This was a plate of white chocolate with filling. Ina bit into one end of the 'bone', revealing the dark filling inside. What she tasted was almond paste filling. Dusì had made four kinds of fillings, namely almond paste, sea salt caramel, coconut shreds, and raspberry jam, each with its unique flavor.
Finally, it was Xavier's turn to present his food. Having worked in a tea restaurant for so long, he was most familiar with all kinds of desserts. This time, Xavier brought one of the desserts: undead mochi.
Fortunately, this plate of mochi had been held by Orldington all along. The chill aura of the undead kept the mochi at a low temperature, otherwise, in the wilderness for so long, the mochi would have melted away.
The mochi had several designs, one was ghost mochi, and the hem of the round white mochi was pulled out into wavy frills, with triangular eyes and shark teeth painted on the round head, but it still looked more cute than horrifying. Another was a skull mochi, with two hollow black eyes on top, and a row of teeth drawn at the bottom end, vividly sketching out a skull head. Orldington saw Dusì pick up the skull mochi and excitedly pointed to its own hollow chest bone.
"Orldington, you made this, didn't you?" Dusì asked while biting into the soft mochi skin.
Orldington nodded excitedly, then pointed to the ghost mochi and Xavier, as if explaining that Xavier had not been slacking off and had participated in the making.
Finally, Anty won the most creative award, Vilanthe got the bravest award, Elvys received the best newcomer award, Xavier and Orldington won the best team award, Lesley got the most popular award, and Dusì received the best intention award.
Everyone got a share of the awards, and the prizes were cool fruits that Ina had obtained from the elves. The light green fruit was as soft as jelly, and if you were not careful, you would poke through the skin, revealing the abundant pulp and juice inside. Everyone learned Ina's action to gently pull out the stem of the fruit, inserting a straw into the formed small hole.
Everyone's faces revealed expressions of surprise. Although this fruit was entirely natural, it was even more delicious than proportionally mixed fruit juice.
As Xavier savored it carefully while trying to analyze the ingredients that could be used to concoct this kind of drink, he said, "A bit of lemon juice, more apple juice, green plum, and sugarcane, plus a few mint leaves, chilled in the coldest spring water, should give this flavor."
Ina complimented him, "You're becoming quite the beverage expert. A human tongue couldn't distinguish so many flavors. It seems your efforts to retain your sense of taste were a wise decision."
At that moment, Xavier sucked a seed from the cool fruit. He had only tasted the soft flesh inside and thought this fruit had no seeds. He didn't expect that the seeds were also edible. His teeth broke a thin flexible skin, revealing a sweeter juice inside. He thought it could possibly be substituted with popping boba.
A rustling sound came from the bushes, everyone turned their heads and saw a little head peeking out from the shrubs. She had two green braids adorned with a few white little flowers.
Atelika looked at Anty with surprise, "Ah! Humans!"
——
Atelika was caught quickly, she only managed to say that one sentence. The entire forest control by Alfred, every tree, every blade of grass.
Just before being entwined by vines, Atelika rushed to Ina. Her sharp senses made her choose the most reliable person present. Atelika tightly hugged Ina's waist.
"Calm down, Alfred," Atelika said, but she was clearly the least calm. Her fingers were shaking with excitement, her hair was a bit messy, a white flower hung loosely on the tip of her hair, and her eyes were wide open. "I don't want to go back, it's not dangerous outside!"
Alfred's gaze swept over this group of people, or rather, this group of diverse creatures. The proportion of humans was not high, just three young girls. Among the two male beings, one was a vampire, the other a lich. There was no species, the "human male," that warranted his extra caution.
Among them, one seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he quickly dismissed the idea. They did not recognize their kin by appearance. Except for her face, everything about her was completely unfamiliar to Alfred.
Seeing Alfred's scrutiny, Elvys also looked back at him with vigilance. Alfred had the kind of face that Ina would like, a straight nose, deep eyes, and beautifully lined lips that looked perfect for kissing.
But he was quite boring, the duke quickly let down his guard, making such a judgment.
Because Alfred was quite impolite, maintaining his silence and using the vines to wrap Atelika up, this inevitably involved Ina, so Ina did a little trick to make the vines loosen like they had been scalded by hot water.
Atelika pouted pitifully and poked her head out from behind Ina's waist, "Can I play outside for a while? I won't leave the Silverleaf Forest."
Alfred pursed his lips indifferently. He glanced at Vilanthe in the crowd, who looked somewhat sad and turned around to leave without saying a word. A first-hand experience might be more powerful than his own warning. Atelika would someday realize that staying in the Silverleaf forest wasn't such a bad thing.
For Atelika, this was an unexpected surprise. She hadn't expected Alfred to let her go so easily. She gently loosened the arm that had bound her to Ina and looked up at everyone with a sweet smile in her eyes.
"So many...so many different..." she paused, the bit of knowledge she understood told her that if she described human-shaped beings as "things," they would become very angry. But Atelika's poor little head couldn't figure out how to describe this group of similar-looking but actually six different species of beings.
So many beings, or species? Saying it this way would also annoy them, right? Atelika still wanted to play with them and hear them tell stories about the outside world, so she didn't want to leave a bad impression.
She scratched her head, deciding to show these beings that could be called "humans" something nice.
Ina watched this little girl, who was overly excited because she had escaped parental restrictions, with concern. Atelika was obviously overly excited, as she suddenly ran to a small tree and kissed it on the trunk.
But what happened next left everyone with wide eyes in surprise. The slim, obviously several years away from bearing fruit, small tree quickly grew taller, becoming sturdy and lush in just a few breaths. Branches bloomed with tiny pale yellow flowers, then petals fell in the wind, and green fruits appeared on the branches.
The fruits grew larger every second, and finally, all fell off together, falling into Atelika's prepared vine net. She held a pile of fruits that was even taller than herself and ran to Ina, hoping to see her say, "Here are some delicious fruits for you, take me to play!"
These fruits were the cool fruits that everyone had just tasted. Because this kind of fruit is too soft, and the picking time is very short — unripe fruits naturally don't taste good, but ripe fruits are too soft and will turn into fruit mush when they fall to the ground. Even the elves who happened to come across ripe fruits hanging from the branches were not many, just seven or eight, as a return gift for enjoying the food in the restaurant.
This was a big gift. Ina carefully put away this big basket of cool fruits. She stretched out her hand to Atelika, "If that's the case, come with me to the Dragon Flame Restaurant, I opened a restaurant in the forest."
Vilanthe had been silent all this time, she looked sad. Dusì knew that she was probably thinking of her own mother. Dusì was Vilanthe's best friend in the tavern, she knew a little about Vilanthe's background.
On the way back to the restaurant, Vilanthe suddenly stared at Atelika's back and said, "Don't trust humans, they will hurt you."
Anty and Lesley were surprised to look at Vilanthe. Why would she say that? They are humans too!
Ina spoke in a disagreeing tone, "Vilanthe."
Vilanthe realized that what she said seemed to have hurt Anty and the others, so she lowered her voice and corrected herself, "Not all humans, it's... it's the people of the Orlan Empire..." She realized she shouldn't defame her own country's people like this, they were clearly also victims of the ethnic cleansing campaign. Vilanthe mumbled and took back the second half of her sentence, only repeating, "In any case, don't leave the Silverleaf Forest."