My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!-Chapter 267: The Last of the Light

The medicine failed at dawn.

Marron felt it happen—the last cold barrier in her chest cracking like ice under pressure, the warmth flooding through the fractures, and then the joy, incandescent and overwhelming, burning away everything that had been holding it back.

She’d been tied to a tree for three hours. Aldric had done the work while she was still lucid enough to cooperate, binding her wrists behind the trunk, securing her legs, adding extra rope around her torso. The Blade’s box sat fifteen feet away, locked with chains Aldric had wrapped around it three times.

Not enough. None of it would be enough.

The joy hit like a physical blow, and Marron screamed.

Not pain—she wished it was pain. Pain she could fight. This was happiness so pure and complete it erased her. The Blade was singing, its sibling so close now, so desperately close, and reunion was everything, was the only thing that mattered, was—

Need to go need to move need to run need to reach it need to be COMPLETE—

Marron’s body convulsed against the ropes. Her wrists twisted, pulling, testing the bindings. The bark of the tree bit into her back. Blood ran down her arms where the rope cut into skin. None of it registered. There was only the joy and the need and the Blade calling out to its sibling with a voice that made her bones vibrate.

"Marron!" Aldric’s voice was distant, underwater. "Marron, stay with me—"

But she was already gone.

Her mouth moved, but the words weren’t hers. "Please, please let me go, need to go, have to—so close, almost there, please Aldric please—"

She was crying. Smiling and crying at the same time, her face contorted in an expression that was joy and horror mixed together. The ropes were too tight but also not tight enough, she needed them tighter, needed to be held down because if she got free she’d run and she couldn’t stop herself and—

The Blade pulsed in its chained box.

Marron’s awareness—what little remained of it beneath the joy—suddenly snapped to the tool. Through the wood and iron and chains, she could feel it. Not just the joy now. Something else underneath. Something the Blade was desperately trying to communicate through the overwhelming happiness.

Afraid. So afraid. Don’t want this. Don’t want to go. Don’t want to learn what the Slicer knows. Don’t want to become—

But the joy drowned it out. The Slicer’s call was too strong, too close, and the Blade couldn’t help responding. Seven years of separation. Seven years of longing. The reunion pull was instinctive, coded into the tool’s very nature by whoever had made it centuries ago.

Come home. Come home. Come together. Be complete.

"No—" Marron’s voice broke through the joy for just an instant. "The Blade—doesn’t want—trying to tell me—"

Then the joy returned, stronger, and her words dissolved into incoherent pleading.

Aldric stood five feet away, knife in hand, watching her with an expression that was breaking him. Lucy sat in her jar beside him, glowing that dim, traumatized gray. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The food cart was positioned between Marron and the direction of the Slicer’s call—wheels locked, acting as a physical barrier. The Eternal Copper Pot sat cold and dark. The Generous Ladle hung motionless.

All three tools were silent. Afraid but resolute.

Marron felt her body surge against the ropes again. The tree groaned. The bark cracked slightly. She was stronger than she should be—the joy lending her strength, or maybe just making her unable to feel the damage she was doing to herself.

"Need to—have to—please, Aldric, please just let me—I promise I’ll come back, I promise, just need to see it, need to touch it, need to—"

"That’s not you talking," Aldric said, his voice shaking. "That’s the joy. Marron, if you can hear me—fight it. Please. Fight it like you did before."

But there was nothing left to fight with. The medicine was gone. The cold barrier was gone. There was only the joy and the desperate, singing need.

The Blade pulsed again, and this time Marron felt something new through the connection. Not from the Blade—from the Slicer itself. Through the Blade’s desperate call, she was receiving impressions from its sibling.

Measurements. Yield percentages. Efficiency calculations.

And underneath that: memories. Seven years of memories that the Slicer had recorded with perfect, indifferent precision.

A workshop in an undercity. Wealthy clients in fine clothes, paying in gold, asking for "specific preparations." Greaves explaining his techniques with professional pride. The mandoline’s perfect uniform cuts applied to—

Marron retched. The joy wavered for just a moment as horror crashed through it.

People. He’s been cutting people. Seven years of—oh god, oh god—

But the joy reasserted itself immediately, burning away the horror. The Slicer didn’t care what it cut. The Blade didn’t want to care. Together they could be perfect, complete, unstoppable—

"No!" Marron screamed, and this time it was her voice, her will, forcing its way through the joy by sheer desperation. "The wielder—Aldric, the person who has the Slicer—they’ve been—"

The joy crushed her words. Her body convulsed, pulling so hard against the ropes that the tree’s roots groaned. Blood ran freely now from her wrists, her struggles becoming frantic, animal.

And then she heard it.

Footsteps. Casual. Unhurried. Coming from the east.

Someone was humming a cheerful tune.

The Blade exploded with joy so intense Marron’s vision whited out. Every muscle in her body locked, pulling against the ropes with strength that should have been impossible. The tree cracked. Not splitting, not breaking, but definitely cracking.

"He’s here," Aldric whispered, moving to stand between Marron and the sound of approaching footsteps. "Marron, whoever this is—whatever they’ve done—you have to fight. The Blade can’t reach them. No matter what the joy makes you feel."

But Marron wasn’t listening anymore. The joy was everything. The Slicer was so close, so impossibly close, and the Blade was screaming for reunion, and Marron’s body was just a vessel, just a cage holding the Blade away from what it needed more than anything—

The humming grew louder.

Lucy’s glow suddenly intensified—not gray anymore, but a fierce, bright blue. The slime launched herself from her jar, landing on the ground between Aldric and the approaching footsteps.

The Wanderer’s Food Cart’s wheels unlocked. It rolled forward, positioning itself more firmly as a barrier.

The Eternal Copper Pot began to heat. Not slowly, not the gradual warming of normal use, but suddenly, intensely hot. Steam hissed from its interior.

The Generous Ladle’s handle blazed green, swinging down from its hook.

The tools were preparing for war.

And Marron, tied to a tree and drowning in joy, could only watch through tears as a man stepped into the clearing.

He was ordinary. That was the first thing she noticed. Middle-aged, weathered skin, the build of someone who did physical labor. Scarred hands that moved with professional precision. He wore a butcher’s apron—clean, well-maintained—and carried a pack that was clearly heavy.

His eyes were what was wrong. They looked at Aldric, at Lucy, at the food cart and tools, at Marron herself—and saw measurements. Yield percentages. Profit margins.

He wasn’t seeing people. He was seeing inventory.

The mandoline in his hands glowed red, pulsing with the same desperate joy that was tearing Marron apart from inside.

Greaves the Butcher smiled. It was a friendly smile. Professional. The smile of a businessman greeting potential clients.

"Good morning," he said pleasantly. "I’ve come for the Blade. We can make this civilized."

The Blade screamed in its box, and Marron felt it through every nerve: joy and terror in equal measure, wanting reunion and dreading it, calling to its sibling while begging to be kept away.

Don’t let me go to him. Don’t let me become what the Slicer has become. Please please please—

But the joy wouldn’t let her speak. Marron’s mouth opened, and what came out was desperate, incoherent pleading: "Yes, yes, take it, take the Blade, let me give it to you, please just let me help, need to help, need to—"

Aldric’s hand tightened on his knife.

Lucy’s glow brightened to blinding.

The Cart’s wheels locked with a sound like thunder.

And Greaves, still smiling that terrible professional smile, set down his pack and began unpacking his tools.

"I had hoped we could negotiate," he said pleasantly. "But I’m flexible. I’ve handled difficult acquisitions before."

He drew a cleaver from his belt. The blade caught the dawn light and threw it back in shades of red.

"Don’t worry," Greaves said, looking at Aldric with eyes that calculated weight and processing time. "The mandoline has taught me efficiency. You won’t suffer long. And waste is—well, waste is inefficient."

He took a step forward.

The tools moved as one—Cart surging forward, Pot tipping to spill boiling water, Ladle swinging like a weapon.

And Marron, tied to a tree and drowning in joy that was burning her alive from the inside, could only scream as the man who’d been cutting people for seven years reached for her companions.

The Blade pulsed in its box, and through the joy and terror, Marron felt it trying to communicate one final, desperate message:

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never wanted this. I never wanted to be what the Slicer has become. Please—don’t let me learn. Don’t let me forget how to care.

But the Slicer’s call was too strong, and the joy too overwhelming, and Marron’s body pulled against the ropes so hard the tree finally cracked, roots tearing from earth.

Dawn broke fully across the clearing, painting everything in shades of gold and red.

And the killing was about to begin.