Inside an ordinary restaurant in Crescent Moon Village, in the Mokomo Dukedom.
Plates were piled high on the long wooden table, every dish swept clean.
Gern ate at a terrifying pace. The fork in his hand was almost a blur; a platter of roast meat had barely arrived before only bones remained.
The restaurant's cooks were run off their feet, sweat constantly rolling down their foreheads, yet they still couldn't keep up with Gern.
"Another extra-large roast steak!" Gern raised his hand and called out indistinctly, his mouth still stuffed with food.
"M-more?!" The restaurant owner's eyes widened, and the spatula nearly slipped from their hand.
"Sir, we've already used up all the meat we had in reserve..."
"Then give me ten more cakes!" Gern grinned, his gaze sweeping over the dishes on the menu he hadn't tried yet.
Every member of the Mink Tribe in the restaurant stopped what they were doing and stared, dumbfounded.
Whispers rose all around.
"Is this guy's stomach a bottomless pit?"
"He ate all the restaurant's food by himself!"
"Where did Lipo find this 'guy'? Did she bring him here specifically to eat us out of business?"
Meanwhile, Lipo sat beside the table, clutching her little carrot-shaped purse in both hands.
The purse had been bulging before, but now it was as shriveled as a vegetable leaf left out in the sun.
"Wah..." She trembled as she turned it upside down, and a single lonely coin clinked onto the table.
Her floppy ears drooped completely, and tears welled in her pink eyes.
At the table, Gern was demolishing his twenty-seventh platter of roast meat while the head chef, panting for breath, brought over the thirtieth serving of stew.
When Gern reached for the last slice of carrot cake in front of Lipo, the floppy-eared