Bon appetit

Chapter 3.1

“With the addition of savory and salty cheese, the flavour enhances without adding any other seasoning! I know it’s delicious to eat freshly grilled meat, but sometimes I want to eat beef jerky. I just followed that instinct.”

The words were long, but they were still bullishit. Even Ingrid, who had now defended her, was looking away.

“How can you eat in this situation?”

The Duke, who never lost his composure anytime or anywhere, seemed to be in a state of wonder this time.

“Of course! As I said before, if you die after eating, you’ll feel good and satisfied. You can have a peaceful death without any regrets. So, would you like one?”

Luana approached and offered a piece of jerky.

If it were the usual situation, the Duke would have slit her throat right away without any hesitation.  But it was also weird. His body was craving the food. The abandoned Princess did not know that the Duke had a curse that had been passed down in his family from generation to generation. The curse grew stronger year after year, and now the Duke had almost lost his sense of taste.

‘Would it be fun to eat food even if I can’t taste it?’ The Duke only ate enough to spare his life. So, wanting food was something that the Duke was not familiar with.

The Duke accepted the jerky from the princess. On the surface, it was not different from any other jerky. However, a new world unfolded with just a bite of it.

Originally, he didn’t like beef jerky. If he couldn’t feel the taste, he wanted it to be at least chewy. So, he had no choice but to hate tough beef jerky. He ate reluctantly during the war, but did not even speak of it in his mansion. But this jerky felt different.

The jerky that the abandoned princess handed over was soft and could be chewed much easier than the others. The teeth could easily dig into the dry surface and cut it off. The meat was chewed and crushed between the teeth, and the taste of the condensed meat filled his mouth. It was exactly how she said. He could taste the savory and salty taste of the meat, and at the end, a strange sweetness remained on the tip of his tongue.

He wanted to eat more. He remembered the desire that he had forgotten‌ for a while.

The Duke, Legion, unknowingly took another bite of the jerky.

It was… delicious.

“Isn’t it delicious?”

When the princess saw him, she asked triumphantly. Even though he didn’t answer, Legion’s actions had told her everything. The knights’ eyes widened in surprise.

‘Our Duke is really eating! Is it really that delicious?’

The knight, who was interrogating Luana while holding the jerky, looked down at his palm with a hesitant look. Yes, he was holding a jerky now. Even though rationally he knew he shouldn’t eat, his instinct urged him.

The jerky seemed to whisper, Take a bite and then you’ll know. It’s going to be really delicious. It was the devil’s whisper.

“No!”

The knight barely managed to endure the temptation. If he had been a little more shallow, he surely would have eaten it. But he endured it. As a member of the proud Leviathan Knights, he endured it!

A strange peace came to the space where just before blood was flowing. Luana was puzzled by the changed atmosphere. She had no choice but to. Because they were the people who were threatening to kill her just now.

All this was peace made by a cheese jerky.

She thought peace would come, but she was mistaken.

“Get in.”

“Wait a minute! Why are you taking me into a dungeon?”

When Luana desperately held onto the door and asked, the Knight looked at her with a blank look on his face.

‘Huh? What? Why? The Duke also enjoyed the beef jerky!’ And as soon as she was about to say more, the knight pushed her forward and she rolled into the dungeon.

She quickly got up again, but the knight had already closed the door and was turning around.

“Wait a minute! Stop right there! Hey! Stop!”

She shouted frantically, but the knight disappeared without looking back. Drops of water dripped from the damp ceiling in a dreary atmosphere. The floor was cracked and dirty and there were some creepy dark red traces left on it. ‘Why should I be here? It’s so unfair.’

Luana stood beside the bed fixed to the wall with a sour look on her face. It was embarrassing to call it a bed, but still it was better to sleep on it than on the floor. However, it didn’t take much long for her to realise that the idea was just an illusion. Actually there were other bugs living together in the bed.

“It’s not fair!”

She tried to move her feet, but to no avail.

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“This is not it.”

Luana sat down looking for a place to sit and stay as clean as possible. As she sat still and pondered, she felt goosebumps on her back. She had an ominous feeling. ‘No, no way! Are they going to torment an abandoned princess? What sort of pleasure would they get from it?’

‘I hate being sick and painful!’

Luana jumped up, grabbed the bars and shook them.

“Excuse me! Please release me! It’s not me! I think you have mistaken me!”