The Best Lunch, The Best Companions

The moment my companions put my Angel Fluffy Bread into their mouths, their bodies arched backward and their faces turned peaceful, as if they were being called up to heaven.

But soon their knees gave out, and one after another they collapsed onto the ground.

“Are you okay?” I called out, but they wore such utterly intoxicated expressions that it was as though they could not hear me at all.

“S-Such delicious bread… f-first time…! L-Leo-kun’s… Leo-kun’s flavor is meltiiiiiiing through meeeeee…! Leo-kuuun… Leo-kuuuuun…!”

“H-Hah… hafuu… I-I have eaten bread… for the f-first time…! I-I never knew… it could be something this delicious…! Master, Masteeeeeer…!”

With nasal, almost crying voices, Monaka and Kotone clung to my legs.

The Merchant Union, led by Maachan, looked as though they had fallen under mass hypnosis.

They gazed up at me with expressions where joy and fear were mixed together, as if the terrifying Great Demon King had granted them forbidden pleasure.

“L-Leopin-kyun… y-you’re amazing… way too amazing…! I don’t even know how many times I’ve said that… but no matter how many times I say it, it’s still not enoughhhhhh…!”

“You grew Wheatgrass, made a watermill hut that threshes it automatically, and even milled it into flour yourself… And not only did you beat Lord Payper black and blue and make Monaka-sama and Kotone-sama do farm work…”

“Y-You can even bake bread this delicious too…!”

“A-Amazinggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg!!”

The Tamers were devouring it together with the pets on their shoulders like they had become siblings.

“H-Haf, haf, it’s so goooood! It’s so goooood!”

“B-But what’s going on!? These little ones usually react to the bread sold at the school store by trying to throw dirt on it!”

“L-Leopin-kun’s bread is so good it’s even captivating the pets!?”

“Yeah! No feed I ever gave mine got this kind of reaction!”

“More importantly, I can’t stop either! I can’t stoppppppppppppppppppp!!”

The only one left outside the circle was Payper, and for some reason he was putting on a one-man performance.

“P-Pay!? A-an unemployed nobody baking bread…! T-That bread has to be awful! Paaah…! B-But it’s so fluffy, and it looks so delicious…! Ahem! Leopin-kun! Would you be interested in a highest-grade sandwich? I’m rather tired of eating them, so I suppose I could bestow one on unemployed trash like you. This one half-eaten slice of sandwich in exchange for two hundred of those breads… aaaah!?”

As Payper stepped forward, he kicked over the basket at his feet.

He spilled every last sandwich inside all over the field.

“Pa!? Pa!? Pa!? Paaaaah!? This Royal Sandwich Basket is a luxury item that costs five hundred thousand Ender at the school store!? I’d only taken one bite, and now they’re all ruined!? What a waste! What a waste! Fuu, fuu!”

Payper picked up the mud-covered sandwiches like they were bundles of cash and blew on them to get the dirt off.

“Hey, hey, sandwiches won’t make good fertilizer, so clean that up properly.”

That was all I said to Payper before I took the empty tray and headed back to the cooking area.

“Everyone’s going to eat through them in no time, so I’ve got to hurry and bake more.”

I tore off more of the dough I had kneaded and put it into the oven.

Then Onesuko, Shinobuko, and Tomoe—the trio of attendants—came over like stray cats stalking a fish someone had just caught.

“No need to panic that much. The next batch will be ready soon. All right, looks like they’re done.”

I handed one freshly baked, piping-hot loaf to them.

Then, with perfectly matched movements, the trio began passing the scorching bread around while tearing off pieces and eating it.

“Haf, hof, i-it really is delicious…! B-But don’t get the wrong idea!”

“Mof, hof, hogu! Once we finish eating, it will be a fight to the death!”

“Hagu, hafu, hofu! Precisely! We have not forgotten that you kissed Monaka-sama and Kotone-sama!”

Ever since the Seven Days of Flame, this trio of attendants had still held a grudge over Monaka and Kotone kissing my cheeks.

Back then, the trio had grudgingly accepted the two of them hugging me in their emotional excitement as a one-time exception.

But they had apparently never imagined it would go as far as kissing.

I had not expected it either, but I had my side of the story too.

“Don’t say it like I forced a kiss on them. Monaka and Kotone were the ones who suddenly did it.”

“Mogu mogu, homu! Making excuses is the worst! I’m disappointed in you, Leopin-kun!”

“Hagu, hagu! Indeed! Ordinarily, you should have recoiled in awe! Leopin! If it were you, you should have been able to do that!”

“Hafu, mogu, gokkun! To think you would use the ninja arts I taught you for something like that—utterly disgraceful, de gozaru!”

“Hamu hamu! At least it was still okay because only our sponsors can watch our pioneer life right now! If something like that had been shown to the general public, it would have caused a terrible incident!”

“Mogu mogu! Exactly! You would have made enemies of every neighboring country!”

“Nin-nin, hamu hamu, a harsher life than even that of a runaway ninja would have awaited you, de gozaru!”

“I get that you want to protect your mistresses, but it’s hard to take seriously when you’re saying all that with bread crumbs all around your mouths…”

I was about to finish saying it when something occurred to me.

“Could it be you were worried about me too?”

“Mogu, as if that were true!”

“Hagu, ridiculous!”

I noticed Shinobuko had said nothing, but when I saw she was waiting for an opening to grab another loaf, I slapped her hand away with a smack.

In any case, thanks to everyone helping out that day, the farm work progressed considerably.

Not only were we able to harvest the sesame, we even managed to plant the next crop, and on top of that expand the fields.

We secured a spacious field on the land on the far side of the forest.

At this rate, we would be able to grow plenty of different crops, and at the very least when it came to vegetables, the people in the residential district would no longer have to suffer under the price manipulation of the upper-class merchants.

And when school let out, the area around my house began to grow lively with many people.

Everyone had started coming to help with my farm work.

They were not just tilling the fields either, but sowing seeds, watering, and even threshing at the watermill hut.

Thanks to that, my workload became a lot lighter.

Everything was smooth sailing.

Just when I thought I would keep expanding the base more and more with this momentum…

A new physical education teacher was appointed to replace Nickbacca-sensei.

For me, that literally became the opening salvo of a brand-new “war.”