My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!-Chapter 270: Greaves Finds Them

The standoff lasted seven minutes.

Greaves lay pinned beneath the Cart, the Ladle’s handle pressed against his throat, the Pot’s heat radiating near his head. His professional calm had shattered completely. He wasn’t screaming anymore—that had lasted only a few seconds before he’d recognized it as wasted energy. Now he was calculating.

His eyes moved constantly. Measuring distances. Assessing angles. Looking for the efficiency gap, the moment when the tools’ coordination would falter.

The mandoline on his hip pulsed frantically, feeding him information through their seven-year connection. The Cart’s damaged wheel is weakening. The Pot’s heat is depleting—it has no fuel source, burning through reserves. The Ladle is operating beyond normal parameters, will exhaust soon.

Greaves could feel it. The tools were running on pure will, and will—however admirable—eventually failed against practical limitations.

He just had to wait.

Aldric stood five feet away, breathing hard. He’d retrieved his knife, though his hand still shook holding it. Marron lay in her chains, the joy still burning through her but muted now by her understanding of what the tools were doing. She was crying silently, her body occasionally spasming with the need to reach the Blade, but she was fighting it. Actually fighting it, not just enduring.

Lucy remained trapped in her jar, throwing herself against the glass periodically. Her glow had shifted from gray to blue again—still traumatized, but aware. Watching.

"This is temporary," Greaves said, his voice calm again. Professional. "The artifacts can’t maintain this indefinitely. They’re not designed for combat. They’re tools, not weapons. Eventually they’ll exhaust themselves, and then—" He smiled slightly. "Then we’re back to negotiation."

"There’s no negotiation," Aldric said. His voice was steadier now. "You’re not getting the Blade."

"I admire your conviction. Truly." Greaves shifted slightly, testing the Cart’s weight. It pressed down harder, and he stopped moving. "But conviction without pragmatism is just stubbornness. You’ve seen what I am. What the mandoline has made me. Do you really think you can stop me? A scholar with a knife against a man who’s been cutting for seven years?"

"The tools stopped you."

"The tools surprised me. There’s a difference." Greaves’s eyes flickered toward the chained Blade. "And they’re conflicted. I can feel it through the mandoline. They want to protect your friend, yes. But they also want their sibling to be happy. Part of them understands that the Blade and mandoline together would be—" He paused, searching for the word. "—complete. Fulfilled. Operating at their designed capacity."

The Cart shuddered. Its wheel was indeed weakening, the damaged spoke beginning to crack further under the strain of holding Greaves down.

"You see?" Greaves continued, his tone almost kind. "They’re torn. Loyalty to the wielder versus purpose for the tool. Eventually, purpose wins. It always does. The mandoline taught me that. We are what we do, and these tools were made to work together."

"They were made to teach," Marron said hoarsely. "Not to work. To teach."

Greaves’s head turned toward her as much as the Ladle would allow. "An interesting philosophy. But demonstrably false. Tools that teach would develop morality, judgment, the ability to refuse certain tasks. The mandoline has no morality. It cuts whatever I place beneath it with perfect uniformity. That’s not teaching—that’s serving. That’s purpose fulfilled."

"It hollowed you out," Marron whispered. "Seven years of cutting without caring. Seven years of it teaching you that distinctions don’t matter, that flesh is flesh, that efficiency is the only virtue. That’s not fulfilling purpose. That’s losing yourself."

"I found myself." Greaves’s voice was firm. "Before the mandoline, I was weak. Conflicted. Held back by sentiment and squeamishness. I hesitated. Made mistakes. The mandoline freed me from all that. Taught me that cutting is just cutting, that the squeamish distinctions people make—animal versus human, food versus person—are artificial constructs that slow down efficiency."

He smiled that terrible professional smile. "I’m more myself now than I ever was. The mandoline gave me clarity."

The Pot pulsed, and Aldric felt the impression clearly: Horror. Grief. This is what happens when teaching is only efficiency. When the lesson is learned without wisdom.

"The tools know you’re wrong," Aldric said. "They can feel what you’ve become. What the Slicer has become. That’s why they’re stopping it—stopping their own sibling—because they understand that some reunions are poison."

Greaves’s expression flickered—just for an instant, something moved behind his eyes. Doubt? Recognition? But it was gone immediately, buried under seven years of the mandoline’s perfect, efficient indifference.

"You waste time philosophizing while your defenses crumble." He gestured with his chin toward the Cart. "Hear that? The spoke is cracking. Another minute, perhaps two, and the wheel will fail. The cart will collapse. And then—"

The spoke cracked. Not completely—not yet—but audibly. The Cart shuddered, trying to redistribute its weight, but the damage was spreading.

Greaves smiled. "There. You see? Matter of time."

"Then we have time to talk," Aldric said quickly. He needed to keep Greaves distracted, needed to think of something, anything—"Tell me about your first client. Your first commission. When did it start?"

Greaves’s eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Because I’m trying to understand. You weren’t born doing this. The mandoline didn’t make you this way overnight. Something must have happened. Someone must have asked you to cross a line." Aldric stepped closer, still holding the knife but lowering it slightly. Non-threatening. "When did you stop seeing people as people?" 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

For a long moment, Greaves was silent. The mandoline pulsed at his hip, and Aldric could see the calculation happening—was answering questions a waste of time, or was keeping the scholar talking a way to wait out the tools’ exhaustion?

Efficiency won.

"Six months after I found the mandoline," Greaves said finally. "I was working in Ashmark’s undercity. Legitimate butcher shop, legitimate business. The mandoline made my work perfect—every cut uniform, every portion exact. My reputation grew. And one day, a wealthy client came to the back door."

His voice took on a distant quality, like he was reciting a ledger entry.

"Lord Cavish. Minor noble, major debts, expensive tastes in everything including food. He asked if I took special commissions. I said yes—assumed he meant game, exotic meats, things like that. He said he’d pay five hundred gold for twenty kilograms of specific... product. Human product. Female, age twenty to thirty, prepared like venison."

Marron made a choking sound. Aldric’s stomach turned.

Greaves continued, his tone unchanged. "I refused, of course. Initially. I was still weak then, still bound by conventional morality. But he left the gold anyway. Said to think about it. Said if I changed my mind, he’d provide the source material—I’d just need to process it."

The Cart’s wheel cracked further. The Pot’s heat was definitely dimming now. The Ladle’s green glow flickered.

"I thought about it for three days," Greaves said. "Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t work properly. The gold sat in my safe, and I kept thinking about what it could buy. How many months of security. How I could expand the shop. And I kept thinking—does it really matter? Meat is meat. The mandoline doesn’t distinguish. Why should I?"

"Because you’re human," Aldric said, his voice shaking. "Because human beings have morality, have lines we don’t cross—"

"Lines are inefficient. The mandoline taught me that." Greaves’s voice was patient, like explaining something to a child. "On the fourth day, I told Lord Cavish yes. He provided a homeless woman he’d acquired—purchase agreement, all legal in the undercity courts. She was sedated. Never knew what happened. I used the mandoline. Perfect cuts. Twenty kilograms of product, packaged and delivered."

His eyes were distant now, remembering.

"Lord Cavish was delighted. Said it was the finest meat he’d ever tasted. Paid me a thousand gold bonus. Referred me to three other clients. Within a month, I had a waiting list. Within six months, I’d left legitimate butchery entirely. Too inefficient, too limited. This was better. The clients paid extraordinary amounts. The mandoline made the work perfect. And I—"

He paused, and for just an instant, something human flickered across his face.

"I stopped feeling anything. The mandoline’s indifference became mine. By the end of the first year, I could look at a person and see only yield percentages. Weight, bone density, optimal processing methods. The squeamishness was gone. The guilt was gone. The mandoline had taught me that cutting is cutting, and everything else is sentiment."

"The mandoline didn’t teach you," Marron said, her voice raw. "It erased you. There’s a difference."

"Semantics." But Greaves’s voice was less certain now. "I became more efficient. More successful. Built an empire on—"

"On murder." Aldric’s voice was hard. "On cannibalism. On convincing yourself that efficiency matters more than humanity."

"Humanity is a construct—"

"No." The word came from Marron. She was sitting up as much as her chains allowed, her face pale but her voice clear. "Humanity is a choice. The mandoline took away your ability to choose. It made everything feel the same until you couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong. That’s not teaching. That’s not wisdom. That’s just—" Her voice broke. "That’s just cutting away who you were until nothing was left but the cutting itself."

The Cart’s wheel finally gave way. The spoke snapped completely, and the Cart lurched, its weight shifting off Greaves’s chest.

He moved immediately—rolled left, came up on his feet, the cleaver somehow back in his hand. Must have grabbed it during the confusion, during the shift.

The Ladle tried to swing at him, but it was slow now, exhausted. Greaves caught it easily and threw it aside again. This time the green glow went out completely.

The Pot tipped toward him, trying to spill the last of its heat. Greaves kicked it away. The metal clanged against a tree and went cold.

The Cart tried to roll forward on its three remaining wheels, but without the fourth, it just spun in place, going nowhere.

Three tools, exhausted and defeated.

Greaves stood in the center of the clearing, breathing hard but triumphant. The mandoline on his hip glowed bright red, pulsing with victory.

"As I said," he told Aldric, raising the cleaver. "Temporary. Now—let’s finish our negotiation."

He took a step toward Aldric.

Then another.

Aldric raised his knife, knowing it was useless, knowing he was about to die, but determined to buy Marron every second he could.

Behind them, the Blade pulsed in its chained box. Through the joy, through the terror, it was trying to send one final message to its wielder:

I’m sorry. I never wanted this. I never wanted you to die for me. Please—please run. Leave me. Save yourself.

But Marron didn’t run. Couldn’t run, chained as she was. Could only watch as Greaves advanced on Aldric with professional precision, calculating the most efficient way to kill a man who’d never fought in his life.

The sun climbed higher. Birds stayed silent. The forest held its breath.

And Greaves the Butcher prepared to add three more entries to his ledger.