Volume 5, 3 : Auntie

Volume 5, Chapter 3 : Auntie

The days after losing the ranking match had not been easy, especially when the reason was due to their absence. Even if Kaiser were to come up with random excuses, such as the Paladin was in need of rescue, etc, it was of no use.

“Nonsense! Why would the Paladin would need rescuing? Even if he did, he would look for the Dark Knight or the Dragon Emperor. He would never look for you unless everyone else in the world was dead.”

Some Knight ignored all the chivalric codes and started swearing.

That’s… because we all got food poisoning, so we all had to go to the bathroom.

Kaiser thought about it, and the Knight was right. If the Paladin was in trouble, the situation couldn’t be handled by a couple of students, so he immediately changed his excuse.

“So you’re saying the principal was so kind, he used a group teleportation spell just to move all of you to bathrooms?”

All the Sorcery students present said with a sunken face.

Uh…

Everyone who knew Barbalis would know he would rather force the students to poop in the stadium than let for them to give up on the match, let alone being kind enough to teleport them to the bathroom.

Kaiser also understood it was impossible to fool the Sorcery students whom Barbalis had tormented for years.

And the result of all the failed excuses was the Troublemaker Gang being chased by students from all three schools for a week.

Every place they could possibly hide, Kaiser had been there at least once, and now Liola and Kaiser were hidden in a very secretive place.

“Liola, come a bit closer.” Kaiser’s voice could be heard in a pitch dark place, together with some tinkling noises.

Liola quietly moved a bit closer.

Kaiser continued to say, “No no, I can’t hold myself back anymore. Liola, I have to hug you.”

Liola hesitated a bit, but he himself also couldn’t restrain himself. He thought about it, and Liola actually reached out and grabbed Kaiser, who also hugged back. As they did, they felt their bodies getting warmer…

“AHH?!” Along with a scream, the dark place was suddenly lit up. Under the bright light, Liola and Kaiser couldn’t see who it was.

“W-what are you guys doing in the freezer? Haha, even your hair has frosted. Even if you guys are willing to die for love, did you really have to commit a lovers’ suicide by freezing yourselves in the freezer? Ahaha…”

The person who opened the door rolled on the floor laughing at the two frozen human popsicles.

“M-Mi-zerui.” Shivering, Kaiser called out the person’s name, and then he looked around to see if there were any other students.

Kaiser was freezing to the point where his blood almost froze, or rather, it had already frozen. He wanted to jump out of the freezer… but then he was shocked to he realized that…

“Damn it, my hand is stuck on Liola’s shirt!”

Kaiser desperately struggled, but his hand really felt like it was part of Liola’s shirt, his hand was firmly glued onto Liola’s shirt.

Liola frowned as he tried to move his hand; unfortunately, he was in the same predicament as Kaiser. Thus, in the freezer, there were two people who were stuck together, and outside was a man rolling on the ground laughing so hard he almost suffocated.

After struggling for quite a while, Kaiser and Liola finally escaped their “bondage” predicament. Kaiser looked at Mizerui, who was still laughing, bitterly.

Had it not been Mizerui; someone who Kaiser couldn’t mess with, he would have already chopped the man into minced meat and thrown him inside the freezer, so the kitchen staff could make dumplings out of him.

“When did you come back?” Kaiser grunted, and decided not to trifle with this wanted criminal. Instead, he was curious. Why did Mizerui suddenly come back after being gone for so long?

Hearing the question, Mizerui finally got off the ground and stood up, and seriously answered Kaiser’s question. Although the corners of his mouth would occasionally tilt upwards, especially when he looked at the freezer with the corner of his eyes.

“I’ve been back for quite a while, but I’ve been busy. When I finally had time to look for you, I searched the entire campus but couldn’t find you…”

“Duh, we hadn’t done anything this week other than hiding desperately. Didn’t you know? All three schools are hunting us. If they find us, I think we really would end up being chopped into pieces and thrown into the freezer.”

Kaiser continued to murmur with dissatisfaction, “Why do we have to be hunted while that guy, Daylight, is completely fine. He’s still walking around the School of Knight minding his own business. He was a part of the M.I.A. group too!”

“Daylight is very strong.” Liola said bluntly.

Compared to the protective shield user Meinan, the Mecha-less Purity, the seemingly useless Kaiser, and Silver Mask…

After some thought, Liola suddenly remembered something.

Strange, he didn’t even go to any of the matches, and everyone didn’t know he was Silver Mask… So why… would he have to hide with Kaiser?

Could it be he didn’t need to hide at all? Liola suddenly found out the shocking truth.

“Liola, you lost your Kung Fu and your dragon cross necklace. What do you plan to do now?” Mizerui asked with a smiling face.

Liola said after a moment of silence, “Live peacefully.”

Mizerui’s eyes flashed with interest, and his smile seemed to carry a bit of mockery, but Mizerui didn’t say anything in response. Instead, he took out a silver mask from behind him, and held it up to Liola’s face,

“Looks like this will be useless, then?”

The moment Liola saw the silver mask, his heart trembled a bit.

Seeing the intact mask Mizerui held up, Liola felt the mask was calling for him, hoping it would be worn again.

Liola saw it as a dilemma. However, he had planned to live peacefully, and therefore he wouldn’t need the mask, but for some reason, Liola felt a strong desire to get the mask again.

Wavering between two choices, Liola reached his hand out, but froze before touching the mask.

Mizerui seemed patient, held the mask without moving, and watched the Assassin’s every move of indecision.

Mizerui was practically laughing coldly as he thought, ‘How could it be so easy for an extraordinary person to live an ordinary life?’

Kaiser grabbed the mask, and looked at it while salivating.

“Shiny, hehe, this mask must be worth quite a lot of money! I’ll just keep it then.”

Kaiser quickly put the mask inside his coat, giving neither Mizerui nor Liola any time to grab it back.

“You…”

Mizerui was shocked, the mask can’t possibly be sold to others. He immediately wanted to retrieve the mask from Kaiser, but Kaiser mischieviously hid behind Liola, and even poked his head out from behind Liola’s back with a shameless expression.

Mizerui grunted, how could the sealed Liola stop him from getting the mask back?

However, Kaiser’s eyes suddenly looked wise, and his joking blue eyes suddenly turned into a deep, ocean blue.

The look in Kaiser’s eyes made Mizerui stop all of a sudden, and suspicions filled his mind:

‘Is this guy putting on a disguise, or…’

A million thoughts ran through his mind, but the last one he thought of was one pessimistic thing Barbalis said: “If it’s meant to be, it will be, if it’s not meant to be, no matter what you do, it won’t be.”

Mizerui glanced at Liola, whose cold Assassin presence was now completely gone, and the only thing left behind was a pessimistic big boy who wanted to live day-to-day.

Mizerui sighed. Everything he had done before sank into the sea like a big rock, just as Barbalis had said…

‘Perhaps one day it will resurface again?’

“Well, whatever. Up to you then.” Mizerui sighed again as his body faded away, but before he was completely gone, he said,

“Liola, when the world is no longer at peace, how would you live a peaceful life?”

Liola felt his heart skip a beat. But before he had a chance to ask Mizerui what he meant, his body already completely faded, leaving behind only a shadow imprinted in Liola’s heart.

Could it be… the peaceful life he had just started was already ending? Could it be he can never live in peace? Liola thought, and his mood was at its worst.

* * *

“Ahhhh, Liola, save me!”

Kaiser suddenly cried in pain. Liola was surprised, had his peaceful life passed by already?

Even though he was sad, Liola still tried to do what companions do, and immediately turned around to try to save Kaiser.

As soon as he turned, Liola’s silver eyes saw a strange scene: Kaiser was held in the air like a little kitten, and the “person” holding him was about 180cm tall (~5’11”) with a body full of muscle, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger-like face was complemented by a head full of curly hair.

The strange creature wore a white apron along with a long skirt with little pink flowers.

‘What is this creature? Even the seen-it-all Assassin Liola couldn’t help but take a step back.

“Why did you two little pretty dolls come to play in the kitchen? Are you hungry?”

Though this unknown lifeform looked vicious, the statement it made didn’t seem ferocious at all. Instead it said with a smile and spoke gently… that is, if the arc formed by the muscles on its face counted as a smile.

Although the voice was as deep as nails on a blackboard, someone with such a deep voice talking about dolls would already count as soft.

“Liola, save me…” Kaiser’s hand and feet waved around for a while to no avail, so he ended up simply helplessly hanging in the air, and used his tears to beg Liola, who was slowly backing away.

Liola’s Assassin instinct was guiding him. Judging from what he saw, this unknown lifeform didn’t seem hostile. But being foreign, who knew if normal instincts applied with them?

While Liola was examining his potential opponent, and Kaiser thought he was going to be eaten alive, the unknown lifeform grabbed Kaiser like a doll and set him on a chair. Then a big hand grabbed the thin Assassin, and placed him on another chair. The unknown lifeform then patted both Liola’s and Kaiser’s heads.

“Don’t move around, Auntie will now make you some food.” After saying so, the unknown lifeform, calling itself Auntie, grabbed a wok big enough to fit both Kaiser and Liola, and then used a shovel like a spatula.

Auntie muttered a few lines, and then intense flames suddenly appeared on the bottom of the wok.

Although Kaiser lacked magical strength, he didn’t lack any magical knowledge.

While trembling, he said, “It’s actually a Firewall spell. Is this Auntie going to use Firewall to burn us into corpses?”

Liola looked at the wok and explained calmly, “It’s not going to be burnt, because then it can’t be eaten.”

“Damn!” Kaiser jumped up from the seat.

“I’d rather be burnt than eaten, especially if I’m going to be made into the same dish as you? Should it be called Kaiser Fried Liola or Liola Fried Kaiser? Hmm, the former one sounds better.”

‘That’s really not what’s important here.’ Liola thought quietly.

The reason why Liola sat calmly on the chair instead of using his speed to escape was… he had already saw Auntie tossed in whole chickens, fish, bowls of vegetables, salt… and other large quantities of ingredients into that super-sized wok.

The wok that was large enough for two people was already 80% full, and there was no more room for a whole person. Therefore, Liola guessed, neither him nor Kaiser would be one of the ingredients.

Bam! Bam!

After two loud noises, two pails were placed in front of them… Liola realized the pails were filled with food.

‘So these are… bowls, right?’

“Little children, eat more. Look at how small you are, you must not be getting enough food.”

Auntie laughed as she used her hands to pat Liola and Kaiser on the back, which made them almost faceplant into the pails.

‘Is this edible?’ Liola looked at the whole chicken and fish inside the pail.

‘It does smell quite delicious…’

“Delicious! Tasty!”

Kaiser already started chewing on the whole chicken. At the same time, he verified that, despite the horrific appearance of the food inside the pail, the taste was unexpectedly good.

Liola hesitated, but Auntie patted Liola’s back again, hurrying him to eat. Liola then grabbed a fish and started to eat, so Auntie would stop patting him on the back and pushing him head-first into the pail.

After fighting with the food for a while, Kaiser’s pail was actually only half empty! But the result was Kaiser holding onto his stomach and couldn’t move an inch while sitting on the chair.

As for Liola, his pail looked practically untouched, he hadn’t been hungry, so the Assassin stopped after eating a fish and some vegetables.

The Auntie was clearly unhappy. She held the kitchen knife and the shovel, and stood behind the two like a mountain, as if she was saying no one was allowed to leave if they don’t finish.

Even for the eataholic Kaiser, he was so full now that he wanted to vomit whenever he saw food, so how could Liola possibly finish his own pail of food?

Auntie narrowed her eyes and asked. “If you guys aren’t hungry, then why are you in the kitchen?”

“Hey hey, maybe Liola wasn’t hungry, but I ate half a pail, doesn’t count as hungry to you? Unless you usually cook for Dragons? Crap, I said too much… ugh.”

Kaiser coughed a few times. The food reached his throat and almost came out of his mouth along with his speech.

‘Dragons?’

Liola saw the mountains of food, and an idea dawned on him. He immediately called for Baolilong using telepathy.

Compared to the pathetic situation of hiding constantly for a week, Baolilong, who was loved by everyone who saw it, was comfortably sleeping in the dorm, until Liola called it.

Baolilong rubbed its little eyes and responded to papa’s calling.

A little magic circle formed underneath the table, and little Baolilong appeared from it, then crawled out.

Before Liola mentioned anything about why Baolilong was summoned, it had already started reducing the mountains of food inside the pails as well as the ones in the wok.

Auntie, who was originally dissatisfied Liola and Kaiser had left more than half of the food, started to show a satisfied smile after seeing Baolilong eliminating the food by eating a whole chicken with every bite.

“You sure eat a lot and fast. Such a good baby.” Auntie sighed with satisfaction, but the air produced by her sigh messed up Liola’s shoulder-length hair.

“Holy cow, I only knew of an interdimensional bag, but now I know there’s such a thing as interdimensional stomach. Hey, Liola, looks like you would need several stadiums worth of food to feed that little runt of yours.”

Kaiser looked at Baolilong clearing the food like a tornado as he rejoiced in the misfortune of the penniless Dragon’s father, Liola.

‘Making money.’

Liola remembered something he couldn’t forget. For him, making money would have been simple. Although different worlds had different needs, the Adorning Flowers’ Assassin organization clearly showed Liola that every world needed Assassins.

As the best Assassin, what stopped him from making a lot of money? Unfortunately, he made a promise not to kill, what was worse was he was completely sealed…

“How do I make money?” Liola whispered.

Though Liola murmured quietly, Auntie heard it clearly.

The giant body suddenly moved from beside Baolilong to behind Liola’s back, and Liola found himself engulfed in a giant shadow.

The shadow could belong to nobody but that unknown lifeform named Auntie, but why would Auntie stand behind him? Liola began to wonder if his battle power was enough to beat Auntie.

A pair of heavy hands landed on Liola’s shoulder, and a face three times the size of Liola’s got close to his ear and whispered,

“Little baby, are you the little little baby’s father?”

Liola’s ear rung for a long while before he could answer, “Yes.”

Auntie’s giant head shook.

“Look at how much this baby eats. It probably needs three cows per meal before it would be full. Little baby, you would probably have to make a lot of money to feed little little baby.”

Liola and Kaiser were both stupefied. ‘T-three cows? Can it be?’

Although Baolilong ate a lot, but not to the point of having three cows per mean, right?

Burp~~ Baolilong finally licked the wok clean, and then let out a long burp.

Baolilong patted its slightly protruding belly, and yelled, “Baolilong is now full, full~”

Hearing Baolilong’s declaration of being full, Liola felt bad. Baolilong had never said it was full before, but instead simply continued eating without stopping.

‘Could it be… Baolilong had never been full before?’

Thinking about the subject, Liola felt disappointed. He turned to Kaiser, who was sitting beside him and asked, “Kaiser, how much is a cow?”

“A cow? Let’s go with the cheapest one, so probably at least three Gold coins.”

Kaiser had probably also guessed Baolilong’s real appetite. Thinking of Liola’s money as his own, Kaiser’s heart started to feel a pain because of money.

Three cows per meal, nine cows for three meals, three gold coins for one cow, so that’s 27 gold coins per day…

Liola remembered that being Purity’s bodyguard, they would only get one Silver coin per day, and ten Silver coins equals one Gold coin, so how was he to get the remaining 26 gold and 9 silver?

Sigh, Kaiser sighed and patted Liola’s back, “Looks like you should raise your baby by being a duck.”

[T/N: Duck — In Mandarin it’s the same as being a male prostitute or a host.]

“Being a duck?” Liola frowned.

‘How would being a duck feed Baolilong? Unless ducks were worth a lot on this world?’

“Hahaha, come to Auntie. Auntie has nothing here, except a lot of meat.”

Auntie hit Liola’s and Kaiser’s back with her large palms. Liola’s face turned pale as a result, and Kaiser lied face down on the table, and blood could be vaguely seen from the corner of his mouth.

“Meat meat!”

After hearing about meat, Baolilong seemed to forget who its papa was. It jumped onto Auntie’s back, and yelled with sparkling eyes,

“Meat meat!”

“A lot of meat? For free?”

Kaiser’s eyes shone as well, because then he wouldn’t have to worry about food again. Besides… hehe, the extra meat could be sold, then he wouldn’t even have to worry about money.

“Of course not. The meat this little baby eats will be paid by the two of you working.” Auntie opened its mouth and laughed out loud, and her shaking muscles made Liola and Kaiser cringe.

Kaiser, who was powerless to escape, heard the word ‘working’, and suddenly felt his knees were alive again.

As he screamed something like “not me”, he beelined toward the kitchen exit. Auntie easily swung her big hands, and dragged Kaiser back. Even Liola, who sat on a chair, was picked up like a cat.

“I can walk by myself.” Liola said calmly while suspended on air. At the same time he was not used to having nothing but air under his feet.

Auntie raised her head and laughed, “Don’t be shy, little babies, just go with Auntie.”

Having said so, her feet began to rapidly move forward. Each step she made, three meters flew by. Despite the fact that the pace of her footsteps were slow, the people being dragged by her felt like their surrounding sceneries were flowing by as if they were on a train.

“I knew it! I knew it! Nothing good ever happens with you. Damn, I should’ve gone with Meinan.” Kaiser snapped.

Liola quietly thought,

Who was it who said nobody would ever find them inside the freezer, and dragged him along…