An amount of 8,500 credits for just a single appetizer!
Scanning the menu, Lohan finally saw what the life of someone truly rich looked like. From the looks of it, tonight’s dinner would probably cost them the equivalent of several Elysium helmets!!
"Bella, this is insane." Lohan commented, his eyes wide as he read the descriptions of other dishes whose prices rose exponentially. "A banquet here could fund a family’s living in the Lower Zone for years! Isn’t the high price an exaggeration?"
He was genuinely having a hard time understanding why it cost so much, at this point, Lohan was already feeling like he was being robbed!
"Quality here isn’t measured only in flavor, Halon, but in the rarity of the material." Isabella explained, keeping her voice low and elegant. "Consider that each ingredient crossed sectors of the galaxy under military and scientific protection, just the cost of keeping these ingredients fresh after traveling so many light years has already multiplied the original value a few hundred times. But don’t worry about the numbers tonight. Tonight is our celebration dinner for Silver Lotus’s invitation to our guild, the celebration for the entry of a group with Players of Epic, Rare, and Uncommon Bases under their control? This banquet is just a fraction of the profits that simple invitation you made will bring us."
Lohan sighed and accepted her suggestion, also ordering a Deep Hydra Fillet as the main dish while actively ignoring its price, deciding to really treat this night as special.
When the Plasma Medusa arrived, its aesthetic was strange and almost intimidating, the dish pulsed constantly with a blue light, and the tentacles of light seemed to move slightly even though the creature was already dead.
The more Lohan looked at it, the more uncomfortable he felt.
"Bella, don’t you think this... looks a bit like a Slime?" Lohan asked uncertainly.
Hearing his comment, Bella also froze, looking at the bluish Plasma right after hearing that remark, and now the image of it wouldn’t leave her mind either. "Well... now that you mention it, it does seem kind of strange to eat this, doesn’t it?"
The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds, not knowing what to say, until Lohan couldn’t hold it in and laughed, with Isabella laughing too right after because of his reaction.
"Hahaha, ok, it’s not like I’ve never eaten a Slime in my life." Lohan said, accepting his fate to try that dish that really did look beautiful, since back in Elysium he had already practiced "cannibalism" by digesting other Slimes to evolve.
If he had already eaten other Slimes just to evolve, even though the other Slimes had no flavor, now that he was facing something with the potential to be the best thing he had ever eaten, Lohan wasn’t going to be intimidated by its strange appearance.
Even though the sensation of eating it with his mouth was much more invasive than digesting it with his membrane, Lohan was still willing to go through this "torment".
Isabella looked at him with anticipation, excited to see what his reaction would be upon tasting one of her favorite dishes.
As soon as Lohan brought the first portion to his mouth, the world around him disappeared.
The explosion of flavors was something he never imagined could be possible.
It wasn’t just his palate, but a sensation that ran through his nerves, as if the food were interacting directly with the Mana now circulating in his physical body, forcing his digestion to savor that flavor in a way no other food ever had!
It was sweet, spicy, and refreshing all at once, with a depth that made Grade A nutritional solutions seem like dirty gutter water.
Lohan realized, in that split second, that the high price really wasn’t for nothing, the restaurant delivered a sensory evolution that the Lower Zone didn’t even know existed.
They kept eating, chatting casually about the plans for the guild interviews and laughing about some absurd situations they’d experienced in the dungeon.
Bella was visibly more relaxed, letting her "Ice Queen" facade melt in Lohan’s company. However, the calm of the moment began to be clouded by an uncomfortable presence at a nearby table.
A few meters away from them, a woman about forty years old, adorned in an ethereal silk dress that shimmered with the value of a small spaceship, watched them with an expression of pure disgust.
Her husband, a middle aged man with the tired look typical of Upper Zone bureaucrats, couldn’t stop looking in Isabella’s direction.
He didn’t notice the utility jacket or the urban style, he seemed captivated by the natural beauty and the aura that young girl exuded.
The woman, noticing her husband’s interest and feeling insulted by the fact that two people she considered "poor" were occupying such an exclusive space, kept huffing constantly.
She looked at Lohan, who despite being as handsome as the girl accompanying him, wore such unpleasant clothes in an environment like that, and then at Isabella, whose beauty made her suddenly feel old and dull, despite all the expensive cosmetic procedures she’d already had done.
Among her own friends, the woman felt she was far more beautiful than all of them, that the hundreds of thousands of credits spent on cosmetic procedures had been worth every penny, but looking at that young girl accompanied by the handsome young man, who obviously had a natural beauty far greater than anything she’d ever had at any point in her own life, the woman grew even more enraged.
"This is absurd, Reginald." The woman hissed at her husband, though her voice carried perfectly to Bella and Lohan’s enhanced hearing. "How did the maître d’ allow this kind of people in here? Look at them... their clothes probably carry dust from industrial sectors. The smell of poverty is ruining the aroma of my Xylos wine."
The husband murmured something inaudible, trying to look away, but the woman didn’t hear a word he said, since she was determined to make a scene.
When Mr. Sterling got up to go to the restroom, the woman wasted no time. She snapped her fingers loudly, calling over the waiter serving that section.