"Wait!"
Seeing the little girl about to call the maid over to send her and Lady Frieren away, Fern panicked. In her haste, she blurted out:
"We—we came to visit the Archmage! The gift was for the Archmage, too!"
"You ate it, so fine, but how can you still send us away?"
"Why isn't the Archmage coming out?"
"Is she not home?"
"Or does the Archmage not want to see us?!"
After all, she had spent quite a bit of money on the ingredients for that dessert, then worked away at it for half the day. Now, before she'd even met the person she'd made it for, a little girl was ruining everything. How could she possibly accept that?
"And another thing!"
"There's no way that dessert could have been that bad, is there?"
Fern simply couldn't bear the little girl's disdainful expression and exaggerated show of disgust from earlier. As a "chef," she found it impossible to stomach.
After all, she and Lady Frieren had both sampled the leftover scraps before packing it up. It had tasted every bit as good as the desserts from the shops outside. They'd even been reluctant to eat it all themselves, so how could this girl call it disgusting?
"It was bad!"
o(^｀)o
Annie wasn't trying to put the other girl down. Good food was good, and bad food was bad. She wasn't about to lie about it!
Especially since she'd gotten used to all kinds of delicacies here in the Central Kingdoms' trading city of Balum. And this girl had shown up with just one ordinary box of sweets—who did she think she was looking down on? No mage could resist a test like that, could they?
Then, after a moment's thought, Annie suddenly asked:
"By the way, who are you?"
(.)