"Two charcoal-roasted hanging-oven steaks with your house special sauce."
"Garlic butter chicken wings, lemon-garlic roasted potato balls, roasted pumpkin and bell pepper soup, vegetable tempura, shrimp and mushroom scrambled eggs, and a yakitori platter. That's it."
"For drinks, one cranberry wine on ice and three cold wheat ales. We'll order more if we need it."
Leon rattled off the order with practiced ease, then waited. And waited. No response. He looked up, confused.
His soul left his body.
Jeanne was bent over, running her fingers along Anya's tail in long, reverent strokes, while the cat-girl waitress wore an expression of pure, transcendent bliss.
"..."
A muscle in Leon's cheek twitched. His eye followed.
"Ahem. Miss Anya?" He rapped his knuckles against the table, trying to summon her back to this plane of existence.
"Meow? What is it, meow?" Those eyes turned to him, wide and vacant and utterly content. She'd clearly forgotten she was on the clock the moment Jeanne's fingers found her fur.
Leon stared at her. Then surrendered.
"The... the order..."
"ANYA!!! What do you think you're DOING?!" A fist came down on the cat-girl's head with a sharp crack, raising an immediate lump.
"Myaow! Mama Mia!" Anya crouched with both hands clamped over her skull, trembling pathetically.
"Sorry about that, dear. She held up your order, and I'll make sure this idiot hears about it." The woman who'd appeared was Mama Mia herself, nearly a hundred and eighty centimeters tall, only a touch shorter than Leon but built like a fortress. He managed a stiff smile.
"N-no, it's fine, really. It was nothing. Besides, my girlfriend was the one who... well, bothered your waitress first. Our fault entirely." He waved it off as fast as he could.
Mama Mia said nothing, but her eyes lingered on the young man with a flicker of approval before she grabbed Anya by the scruff and hauled her back toward the bar.
"Don't be so polite. Ten percent off your tab tonight. Enjoy yourselves!"
Once they were gone, Jeanne hung her head, cheeks pink. "Sorry, Leon. I caused trouble."
"That's not trouble." He waved it away and changed the subject. "By the way, I ordered you a cranberry wine. Sound good?"
Cranberry wine went down with a tart-sweet kiss, then bloomed into something richer, fragrant with fruit. The kind of easy-drinking wine that was a hit among the women of Orario. Even goddesses had a weakness for it.
"Fruit wine? That does sound nice." Curiosity sparked in her eyes.
"Trust me, I've had it a few times. It's good."
...
Before long, Anya returned with a tray, a fresh lump still crowning her head.
"Here you go! Everything you ordered, food and drinks! Enjoy, meow!" She set everything down, flashed Jeanne a grin, and darted off to her next table.
Their seats were tucked into a corner with a clear view of the entire hall.
They ate, drank, and leaned close, trading observations in low voices.
"Don't let appearances fool you. This tavern looks ordinary, but I'm telling you, it's anything but. If you ranked every Familia in Orario by combat power, this place could hold its own near the top."
The conspiratorial look on Leon's face hooked Jeanne's curiosity instantly.
She scanned the room, studying each member of the staff one by one, until her gaze landed on a grey-haired girl weaving between tables. Something in her chest lurched.
A wrongness she couldn't name. Subtle, elusive, but definitely there.
Jeanne set down her knife and fork, lifted her glass, and clinked it softly against Leon's. She leaned in, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
"Is it... that grey-haired girl?"
"Something about her feels off. I can't explain it. This strange, subtle dissonance?"
"And actually, all the waitresses here seem... unusual."
"Especially the owner. That kind of presence, that pressure... a normal person doesn't have that."
Leon's ale paused halfway to his lips. He was quietly impressed. Leave it to the Saintess to sense in minutes what most people never noticed at all.
He tipped the mug back, draining the cold wheat ale in one long pull, and sighed with satisfaction.
"Rumor has it every waitress here used to be an Adventurer. They ended up working here for one reason or another. And if you can imagine the kind of stories that lead someone down that path... well, none of them are simple."
Jeanne's eyes widened. She hadn't expected this modest tavern to be hiding that kind of firepower.
"And here's the real question." Leon dropped his voice further. "You know why nobody dares start trouble at the Hostess of Fertility? It's not just that every waitress is a former Adventurer with at least Level 3 under her belt. The real reason is Mama Mia."
He stole a guilty glance toward the bar, where the owner stood polishing a glass. She sensed it immediately. Their eyes met.
He flinched, broke the look with a sheepish grin, and hunched back toward Jeanne.
"That woman is the Demi Ymir. Among Orario's veteran Adventurers, it's practically an open secret."
"Demi Ymir? Is that an alias?"
Jeanne wasn't slow. Her brow furrowed, and she landed on the answer almost instantly.
Leon bit into a garlic butter chicken wing, silently praising Mama Mia's cooking, and murmured near Jeanne's ear:
"Yeah. The Demi Ymir. One of the city's Two Great Pillars. Former captain of the Freya Familia. Level 6, and the strongest kind of Level 6 at that."
Jeanne sucked in a breath.
She wasn't a wide-eyed rookie anymore.
Over the past weeks, Leon's sporadic but intense crash courses had given her a thorough understanding of what Levels meant in this world.
As far as she knew, while Level 5 and above were all classified as First-Class Adventurers, the elites who fought on the Dungeon's deepest front lines, the gap between Level 5 and Level 6 was a chasm that most could never cross.
Level 5 was formidable. The backbone of the city. But spread across all of Orario's many Familias, there were a decent number of them. Strong, certainly, but not singular.
Level 6 was different. Using Leon's framework, Level 6 meant you'd stepped into the realm of heroes. Every individual who reached that height was one of a kind, defined by something no one else possessed. True powerhouses.
Their deeds, their glory, their names were woven into songs by bards and carried across the world. Even children in the most remote, isolated villages could recite a line or two. Their stories were chronicled in the Heroic Tales, legends passed down through generations.
And Mama Mia was one of those people.
The realization crashed through her in a wave. Disbelief painted itself across her face.
"That's... don't you think that's bizarre? By Adventurer standards, Mama Mia's still young, isn't she? And she just... retired to run a tavern?"
Leon flagged a waitress for a refill, took a long sip from his freshly topped mug, and sighed contentedly.
"Nothing strange about it. Dreams are abstract things. A thousand Adventurers carry a thousand different visions of the One-Eyed Black Dragon."
"Everyone's ideals and goals are shaped by different circumstances. Glory, fame, fortune, revenge... you don't have to understand someone else's dream. You just have to respect it."
Jeanne accepted the yakitori skewer he passed her, took a bite, and her eyes lit up.
"This is delicious."
She was about to hear Leon launch into a monologue about his refined culinary philosophy when someone cut him off.
"Hey. You just said the One-Eyed Black Dragon."
The voice was young, flat, almost devoid of inflection, yet threaded with something raw underneath. Something that burned.
Leon and Jeanne both froze. They turned toward the voice at the same time.
A girl stood there, eyes fierce and unyielding, and spoke each word as if carving it into stone:
"The Black Dragon. I will be the one to kill it."
"...?"
Golden hair. Golden eyes. A presence as cool and remote as a porcelain doll brought to life.
That was the first impression the Sword Princess, Ais Wallenstein, left on them both.
A deep one.