Lucas couldn’t help his new friend beco a Disciple of Celestina Balfour, but that didn’t an there was nothing he could do for her, "If you’d like, I can introduce you to my Master. She’s always enthusiastic about training young talents, so if you have so questions you’d like to ask her, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving you a few pointers."
*Glomp!*
"Uh..." Lucas’ brain shut down in the next instant as he felt an impact on his chest and two arms wrap around him, squeezing him tightly.
He also found himself being lifted off the ground as the young girl embracing him hopped up and down joyfully and cheered, "Thank you thank you thank you!"
In the next second, Audrey literally leapt backwards, her face flushed as red as her dress and panicked out loud, "I’m sorry! That was... I... I didn’t an to... I was just..."
"Pft, puhaha," Lucas burst into laughter when he saw Audrey acting this way.
"Mmmm..." In response, Audrey pouted visibly, clearly thinking Lucas was making fun of her.
"Sorry sorry," Lucas waved off her concerns, "You just reminded of my Big Sister. Her na is Eris. She’s the daughter of the Baron who governed my hotown. I think you’d get along well with her."
"Is that so?" Audrey was a little intrigued, but since she had never t Eris, she didn’t think too much about it.
Lucas deliberately left out that Eris was also the Disciple of Celestina, and also the latter’s great granddaughter. He figured it would be best to let the two girls et and see how they got along first without this extraneous information.
As the atmosphere between the two children cald down, a familiar voice announced loudly to the hall, "Honoured Guests, please return to your seats as dinner will be served in a mont."
"I guess we should head back," Lucas mused upon hearing Count Carlson, offering his hand to Audrey, "Shall we?"
Grabbing her new friend’s hand, Audrey nodded happily, her earlier displeasure having lted away entirely.
She then imdiately began dragging him along, through the mulling crowds, back to the head table where the two had first t.
Feeling the slight tug on his arm as the girl in front of him weaved in-between the various adults, confidently taking the lead, Lucas really was reminded of his Big Sister, thinking the two of them were quite similar in many respects.
.....
As soon all 200 or so guests were seated, Mathias Carlson stood and made a few remarks, welcoming everyone, praising so, offering thanks to others, the standard things one would expect a noble to say.
Most of this flowed in one ear and out the other of the people in the hall, but since noble etiquette demanded that the host deliver such a statent at the beginning of a banquet, that was what the Count did, whether anyone was really listening or not.
Lucas, for one, was listening intently. Not because he found what the Count was saying to be interesting or engaging, but because he thought he might pick up on so information about important people in the hall he could use later.
This was also his first noble banquet, so the boy didn’t really know any better and thought this was what he was supposed to do in order not to seem rude.
10 minutes later, the Count finally concluded his prepared speech and clapped his hands, signaling an army of footn and maids to quickly enter from the side of the hall and begin serving the food.
If he was being honest, this was the only part of the evening Lucas was actually looking forward to.
Lunch with the Supre Elder had been quite delicious, a light and refreshing experience he had not had before. However, as a growing boy who had been running around all day long, such a al had hardly been filling, making Lucas quite eager to see what was on the nu for dinner tonight.
Unfortunately, he was bound to be disappointed.
The first course consisted of a clear soup and small piece of flatbread.
Carefully following the example of the others around him, Lucas picked up the smallest spoon on the place-setting before him and took a sip of the soup, finding it to be... well, bland.
It wasn’t bad, per-say, but this soup lacked any kind of rich flavour or seasoning. Lucas couldn’t even tell if it was made from so kind of animal stock, or if it was purely vegetarian.
As for the flatbread... it was, well, bread.
Sure, it was warm and freshly baked, but it was just normal bread in the end. Lucas had been hoping that in a bigger, wealthier city like Iron Rock, especially at the banquet of a Count, so kind of yeasted bread would appear, but it seed that his Uncle Jerry, who ran the bakery back in Redwood Town, was right when he said the only place to find such bread was in a single shop in Southbridge.
It’s probably sothing like a secret recipe they don’t want to share so they can maximize their profits, Lucas grumbled to himself, completely ignoring the fact that he was doing sothing similar with both his soap and sugar.
With this initial experience, Lucas tamped down his expectations as the next course was being served, and it was a good thing he did so because the salad which was placed in front of him was basically identical to the one he had eaten earlier today, only less elaborate.
At lunch, the salad had consisted of a few kinds of fresh greens, topped with chopped fruits, nuts, and vegetables. The dressing had been a simple oil and spice mixture, but it was still quite tasty, earning Lucas’ honest praise.
The salad served tonight, however, had the sa greens, but it was lacking many of the fruits and nuts from earlier, and the dressing was also far less seasoned, again resulting in Lucas feeling it was a bit uninspired.
If this had been the first ti he was tasting this dish, Lucas might have given it a higher evaluation, but since he had eaten the superior version of it a few hours earlier, it naturally fell short.
Still, Lucas was hungry, as most active boys his age tended to constantly be, so he ate as fast as politely possible.
During this ti, Lucas stole a few glances around the head table and the rest of the banquet hall, checking out the reactions of not only the hosts, but all the other guests as well.
To his surprise, many people were also eating quite enthusiastically, so of them even praising the dishes for their taste and variety. There were even a few who seed better inford and were bragging about the Carlson Family recently hiring a High-Rank Grade 0 Spirit Chef Apprentice to run their kitchen.
Lucas didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he heard all this.
If this was really the best the Rockwell Kingdom had to offer when it ca to fine cuisine, it seed like he would have to personally get involved in improving things if he ever wanted to taste all the tantalizing dishes from his inherited mories.
Hygiene products, food, clothing, infrastructure, talworking... Lucas went over all the projects and ideas that were on his to-do list and suddenly felt extrely exhausted, and these were all just things he ’wanted’ to do, not ’needed’ to do.
Cultivation, physical training, the mass-evacuation, and many other things were even more important than these optional pursuits and couldn’t be put off or delayed.
"Haaa..." letting out a long sigh, Lucas pushed all of these worries out of his head for now and just concentrated on the present, not that the banquet was giving him much enjoynt or relaxation either.
A few more minutes passed before the main course for the evening was served, and at long last, Lucas found sothing he could genuinely praise.
Back in Redwood Town, and even recently in Herald City, there had rarely been a lack of protein to eat, but it was still very rare to be able to eat higher Order beast at.
It seed Count Carlson had instructed his chefs to go all out when it ca to the main dish tonight, and in order to et those expectations, the Manor’s kitchen staff had actually prepared the at of a Fourth Order Wild Beast.
Lucas couldn’t tell which beast was being served, but the at itself was juicy, tender, and bursting with flavour.
On top of that, being from a Fourth Order Beast, it was also packed full of refined Spirit Qi which, through the efforts of the chefs, was now easily digestible and could even be absorbed into the body, ever so slightly increasing one’s strength.
The sides which were served with the main course were lacklustre again. The lack of variety when it ca to seasoning was still an issue, and the actually cooking thods weren’t very refined from Lucas’ perspective, but the quality of the at itself was so high that it basically made up for all those faults.
Everyone in the banquet hall seed to agree with Lucas’ assessnt, with even Allina, who was sitting next to him, muttering with so surprise, "This isn’t bad..."
Many ideas about how to improve upon what he was eating ca rushing into Lucas’ head, but he again pushed them aside, knowing that now wasn’t the ti for such indulgences.
Upon finishing what was on his plate, which wasn’t actually much, probably because he was so young and his cultivation was so low, Lucas still felt hungry and wanted to ask for seconds, but he didn’t know if doing so would be appropriate, so he just set down his fork and knife and waited.
Fortunately, not long after, several calls for seconds ca from people around him, including from the Count himself, so Lucas happily hopped onto the bandwagon and requested another half-portion.
This drew a few surprised looks from so of the Carlson Family’s younger mbers, sothing that Lucas did not miss, but none of them said anything, leaving him wondering what was going on.
"They’re wondering how you can digest so much high-Order at and not feel bloated," Allina whispered from the side, but that only confused Lucas further as he didn’t think he was eating any more than normal.
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