
Mentioning King Philip III of the Doren Kingdom, Lanster II used a toothpick to lift a piece of fish cake that had been hidden in the tteokbokki broth.
"Greg, I'd like to know more about this dish called bunsik that you brought. I want to send someone to the Doren Kingdom—do you have anyone you can recommend?"
"I will go myself."
"You, personally?"
"I'll take the chance to see my son too."
"If it's your son, do you mean that man—the hero of our Girvante?"
"Yes. I earnestly request you entrust it to me."
Greg, the food-service businessman who operated as many as a hundred restaurants in the Girvante Kingdom, nodded as he answered.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Scrape, scrape.
Thunk-thunk-thunk.
The sounds of building new facilities echoed all across Dwarf Town.
Once it was decided that Dwarf Town would participate in the autumn festival held every year at Falstead Castle, the dwarves poured their hearts into creating facilities even more splendid and impressive than before.
"Hey! We need to smooth this out more! Hand me the saw!"
"I think this part should be painted a bit redder!"
"Hey! Give me some leftover blue tape!"
Maybe because this was their first time participating in a festival held on another continent, the dwarves couldn't contain their overflowing zeal and even took on the production of Falstead Castle's festival facilities.
And the Food Truck crew—who had participated in the festival around this time last year—were also busy preparing to showcase even tastier and more varied bunsik.
"Boss! It's done!"
Jason folded a freshly made hotteok in half, put it in a paper cup, and handed it to Jinseo.
"How is it?"
Jason's face was full of anxiety as he asked for feedback before Jinseo even took a bite.
Under that gaze, Jinseo took a big bite of the hotteok.
As the sweetness of the brown sugar hidden inside the soft dough spread through his mouth, Jinseo closed his eyes without realizing it.
"How is it?"
"When you press the dough, I think you can ease up a bit more. Hotteok is better when it stays a little thick."
"Yes! I'll remember that!"
After tasting hotteok—one of the new menu items to debut at this festival—Jinseo checked the number of customers sitting at the table seats.
"It's fewer than before, but it's not worrying. It's just right—a good level where we can focus on cooking and sales without overdoing it."
Maybe because a lot of customers moved to the bunsik street, the frantic, nonstop rush had eased a lot.
Jason's skills had improved considerably, so orders piling up had decreased sharply, and since there were now two branches after adding one more, revenue had actually increased much more.
"And it's also thanks to the people who came with the princess."
As the Centaur delivery boys grew from three to ten, the number of customers who ordered delivery instead of coming in person also rose significantly.
As a result, mileage, mana, and experience gained through bunsik sales were steadily increasing.
"Jason, do you think hotteok will sell well?"
"Huh? Ah, hotteok? It'll sell like crazy!"
Jason, who was mindlessly devouring hotteok, confidently raised his right thumb at Jinseo's question.
"It feels like just yesterday we introduced hot dogs for the autumn festival around this time last year, and yet the second autumn festival is already right around the corner."
Jinseo, holding a hot dog in his hand, grew sentimental as he watched tourists enter Dwarf Town through the entrance.
At last year's autumn festival, a huge crowd poured in to taste the Food Truck's bunsik, recording the largest number of tourists ever.
And Jinseo felt certain that record would be broken once again at this year's festival.
"Boss, I'm even more excited for this festival. There's a festival in Dwarf Town too, and the festival period is expanding from three days to ten days, right?"
This year, the festival's scale expanded greatly, and both the hosts and the attendees were full of anticipation.
In fact, Falstead Castle's lodgings saw sold-out notices everywhere from tourists who flooded in even before two full weeks remained until the festival.
Even so, to accommodate the tourists who kept coming, they had to open lodging in Dwarf Town that would operate only during the festival period.
The autumn festival's drastic changes began with a conversation Jinseo had with Oswald and Gestain while they watched footage on a large TV.
"So the video we just saw is one of Korea's festivals called Oktoberfest?"
"It's not Korea. It's a festival in a country called Germany."
"A festival where people merrily enjoy beer… I really like it. It's perfect for us dwarves!"
"Does Korea not have a festival like that? If possible, can you tell us about a festival that would be held around this time?"
"It's autumn right now, so there's Chuseok."
In response to the suggestion that they should make this year's festival more grand by referencing festivals from other continents, Jinseo played an Oktoberfest video, and as a result, it led to this year's special autumn festival.
But there was a decisive reason the festival changed this much.
"It looks like they're arriving."
Jinseo and Jason stepped down from the Food Truck and adjusted their clothing.
Dagdak-dagdak.
Angelica came charging toward the Food Truck with someone riding on her back.
Keeping formation in a straight line alongside Centaur soldiers.
Knights and carriages followed behind her, and customers hurriedly paid their respects when they saw the royal banner the knights carried.
"Jinseo, it's been a while!"
"Your Highness Prince Charles, it's truly good to see you."
Prince Charles of the Doren Kingdom climbed down from Angelica's back and approached Jinseo warmly.
Meanwhile, the knights who were seeing Jinseo for the first time couldn't let their guard down.
The owner of the Food Truck, a sacred relic officially recognized by the Heirem Order.
A chef with skill great enough to impress even a dragon.
A master of a martial art called taekwondo, who defeated the sea's giant monster, the kraken, with his bare hands.
A diplomat who effectively handled real exchanges with other races like dwarves and Centaurs, and so on.
The countless epithets attached to Jinseo's name turned him into a figure no one could easily approach.
"Your Highness Princess Angelica, you've worked hard."
"Carrying someone on my back still wasn't something I was used to, but it was more enjoyable than I expected. Charles, you enjoyed it too, didn't you?"
"Thanks to you, Angelica noona, it was so much fun! By the way, can I take a shower in the Food Truck? Since your speed is so fast, I was really tense at first, so I sweated a bit."
Charles asked while recalling the time he washed up comfortably in the Food Truck's Additional Trailer when they went camping in the palace garden before.
"Your Highness, there's a better place to wash up. Shall I guide you?"
Jinseo said, pointing to the newest completed building near the entrance of Dwarf Town.
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