Chapter 731: Sterling Enterprises [Bonus - ]

Chapter 731: Sterling Enterprises [Bonus Chapter]

The black automobile rolled down from the botanical terraces and back into the bustling mid-tier avenues.

Sebas turned them into a narrow sun-dappled lane paved with smooth river cobbles, and the air changed at once.

The sweet perfumed breeze of the gardens was gone.

In its place hung a scent that was savory, built from slow-simmered pork marrow, toasted sesame oil, scorched garlic and fermented soy paste.

It crept through the vents of the sealed cabin and hit every nose at the same time as four stomachs growled in unison.

’What is this smell...?’ Rika thought while almost drooling as Silas helped her keep her mouth close, she didn’t know what it was or what smelt so good... but she wanted it.

Sebas eased the car alongside an open-fronted street stall tucked under a dark cedar awning.

Red paper lanterns swayed in the draft with simple painted characters on their sides.

Long counters of thick scarred pine ran along the perimeter, ringed by low backless stools.

Behind them two burly beastkin cooks with rolled-up sleeves worked furiously over iron cauldrons the size of washtubs, where milky broth bubbled and hissed and sent billowing clouds of fragrant steam into the alley.

"Street ramen!" Valerius announced as they stepped out onto the cobblestones. "Not the delicate flavorless broths they serve at banquets... This is Central City red-miso marrow ramen! The noodles are pulled by hand three minutes before they hit the water, and the broth simmers for thirty-six hours over fire-mana coals!"

"Now you’re speaking plain tongue," Morwenna grunted as she dragged out a cedar stool and dropped onto it with a heavy thud.

She tried some yesterday but she didn’t get from this place and she was excited at what it could be.

’Hehe... I love this Ramen thing.’

Silas slid onto the bench beside her and rested his forearms on the counter.

Solenne took the stool on his right and tucked her tail neatly between her knees to keep it off the dusty cobbles.

Aeliana, Rika, Mia and Valerius filled out the rest of the counter and claimed an entire wing of it.

"Seven bowls of the house special!" Valerius called to the cooks.

He paid for all of it in Spirit Credits and waved off the change. "Extra pork belly, extra soft eggs, and double the scallions for the little blond one!"

"I am not little, I am compact and aerodynamic..." Mia kicked her boots against the base of her stool. "You know this Master."

Within three minutes the cooks slammed seven steaming ceramic bowls onto the pine.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

The sight alone was a masterpiece of rustic street food.

The broth was a deep rich ochre shimmering with golden sesame oil and rendered pork fat.

Thick pale-yellow noodles lay coiled under slabs of braised pork belly torched until the edges blackened and caramelized, dark soy-marinated eggs with runny golden yolks sat half-submerged beside heaps of fresh green scallion and crisp sheets of roasted kelp, and a bright red dollop of fermented chili paste glowed in the center like a coal.

The fragrant spicy steam rolled over the counter and made every stomach growl again and bundles of lacquered wooden chopsticks lay beside the bowls.

Silas picked up a pair with his right hand.

With a casual flick of his fingers he snapped them apart, rolled them between thumb and middle finger and dipped the tips into his bowl without a single wasted motion.

He snagged a generous bundle of noodles along with a slice of scallion, lifted it from the steaming broth, blew once across it and slurped it down in one smooth practiced pull.

SLUUUURP!

"Good heat," he murmured, nodding in quiet appreciation. "...The broth has real body."

...He still wanted Martha or Kaelia’s food though.

Beside him Morwenna’s jaw tightened.

She picked up her chopsticks like she was gripping a boarding axe.

Her scarred knuckles wrapped around both sticks in one fist, and she stabbed the blunt ends into her bowl and tried to clamp a chunk of braised pork between them.

SNAP!

The slippery meat squirted out from between the sticks and flicked a fat drop of red-miso broth straight onto the front of her plain linen shirt!

Morwenna froze as her stormy gray eyes smoked with violent naval rage.

"Miserable little sticks!" she hissed through clenched teeth, glaring at them like mutinous deckhands. "Give me a fork! Give me a dagger! Who eats soup with two polished toothpicks?! It’s an unnatural shore-curse..."

Aeliana took a delicate sip of broth from a wide ceramic spoon and set it down with unhurried grace.

Her shortened ears didn’t move an inch as she glanced sideways at the pirate.

"It is not hard, Morwenna," she said calmly, holding her own chopsticks with perfect precision. "You are squeezing too tight... You ate them yesterday too, you know or should we give you the beginner one’s again."

’Now she sits there preening like a professor,’ Morwenna thought, her left eye twitching as she glared at the smug elf. ’I ought to snap these sticks and shove them right up her—’

"Here, let me see," Silas cut in, turning on his stool with a smile he was trying very hard to keep polite.

He reached across and tapped her knuckles. "Relax your grip... You’re choking the wood to death."

Morwenna’s grip loosened one finger at a time.

"O-ok..."

"Look." Silas laid his own chopsticks across his fingers to show her. "The bottom stick rests in the crook of your thumb, against your ring finger... It doesn’t move as that’s your anchor... You only move the top one, with your index and middle fingers, like this."

He clicked the wooden tips together in a crisp rhythm.

Clack-clack-clack!

Morwenna grunted.

Her brow furrowed in deep concentration as she shifted her scarred fingers along the lacquer and settled the sticks into place. She took a breath, aimed at a thick slice of pork belly and squeezed with careful trembling precision.

The wooden tips pinched the meat and she lifted it two inches above the broth.

...It held.

A fierce triumphant grin split her face.

"Hah! Anchored the cargo!" She shoved the whole slice into her mouth and chewed with furious delighted satisfaction. "Not bad, Captain! You might make a decent tutor too!"

On his other side Solenne was having a complete and silent crisis.

She held her chopsticks in both hands with her fingers tangled in a desperate knot that looked like a bird’s nest made of kindling.

Her floppy ears lay flat against her temples and her golden eyes were wide with panic as the noodles slid off the sticks again and splashed back into the bowl with a mocking plop.

"I can build a high-pressure mana regulator with sixteen gear ratios," Solenne whimpered in agonizing mortification.

Her tail drooped between her legs.

"Why can I not operate two wooden dowels?! The friction coefficient does not exist... The noodles are actively resisting capture!"

Silas chuckled and reached over to cover her trembling hands with his own.

"Deep breath, Solenne." His voice was soft and patient as he untangled her fingers one at a time and guided her thumb and index finger into the right grooves. "Don’t treat it like a machine... It’s not a gear train. It’s an extension of your hand so keep your wrist soft, like when you calibrate a fine scribe."

Solenne’s face turned an incandescent crimson under his touch as her tail gave one violent involuntary thump against the stool.

"Y-Yes, my Lord!" she squeaked.

With Silas steering her knuckles she closed the wooden tips around a cluster of pale noodles and lifted them smoothly out of the red broth.

They stayed on the sticks and not a strand slipped free.

Gasp!

Her ears shot straight up and trembled with ecstatic joy. Her tail began to wag with a lot of velocity and slap against the cedar stool in a rapid drumroll.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

"I did it!" Solenne cried. She blew once on the steam and took a huge eager bite.

SLUUUURP!

Her golden eyes widened until they gleamed like polished brass gears.

The savory heat of the pork, the bite of the red chili and the chewy spring of the noodles all hit her tongue at once.

"S-So good!" she gasped around a mouthful of broth and plunged her chopsticks back in with frantic new confidence. "It is so savory! It warms me all the way down to my ribs... My Lord, this is magnificent!"

"Told you," Valerius laughed, thoroughly enjoying the show as he shoveled a massive portion of noodles into his own mouth.

Across the counter Mia ate with chipmunk speed, her cheeks stuffed with pork belly and bamboo shoots.

She ignored chopsticks altogether and funneled soup into her face with a wooden ladle like a runaway water wheel.

’Look at her,’ Aeliana thought with a bit of a scrunched face. ’Grown woman by the way...’

Rika sat beside her and lifted noodles one neat mouthful at a time with a calm expression, pausing now and then to dip a single shredded scallion in the broth and feed it to the little white phoenix peeking from her collar.

The hatchling swallowed it, shivered with joy and demanded another.

’It’s really good... I would have let out a cry for happiness but...’ She glanced at Valerius, she really wanted to be alone with Master and the other girls. ’Hehehe~ Much better than when I made them myself all those years ago or had my beasts make them...’

For ten minutes the only sounds along the cedar counter were the clatter of wooden bowls, the rhythmic slurping of hot noodles and the sizzle of the iron cauldrons behind them.

Every drop of broth vanished.

Morwenna slammed her empty bowl down on the pine with a resounding clack as she wiped her lips on her sleeve and let out a long contented sigh like a ship dropping anchor in a safe harbor.

"Now that was an honest meal," she declared, crossing her arms in deep satisfaction. "Hot, heavy and a good burn in the throat... Worth every bit of money spent."

Valerius pushed his empty bowl away and leaned back against the wooden rail, stretching his arms over his head until his spine popped.

He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his mouth, his golden eyes sweeping over the full and happy group with easy warmth.

"Well," he said, tilting his head toward Silas. "We’ve scaled the high terraces, we’ve admired the mountain flora and we’ve conquered the best red-miso cauldron in the middle ring... Which brings me to the practical side of this little excursion."

Silas raised an eyebrow and rested his chin in his hand. "The practical side?"

"You’re a Lord with a brand new territory, well you’ll soon become a Classic Lord right?" Valerius’s tone turned a shade more businesslike, though the playful smirk never left his lips. "You’ve got retainers, you’ve got defenses to build, you’ve got a whole frontier to secure... You can’t spend your entire stay in Central City eating street noodles and watching Mia steal my cakes. Do you need any serious equipment? Weapons, advanced mana armaments, dampeners, defensive stuff... anything like that?"

Silas paused.

A slow bright smile spread over his face, and his dark blue eyes lit up with real delight.

He set his chopsticks on the counter and leaned back on the stool until his gaze met Valerius’s golden eyes.

"Actually, Val," he said, looking exceptionally happy about it, "yes. We do."

Valerius’s face lit with an enormous triumphant grin.

He slapped both hands down on the counter with a loud smack and hopped off his stool with all the flair of a merchant prince about to seal the contract of the century.

"Say no more!" He swept his azure mantle over his shoulder and strode to the black automobile idling at the curb.

He planted his hands on the doorframe as Sebas lowered the dark glass window.

"Sebas!" Valerius flashed a dazzling grin. "Drive us to the Sterling Enterprises building!"

’Sterling Enterprises?’

After a few minutes... Once again, the black automobile surged away from the curb and left the savory steam and clatter of the noodle stalls behind.

Sebas took the winding mid-tier alleys with silent effortless grace and merged onto a wide thoroughfare paved with polished basalt slabs and lined with tall brass gaslamps that gleamed in the afternoon sun.

The rustic timber storefronts fell away as they neared the commercial heart of Central City.

Towering facades of gray granite, tempered obsidian glass and soaring arches of burnished copper rose on both sides of the road.

Ahead, commanding the eastern horizon of the district, stood the headquarters of Sterling Enterprises.

It was a thirty-story tower of pale limestone and reinforced dampening alloy shaped like a shield pointed straight at the highland clouds.

Huge aegis emblems of burnished silver threw the sunlight across the facade in dazzling planes.

Around its wide base, private courtyards of crushed white quartz and low marble fountain basins held the public avenue at a respectful distance.

Sebas brought the car to a silent hydraulic stop under a cantilevered portico of smoked glass.

"Here we are, Lord Valerius," he announced, stepping out to open the passenger doors with a dignified bow. "The flagship pavilion of Sterling Enterprises..."

"Home sweet foundry!" Valerius grinned. He stepped out onto the quartz walk and shook out his azure silk sleeves.

Silas got out beside him and took in the clean fortified lines of the building.

Behind them Morwenna tugged at the front of her linen shirt with a lingering scowl and muttered about Rowenna’s disguise runes, while Solenne scurried to Silas’s side with her ears straight up and her eyes shining.

Aeliana adjusted the strap of Eluned’s brass camera over her shoulder, and Mia hopped out last and scampered ahead, spinning on her toes as if she owned the whole avenue.

Valerius led them through towering double doors of etched plate glass that swung open on a whisper of pressure.

Inside, the grand lobby was a sunlit cathedral of commerce.

The floor was polished white marble veined with silver, the ceiling vaulted three stories overhead and was crisscrossed by suspended brass walkways where junior clerks and artificers in tailored dark coats hurried back and forth with clipboards and mana ledgers.

Sleek display pedestals lined the floor and showed off miniature pumps, polished alloy ingots, runic dampeners and scale models of heavy mining rigs under glass domes.

"Welcome to the belly of the beast!" Valerius declared with an expansive wave.

He led them past the central reception rotunda, where the desk staff snapped to attention and bowed low as the heir walked by.

Valerius barely blinked as he was in his element. "Sterling Enterprises doesn’t just sell blades to mercenaries... We supply the heavy foundries of the whole Sovereign Realm! Kinetic excavation drills, reinforced atmospheric seals, structural plating... if it needs metal that won’t crack under twenty tons of mana pressure, it comes through our workshops...!"

Silas stopped at one of the pedestals and ran his eyes over the precise runic engraving on its mount.

"It’s impressive, Val."

"Wait until you see the heavy depot." Valerius winked and tapped his mythril keycard against a private brass elevator beside the rear vaults as the doors slid open with a chime. "The showroom upstairs is for dilettantes who want pretty swords to hang over their hearths but the real work happens in the logistics sub-vaults."